by Hugh Thomas
From Champoton and Campeche, Montejo, with his sixty remaining men, his vanguard, cut across about 150 miles of the peninsula to rejoin his first settlement and those whom he had left behind at Salamanca de Xelhá. It is not at all clear whether or not he passed by such ancient sites as Uxmal, Chichén Itzá, Cobá, or Tulum. He would now have seen how the peninsula was a vast plain with thin soil, most of which was covered by dry scrub forest, with no large rivers but many cenotes. The land was sparsely populated, but the Indians may have numbered three hundred thousand in 1520.33
After some weeks of reconsideration and stocktaking, Montejo decided to set off for the south of his peninsula, making for the Bay of Ascension, which had been so named by his own old captain, Grijalva, in 1518 (it had been Ascension Day). They made for the town of Chetumal. This was a combined land-and-sea operation: Montejo went by boat, Alonso de Ávila by land, while Alonso de Luján remained behind at New Salamanca. He was to build a ship and follow.
The plan was for all three sections of Montejo’s expedition to meet at or near Chetumal, one of the richest Mayan towns on the west of the bay. It was a town characterized by the cultivation of bees, in large apiaries. Much maize and cacao also were grown there. And there Montejo came across an unexpected stranger: Gonzalo Guerrero.
Guerrero, a Spaniard from the little town of Niebla, on the Río Tinto, about twenty miles upriver from Palos, had accompanied Diego Colón to the Indies in 1509. He seems to have been literate. Bored with life in Santo Domingo, he set off with Diego de Nicuesa for the South American mainland. He was shipwrecked. Saved from being fattened and eaten, he and Jerónimo de Aguilar, who later became Cortés’s interpreter, settled down in Yucatán. Guerrero found a Mayan girl, by whom he had several children. He was a slave, but all the same, he became a military adviser to Na Chan Can, the cacique in Chetumal. Fray Diego Landa thought that he taught the Indians “how to fight, showing them how to build fortresses and bastions.”34 Guerrero was said to have advised the Maya to attack Hernández de Córdoba in 1517. In 1519, he had refused to return to Spanish life, as Jerónimo de Aguilar did, saying to him, “Brother Aguilar, I am married and have three children, the Indians treat me as a chief and as a captain in war. You go [back] and God be with you but I already have my face tattooed and my ears pierced. What would the Spaniards say if they saw me in this guise? And look how handsome those boys of mine are! For God’s sake give me those green beads which you brought and I will give them to my sons and I shall tell them that my brothers have given them to me.” Guerrero’s Maya companion said to Aguilar, “Be off with you and don’t give us any more trouble.”35
That had been in 1519. Eight years later, in 1527, Guerrero received a letter from Montejo. It read: “Gonzalo, my special friend and brother! I count it as your great good fortune that I have arrived and I have learned of you through the bearer of this letter. I remind you that you are a Christian created by the blood of Christ our Redeemer to whom you should give infinite thanks. You have a great opportunity to serve God and the Emperor in the pacification and baptism of these people and, more than that, to leave your sins behind you with the grace of God and so benefit and honour yourself. I shall be your good friend in this and you will be treated very well. Thus I beseech you not to let the devil influence you to decline what I ask, so that he will not possess himself of you forever. On behalf of His Majesty, I promise to do very well by you and fully to comply with what I have said. On my part and as a gentleman [como hombre hidalgo], I give you my word and pledge my faith to make my promises to you without any reservation whatever … and I shall make you one of my principal men, and one of the most dearly loved and select of these parts. Consequently, I beg you to come to this ship or the coast without delay to do what I have suggested and help me carry out this work of conversion by giving me your wisest advice and opinions.”36
Guerrero, however, could not be persuaded to rejoin his compatriots. He wrote on the back of this letter: “Señor, I kiss your lordship’s hand. As I am a slave, I have no freedom. I have a wife and children, even though I remember God. You, my lord, and the Spaniards will find in me a very good friend.”37
But in truth, Guerrero remained an enemy. Thus he seems to have ensured that news passed to Alonso de Ávila, who was coming down the coast with reinforcements, included the story that Montejo had died; and news went to Montejo that Ávila was dead.
