ose help
Cortes overcame Montezuma and Guatemoc. Beyond the Tlascalans and to the
west, the great Otomie race lived or lives among its mountains. They
are a braver nation than the Aztecs, speaking another language, of a
different blood, and made up of many clans. Sometimes they were subject
to the great Aztec empire, sometimes in alliance, and sometimes at open
war with it and in close friendship with the Tlascalans. It was to
draw the tie closer between the Aztecs and the Otomies, who were to the
inhabitants of Anahuac much what the Scottish clans are to the people
of England, that Montezuma took to wife the daughter and sole legitimate
issue of their great chief or king. This lady died in childbirth, and
her child was Otomie my wife, hereditary princess of the Otomie. But
though her rank was so great among her mother's people, as yet Otomie
had visited them but twice, and then as a child. Still, she was well
skilled in their language and customs, having been brought up by nurses
and tutors of the tribes, from which she drew a great revenue every year
and over whom she exercised many rights of royalty that were rendered to
her far more freely than they had been to Montezuma her father.

Now as has been said, some of these Otomie clans had joined the
Tlascalans, and as their allies had taken part in the war on the side of
the Spaniards, therefore it was decided at a solemn council that Otomie
and I her husband should go on an embassy to the chief town of the
nation, that was known as the City of Pines, and strive to win it back
to the Aztec standard.

Accordingly, heralds having been sent before us, we started upon our
journey, not knowing how we should be received at the end of it. For
eight days we travelled in great pomp and with an ever-increasing
escort, for when the tribes of the Otomie learned that their princess
was come to visit them in person, bringing with her her husband, a man
of the Teules who had espoused the Aztec cause, they flocked in vast
numbers to swell her retinue, so that it came to pass that before we
reached the City of Pines we were accompanied by an army of at least ten
thousand mountaineers, great men and wild, who made a savage music as we
marched. But with them and with their chiefs as yet we held no converse
except by way of formal greeting, though every morning when we started
on our journey, Otomie in a litter and I on a horse that had been
captured from the Spaniards, they set up shout