The Indian Emperor/Connection
CONNECTION
OF
THE INDIAN EMPEROR
TO
THE INDIAN QUEEN
The conclusion of the Indian Queen (part of which poem was writ by me) left little matter for another story to be built on, there remaining but two of the considerable characters alive, viz. Montezuma and Orazia. Thereupon the author of this thought it necessary to produce new persons from the old ones: and considering the late Indian Queen, before she loved Montezuma, lived in clandestine marriage with her general Traxalla, from those two he has raised a son and two daughters, supposed to be left young orphans at their death. On the other side, he has has given to Montezuma and Orazia, two sons and a daughter; all now supposed to be grown up to men's and women's estate; and their mother, Orazia (for whom there was no further use in the story), lately dead.
So that you are to imagine about twenty years elapsed since the coronation of Montezuma; who, in the truth of the history, was a great and glorious prince; and in whose time happened the discovery and invasion of Mexico, by the Spaniards, under the conduct of Hernando Cortez, who joining with the Traxallan Indians, the inveterate enemies of Montezuma, wholly subverted that flourishing empire;—the conquest of which is the subject of this dramatic poem.
I have neither wholly followed the story, nor varied from it; and, as near as I could, have traced the native simplicity and ignorance of the Indians, in relation to European customs;—the shipping, armour, horses, swords, and guns of the Spaniards, being as new to them, as their habits and their language were to the Christians.
The difference of their religion from ours, I have taken from the story itself; and that which you find of it in the first and fifth acts, touching the sufferings and constancy of Montezuma in his opinions, I have only illustrated, not altered, from those who have written of it.