by Buddy Levy
PHOTO CREDITS:
Hernando Cortés (1485–1547) (copy of an original) (oil on panel) by Master of Saldana. © Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City, Mexico/ The Bridgeman Art Library
Spanish School (seventeenth century). © Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy/ The Bridgeman Art Library
Manuscript, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, Italy / The Bridgeman Art Library International
From the Codex Magliabechiano (vellum) by Aztec (sixteenth century). © Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, Italy/ The Bridgeman Art Library.
Ms Laur. Med. Palat. 218 f.84v: Human sacrifice at the temple of Tezcatlipoca, from a history of the Aztecs and the conquest of Mexico (pen and ink) (sixteenth century). © Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Florence, Italy/ The Bridgeman Art Library
Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) orders the sinking of his ships, Mexico, July 1519 (engraving), Spanish School (nineteenth century). Private Collection, Ken Welsh / The Bridgeman Art Library International
Massacre of the Mexicans (vellum) by Diego Duran (sixteenth century). © Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Spain/ The Bridgeman Art Library
Ms Palat, 218–220 Book IX: Marina interpreting for the Spaniards at a meeting between Hernando Cortés and Montezuma (1466–1520), from an account written and illustrated by Bernardino de Sahagun, Spanish (mid-sixteenth century). © Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Florence, Italy/ The Bridgeman Art Library
Montezuma (1466–1547), captured by the Spaniards, pleads with the Aztecs to surrender as they attack his palace in 1520 (panel No.4) by Spanish School (sixteenth century). © British Embassy, Mexico City, Mexico/ The Bridgeman Art Library
Codex Duran: Pedro de Alvarado (c.1485–1541), companion-at-arms of Hernando Cortés (1485–1547), besieged by Aztec warriors (vellum) by Diego Duran (sixteenth century). Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Spain / The Bridgeman Art Library International
Battle of Otumba, Mexico, 7 July 1520 (engraving) by Spanish School (nineteenth century). © Private Collection, Ken Welsh/ The Bridgeman Art Library
The Taking of Tenochtitlan by Cortés, 1521 (panel) by Spanish School (sixteenth century). © British Embassy, Mexico City, Mexico/ The Bridgeman Art Library
Map of Tenochtitlan and the Gulf of Mexico, from “Praeclara Ferdinadi Cortesii de Nova maris Oceani Hyspania Narratio” by Hernando Cortés (1485–1547), 1524 (color litho) by Spanish School (sixteenth century). © Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois, USA/ The Bridgeman Art Library
The Capture of Cuauhtémoc (c.1495–1522), the last Aztec Emperor of Mexico (panel No.8) by Spanish School (sixteenth century). © British Embassy, Mexico City, Mexico/ The Bridgeman Art Library
Portrait of Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) (oil on canvas) by Spanish School (sixteenth century). © Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Spain/ Index/ The Bridgeman Art Library
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Authors never write books alone, even if it often feels as if we do. As usual, I first have to thank my writing family, the Free Range Writers: Kim Barnes, Jane Varley, Lisa Norris, and Collin Hughes. They keep the fire stoked, the cabin warm, and the music going. Thanks, always, to my literary agent Scott Waxman, who suggested I see a man about a horse, and that man ended up being Hernán Cortés. Scott’s imagination is sweeping and boundless, his ability to see his way to the good story uncanny. Thanks also to foreign rights agent Farley Chase, whose hard work has ensured that Conquistador will reach readers in numerous languages.
I’m deeply grateful to my intrepid first readers, compadres John Larkin and Kim Barnes, for their careful proofing and surveillance of the text. Thanks, John, for the humor and scathing honesty, and thank you, Kim, for your profound ability to see the larger narratives.
In June 2006 I took a lengthy research trip during which I followed the route of the conquistadors from where they landed on the Gulf Coast at San Juan de Ulúa, over the mountains and across the plains to Mexico City. Many people assisted me during my journey, making it among the best, most educational experiences of my life. Thanks to the Museo de Antropología, Xalapa, for the wonderful tour and detailed explanations of stunning pre-Columbian works, particularly the awe-inspiring Olmec heads. Thanks also to Veracruz University in Xalapa.
In Cholula, big embraces go out to Rodrigo Moctezuma and the amazing crew at Jazzatlán. I will always remember their kindness and enthusiasm for my project, and their suggestions for the music of Mexico. Rodrigo gave me a personal tour from Cholula to the Pass of Cortés in his Volkswagen van, a trip that was as informative as it was adventurous.
