Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  Cortés now sent back two procuradores, Alonso Hernández de Portocarrero, from Medellín, and Francisco de Montejo, from Salamanca, to report his findings to the King. These men were only procuradores in the most simple definition of the word. They were certainly named by Cortés as his, not Vera Cruz’s, representatives. No doubt they were selected since they would have been at home at court. Cortés avoided asking them to report to Diego Velázquez, but since Montejo had a property in Cuba, he stopped there for a day or two on his way to Spain. It was here that some of Cortés’s treasure was observed by a friend who told the Cuban governor about it.

  This mission was discussed earlier.15 The treasure included the wheels presented by Moctezuma and a characteristic selection of Mexican works of art—wood carvings, turquoise, mosaics, feather mosaics, gold jewelry, and jade—except that there could not have been any of the large sculptures for which Mexico has been deservedly famous. The two also took back the news that Jerónimo de Aguilar, believed lost in Nicuesa’s last expedition, was alive and well, and indeed serving the King as an interpreter.16 (For their reception in Spain, see chapter 31.)

  In August, Cortés left about a hundred of his men on the coast while, attended by many Totonacs as bearers, he led the rest over the tropical lowlands to the temperate zone of Mexico near Perote and across the mountains to the east of the city of Tenochtitlan, the Mexican capital.

  Cortés and his army had some fierce battles on their way up to Tenochtitlan, on a scale much larger than Europeans had yet experienced in the New World. But they made friends with the people of Tlaxcala after fighting them. Tlaxcala was, as we have seen, a city-state that had often fought the Mexica, by whose empire they were surrounded. There was also a battle at Cholula, where the Spaniards assumed that the people of the city were planning to attack them. That seems improbable, but all the same, the heavily outnumbered expeditionaries may have genuinely feared such an attack: “If by chance we had not inflicted that punishment, our lives would have been in great danger,” commented Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of the many participants in this expedition who wrote about it.17

  Then Cortés and his companions were received as guests by the Emperor Moctezuma. Their welcome was one of the most astonishing in history. The meeting occurred in November 1519 on the southern causeway, leading from the mainland across the lake of Mexico to Tenochtitlan. Cortés came with his four or five hundred Europeans, accompanied by bearers and servants from the indigenous, non-Aztec people who had flocked to serve him. Those people were happy to support a foreign military leader who might help them overthrow the Mexica.

  The sight of Cortés and his fellow commanders, such as Pedro de Alvarado and Gonzalo de Sandoval, in their armor and on their fine Spanish horses made a great impression. Cortés had a few fighting dogs that were equally disturbing to the Mexica, and some cannon were probably carried up to Tenochtitlan on carts pulled by Totanacs, the usefulness of the wheel thereby entering the indigenous imagination for the first time in North America. In addition, there were arquebusiers, who could cause a violent detonation even when their fire was inaccurate.

  Probably the Mexica would have heard of the long, strong, menacing swords of the Spaniards that had already been wielded to deadly effect on the journey up from the coast.

  Cortés was received in person by Moctezuma, who was surrounded by many of the elaborately beplumed Mexican nobility. A man walked in front of the Emperor carrying a carved pole to indicate his authority. The Spaniards would have found that element in the ceremony familiar, and some might even have appreciated the admirable carving that probably adorned the pole. The Emperor may not have wanted to receive Cortés, but the local tradition of hospitality made it essential. The Mexica had impeccable manners: “as polite as a Mexican Indian” would be a typical phrase in the Spanish seventeenth century.

  Moctezuma descended from his green litter, which according to the chroniclers was elaborately decorated with jewels, carving, featherwork, and other things for which his civilization is renowned. The Emperor probably wore an embroidered cloak, a green feathered headdress, perhaps comparable to the one that can be seen in the Museum of Mankind in Vienna, and on his feet gold-decorated sandals. He kissed his hand to Cortés after touching the earth.

  Cortés apparently asked, “Art thou not he? Art thou not Moctezuma?” He then presented the Emperor with a necklace of pearls, probably made out of some gathered from the island of Margarita, off Venezuela, where Spanish pearl seekers had been so active.

