“I and my companions suffer from a sickness of the heart which can be cured only by gold.”
-Hernan Cortez, Easter Sunday, 1519
Notes on This Adaptation
Bernal Diaz left us the only reliable firsthand account of the fall of a great Stone Age civilization, virtually upon its discovery. The actions of those few hundred men with which he adventured beyond the boundaries of the known world directly caused the deaths of millions of persons, and provided a blueprint for the fall of more as yet undiscovered worlds.
Bernal’s work is matter of fact and deed oriented. It is, however, spotted with beautiful literary rosettes, with his words invoking the occasional pang of loss, even in those a half millennium removed from the action he describes.
Commentary, notes and annotations will be drawn from various works. The body of this story, however, will be drawn exclusively from Bernal’s own unembellished account. The author was not a writer or scholar and despaired of ever recording his memories in old age. It appears that he was blind and arthritic by the time much of this account was recorded, so one might imagine him dictating it to a younger relative in his late 80s.
Bernal Diaz was born in Spain, in the year 1492, the year the New World he was to plunder was discovered. He would discover the most beautiful world a European had ever seen and take a hand in its utter destruction. Bernal died in 1580, at the age of 89, living the life of an impoverished nobleman on his Guatemalan estates, off the back breaking labor of the descendents of another great Amerindian civilization, the ruins of which remained largely hidden beneath the avenging jungle that had reclaimed the land 600 years earlier. Bernal was a typical member of a tiny parasite infection, and somehow had the perspective and sense of decency to record the death throws of the host society he had taken a very red hand in bringing down.
The irony that Spanish lords in the New World tended toward poverty by European standards, was not lost on the conquerors, who seemed to miss aspects of the civilizations they destroyed as if their discovery had been a dream. From our modern vantage we can see that the ecology of the conquered lands were not as suited for feudal exploitation as temperate Europe.
Bernal’s story will be told in his own words as much as practical. These passages will be in quotations.
Narrative stretches linking key events will be summarized in plain text, as briefly as possible, in order to focus on the momentous actions in the unfolding of this apocalyptic drama.
This author’s commentary shall be given in italics.
Annotations, notes, references and amplification notes shall not be placed at the bottom of a page or in the back of the book, but will be presented after the relevant passage of Bernal’s account in their own titled chapter.
