# Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/White Visitors before Columbus

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WHITE VISITORS BEFORE COLUMBUS
MEXICO and the adjacent country enjoyed a civilization that must have seemed to its people something better than the substitute offered by the pale-faced strangers who came among them carrying tubes of metal that uttered lightnings and thunders and slew by hundreds, and who stabbed and cursed and tortured and imprisoned when they could not have their way, and pillaged whether they had it or not. The shameful treatment of the owners of the western continent began in the day of Columbus, and has continued ever since. Long before any permanent settlement of white people on our continent, before even the visits of the Norsemen, a great, strong, religious race, the Mound-Builders, had disappeared, leaving not even a name. Whether they had crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific, or had sprung from native stock, is conjectural. There are Chinese who have built mounds, though none on such a scale as those of the central States or the great heap of Cholula, and none so splendidly adorned as those of Koh. It was at about the dawn of the Christian era that the Nahuas entered Mexico and built houses, while the Toltecs, who followed them, erected temples, and these the Aztecs decorated with sculpture. ​The Toltecs said that they came from Atlan, or Aztlan, which some believe to have been Atlantis. The Mound-Builders may have been earlier than all of these, and they have left the records of their march, or their retreat, from Manitoba to the domain of Montezuma. As the kingdom of peace had not then come upon the earth, it is likely that this great family, the Aryans of the western world, the people of arts and gentle living, met their end among the deserts and snows beyond the Rio Grande.
But, great as the destruction of the red race may have been in its intestine wars, it was not doomed until the white men landed. On the island of Cozumel, which the Spaniards took in the middle of the sixteenth century, it is reported that they found a population of one hundred thousand, and half as many others from adjacent lands yearly visited the shrines of the sun-god. Now but a few hundred remain.
As among the Canadian tribes, so among the Mexicans, we have tokens of an early teaching of at least the forms of Christianity. The cross appears in Aztec sculpture, though not needfully as a Christian symbol. The Lower California Pericues tell of Kwahayipe, son of the lord of heaven, and his wife, who lived in the Acaragui Mountains and brought men into being, pulling them out of the earth. Men killed him, put a crown of thorns upon him, and in a remote place he lies to this day, dripping fresh blood and uncorrupted. And ​the second coming of a Messiah was so confidently looked for that Montezuma believed that the great white god had returned when Cortez landed. Cortez, forsooth! This god, or demi-god, was Quetzalcoatl, "the plumed serpent," the son of a virgin in Tula, he whose symbol was the morning star, bringer of light, and who was worshipped in Cholula. He came from the east to help the human race. He was in many ways like Hayowentha, or Hiawatha, albeit a large, bearded man, wearing white garments and a mitre, and red crosses were painted on his feet. He was a celibate, hated war and sacrifice, delighted in fruits and flowers and things of natural beauty, and was constantly preaching and working for purity and peace. When, through the wiles of his dark enemy, Tezcatlipoca, he was driven away in exile, sailing eastward in his snake-skin boat, yet glad to meet the sun, he promised to return; so, when Cortez arrived the Mexicans hailed the strangers as brothers of the plumed serpent. Heartless was the violation of this trust.
Another indication of early visits of white men to this land is found in a legend told among the Indians of Colombia, to the effect that Bohica, a bearded white man, appeared to the Mozcas on the Bogota plains and taught them farming, building, draining, and civil government before he retired to a hermitage for two thousand years. Like him was Manco Capac, who with his sister, Mama ​Oello, gave laws and arts to the Peruvians before returning to the Sun, his father; like him were Kukulkan of Yucatan, and Bochica of the Muyscas.
When the Spaniards invested Bogota they guarded the roads, so as to cut off the chance of escape and intercept any approach of reinforcements. The savage men-at-arms soon had the city in their power, the natives having been awed by the thunder and murder of their guns into the belief that the Spaniards were invincible. The invaders as they entered found the people either attempting flight or extended along the streets in supplication; but, paying little attention to them, save when it was necessary to beat back a threatening band, they pressed on toward the centre of the town, from which a great smoke was rising, for here they knew was the temple, and here they hoped to find treasure. The sound of a solemn chant arose within, and as they came clattering and shouting to the door, the people, in a frenzy at their intended sacrilege, made one last and vain attempt to stay them. Benalcazar and his men rushed in. Before the statue of a grim god a funeral pyre had been reared, and the flames were snapping over it. Gums and spices had been thrown upon the logs, and the smoke was choking in its fragrance. Vessels of gold had been heaped in a corner, ready to carry out or to hide, and the eyes of the Spaniards fastened on them greedily; but as the smoke ​swung aside the leader saw what made him pause. Three white men, not Spaniards, nor like them, stepped upon the brands, still chanting, their look turned skyward, their hands raised high. Long beards flowed upon their breasts, and their rich gowns were heavy with gems and gold. Without look or word for the intruders, these men of a race unknown went calmly to their death.