  Moctezuma gave Cortés in return a double necklace of red snails’ shells from which hung eight shrimps made of gold. The color of this necklace may have confirmed that Moctezuma believed Cortés might have been a reincarnation of the lost god Quetzalcoatl, since red was one of that deity’s favorite colors.

  The Emperor then addressed Cortés. According to Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, a Franciscan who, after reaching Mexico in 1526, devoted his life to uncovering the nature of the civilization of the Mexica, it must have been the most remarkable greeting in history. Moctezuma is supposed to have said:

  O our lord, thou has suffered fatigue, thou has endured weariness, thou hast come to arrive on earth. Thou hast come to govern thy city of Mexico, thou hast come to descend upon thy mat, upon thy seat which for a time I have guarded for thee.… I by no means merely dream, I do not see in my sleep. I do not merely dream that I see thee, that I look into thy face.… The rulers departed maintained that thou wouldst come to visit thy city, that thou wouldst descend upon thy mat, upon thy seat.18

  This translation from Mexican (Nahuatl) of the sixteenth century by Sahagún has invited many skeptical comments, but, all the same, some such elaborate words of welcome were surely made. “This is your house” is still a Spanish way of welcoming even a stranger on the peninsula.

  Cortés and his men were allocated rooms in a palace facing that of Moctezuma, across the sacred precinct, on the site of what is now the state pawnshop. After a few days, fearing to be cut off and then murdered at the Mexicans’ leisure, Cortés seized Moctezuma and held him captive in these lodgings. For an extraordinary time, between November 1519 and April 1520, the Emperor continued to govern Mexico, while Cortés ruled Moctezuma. Cortés taught the Emperor to use an arquebus, and they had numerous curious conversations recorded in subsequent accounts.

  Relations between Cortés and Moctezuma became quite close, and on one occasion, Cortés remarked that with his weapons and generalship and with Mexican manpower, surely they could conquer the world together—or, at least, China.19 All the same, there were tensions between the conquistadors and the Mexica, as when Cortés, Andrés de Tapia, and some others displayed images of the Virgin and St. Martin on the main temple on top of the pyramid, and broke some of the effigies of the Mexican gods, the remains of which were thrown down the steps of the ceremonial building.20

  During this time, in January 1520, Moctezuma made a formal acceptance of his vassalage to the King of Spain, Charles V. The act, like many others in Cortés’s time in the Mexican capital, has been questioned, and it has been plausibly suggested that the definition of being a vassal was quite different in Mexico to what it was in Spain. Yet the Mexica were, before the fifteenth century, the vassals of the Tepaneca, in the same way that Cortés now thought that they had become those of Castile. Several people testified to having witnessed the scene, and something like a concession of superior authority was probably given.21 Moctezuma may even have agreed to become a Christian.22 It has also been suggested that the aim of Cortés had always been to persuade Moctezuma to acknowledge himself a vassal of Charles V.23

  This improbable cohabitation came to an end in April 1520 when about a thousand Spaniards, led by the veteran conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez—victor in Jamaica and deputy commander in Cuba—landed at Vera Cruz determined to capture or kill Cortés and establish the authority of the Governor of Cuba. Narváez had with him many experienced, swashbuckling adventurers, some known in battles in La Española as w
ell as in Cuba. Once again, numerous Cuban Indians accompanied Narváez, either as slaves or servants.24 Cortés told Moctezuma that these newcomers were principally Basques.25 That was not so, even if there were a few Basques among them, such as Juan Bono de Quejo, one of Ponce de León’s captains in Florida and leader of the infamous slaving exhibition to Trinidad in 1515.

  Cortés left his deputy, Pedro de Alvarado, in Tenochtitlan and set off for the coast, where, at Cempoallan, near Vera Cruz, he surprised Narváez’s Spaniards by a night attack. It was the first pitched battle between Spaniards in the Americas. About a dozen of Narváez’s men were killed. Narváez himself was wounded, captured, and held as a prisoner at Vera Cruz for many months.

