Slavery
Bernal Díaz de Castillo (Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, Chapter XXIX) said Aguilar told them some of the ship's crew were sacrificed almost immediately, while the rest were put into cages. They managed to escape but were captured by other Mayan lords, who enslaved them. By 1519, the year Hernán Cortés began his Conquest of Mexico, only two from the original shipwreck were still alive: Gonzalo Guerrero, who by this time had become famous in the Mayan world as a war leader for Nachan can, Lord of Chactemal; which includes parts of Mexico and Belize, and Gerónimo de Aguilar, who had taken holy orders in his native Spain. Guerrero had by then married Nachan Can's daughter Zazil Há and was the father of America's first mestizo children.
Read more about this topic: Gonzalo Guerrero
Famous quotes containing the word slavery:
“In nothing was slavery so savage and relentless as in its attempted destruction of the family instincts of the Negro race in America. Individuals, not families; shelters, not homes; herding, not marriages, were the cardinal sins in that system of horrors.”
—Fannie Barrier Williams (1855–1944)
“I remember the almost daily talks of my mother on the cruelty of slavery. I would say nothing to her, but I was thinking all the time that slavery did not seem so cruel. Master and Mistress Jennings were not mean to my mother. It was she who was mean to them.”
—Cornelia (1844–?)
“I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name,—if ten honest men only,—ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)