When Montezuma Met Cortes

by Matthew Restall

  52.Mendoza: Mendoza’s letter was paraphrased in Fernández de Oviedo’s Historia general (1959 [1535], IV: 245–48) (Nicholson 2001a: 88–91 cites a different edition). Franciscans: Carrasco (2012: 112) notes that Sahagún’s claim “has resulted in endless debates” regarding its invention or its actual belief in Montezuma’s court in 1519. Arguments in favor of Montezuma or Aztecs generally believing some version of it include Nicholson (2001a: 32–39; 2001b) and MacLachlan (2015: 108–9); ambivalent positions are taken by Elliott (1989 [1967]: 36–38) and Hassig (2006: 55), with Carrasco (2000: 205–40) taking a sophisticated middle position; arguments against include Frankl (1962: 10–12), Parry (1977: 319), Lockhart (1993: 235), Thomas (1993: 185), Restall (2003: 114–15), Townsend (2006: 47–50), and Villella (2016: 130–31). In a way, the issue is one of timing: Carrasco has argued that the return of Quetzalcoatl “represents not a postconquest fabrication in order to explain an incredible political collapse, but a postconquest elaboration of an indigenous tradition” (italics his; 1992: 145–47); I would argue that it is a postconquest fabrication developed to explain a political collapse. Sahagún’s insistence that it was not true that Quetzalcoatl would return (“he is still expected, but it is not true; it is a falsehood”; FC, I) is ironic in view of the persistent belief “in Mexico and among some Latinos in the United States” that Quetzalcoatl still “may return one day in some powerful symbolic and political form” (Carrasco 2012: 112). Appeal: In the lost indigenous source that scholars call Crónica X, used by Durán, Tovar, Tezozomoc (1949: 90) (also see Charnay 1903), and others in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Quetzalcoatl is “the god whom all of us await, the one who crossed the sea of heaven.” Also see Chimalpahin (1997: 180–83; Nicholson 2001b: 12–13; “He is alive and will not die, and he will return to rule once again”).

  53.Boone (1989: 86–88); Pagden (1990: 96–102). Pagden argues that Clavigero knew that Sahagún had invented the Cortés-Quetzalcoatl connection, but that it was too useful not to use in his efforts to make Quetzalcoatl “a symbol of mestizo and criollo religious distinctiveness” (102); see also Lafaye (1976: 187–90).

  54.Howard and Dryden (1665); Restall (2013) is linked to a performance of the semi-opera in Madrid in 2013.

  55.A 1668 performance at the court of King Charles II included performances by courtiers such as the Duke and Duchess of Monmouth. One cannot but hope that the Duke played Montezuma. At the play’s end, Montezuma loses his throne and commits suicide. In the real world, the Duke—who was the king’s illegitimate son—rebelled when his uncle James succeeded his father Charles to the throne in 1685. For his ambitions, the Duke was beheaded. Hutner (2001: 65–88); Thompson (2008).

  56.In a dedication to the published version, he reiterated that he had “neither wholly follow’d the Truth of the History, nor altogether left it: but have taken all the liberty of a Poet, to add, alter, or diminish, as I thought might best conduce to the beautifying of my Work” (also quoted at the top of my Prologue; Dryden 1668 [1667]: unnumbered prefatory pp. 26, 27).

  57.Dryden (1668 [1667]: 64).

  58.Quoted phrases: Dryden (1668 [1667]: 68, 65). Also see Brown (2004: 71–73).

  59.“Unstable edifice”: Pagden (1990: 96).

  60.Rueda Smithers (2009: 290–91); Collis (1954: 65–66); on Frías, see Frías (1899–1901); Bonilla Reyna and Lecouvey (2015: 61–116).

  61.“Table”: Ranking (1827: 345).