  Then Cortés returned to Tenochtitlan, his forces swollen by most of the newcomers, who had seen no alternative to changing their allegiance to him. He also now had many more horses. In the meantime, though, Alvarado, in Tenochtitlan, fearing an attack, much as in Cholula the previous autumn, had massacred, in what modern strategists would term a preemptive strike, much of the Mexican nobility at a fiesta and was afterwards himself surrounded. Cortés entered Tenochtitlan and sought to raise that siege, but could not do so. The mood of the Mexica was quite different from what it had been the previous winter. Moctezuma died on a roof while trying to reason with his erstwhile subjects. That he was killed by a stone thrown from the ranks of the Mexica seems reasonable after reading the account of Fray Francisco Aguilar.26 Cortés decided, after consultation with Alvarado, to leave the city surreptitiously at night.

  A woman collecting water raised the alarm. In a fierce battle on the causeway leading from Tacuba into Tenochtitlan on the night of June 30, 1520, the so-called noche triste, many Spaniards were killed. Some seem to have been seized asleep in their lodgings, to be later sacrificed on the summit of the main pyramid.

  The Spaniards were able to regroup, however, in the town of Tacuba, where the Church of Los Remedios now stands. Marching around the head of the lake of Mexico, they defeated the Mexica in an open battle near the town of Otumba. They were then able to recover fully on the other side of the mountains, in Tlaxcala. There, the indigenous enemies of the Mexica (the Spaniards’ allies in this new territory) welcomed and succored them in return for a treaty that ceded Tlaxcala new authority in the valley of Mexico.27

  Tlaxcala was the leading city-state that had successfully resisted incorporation into the Mexican Empire. Other peoples had been conquered and forced into a submission that they usually resented. Some of these seem to have seen the Spaniards’ arrival as a heaven-sent opportunity to recover their old independence. Many Tlaxcalteca also saw the Spaniards as mercenaries from whose help they would benefit, and made what they thought was a hard bargain in return for their help.28

  Cortés recovered from his wounds, as did his fellow commanders. He then devoted several months to the conquest of minor cities of the Mexican Empire, such as Tepeaca, to the east of the capital. He deliberately used terror as a deterrent against later resistance. Finally, his army, enhanced both by the help of indigenous allies and by new Spanish volunteers coming from Santo Domingo, in the spring of 1521 set about besieging Tenochtitlan.29 One of the expeditions from Spain via the Canary Islands was sent at this time by two old converso associates of Cortés’s, Juan de Córdoba, the well-known silversmith of Seville, and Luis Fernández de Alfaro, the merchant and onetime sea captain who had carried Cortés to the Indies in 1506 and whose life was discussed earlier.30 Rodrigo de Bastidas also sent a large expedition from Santo Domingo.

  Cortés could attack Tenochtitlan from the lake by commissioning a Sevillano, Martín López, to construct twelve brigantines. These were built at Tlaxcala and were then carried over the hills in pieces to be assembled in a small estuary next to the lake of Mexico—an astonishing feat, a feat similar to that of Balboa in the isthmus of Panama.

  The siege, a long battle, included many setbacks for the Spaniards. The fighting, often described, was on a scale unknown in the New World and ranks alongside some of the most bloody European battles; it was certainly one of the decisive battles of the world. The Spaniards captured control of the lake early on, through their use of the brigantines, and thereafter cut off the defenders from sources of food and other supplies. The battles led to the destruction of the city and the death from starvation, as well as in battle, of many Mexica. The latter almost certainly drugged themselves to fight with bravery, probably making use of sacred mushrooms and the peyote cactus.31 But Moctezuma’s cousin and successor, the youthful Emperor Cuauhtémoc, surrendered the city to Cortés on August 13, 1521. Many thousands of Mexica had been killed, and the people never recovered, though some survivors took part in subsequent wars of conquest, on the Spanish side. The Spanish losses since 1518 were probably about five hundred.32

  Cortés’s victory over the far more numerous Mexica has several explanations. The better-disciplined Spaniards were organized in companies and divisions, for which there was no Mexican equivalent. Cortés showed himself to be an excellent commander: always calm, particularly at difficult moments; always at the forefront of the battle; and always able to improvise imaginatively when things went wrong. He was as good a leader in a retreat as in an advance, and he could speak to and rally his men in a measured and inspiring tone. He could also explain in “a very excellent way … things about our holy faith” to the Indians.33

  Communication of other sorts also counted. Bernal Díaz recounts how, during the siege of Tenochtitlan, Cortés was able effectively to correspond with Alvarado: “He was always writing to us to tell us what we were to do and how we were to fight.”34 The role of writing in all these conquests of the sixteenth century has been called “the literal advantage,” or “perhaps … the most important” difference between the Spaniards and the indigenous people.35 The part of Cortés’s interpreter and subsequent mistress, Marína, was also critical.

