February – March 1519
Cortés at Cozumel
Grijalva’s report raises a third expedition. Velázquez gives the command to Hernán Cortés, then revokes it, and Cortés sails anyway in February 1519 with eleven ships, about 500 soldiers and some horses. His captains include Pedro de Alvarado, Francisco de Montejo, Cristóbal de Olid and Gonzalo de Sandoval, and Antón de Alaminos is the chief pilot.
Hernán Cortés drawn by Christoph Weiditz in Spain in 1529, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, NurembergWikimedia Commons, Christoph Weiditz, Public domain (Weiditz Trachtenbuch 077 Hernan Cortés.jpg)
Alvarado’s ship reaches Cozumel two days ahead of the others. The islanders flee, and his men take chickens and other goods from their houses. Cortés rebukes him, has the goods returned and gives the islanders beads and shirts, and the lords come back. Cozumel is a centre of pilgrimage to the goddess Ixchel. Cortés has the images in one of its temples thrown down and sets up a cross and an image of the Virgin Mary.
A temple at San Gervasio, the main Maya town of Cozumel and a sanctuary of Ixchel, 2015Wikimedia Commons, Banja-Frans Mulder, CC BY 3.0 (Cozumel, San Gervasio - panoramio.jpg)
On Cozumel Cortés hears of bearded men on the mainland. He sends messengers with a letter and glass beads to ransom them. Gerónimo de Aguilar comes to the fleet in the dress of a Maya slave, so dark that Cortés does not know him at first. Guerrero stays with his family in Chetumal. He is married with three children, he tells Aguilar, and his face is tattooed and his ears pierced.
Gerónimo de Aguilar presented to Cortés after eight years as a slave, engraving in Antonio de Solís’s Historia de la conquista de Méjico, Madrid, 1851Wikimedia Commons, Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla, CC BY 2.0 (Historia de la conquista de Méjico, 1851 "Gerónimo de Aguilar es presentado a Cortés después de ocho años de esclavitud entre los indios". (3965822244).jpg)
Aguilar speaks Yucatec Maya and becomes Cortés’s interpreter. On his advice the lord of Cozumel asks Cortés for a letter to protect the island from later Spanish fleets. The fleet sails on in March, on good terms with the islanders.
Sources
- Robert J. Sharer and Loa P. Traxler, The Ancient Maya (6th ed. 2006), pp. 760 to 761.
- Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés and the Fall of Old Mexico (1993).
- Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain, tr. J. M. Cohen (1963), pp. 60 to 65.
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