ABSTRACT
When we returned from Tzumpantzingo, 2 as the town is called, with our supplies of food, very contented at leaving the place pacified, we found that in camp there had been meetings and discussions about the very great danger we were running day by day during this war, and on our arrival the discussion grew most lively. Those who talked most and were most persistent, were those who had left houses and assignments of Indians behind them in Cuba, and as many as seven of these men (whose names I will not mention so as to save their honour) met together and went to the hut where Cortés was lodging, and one of them who spoke for all, for he was very fluent of speech and knew very well what they had come to propose, said, as though he were giving advice to Cortés, that he should take heed of the condition we were in, wounded and thin and half-hearted, and the great hardships that we endured by night as sentinels and spies, or patrols and scouts, and both by day and night in fighting. According to the accounts he had made up, since leaving Cuba we had lost over fifty-five of our comrades, and knew nothing about those whom we had left as settlers at Villa Rica; and although God had given us victory in the battles and skirmishes since we came from Cuba to this province and by His great pity had sustained us, we ought not to tempt Him so many times, and might it not turn out worse than Pedro Carbonero 3 ; that he [Cortés] had got us into an unexpected situation, and that some day or other we should be sacrificed to the idols, which please God would not happen; but that it would be a good thing to return to our town and the fortress which we had built, and stay among the towns of our friends the Totonacs until we could build a ship which should be dispatched to Diego Velásquez and to other parts and islands to ask them to send us help and assistance; and that now the ships which we sunk would have been useful to us, and we might have left at least two of them in case of necessity arising, but without consulting them about this, or about anything else, by the advice of those who did not know how to provide for changes of fortune, he [Cortés] had ordered them all to be sunk, and please God that he and those who had given him such advice would not repent of it; that we were no longer able to support the burden much less the many overburdens [which we were carrying] and that we were going along worse than beasts of burden; for when a beast has done its day’s work its packsaddle is taken off and it is given food and rest; but we went booted and loaded down with our arms both by day and night; and they told Cortés besides that he could see in any history that neither the Romans nor Alexander, nor any other of the most famous captains whom the world had known, had dared to destroy their ships and with such a small force throw themselves against such a great population with so many warriors as he had done, and that it would be the cause of his own death and that of all his followers; that he should wish to preserve his life and the lives of us all, and that we should at once return to Villa Rica as the country there was at peace; that they had not said all this before, as there had been no time to do so on account of the many warriors who were opposed to us every day, both in front and on our flanks; and although they had not returned to the attack they believed that they would do so, and since Xicotenga with his great power had not been to look for us during the last three days, that he must be collecting his forces and we ought not to await another battle like the last; and they said more to the same effect.