  Both sides were convinced of their own superiority. The Spanish conviction that they knew a unique religious truth that had to be imposed on those who sacrificed others counted for much. Even at the end Cortés had only three or four churchmen with him (the priest Juan Díaz, the lay brother Jerónimo de Aguilar, the Mercedarian Fray Bartolomé de Olmedo, and the Franciscan Fray Pedro de Melgarejo), but all his men were possessed by religion. That religiosity grew stronger as the conquest continued and as the extent of human sacrifice practiced by the indigenous people became known.

  Christoph Weiditz was the first European painter to depict the indigenous people of the New World. Here we see their possessions, clothes, and games.

  Francisco de los Cobos, the charming supersecretary who ran the Spanish Empire between about 1517 and 1542.

  “Civil servants decide”: Dr. Sancho de Matienzo organized the commerce with the New World, 1503–1520.

  Laurent de Gorrevod (kneeling), a protégé of the Archduchess Margaret, obtained the first major contract to transport slaves to the New World, in 1518.

  Bartolomé de las Casas devoted his life to the cause of the indigenous people of the Americas.

  The wheel, here on a typical cart of Andalusia, was Spain’s most obvious contribution to development in the Americas.

  The Mediterranean plough was necessary for planting wheat, the main European cereal.

  A horse of the kind taken to the Americas, ridden by a typical knight.

  The knight’s wife, whose clothes would have benefited from the dyes of the New World.

  Many Spanish conquistadors took their wives to the New World.

  The guitar was the happiest European export of the sixteenth century.

  Wine was soon taken to the New World, where the indigenous peoples loved it.

  Black slaves were taken to the New World from about 1500.

  Scenes of war against the Mexica, from the Florentine Codex. 111. Burning of bodies of Mexicans slain in balttle at Mt. Tonan (Chapter 27). 112, 113. Refurbishing of a temple in Tenochtitlan on the departure of the Spaniards (Chapter 28). 114. Smallpox
plague (Chapter 29). 115–117. Return of the Spaniards to attack Tenochtitlan (Chapter 29). 118. Spanish brigantines (Chapter 30).

  All conquistadors coverted gold. They found some, above all, in what is now Colombia and Central America.

  A crocodile.

  A man with a jaguar mask and crocodile motifs.

  A man with a crododile costume.

  A wizard with a drum and snake.

  Double humans or twins.

  A man with an eagle costume.

  The Spaniards also had a capacity to improvise and think of new solutions that seemed nothing less than extraordinary to the Mexica. For example, after the conquest there was a severe shortage of gunpowder. Cortés’s solution to this problem was to order two of his most reliable followers, Francisco de Montaño and Diego de Peñalosa, to lower a third, Francisco de Mesa, into the boiling volcano of Popocatepetl and obtain pitch in a bucket.36

  Weapons and animals, however, constituted the determining factor. In order to prevent the Mexica from hiding on the rooftops of their capital and dropping stones into the streets, artillery fire by lombards or culverins, however inaccurate, came into its own. Horses were not effective in hand-to-hand fighting in the city, but they were decisive in combat in open country at, for example, the Battle of Otumba; and, to begin with, they seemed a terrifying innovation to the Mexica. Handguns, such as arquebuses, and older weapons, such as crossbows, did not make much difference to the course of battles, but the long, sharp Castilian sword was, as elsewhere in the New World, a vital element in the Spanish success. In comparison, the Mexica’s swords of sharp stones slotted into wooden shafts were intended primarily to wound, not to kill, for their bearers hoped for wounded captives, not corpses, for sacrifice at festivals.