The pleasant historie of the conquest of the VVeast India, now called new Spayne: atchieued by the vvorthy Prince Hernando Cortes, marques of the Valley of Huaxacac, most delectable to readeLópez de Gómara, Francisco
History
The pleasant historie of the conquest of the VVeast India, now called new Spayne: atchieued by the vvorthy Prince Hernando Cortes, marques of the Valley of Huaxacac, most delectable to reade
López de Gómara, Francisco
Cortés, Hernán, 1485-1547; Mexico -- History -- Conquest, 1519-1540; Nahuatl language -- Glossaries, vocabularies, etc.
The temple is like vnto a square Toure broad at the foote, & steps
round about it, & from y^e middest vpward very straight: the top is
hollow & couered with straw: it hath foure windowes with frontals and
galleries. In y^t holow place is their chappel, wheras their Idols do
stand. The temple that stoode by the sea side was such a one, in the
which was a maruellous straunge Idol, and differed muche from all the
rest, although they haue manye and of diuerse fashions. The body of
this Idol was great and hollow, and was fastened in that wall with
lime: hee was of earth. And behinde this Idols backe was the Vesterie,
where was kept ornaments & other things of seruice for y^e temple. The
priests had a little secret dore hard adioyning to y^e Idol, by which
dore they crept into y^e hollow Idol, and answered the people y^t came
with prayers & peticiös. And w^t this deceit y^e simple soules beleued
al y^t the Idol spake, & honored y^e god more thä al the rest w^t
many perfumes & swéete smelles, and offered bread and fruite, with
sacrifice of Quayles bloud, and other birds, and dogges, and sometime
mans bloud. And through the fame of this Idoll and Oracle, many
Pilgrimes came to _Acusamil_ from many places. At the foote of this
Temple was a plotte like a Churchyard, well walled and garnished with
proper pinnacles, in the middest whereof stoode a Crosse of ten foote
long, the which they adored for God of the rayne, for at all times whë
they wanted rayne, they would goe thither on Procession deuoutely, and
offered to the Crosse Quayles sacrificed, for to appease the wrath
that the God séemed to haue agaynste them: and none was so acceptable
a sacrifice, as the bloud of that little birde. They vsed to burne
certaine swéete güme, to perfume that God withall, and to besprinckle
it with water, and this done, they beléeued assuredly to haue rayne.
Suche is the Religiö of those _Indians_ of _Acusamil_. They could neuer
know the original how that God of Crosse came amögst them, for in all
those parties of _India_, there is no memorie of anye Preaching of the
Gospell that had bin at any time, as shall be shewed in another place.
The Battell and vvinning of _Potonchan_.
[Sidenote: Policie.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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