Note 358 — Chapter XIII · ENTRY INTO TLASCALA. September, 1519.

‘Y dar la obediencia â nuestro Rey, y Señor, sino que los ternia por de malas intenciones.’ Bernal Diaz, Hist Verdad., 56. According to Camargo, Patlahuatzin of Tlascala was sent with the message. The Cholultecs seized and flayed his face and arms, cutting off the hands, so that they were left dangling by the skin from the neck. In this guise they sent him back with the reply that thus would they receive the white gods whose prowess he had extolled. The Tlascaltecs demanded that Cortés should avenge the cruelty and the insult, and he did so in the massacre of Cholula. This, continues the narrator, is commemorated in Tlascalan song, but the account is evidently mixed, and probably refers chiefly to some earlier occurrence. Hist. Tlax., 161-2. Brasseur de Bourbourg assumes that Patlahuatzin is merely insulted and ill-treated. The two peoples had once been friends and allies, but during the last battle which they fought against their common enemy, the Aztecs, the Cholultecs had suddenly changed sides and fallen on the rear of their unsuspecting allies, inflicting great slaughter. Herrera, dec. ii. lib. vi. cap. xviii.