  62.Essay in Lasso (1594: ff. 295–304; quotes on ff. 295v, 296r, 300r) (los Indios de la nueua España no eran belicosos, sino cobardes, simples, ignorantes, sin ingenio ni habilidad, ni modo de biuir . . . tan flacos de coraço[n], y ta[n] afeminados (como algunos dizen) . . . muy dieztros en las armas . . . pelear valerosamente . . . el animo y fortaleza de los Indios . . . diminuye[n] el merito q Cortes gano en ve[n]cerlos; . . . el espantoso nimbre y poder de Moteçuma Rey de Mexico . . . ni en grandeza de Reyno, ni en numero de vassallos, ni en abundancia de riquezas).

  63.Ogilby (1670: 239). See “Ruffled Feathers” (phrase inspired by a 2016 Penn State graduate seminar paper of that title by Catherine Popovici), showing the frontispiece to Ogilby’s America. The maps scattered across this beautiful volume (and its Dutch twin, by Montanus) all feature cartouches of people surrounding the captions, with various indigenous figures wearing feathered skirts and headdresses. In an illustrated passage on the “Ancient Attire of the Mexicans,” Ogilby remarked that unlike “the several barbarous Nations, that run up and down naked in New Spain,” the Aztecs wore cotton clothing, and elaborate feathered accessories around their heads, necks, and legs (1670: 276–77). I have also included the Ogilby/Montanus portrait of Montezuma, identified in Latin as Rex ultimus Mexicanorum (“The Last King of the Mexicans”), and thus as a personalized portrait, yet highly generic in its details; it was reproduced for centuries in various European publications, usually varied and altered but never much—examples are a version published in Germany (Happel 1688: 101) and one in Antwerp in a Spanish edition of Herrera’s Historia General (1728, I: facing 401).

  64.Romerovargas Iturbide (1964: 21–26, quotes on 21–22, 24) (un gran reformador y educador de su pueblo; el único gobernante de su tiempo en el mundo que exigiera la educación obligatoria de todos los miembros de la sociedad; curiosidad morbosa como pretendieron interpretar este hecho los españoles que tanto hablaban de caridad, tan mal la conocían y en nada la practicaban; de temperamento profundamente artístico; amado por su pueblo al grado de ser casi adorado).

  65.Romerovargas Iturbide (1964: 27–57; 1963–64, III: 184–85) (figura excelsa . . . héroe nacional . . . fue cogido por sorpresa y tomado prisionero . . . vejaciones, tormentos y martirios tanto físicos como morales . . . atormentado y reducido a la impotencia).

  66.Restall (2003: 15, 100).

  67.I am paraphrasing the succinct summary by Hajovsky (2015: 8, 136–38, 142); also see Gillespie (2008). Hill and MacLaury (2010) use the Sahagún/FC account of Montezuma’s weaknesses to show how MacLaury’s vantage theory (which uses color to categorize personality viewpoints) can be applied to sixteenth-century Aztec understandings of “person.”

  68.Gemelli (1704: 513–14); Vaca de Guzmán (1778: 1, 6, 16) (el terrible Motezuma; el Rey mas arrogante; su mortal letargo); Ranking (1827: 314, 321, 318; italics in original).

  69.White God: This is my translation of the French title; the English edition was titled, less revealingly, The Conquistadors; Descola (1957 [1954]: 101–228). Valadés (1579); Palomera (1988: 31) (leyenda preñada de presagios fatalistas influía poderosamente en el ánimo religioso de los mexicanos, especialmente en el espíritu supersticioso de Moctezuma).

  70.Wolf (1959: 155–56); Todorov (1999 [1982]: 118–19); Tuchman (1984: 11–14); Le Clézio (1993: 10); MacLachlan (2015: 109, 191–92). Also see Restall (2003: 114–15, 134–35), citing some of these same sources, as well as Fernández-Armesto (1992), Gillespie (2008), and Allen (2015: 479).

  71.Essence as emperor: Hajovsky (2009; 2015).