Montejo sailed down to Honduras where he briefly put in to the Río Ulúa, an eminently navigable river in that territory. Perhaps he went there out of curiosity. He then sailed north again to Salamanca de Xelhá, to find it deserted, so he assumed that Luján, Ávila, and their men were lost. But farther north still, at Cozumel, he received the news that they were alive. Montejo crossed to the mainland for a new meeting with those old comrades.
In the summer of 1528, he went back even farther than Cozumel: He returned to New Spain, to seek reinforcements, in his ship La Gavarra. He still had his valuable encomiendas near Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and he thought that he would be able to borrow a substantial sum of money on their security and so persuade about another hundred new soldiers to accompany him, including his own half-converso son, Francisco Montejo, El Mozo, who had been brought up at court in Spain and who had accompanied Cortés to Honduras-Higueras in 1524. He also bought another ship, which he loaded with supplies, but it sank in a storm in the harbor of Veracruz. Undaunted, he bought yet one more vessel. He next made an arrangement with a rich shipowner, Juan de Lerma, perhaps related to García de Lerma, the pearl king of Cubagua, who agreed to make his ships available for trade in Yucatán, perhaps in return for eventual trading privileges there, though no document proves it. Lerma later became treasurer of Yucatán and also inspector of Higueras and Honduras.
The supreme court, headed by the odious Nuño de Guzmán, arrived in New Spain while Montejo was in Tenochtitlan. But Guzmán conjured up no enmity with such a well-born conquistador. The court ordered Montejo to return to Yucatán from the west: Proximity to New Spain would be a help. He went back via Tabasco and Acalán. Guzmán agreed to help Montejo and made him chief magistrate of the first-named place.38
Before returning, Montejo wrote (on April 20, 1529) to the emperor Charles the first of many reports about Yucatán: “All the towns have an orchard for fruit, but are a little rough for our horses. I found many signs of gold [hallé mucha nueva de oro].” The great difficulty was that there was no port. “And, for that reason,” he wrote, “I wonder whether I could not be given the river Grijalva as part of my grant.” So he changed his mind and said that he would found a few towns in the west, perhaps one precisely on the Grijalva, another in the mountains, and a third at Acalán. Then he would send ships to “the islands” (the West Indies) for more men, horses, and livestock.39
In April 1529, Montejo set off for Tabasco with his son, El Mozo, as his second-in-command and Gonzalo Nieto as his general factotum, being formally chief magistrate of Tabasco. Montejo “El Padre” went by land with twenty-five men, among them Baltasar Gallegos, who had been sent back to New Spain by the settlers of Santa María de la Victoria on the Grijalva, a colony that had been founded in 1519 on the suggestion of Cortés but whose existence had been threatened by Indians and which took a long time to attract residents.40 Montejo arrived at this Santa María in time to prevent its complete disintegration. He sent for Alonso de Ávila’s men in Salamanca de Xelhá, where they had been busy capturing Indians, probably to enable Montejo’s backer, Juan de Lerma, to sell them in the West Indies. These troops, if that is what they were, sailed back around the head of the peninsula to meet Montejo at Guayataca, west of Xicalango.
Montejo was really hoping to make Xicalango, on the Laguna de Términos, his forward base for the conquest of Yucatán. The Indians seemed complaisant. Leaving there his son, Montejo turned west and soon overcame the populous districts of Tabasco along the river Copulco. Then, with Ávila again his second-in-command, he moved up the river Grijalva into the mountains with about a hund
red men, his horses being carried upstream on rafts. He reached Teapa, at the foot of the mountains of Chiapas. There were what Blas González, one of his captains, called “excessive tribulations.”41 But Montejo himself later described how, “at a cost of much effort” both for himself and all the soldiers, he conquered and pacified “all the provinces of the Río Grijalva.” Some thirty Spaniards were killed, a high figure for those days. But Montejo carried through the institution of the encomienda successfully, a remarkable achievement in the circumstances.
Montejo had planned to return to Santa María de la Victoria and then go on to establish a settlement at Acalán. But he learned that another Spanish force under Juan Enríquez de Guzmán, one of Alvarado’s captains in Guatemala, was coming up northward from Chiapas, hoping to conquer the border areas. The two met and reached a rough agreement as to where Alvarado’s domain of Guatemala should stop and where that of Montejo begin. Enríquez de Guzmán suggested that Montejo should make his way to Acalán via Alvarado’s new city, San Cristóbal de las Casas. Montejo agreed, but sent Ávila to perform this journey. He himself, ill, returned to Santa María de la Victoria.
