ABSTRACT
After the battle which I have described was over, in which we had captured three Indian chieftains, our Captain Cortés sent them at once in company with the two others who were in our camp and who had already been sent as messengers, and ordered them to go to the Caciques of Tlaxcala and tell them that we begged them to make peace and to grant us a passage through their country on our way to Mexico, as we had already sent to request them, and to say that if they did not now come to terms, we would slay all their people, but that as we were well disposed towards them and wished to treat them as brothers, we had no desire to annoy them, unless they gave us reason to do so; and he said many flattering things to them so as to make friends of them, and the messengers then set out eagerly for the capital of Tlaxcala and gave their message to all the Caciques already mentioned by me, whom they found gathered in council with many other elders and priests. They were very sorrowful both over the want of success in the war and at the death of those captains, their sons and relations, who had fallen in battle. As they were not very willing to listen to the message, they decided to summon all the soothsayers, priests, and those others called Tacal naguas (who are like wizards and foretell fortunes), and they told them to find out from their witchcraft, charms, and lots what people we were, and if by giving us battle day and night without ceasing we could be conquered, and to say if we were Teules, (which, as I have already said many times, are evil beings, like devils,) as the people of Cempoala asserted, and to tell them what things we ate, and ordered them to look into all these matters with the greatest care.