  72.Hajovsky (2009: 338); Mundy (2011a: 175–76). Boone (2017) has recently shown that the feathered Aztecs in Weiditz’s 1529 costume book, long assumed to be portraits of the Aztecs brought back to Spain by Cortés, are in fact imaginative blends of Aztec, Brazilian Tupinambá, and “Oriental” costumed featherwork. By the time of de Bry’s illustrations to the 1601 volume of his Peregrinationes in Americam, all the prints that illustrate some aspect of Mexico feature generic Native American lords wearing feathered skirts and feathered headdresses—Montezuma’s specific identification is implied on the illustrated title page of de Bry (1601; the plates are section 3 of the volume, following p. 72 of the second section). In more than one hundred images of “Indians” in Pieter vander Aa’s 28-volume Dutch edition of Herrera’s Historia General, all are shown naked or clothed only in feathers (Aa 1706–1708); the same trope runs through editions in multiple languages of Solís and of Robertson.

  73.Hajovsky (2011) is the definitive study of the Thevet portrait (quotes a
re from him, p. 336); also see Hajovsky (2015) for the larger context of Montezuma portraiture.

  74.On the Medici portrait of Montezuma (unsigned but attributed to Rodríguez): Escalante Gonzalbo (2004: 171–77); Hajovsky (2009: 350); Schreffler (2016: 14–17). The engraving included in our Gallery as “A Noble Savage” is from Istoria della Conquista del Messico, an Italian edition of Solís’s History published in Venice in 1733, although the engraving was included in Italian editions beginning in 1699; it was based on the Montezuma portrait painted by a Mexican artist that Cosimo III de’ Medici had received by 1698 (and which hangs today in Florence’s Medici Treasury, or Museo degli Argenti). The caption reads: “Portrait of Moctezuma, engraved from the original sent from Mexico to the Most Serene Grand Duke of Tuscany.” Solís (1733: facing 243); Hajovsky (2009: 349–50); Alcalá and Brown (2014: 117).

  75.Niles and Moore (1929: 128–29).

  76.Cortés wrote: DC, I: 225, 230, et al. Centuries: Restall (2003: Ch. 4).

  77.Aztec Ruler: McEwan and López Luján (2009: 23). Revenge: “The Aztec Two-Step” and “Montezuma’s Revenge” are likely North American variants on phrases popularized by the British during World War II but surely coined generations earlier, such as “Delhi Belly,” “the Rangoon Runs,” “the Cairo Two-Step,” “Pharaoh’s Revenge,” the later variant, “Ghandi’s Revenge,” and so on; the phrase first seems to appear in print in the United States in the 1950s (e.g., phrases.org.uk/meanings/montezumas-revenge.html). The assertion on various websites that Cortés threw up the first meal given to him by Montezuma, with every subsequent gringo regurgitation an echo of that original vengeful offering, is not supported by evidence.

  CHAPTER 4: THE EMPIRE IN HIS HANDS

  1.Epigraph sources, in sequence: Durán (1967 [1581], II: 398; translation mine, but see 1994 [1581]: 389; I was led to this passage by Hajovsky 2015: 23) (a quien todos de conformidad acudieron con sus votos, sin contradicción ninguna, diciendo ser de muy buena edad y muy recogido y virtuoso y muy generoso, de ánimo invencible, y adornado de todas las virtudes que en un buen príncipe se podían hallar; cuyo consejo y parecer era siempre muy acertado, especialmente en las cosas de la Guerra, en las cuales le habían visto ordenar y acometer algunas cosas que eran de ánimo invencible); Brian, Benton, and García Loaeza (2015: 19–20) (I have omitted a sentence from the middle of the quote); Dryden (1668 [1667]: unnumbered prefatory p. 25).

  2.The map was published with Latin captions in Nuremberg in 1524, and with Italian ones in Venice in 1525. See Mundy (1998: 13–22) and Boone (2011: 32–38) on identifying the indigenous and European elements of the map; also Chapter 1. In addition to “Downtown,” the image cluster that began this chapter, see “The Urtext” in the Gallery.

