The Aztec Account of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico

The Aztec Account of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico Miguel Leon-Portillas password The Broken Spears Introduction Other resources Aztec Life Mexica Culture Mexica Medicine religious belief of the Modern Aztlan Movement Religion of the Mexica Bibliography Major Deitites of the Mexica Minor Deitites of the Mexica Aztec Cannibalism An Ecological fate? Path of the Conquest On November 8, 1519, the Spanish conquistadors first entered the great city of Mexico, the metropolis the Aztecs had built on a lake island.Don Hernando Cortes, who was accompanied by half-dozen hundred Spaniards and a great many native allies, at pull round could see for himself the temples and palaces abtaboo which he had heard so many marvels. The Spaniards arrived from the trouble of Tlalpan, to the south of the city, passing across one of the wide causeways that connected the island with the mainland. When they reached a locality k this instantn as Xoloco, they were welcomed by the last of the Motecuhzomas , who had come out to meet them in the belief that the white men must be Quetzalcoatll and other gods, returning at last from across the waters in a flash known as the Gulf of Mexico.Thus Cortes and his men entered the city, not barely as guests, but also as gods coming home. It was the first direct control between one of the most extraordinary pre-Columbian cultures and the strangers who would eventually set aside it. Cortes landed on the coast at Veracruz on Good Friday, April 22, 1519 the Aztec keen surrendered to him on August 13, 1521. The events that took place between these ii dates befool been recounted in a number of chronicles and other writings, of which the best known are the earn Cortes wrote to King Charles V and the True History of the Conquest of Mexico by Bernal Diaz del Castillo.These two works, along with a few others also written by Spaniards, until now have been almost the only basis on which historians have judged the seduction of one of the greatest c ivilizations in pre-Columbian America. But these chronicles present only one side of the story, that of the conquerors. For some reason-scorn, perhaps-historians have failed to consider that the conquered might have set down their own version in their own language. This halt is the fir