Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/367

Rh built up on rather frail foundations of fact, and conclusions were reached by undue straining of the imagination rather than by the exercise of critical research. The Indians frequently misled their new teachers, giving such interpretation of their rites as they thought would be most acceptable, when not themselves ignorant of the real significance of their symbols and ceremonies; as, indeed, many poorly instructed Christians to-day could not explain intelligibly, to an inquiring visitor from Mars, the meaning of emblems and practices with which they are, nevertheless, familiar. But with every such allowance, there still remains a sufficient number of authenticated and perfectly understood doctrines and observances in the ancient Mexican cult, to argue convincingly their Christian origin; hence many writers have identified Quetzalcoatl with some unknown Christian missionary priest—possibly an Oriental bishop—while others have even thought he was the apostle St. Thomas. This startling opinion has not lacked eloquent defenders, but it is excluded from serious consideration by the fact that St. Thomas lived in the first century, and Quetzalcoatl in the tenth, without adducing others which conclusively disprove it.

The identity of Quetzalcoatl remains an unsolved mystery, and, after his departure, it became merged into that of mythical divinities, with a plumed serpent for his emblem. The confused notions which the Mexicans preserved concerning his life, his acts and miracles, and his final disappearance, and their interweaving of other legends of their more beneficent deities with his imperfectly transmitted doctrines, and the distorted facts in his personal history are no more extraordinary than many of the popular tales from lives of the saints, and other wonder stories which are cherished from generation to generation by ignorant and imaginative people everywhere. Unless some heretofore undiscovered treasure house of lost records delivers the key to the early history of the Toltecs, there seems little hope that our imperfect knowledge concerning him will receive any important additions. The systematic destruction of the picture writings of the ancient Mexicans, and particularly of everything connected with their religion, which was carried on for years with misguided zeal by the Spaniards, cut off the source from which fuller information might have been hoped. Much and very severe criticism has fallen upon the ecclesiastics—notably Bishop Zumarraga—by whom this sad destruction was accomplished, and the not unnatural vexation, with which historians view what now seems to have been a work of ignorant and unnecessary fanaticism, has lent undue vehemence to the blame assigned to these well-intentioned iconoclasts. The destruction is undoubtedly most regrettable, but, in strict justice, it must be admitted that the extent of the loss which American history sustained is entirely problematical, for we do not certainly know that the destroyed records contained anything which has not been learned from others which were preserved, and from the Indians themselves at the time of the conquest. On the other hand our debt to the friars is very great,