  3.The original is typically called the Nuremberg Map (see Mundy 1998; 2011b). For sample variants, see differing versions, all clearly descended from the Nuremberg Map, from 1528 (in Italian, printed in Venice), 1556 (Italian, Venice; see Ramusio 1556), 1564 (French, Lyons), 1575 (Latin, Antwerp; engraved by Frans Hogenberg), 1576 (Italian, Venice; an engraving not a woodcut), 1580 (Italian, Venice), 1631 (German, Frankfurt), and 1634 (Latin, Frankfurt) (see de Bry 1634, Part 13: 125), all in JCB and all accessible through jcb.lunaimaging.com. A good example of the multiple-island variant is in Prévost (1746–59, XII [1754]: facing p. 325). Mundy (1998: 32) also lists variants published in Italy and France from 1524 to 1612; also see Kagan (2000: 89–95). The Italian rendering created by Giovanni Battista Ramusio in 1556 was reproduced widely, with minor changes, for centuries; in fact, the Ramusio Map was a more direct influence on subsequent versions than was the Nuremberg Map; a late example of the Ramusio Map, printed in Mexico City in 1858, is in CDHM, I: 390–91 inter. On the early modern “copy-cat publishing” of maps of Tenochtitlan, see Kagan (2000: 89–90).

  4.Statue: It is eccentric enough to have prompted many theories (summarized by Boone 2011: 35); my guess is that the engraver was inspired as much by medieval images of headless savages as he was by Aztec statues with displaced heads such as those of Coatlicue and Coyolxauhqui. I am grateful to Laurent Cases for discussing the Latin captions with me. For a list and identification of all the labels (Latin version only), see Mundy (1998: 32).

  5.Anonymous, (1522 [Ein Schöne Newe Zeytung] unnumbered pp. 7–8); translation mine, with the kind assistance of Wolfgang Gabbert and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives; also see Wagner (1929).

  6.CDHM, I: 362 (Tenia Monteuzuma por grandeza una casa en que tenia mucha diversidad de sierpes e animalias bravas, en que habia tigres, osos, leones, puercos monteses, viboras culebras, sapos, ranas e otra mucha diversidad de serpientes y de aves, hasta gusanos; e cada cosa de estas en su lugar, e jaulas como era menester, y personas diputadas para les dar de comer y todo lo necesario, que tenian cuidado dello. Tenia otras personas monstruosas, como enanos, corcobados, con un brazo, e otros que les faltaba la una pierna, e otras naciones monstruosas que nacen ocasionadas).

  7.Zuazo: CDHM, I: 362–65 (Señora de la plata). Ordaz: Thomas (1993: 471); also see AGI Patronato 150, 5, 1: ff.4v–7v; Justicia 712 (old citation; Otte 1964). Myth: The discoveries of the Great Temple project (PTM) have been seen in Mexico as putting to bed some long-standing popular skepticism regarding the zoo (e.g., see Blanco et al. 2009; Ventura 2014); I have not found evidence of equivalent, modern skepticism outside Mexico.

  8.On the lists of items sent to Spain: DC, I: 232–49; FC, XII: 58–59; Gómara (1552: Ch. 39; 1964: 84–87; Schroeder et al. 2010: 124–27); Solari (2007: 253); Russo (2011: 7–8). On buried objects, see citations to the PTM in notes to this and the previous chapter. Amara Solari’s 2003 M.A. thesis and a version of it published in Mexico (2007) planted the seed for my thinking on Montezuma as a collector, thereby underpinning this chapter and providing a crucial link in the argumentative chain of the whole book.

  9.Map: The Nuremberg Map’s casa (Italian) and domus (Latin) parallel casa used in Spanish accounts; early modern English versions or translations of such accounts use “house,” occasionally “palace” or “Pleasure-House” (e.g., Townsend version of Solís, 1724: 75). Block quote: Ogilby (1670: 88–89). On Aztec palace terminology, see Evans (2004).

