Brother Bernardino Minaya and his companion friars do attest that they saw in that country many seemingly Christian crosses—at any rate, crosses of the shape called in heraldry the croix botonée—but that they serve no religious purpose, being regarded only pragmatically, inasmuch as they mark sources of fresh water. Therefore, Your Majesty's vicar is inclined to view those crosses with Augustinian skepticism. In our appreciation, Sire, they are but one more manifestation of the Adversary's spiteful cunning. Clearly, in anticipation of our arrival in New Spain, the Devil made haste to teach some numbers of these heathens a profane imitation of various Christian beliefs and rites and sacred objects, in the hope of frustrating and confounding our later introduction of the True Faith.
Also, as well as the Dominicans could gather (they being hampered by linguistic difficulties), the Almighty Breath is not a god but a high wizard (or priest, as our chronicler would have it) who holds dominion over the subterranean crypts in the ruins of that city called Mitla, formerly considered by the natives their Holy Home. The friars, apprised by us of the pagan interments and sinfully suicidal immolations of live volunteers at that place, forced the wizard to allow them access to those crypts.
Like Theseus venturing into the Labyrinth of Daedalus, they unwound a cord behind them as they went by torchlight through the branching caves and tortuous underground passages. They were assailed by the stench of decayed flesh; they trod on the bones of countless placidly seated skeletons. Unhappily, and unlike Theseus, they lost their courage before they had gone many leagues. When they were confronted by giant, overfed rats and snakes and other such vermin, their determination dissolved in horror, and they departed in an almost undignified rout.
Once outside, they commanded, despite the Indians' lamentations and protests, that the tunnel entrances be permanently caved in and collapsed and sealed by the rolling of many boulders over them, "to wall up and hide forever that back door of Hell," as Fray Bernardino phrases it. The action was of course well warranted, and even long overdue, and not to be disparaged, since it is reminiscent of the sainted Catherine of Siena, who prayed that her own impeccable body might be splayed forever across the Pit, so that no more poor sinners would ever fall in. Nevertheless, we regret that we may now never know the full extent of that underground network of caverns, and may never recover the treasures which the ranking personages of that people no doubt took with them to their tombs. Worse, we fear that the Dominicans' impetuous action may have done little to make the Indians of that area more receptive to the Faith or more loving toward us who bring it.
We regret also to report that we ourself are not much better beloved by our own fellow Spaniards here in New Spain. Your Majesty's officers in the Crown Archive of the Indies have perhaps already received communications from persons complaining of our "interference" in secular matters. God knows they complain enough to us, particularly the landholders who employ great numbers of Indian laborers on their farms and ranches and plantations. Those lords-proprietors have even made a play upon our name, and now irreverently refer to us as Bishop Zurriago, "the Scourge." This is because, Sire, we have dared to denounce from the pulpit their practice of working their Indians literally to death.
"And why should we not?" they demand. "There are still some fifteen thousand red men to every white one in these lands. What harm in our reducing that dangerous disparity, especially if we can wring useful work from the wretches while we do it?"
The Spaniards who hold that attitude claim that they have good religious justification for it, viz.: because we Christians rescued these savages from their devil worship and inevitable damnation, because we brought them hope of salvation, therefore the Indians should be eternally obligated to us their redeemers. Your Majesty's chaplain cannot deny that there is logic in the argument, but we do feel that the Indians' obligation should not require them to die indiscriminately and arbitrarily—of beatings, brandings, starvation rations, and other mistreatments—certainly not before they have been baptized and fully confirmed in the Faith.
Since the cadastral and census records of New Spain are still necessarily haphazard and incomplete, we can offer only rough calculations of the number of the native population, past and present. But there is reason to believe that approximately six million red men formerly lived within the confines of what is now New Spain. The battles of the Conquest of course took a considerable toll of them. Also, at that time and in the nine years since, an estimated two and a half million more of the Indians under Spanish authority have died of various diseases, and only God knows how many more in the yet unconquered regions, and they continue to die in great numbers everywhere.
It has apparently pleased Our Lord to make the red race peculiarly vulnerable to certain afflictions which, it seems, were not heretofore endemial in these lands. While the pestilence of the great pocks was previously known here (and not surprisingly, in view of the people's general licentiousness), it appears that the plagues of the buboes, the cholera morbus, the small pocks, the pease pocks, and the measles were not. Whether those diseases began to occur only coincidentally with the overthrow of these peoples, or are a chastisement visited upon them by God in His judgment, they ravage the Indians with far more virulence than Europeans have ever suffered.
Still, that loss of lives, while of distressing magnitude, is at any rate of natural cause, an inscrutable Act of God, and not of our countrymen's doing nor amenable to their amelioration of it. We can, however, call a halt to our countrymen's deliberate killing of the red men, and we must do so. Your Majesty gave us another office besides those of Bishop and Inquisitor, and we will uphold that title of Protector of the Indians, even if it means bearing also the hateful title of Scourge bestowed by our fellows.
That the Indians profit us, as cheap and expendable labor, must be a secondary consideration to our saving of their pagan souls. Our success in that noble task is diminished by every Indian who dies not yet a Christian. If too many should perish thus, the good name of the Church would suffer. Besides, if these Indians all die, who then would build our cathedrals and churches and chapels and monasteries and convents and cloisters and shrines and houses of retreat and other Christian edifices, and who would constitute the bulk of our congregations, and who would work and contribute and tithe to support the servants of God in New Spain?
May Our Lord God preserve Your Most Renowned Majesty, executor of so many holy works, that you may enjoy the fruits thereof in His High Glory.
(ecce signum) Zumárraga
SEPTIMA PARS
Does Your Excellency join us today to hear what my married life was like?
I think you will find the account rather less crowded with incident—and, I should hope, less abrasive to Your Excellency's sensibilities—than the tempestuous times of my younger manhood. Although I must regretfully report that the actual ceremony of my wedding to Zyanya was clouded by storm and tempest, I am happy to say that most of our married life afterward was sunny and calm. I do not mean that it was ever dull; with Zyanya I experienced many further adventures and excitements; indeed, her very presence brought excitement into my every day. Also, in the years following our marriage, the Mexíca were at the peak of their power and were wielding it with vigor, and I was occasionally involved in happenings that I now recognize as having been of some small importance. But at the time, they were to me and Zyanya—and doubtless to the majority of commonfolk like ourselves—only a sort of busy-figured wall painting in front of which we lived out our private lives and our own small triumphs and our inconsequential little happinesses.