Ávila had a long and weary march through the mountains, first to San Cristóbal, then to Acalán. It was the rainy season, and the suffering of the Spaniards in these jungles was considerable. On the river Usumacinta, Ávila placed his horses in canoes attached to one another, the forelegs in one canoe, the hind legs in another. They then went down a cascade between cliffs of such a height that “to those who were there, it would not have seemed worse to voyage in the shadows of Mount Athos.”42 They later came across both a lagoon and the remains of a bridge built by Cortés on his way to Higueras. But it was too much in decay for Ávila and his men to benefit from it. They still had to use canoes that some friendly natives of Tenosique provided them. They then went on toward Acalán, which had been an important trading port for the Indians in the days of Montezuma and before. Ávila sent a message to the ruler of this town saying that he hoped to be welcomed since he intended no injury. But the natives did not believe him since Cortés, when passing there a year or two before, had said the same but had carried off the cacique and six hundred bearers who were never seen again.43 So they fled. Ávila reported Acalán to be a city of about a thousand people, with good buildings of stone and white stucco, with thatched roofs. It was on a river, which the Spaniards had already christened the Candelaria and which flowed into the lagoon of Términos. After a day or two, the cacique returned with a train of about four hundred people—so Ávila reported—and swore fealty to the Emperor. He brought presents of birds and supplies. All the same, Ávila seized and chained him, for he feared treachery, since his own force was so small. He must have been influenced by the precedent of Cortés in relation to Montezuma.44
Shortly thereafter, the rest of the population of Acalán returned and began to serve the Spaniards with relative enthusiasm. Ávila soon freed the cacique and his followers, and in the tradition of Montejo, soon began to allocate encomiendas. He gave Acalán the name of Salamanca de Acalán, to recall Montejo’s birthplace.
Despite its excellent communications, Acalán was, however, not to be the capital city of the new Yucatán that Montejo wanted to establish. There was no gold, the population was small, the supplies of food were poor. Ávila became interested in another town, Maztalán, a little to the east, where the Spaniards remained for a few weeks before they began to think of Champoton, the town whose people had defeated Hernández de Córdoba in 1517.
Champoton, like Acalán, was a town of many stone houses with thatched roofs. It was on the sea, and from it many canoes set out daily to fish. Just offshore, there was an island filled with idols, where the fishermen went to pray and to make offerings. The people were the Cuohes, of whom a large detachment went to greet Ávila on his arrival. Montejo had previously sent messengers there, and the Spaniards found that a special district had already been prepared for them—a square, houses with stables and, in the square, enough food to last a month. Every day the Spaniards could eat turkey and ample maize, with good fish. The cacique said that he wanted to become a Christian. So his island was abandoned and his idols thrown into the sea.45
Montejo, meantime, was having difficulty confirming his control of the passage from New Spain to Yucatán. A previous chief magistrate of Santa María, Baltasar de Osorio, had succeeded in persuading the audiencia in Mexico-Tenochtitlan to restore his own control of Acalán, going back on the decision to give it over to the Montejos. Osorio even managed to seize part of Montejo’s property in Tabasco, and he persecuted Montejo’s followers. Though Montejo succeeded in securing the reversal of some of these judicial decisions, he was obliged to delay his new plans for the conquest of Yucatán. When finally he felt able to set out again, he reached only as far as Xicalango. He and his expedition were in poor morale, men deserting from his side and Montejo himself believing that Ávila was lost. Fortunately, his mercantile backer, Lerma, came to the rescue by sending several ships full of men, supplies, horses, and clothing bought in Cuba.46
Learning that Ávila was still alive in Champoton, Montejo repaired there himself in the early days of 1531. On his way, he completed his organization of the port of Xicalango: Ávila and Montejo then agreed to establish their real base not at Champoton, with its bad memories of defeat in 1518, but at Campeche, some forty miles north. The people there could support a Spanish settlement, and there were well-populated places nearby, capable of being the center of encomiendas. Campeche might also turn out to be a most useful port. So Montejo went ahead and optimistically read the Requirement to a number of local lords. He explained that all Christians worshipped God in Heaven, asked the lords to permit his clergy to preach the Gospel, and told them to recognize himself as the representative of the emperor Charles. A number of local lords accepted these views, or pretended to. Then Montejo proclaimed the foundation of a new Spanish city, which predictably he called Salamanca de Campeche.
