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Show GROSSLY MEAN LIE ANSWERED Vitality of a Lie Spanish Missionaries Vindicated Savages Bereft of Arts and Science Bancroft's False Charge Refuted Re-futed Aztecs' Gruesome Idols Elliot Couss Refutes Meream and Deilen-bauch Deilen-bauch Facts Regarding First Bishop of Youcatan Destruction of Valuable Records in New Mexico. (Foreign Correspondence of the Intermountaiu Catholic.) You ask me, now that I am. here on th" ground, to answer a charge brought against tho early Spanish bishops and priests in Mexico and Central America. Yon say that a letter was received re-ceived at the Intermountaiu office containing a. repetition of an accusation made at a meeting of literary society in a neighboring city to this effecr : "Bishop Zurnarraga. first bishop of Mexico, and the early Spanish missionaries, in a spirit of fanaticism, fa-naticism, destroyed and burned the statuary, works of art and priceless picture writings of the Aztecs of Mexico and the Mayas of Yucatan, thus removing remov-ing for all time the hope of tracing the origin and history of these ancient races." VITALITY OF A LIE. You ask me if this charge brought against the Spanish missionaries can be proved? No, it cannot, and what is more to the point, it is a lie. The Mexicans, Peruvians and Mayas were not civilized races and only among a civilized people do the arts and sciences flourish. The vitality of a lie is like the peace of the Lord, in that it surpasses the understanding of man. What is the use in proving this charge to be a -lie; it will be repeated again and as often as heresies are generated in opposition to the church of God. I answer the wholesale accusation now, only to serve your request, and not with any hope of killing the seven-headed monster of calumny. I cannot here put my hand upon Prescot; and T do not now remember if he charges Bishop Zum-maraga Zum-maraga with the destruction of the picture-writings of the Aztecs, but I do know that Hubert Bancroft, a most dishonest historian and unmitigated bigot, -p.ve wide circulation to this unfair and untruthful accusation against the saintly first Bishop of Mexico. Mex-ico. Long before his death Bancroft must have known that the Mexican archaeologist and antiquarian, an-tiquarian, Manuel Icazvalceta, securely nailed that, accusation, yet the California historian never retracted re-tracted the calumny. From Bancroft, magazine writers and second-class second-class controversial scribblers have taken this charge and spread it at large over America. That the bishop was a consenting, or even an advisory ad-visory party, to the destruction of the hideous idols, which the decomposing Aztec adored, no one denies. Amomr these gruesome objects were the stone blocks in the butcher shops where human bodies were dismembered dis-membered and the flesh sold by weight; the discoi-dal discoi-dal rock, on which naked prisoners of war hacked and killed each other for the amusement of the barbarous spectators; the convex stcne, on which victims were stretched before their palpitating hearts were torn out and offered to the sun god or god of war, the stone idol with gaping mouth, the god of death, into which these bleeding hearts were thrown after they were held aloft to the sun by the officiating minister; the trough of syenite which held the blood of the human victims, and many other oth-er frightful reminders of the awful degradation of the people. The lithic museum of this city is filled with the most revolting stone idols, among which, if we except the Maya cross, there is not one, that approaches in workmanship, the borders of art. To t Ik of statuary and art, when speaking of the pre-Spanish pre-Spanish Mexicans, is to proclaim one's ignorance of Mexican history. That the bishop ordered or consented con-sented to the breaking into fragments of these revolting re-volting objects of adoration, or, of ceremonial use, has been used against him for he past thirty yers by bigots whose hatred of the Catholic church is as fanatical as their ignorance of early Mexican history is deplorable. BISHOP LANDA AND YUCATAN. Meriam, in his book. "With the Lados," stealing from a Spanish free-thinker, who wrote an appendix to Cogolludo's "Historia de Yucatan," says: "Bishop "Bish-op Landa and his priests destroyed all the records and books of perishable material of the ancient Mayas. The bishop himself, in a book he wrote, mentions the shameful act, as if his iconoclasm was, a glorious deed." Dellenbaugh, in his "North Americans of Yesterday," (page 73), repeats the calumny, and God knows how many others have mouthed it. Elliott Couss in his work, "On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer," sends Dellenbaugh to ' : the scrap-heap, and as for Meriam, his book is now as dead and forgotten as himself. Now what are the facts. Diego de Landa, of the aristocratic and noble house of Calderon. was one of the first Franciscan Fran-ciscan priests to offer himself, after his ordination, f for the Indian missions of Central America. For thirty years this faithful and zealous priest buried I himself in the forests of Yucatan amid the revolt- I ing companionship of tribes descending to savage- j ry. In 1573 he was consecrated a bishop in Madrid I and nominated to the see of Merida, Yucatan. He ' died there in 1579. in the fifty-fourth year of his I ? age. While a missionary araone the tribes he mas- tered the Quiche and Maya languages, wrote his j grammar and vocabulary of the Maya alphabet and (Continued on Page 5.) . ! ' GROSSLY