  10.Sahagún (1997 [c.1560]: 207); Solís (1724: 78). Such claims have appealed to later writers; Romerovargas Iturbide (1964), for example, imaginatively used them as evidence of an Aztec social welfare system.

  11.Gómara (1552: Ch. 73; 1964: 151; Schroeder et al. 2010: 197); Díaz XCI (in 1632 ed. styled as LXXXXI; 1632: f. 68; 1908, II: 67; 1984 [1632]: 169; 1963 [1632]: 229–30; 2005 [1632]: 232); Solís (1724: 76). As often, despite his claims to eyewitness reporting, Díaz simply copied Gómara, who uses the same phrases to imagine hellish zoo noise (op. cit.). (Díaz: muchas viboras y culebras emponzoñadas, que traen en la cola uno que suena como cascabeles . . . cuando bramaban los tigres y leones, y aullaban los adives y zorros, y silbaban los sierpes, era grima oirlo y parecia infierno.)

  12.Solís (1724: 75); Gómara (1552: Ch. 73; 1964: 150–51); Schroeder et al. (2010: 196—“cranes” etc. quote is Chimalpahin’s addition to Gómara’s text); CCR (1524; 1960: 140; 1971: 223) (otras que estaban junto a ellas, que aunque algo menores eran muy más frescas y gentiles, y tenía en ellas Mutezuma todos los linajes de aves que en estas partes había; y aunque a mí me pesó mucho de ello, porque a ellos les pesaba mucho más, determiné de les quemar, de que los enemigos mostraron harto pesar y también los otros sus aliados de las ciudades de la laguna).

  13.“Lanners”: Gómara (1552: Ch. 73; 1964: 151; Schroeder et al. 2010: 197). Florentine Codex: the zoo image that is “The Zookeeper” in our Gallery (FC, VIII: f. 30v in original MS) goes with Ch. 14 (41–45), Paso y Troncoso ill. #71. “Extremely large”: Motolinía (1951 [1541]: 269) (I have used Speck’s translation here). “Sheep”: Solís (1724: 75–76; 1733: engraving facing p. 81): engraving included in our Gallery as one of the frames in “Picturing the War.” Note that an Aztec-carrying eagle featured in an early colonial legend in which Montezuma dreamt of his emp
ire’s impeding loss, and this Solís image was also reproduced as a stone bas-relief on the atrium wall of Mexico City’s St. Hippolyte church—it survives and attracts varying guidebook and online interpretations, while it slowly deteriorates (Durán LXVII; Sánchez 1886; my 2009 Mexico City field notes; also see mention of the St. Hippolyte church in Chapter 2).

  14.The term I have glossed as “jackal” is adive; by “here they call” (en esta tierra se llaman) Díaz must mean Spain, or Spanish Mexico, not indigenous Mexico, as the word is Spanish of Arabic origin (Díaz XCI; 1632: f. 68r; 1984 [1632], 169; 2005 [1632]: 232; 1963 [1632]: 229, Cohen note) (de tigres y leones de dos maneras: unos, que son de hechura de lobos, que en esta tierra se llaman adives, y zorros y otras alimañas chicas); Gómara (1552: f.44v; Ch. 73; 1964: 150).

  15.Ventura (2014); in fact, some such drawings “morphologically look more like wolves” than coyotes (in the words of Ximena Chávez Balderas, who has been doing important work on the bones found by the Great Temple project [PTM]).

  16.Tapia (c.1545; Fuentes 1963: 40; J. Díaz et al. 1988: 102) (hombres monstruos y mujeres: unos contrechos, otros enanos, otros corcovados); Motolinía (1951 [1541]: 269) (I have used Speck’s translation here); Solís (1724: 76–77). Also see CCR (1522: f. 17; 1960: 67; 1971: 111) and Gómara (1552: f.44v; Ch. 73; 1964: 150), who describe albinos as included here. Modern Mexican historians: e.g., Romerovargas Iturbide (1964: 21–22) (curiosidad morbosa; para que el estado cuidase directamente de ellos por espíritu humanitario).