Here Montejo set about making plans for the conquest of the rest of the peninsula, which was still largely unknown to the Spanish explorers. So he then sent Ávila back across the center of the peninsula to Chetumal with fifty men, who included Alonso de Luján and Francisco Velázquez, a mining specialist. Montejo’s nephew, a third Francisco Montejo, son of one of his brothers, was of this party. They went from Campeche to Maní, where the Xui Maya made themselves friendly, continuing on to Cochuah, Chablé, and then Bacalar, where the treacherous Guerrero had influence. Ávila requested the lords in Chablé to go to Chetumal to explain that he wanted peace, but the messengers returned with the reply that “the people there were not interested in peace but desired war, and would give us chicken in the form of lances, and maize in the form of arrows.”47
All the same, when they arrived at Lake Bacalar, Ávila and his men obtained canoes to go across to Chetumal. That town was now deserted. Ávila determined to establish a new settlement, which he named Villa Real. He was planning this when the news came that the Maya, assisted if not led by Guerrero, were about to attack. Ávila struck first and destroyed an Indian encampment. He took sixty prisoners and suffered no losses, although the cacique and Guerrero, if he had indeed been there, escaped. The Spaniards did find gold and turquoise masks at this place, and Ávila sent those prizes back to Montejo with six Spaniards, who were, however, all killed en route, at Hoya.
Ávila returned to Bacalar. He became aware that a general “rebellion” was being mounted by the lords of a place named Macanahaul. Chablé also came out in revolt, but Ávila cleverly surprised his enemies by attacking the town from the rear. He then returned to Villa Real at Chetumal, but everywhere there were rumors of rebellion. It became evident that any idea of alliance with the Indians of Chablé would fail since the project was “false and with evil intent.”48
Ávila met another conflict at Cochuah, where the town was destroyed by a hurricane and where, after its capture, he found the wells filled in with earth and stones. One well twelve
feet deep was dug out, and two Indian boys were let down into it by straps made from horses’ harnesses, to bring up water. Ávila then decided to return to his Villa Real—a difficult journey through swamp and maquis, and also with frequent attacks by Maya. Oviedo reported, however, that one of the sentinels had a vision of Santiago, accompanied by six or seven knights with a divine scent. A sighting of Santiago was, of course, a good sign—even if it was one traditionally balanced by the appearance of the Moorish knight Alfatami on a green horse. All the same, by the time they reached Villa Real, Ávila’s force was reduced to forty men, of whom ten were maimed in the arm or in the leg, being able to call on only four horses.49
Alonso de Ávila sent a message to Montejo to tell him that, though in a poor condition, he and his men had survived. The messenger, a captured cacique, was to return in a month to report whether all was or was not well with the adelantado. Yet after that month, there was no message. It transpired that neither the cacique nor his son had taken the message. On the contrary, he and his friends plotted an attack to destroy Ávila once and for all. What should the Spaniards do? They had no food, and they had seen no brigantine on the coast that might help. They assumed that Montejo believed them dead.50 Could they evacuate Villa Real? If so, how?
In the end, Ávila decided to go to Honduras, by canoe. They encountered a furious sea: “such a manner of coast as had never been seen before,” commented Oviedo, exaggeratedly.51 They met several merchantmen in large boats but, though they sometimes seized them, they could not rely on such piracy as a source of food. After seven months of escapes and privations, Ávila reached Puerto de Caballos, on the Bay of Honduras. That seemed a good place for a settlement since it was fertile and well peopled. The Spaniards were also impressed by the river Ulúa, which boasted groves of cacao on both its banks. Here, though, a storm destroyed their canoes. So they went on to the town of Trujillo by land, where they were well received by Andrés de Cereceda, the acting governor of Higueras, and his treasurer, Juan Ruano. Ruano had been an enemy of Cortés, who looked on him as responsible for Olid’s treachery.52 After some painstaking negotiations, they set sail on a merchant ship that had come from Cuba and set off for home or, rather, for Campeche.53