1493_ Uncovering the New World Columbus Created - Charles C. Mann [175]
In a decision that the missionary claimed was his own, Esteban and his followers went ahead of the rest of the party after crossing the Rio Grande. Quickly they gained a lead of many miles. Once again, Esteban was moving into an area never before seen by someone from across the ocean. Days after the separation, Niza encountered some of Esteban’s entourage, wounded and bleeding. In the mountains at the Arizona–New Mexico border, they told him, the group had come across the Zuni town of Hawikuh, a collection of two- and three-story sandstone homes that climbed like white steps up a hill. Its ruler angrily refused entrance. They barricaded Esteban and his cohort into a big hut outside town without food or water. Esteban was slain when he tried to escape Hawikuh the next day, along with most of the people accompanying him.
The Zuni themselves have a different story—stories, I should say, because many have been recounted. In one version told to me, Esteban is not refused entry, but welcomed into Hawikuh. The people have heard of this man and his extraordinary journey. They want to keep him there—want this very badly, at least in the story. He is a man like no other they have encountered, an incredible physical specimen with his skin and hair, a man whose spirit holds a great wealth of knowledge and perhaps more, a valuable possession they have no desire to lose.
To prevent his departure, they cut off his lower legs, lay him gently on his back, and bathe themselves in his supernatural presence. Esteban lives in this way for many years, the story goes, always treated with the respect due to such uncommon figures, always on his back, legs stretched out, with the wrappings on his stumps carefully tended.
All versions of his end are based on stories that people have told to themselves. His actual fate may never be known with certainty. What seems clear is that in the end this man who crossed so many bridges fell into the same delusion that possessed so many Spaniards. He thought that he understood the shook-up world he was creating and that he was in control. He forgot that under bridges is only air.
FAMILY VALUES
Tenochtitlan fell on August 13, 1521, in a welter of massacre and chaos. In the waterways outside the disintegrating city Spanish troops discovered a small flotilla of canoes. Spanish writings say their occupants were hiding in the reeds and found only by determined search. Native accounts say they sought out the invaders to surrender. Historians today tend toward the latter interpretation. In the tumult of the disintegrating city, concealment would have been so easy that it seems likely that the people in the canoes were not even trying to avoid discovery.
In one boat was Cuauhtemoc, last leader of the Triple Alliance; others contained his wife and family. Tenochtitlan rulers, like their European counterparts, had long consolidated power by marrying within a select group of other elite families. As in Europe, men in authority had children by multiple women. The imperial family tree hence was complicated. It was about to become even more complicated.
Cuauhtemoc, then in his early twenties, was the nephew of Motecuhzoma II, the famous “Montezuma,” who had been held hostage by Cortés in his own palace during the Spaniards’ first assault on the capital city. Motecuhzoma was killed—exactly how is in dispute—during the counterattack that drove Cortés’s force from the city. His successor reigned for barely two months before dying of smallpox. To bolster his legitimacy, the successor had married Motecuhzoma’s daughter, Tecuichpotzin, who had been widowed during the first assault.