Formidable as was in truth the Spanish army, the unsophisticated natives made light of it, and came gayly forward to the combat in five squadrons, of eight thousand warriors each,30 as Bernal Diaz says, “all in flowing plumes, with faces painted in red, white, and black, sounding drums and trumpets, and flourishing lances
and shields, two-handed swords, fire-hardened darts, and slings, and every man protected by an armor of quilted cotton.” They would encircle these impudent interlopers, and did they not fall fainting beneath their brave yells and savage music, they would crush them like flies.
And by way of beginning, they sent forth a cloud of arrows, stones, and charred darts, wounding many and killing one, a soldier named Saldaña. The Spaniards answered with their cross-bows and firelocks, and mowed the packed masses with their cannon.
The soft soil and ditches were less to the agile Indian than to the heavily accoutred Spaniard.
It adds nothing to the honor of Spanish arms to throw in at this juncture a miracle to terrify the already half-paralyzed Indians, who might otherwise prove too strong for their steel-clad assailants; but the records compel me. While in the dire embrace of heathen hordes, midst thrust and slash and crash of steel and stone, the enemy hewn down and driven back only to give place to thrice the number, behold, upon a gray-spotted steed, a heavenly horseman appeared, and from a slight eminence overlooking the bloody field he frowned confusion on the foe. The heathen warriors were stricken powerless, enabling the Spaniards to form anew; but when the horseman vanished, the Indians rallied. Thrice, with the same effect, the awful apparition came and went.31 Then there were horsemen indeed, more real to the Spaniards, but none the less spectral to the Indians. They had been detained by the marshes