Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/368

344 for to them alone is it owing that anything at all survived the Spanish conquest. They alone, amidst the hordes of gold-greedy colonists who scoured the country in search of mines and slaves, established humane relations with the Indians, learned their language, studied their records, and while bringing them into schools to teach them Christianity, learned from them all that could be discovered concerning their own religion, history, and traditions. Franciscans such as Sahagun, Torquemada, Motolinia, Landa, and Lizana, Jesuits such as Acosta, Duran, and later Clavigero—to mention some of the more notable amongst many workers—are the fathers of American history, to whose labours is due the preservation of an enormous mass of information—all we possess in fact—which would otherwise have perished irrevocably.

It may be safely assumed that little or nothing of importance which the Indians themselves knew escaped the researches which these and other men of their order conducted with patience and intelligence. Those among the early ecclesiastics in whom the critical faculty was wanting made good this lack by their diligence, amassing the materials which served later writers, to whom fell the task of assorting the confused historical lumber they had collected. It appears that the Mexicans knew surprisingly little about their own history, and that their trustworthy traditions did not carry them very far back. The Indians of Yucatan, in' the time of Diego Landa, were unable to decipher the inscriptions on the ruined temples, and only the most vague and improbable legends concerning the buildings of their ancient cities survived amongst them. It does not seem, therefore, unreasonable to temper our impatience towards Bishop Zumarraga's act of vandalism by the reflection that the destroyed records would have probably furnished no link between the civilisation of Anahuac and that of Yucatan and Central America.

Authorities consulted on Quetzalcoatl, Sahagun, lib. iii., cap. v.xiv.; Torquemada, lib. iii., cap., vii.; Motolinia in Icazbalceta pp. lo, 30, 65; Mendieta, p. 82-98; Clavigero, tom. ii., p. 11-14; Servando Teresa de Mier in Bustamante; Orozco y Berra, tom. i., cap. iv., tom. ii., cap. iii.; Brasseur de Bourbourg, lib. ii., cap. iv., lib. iii., cap. ii. Charnay, Ancient Cities ; Bulletins of Bureau of American Ethnology.