MEAN LIE ANSWERED. (Continued from Page 1.) language. He made it possible for all historians of Yucatan, who came after him. to read the Maya codices- in fact, he saved the language from oblivion. obli-vion. He did more. He wrote the History of Yucatan, Yu-catan, or "Relacion de las Casos.de Yucatan," in which he describes the country, the traditions, the manners, customs, etc.. of the people; in fact, made known to the world all it possesses of information of the pre-Columbian Yucatecas. The Spanish edition edi-tion of this great work, edited by a priest, L'Abbe Brassew de Bourbourg. in 1S64, is now on my desk, and I propose to use it to give the lie to the calumnies cal-umnies against the bishop. On page 317 of his history his-tory we read: "As their scrolls or character writings wri-tings contained nothing that did not savor of superstition super-stition and lies of the devil we burnt them all, at which the natives grieved most keenly and were greatly pained." That the "all" here referred only to the picture-writing in a particular village we know from what is said on page 355: "The "history and the authorities we are able to quote from are certain ancient writings, not very well understood by the people, but only by the sons or grandsons of the priests of their gods." Many of these scrolls existed and were seen by Lizana,4who wrote in 162G, and, moreover, there were many of these writings found among the Itzas of Peteu when the people were driven out of Yucatan in 1697. Landa, before ordering the destruction of these particular picture writings, no doubt, as he was a scholar, examined them carefully, and finding they were only incentives incen-tives to idolatry and superstition, ordered them destroyed. de-stroyed. On the strength of this passage from Landa's own history is built up, by scribbling bigots, big-ots, the charge that the bishops and priests of Yucatan Yu-catan destroyed all the manuscripts and early writings writ-ings of the Mayas. Landa rendered an immense service to historic science when he compiled his admirable ad-mirable observations and preserved for us the characters char-acters of the Maya alphabet. This alphabet is the key to the inscriptions on the monuments of Central Cen-tral America, and without it these early monuments would remain for all time as great an enigma as the Egyptian hieroglyphics before the discovery of the Rosetta stone and the splendid triumphs of Cham-pollion. Cham-pollion. BANCROFT AND DISRAELI. The Tu quoque, or the "You're another" method of attack is onjy permissible under great provocation. provoca-tion. The provocation is here. Xow, how is it we never hear a word of the bulky accumulation of manuscripts and documents, covering a period of ICO years, found in Santa Fe by the Americans whcii they took possession of the city. Bancroft in his introduction to his "History of Arizona and New Mexico," charges the United States government govern-ment with being a contributory agent, by its indifference, indif-ference, to the destruction of most valuable documents docu-ments on the early history of the tribes of the southwest. He states that one thousand valuable documents were destroyed, from time to time, by American officials and that in 1870, during the rule of Governor Tile, most valuable archives were sold for wrapping paper. Remember these archives and documents were written by Spanish missionary priests and Spanish governors of New Mexico, arid were seized by the American commanders and officials offi-cials when they entered Santa Fe. What Catholic writer ever brings a charge of. vandalism against this Protestant Governor Pile or holds Protestantism Protestant-ism responsible for this wanton onslaught on the honor of historical literature. Xow listen to Jacob Disraeli, father of the great English commoner. In his "Curiosities of Literature." Litera-ture." page 15, v-c read: "The destruction of libraries li-braries in the reign of Henry VIII, at the dissolution dissolu-tion of the monasteries, was an irreparable calam ity; those who purchased the religious houses took the libraries as part of the booty; with the leaves of the books they scoured their furniture or sold the books as waste paper. At the Reformation fanaticism fa-naticism exhausted itself on illuminated books or manuscripts that had red letters on the title page. We still find such volumes mutilated of the gilt letters and elegant flourishes, but the greater number num-ber of these priceless books were destroyed. The Puritans burned everything they found, paintings, illuminated windows, statuary, anything which bore a vestige of popish origiu." The Presbyterian vandals van-dals of Scotland were, if it were possible, yet more ruthless and fanatical. So that people who live in rlass houses should have a care at whom they throw stones. So far from destroying the records of Mexico and Central America, the priests helped lo preserve them. The Zapotcca code, obtained from a priest of Puebla by Dorcmberg. the Dresden or Codex Americain, reproduced by Kingsborough. the Codex Chimalpopaca, that of Letellicr, the Bo.k of Chilan Balam, the Codex Perizianus, the Codices i Mendoza, Borgia, Yaticanu's. and a number of oth-j ers. were mostly all preserved and saved from de- I struction by the early Spanish priests. The groat-j est loss to prehistoric Mexico happened when in j 1742 a ship, loaded by the Archaeologist Boturini with pre-Spanish relics, with picture writings, stone idols and the like, sank 190 miles off Vera Cruz, when on her way to Spain. Mexico City. |