d the Spanish
advance, the enslavement of a whole people to the demon of greed,
especially after the withdrawal of Cortes from the scene, left a bitter
crop of estrangement between the native Mexicans and their white
masters, of which the rank remains have not even yet been quite
eradicated. Cortes himself, as great in diplomacy as in war, it is true
made himself rich beyond dreams, though he was defrauded of his
deserts, even as Columbus, Balboa, and Pizarro were; but he was not
wantonly cruel, and in the circumstances in which he was placed it was
difficult for him to have acted very differently from what he did. It
was not until the smaller men displaced him and came to enrich
themselves at any cost that his methods were debased and degraded to
vile ends and the policy itself was rendered hateful.

Thus, whilst New Spain was always held to be nearer to the mother
country than any other American lands and more of a white man's home
than the settlements on the Southern Continent, the distrust engendered
by the ruthless cruelty of the earlier years of the occupation
contributed powerfully to retard any intimate intermixture of the
conquerors and the conquered races, the closer connection with Spain
also keeping the Spanish-Mexican decidedly more pure in blood than any
other Spanish American people. This will account for the fact that the
various Indian races of Mexico are still, to a large extent, distinct
from each other and from the pure white Mexicans after nearly a century
of native Republican government. In the State of Oaxaca alone there are
even now at least fifteen perfectly distinguishable separate tribes of
pure Indians, of which two, the Zapotecas and the Mistecas, comprise
more than half the whole population of the State. But, this
notwithstanding, no race question now really exists in Mexico. The
pure-blooded Indians frequently occupy the highest positions in the
State, as judges, soldiers, or savants, the greatest but one of Mexican
Presidents, Juarez, having been a full-blooded Zapoteca, whilst the
present ruler of Mexico, certainly one of the most exalted figures in
American history, General Porfirio Diaz, is justifiably prouder of his
Misteca descent than of the white ancestry he also claims. Nor, as in
other countries of similar ethnological constitution, does the Indian
population here tend to decrease. The Mexican Indian or half-breed
suffers under no disability, social or political, and is in a deci