Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/70

50 here. Stately volumes in our libraries bear the titles of Histories of the Conquest of Mexico, of Peru, etc.; and their versions in other languages repeat the title. The descendants of the French and English colonists on this soil may congratulate themselves that that word is appropriated exclusively to the Spanish freebooters. For, by whatever method other nationalities obtained and hold territory here, it was not first acquired by the intent of conquest, nor by that way alone. The word conquest, by the Spaniards, is a very tame one to apply to the method of their rapacity and fiendish inhumanity, as they disembarked on these virgin realms, and bore down upon its harmless native tribes as with the sweep of a vengeful malice and rage. Some other word of our capable language than conquest would more fitly define the riot and wreck, the greed and the diabolical cruelty, of those first invaders. And that more fitting word would need to be one of the most harrowing and appalling in its burden of outrages and woes. The campaigns of Cyrus, of Alexander, of Pompey, of Julius Caesar, of Titus and Vespasian, might shrink from being classed with the Spanish conquest of America; and we should have to turn to the ferocities of Tamerlane, of Ghengis Khan, of the princes of India and Tartary, and of the brute men of Africa, for points of parallel with it.

We must remember the training of centuries, through which not only the nobles, but also those of meanest rank fired with Spanish blood, had passed, and the full results of which exhibited themselves just at the period of the discovery of America. During six or more of those previous centuries the Spaniard had been a fighter for his own territory and creed. By desperate valor and inhuman cruelty he had driven the Moor from the former, and had engaged all the fury of a heart-consuming bigotry in a most devout though craven superstition to impose the latter. Honest, painstaking industry for thrift and homely good had no attraction for the Spaniard. Nor would even enterprise