Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/63

 Rh Let us try to recall the date of Chapultepec's first appearance in history, when we shall, at a later period, wander beneath its cypress groves, with Montezuma, or heroes of a later generation.

[A. D. 1260.] After seventeen years at Chapultepec the Mexicans were driven thence to the southern borders of the lake, Tezcoco, where they existed for fifty years in a state of misery, feeding on fish and insects and reptiles of the marshes. They clothed themselves in garments of leaves, and their huts were made of the reeds and rushes surrounding the lake. They were free, however, and it is thought that they willingly endured these hardships rather than ally themselves with any other tribe.

But in the year 1314, they were made slaves by the Colhuas, who lived near the junction of the fresh-water lake of Chalco, or Xochimilcas, with the salt-water lake of Tezcoco.

[A. D. 1320.] After they had been slaves some years a war broke out between the Colhuas and the Xochimilcas, both of whom were tribes that had separated from the Mexicans at the Place of the Seven Caves. The Colhuas were very willing the Mexicans should assist them in this war, but they provided them with no arms. Then the Mexicans armed themselves: they provided long poles, hardening their sharpened ends in the fire, knives of itsli, or obsidian (that volcanic glass peculiar to the country) and shields of reeds woven together; thus armed, they rushed upon the enemy. They had resolved to take no prisoners, as that would waste their time and retard their victory; but to cut off an ear from every man they captured and then to let him go. The Xochimilcas were terrified at the savage attacks of these fierce Mexicans, for they were fighting for freedom and fought their best, and they fled to the mountains.

When the Colhua soldiers came to show their captives,