1517, at dawn
Surrounded at dawn
At sunrise the Spaniards find themselves surrounded by a large army on the landward side, with the sea behind them. Bernal Díaz writes of three hundred warriors to every Spaniard. The Maya open with arrows, darts and stones, and eighty Spaniards are wounded in the first volleys. Then the warriors close in with spears and clubs.
Title page of Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, engraved by Jean de Courbes, Madrid, 1632Wikimedia Commons, Jean de Courbes, Public domain (Bernal Diaz del Castillo Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España 1632.jpg)
Fresh squadrons keep arriving. After the first shock of swords, crossbows and muskets, the warriors keep their distance and shoot. Calling out "calachuni", the chief, they aim at Hernández de Córdoba, who is hit by many arrows. They also try to take men alive, and carry off two of them, Alonso Boto and an old Portuguese.
The Spaniards stay together near the wells, since a retreat under attack seems more dangerous than standing. The fight goes on until nearly every man in the party is wounded.
Sources
- Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517 to 1570 (2nd ed. 2003), pp. 10 to 13.
- Robert J. Sharer and Loa P. Traxler, The Ancient Maya (6th ed. 2006), p. 759.
- Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain, tr. J. M. Cohen (1963), pp. 22 to 26.
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