n fragments their fetters, and
lead them to glory and honor.

When the name of Quetzalcoatl was no longer heard from the teocalli of
Cholula, that of Montezuma took its place. From ocean to ocean, and from
the river Gila to the Nicaraguan lake, nearly every aboriginal nation
still cherishes the memory of Montezuma, not as the last unfortunate
ruler of a vanished state, but as the prince of their golden era, their
Saturnian age, lord of the winds and waters, and founder of their
institutions. When, in the depth of the tropical forests, the antiquary
disinters some statue of earnest mien, the natives whisper one to the
other, "Montezuma! Montezuma!"[190-1] In the legends of New Mexico he is
the founder of the pueblos, and intrusted to their guardianship the
sacred fire. Departing, he planted a tree, and bade them watch it well,
for when that tree should fall and the fire die out, then he would
return from the far East, and lead his loyal people to victory and
power. When the present generation saw their land glide, mile by mile,
into the rapacious hands of the Yankees--when new and strange diseases
desolated their homes--finally, when in 1846 the sacred tree was
prostrated, and the guardian of the holy fire was found dead on its cold
ashes, then they thought the hour of deliverance had come, and every
morning at earliest dawn a watcher mounted to the house-tops, and gazed
long and anxiously in the lightening east, hoping to descry the noble
form of Montezuma advancing through the morning beams at the head of a
conquering army.[191-1]

Groaning under the iron rule of the Spaniards, the Peruvians would not
believe that the last of the Incas had perished an outcast and a
wanderer in the forests of the Cordilleras. For centuries they clung to
the persuasion that he had but retired to another mighty kingdom beyond
the mountains, and in due time would return and sweep the haughty
Castilian back into the ocean. In 1781, a mestizo, Jose Gabriel
Condorcanqui, of the province of Tinta, took advantage of this strong
delusion, and binding around his forehead the scarlet fillet of the
Incas, proclaimed himself the long lost Inca Tupac Amaru, and a true
child of the sun. Thousands of Indians flocked to his standard, and at
their head he took the field, vowing the extermination of every soul of
the hated race. Seized at last by the Spaniards, and condemned to a
public execution, so profound was the reverence with which he had
inspired