In Mexico City and environs, the attentive and knowledgeable curators and guides at the Museo Templo Mayor, Teotihuacán, and the Museo Nacionale de Antropolgía took excellent care of me and thoroughly answered my many questions.
Throughout the process of writing Conquistador, the folks at Random House/Bantam Dell have been fantastic to work with. My editor John Flicker brought his considerable expertise and vision to bear on the book at every stage, from conception to polished manuscript. His eye is sharp and his ear keen, and he understands the delicate balance of narrative pacing and historical accuracy. I look forward to working on more books with him.
The Washington State University libraries were instrumental in my research, especially everyone in Interlibrary Loans, and at Holland New Library. Their organization, knowledge, and timely retrieval of my innumerable requests made my work smooth and efficient.
Edward Whitley at Bridgeman Art Library offered invaluable assistance and expertise in my image search, and I certainly owe him a debt of gratitude for his expedient work and correspondence with me.
Finally, thanks to my wonderful family, extended and immediate. To my children Logan and Hunter, who endure my late nights, deadlines, and travel junkets, and to my partner, friend, and spouse Camie, who continues to support me: you allow me to live the life I always dreamed of.
ALSO BY BUDDY LEVY
American Legend:
The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett
Echoes on Rimrock:
In Pursuit of the Chukar Partridge
*1The term Aztec was originally coined (erroneously) by the nineteenth-century German naturalist-explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Aztec was actually an eponymous derivation of the legendary Aztlan, the mythical “Place of the White Heron,” the ancestral homeland of the people who eventually came to the Valley of Mexico and settled there after long years of migration and founded the city of Tenochtitlán in 1325. In only two centuries these agricultural and warrior people had developed a remarkable culture. The term Aztec has been widely replaced—primarily by scholars and historians—with the term Mexica, a designation that more accurately describes the people of the Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlán, Texcoco, and Tacuba. Numerous modern institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Smithsonian Museum, and even the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City still employ the term Aztec. Conquistador will retain the popular term Aztec and use it interchangeably with Mexica.
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*2Many modern scholars use the term Motecuhzoma (actually pronounced something akin to “Mock-tey-coo-schoma”), which presumably more accurately mimics the correct pronunciation, but the more popular and widely used Montezuma causes less confusion, so I opt for the popular usage.
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*3Cacique is a Caribbean Arawak word for “chief” that the Spaniards brought with them from the islands. Many of the chroniclers, including Bernal Díaz and to a lesser extent Cortés, use the term. The word would have been unknown to mainland Mexicans.
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*4Grijalva, Velásquez’s nephew, led an expedition to the Yucatán in 1518. He witnessed evidence of thriving civilization, including pyramid towers and great buildings that reminded him of the city of Seville. Grijalva and his crew also discovered evidence of human sacrifice near what is today Veracruz, and they named the place the Island of Sacrifices. Grijalva was u
nable to trade or settle and was eventually driven from Mexico by the native inhabitants and lost over thirty men.
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*5Sometimes referred to also as Tentlil or Teudile.
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*6The Spaniards, including Bernal Díaz, interpreted the term teule to mean “god” or “divine being,” whether that was correct or not.
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*7Her name had been something approximating Malinali, which the Spaniards mispronounced, and it became Malinche—the name by which she is now commonly known. She was baptized and referred to as Doña Marina by the Spaniards.
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*8The Aztecs used at least two calendars, one agricultural or solar, called the xiuhpohualli, the other sacred or ritualistic, called the tonalpohualli. The tonalpohualli was a calendrical system employing fifty-two-year cycles and the concept of “bundles of years.” The sacred tonalpohualli used a pair of interconnected cycles: a cycle of thirteen numbers and a cycle of twenty day names.
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*9Cempoala was the principal city of the Totonac federation, who were reluctant tributaries of the Aztecs. The term Totonac refers to a member of the federation, while Cempoalan refers to a Totonac from the primary city of Cempoala.
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*10According to Bernal Díaz and other sources, the practice of sodomy was frequent and also used as a form of prostitution. Díaz reports that the Cempoalans “had boys dressed as women who practiced the accursed vice for profit.”
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*11Díaz also witnessed his share: “Every day they sacrificed before our eyes three, four, or five Indians, whose hearts were offered to those idols and whose blood was plastered on the walls. The feet, arms, and legs of their victims were cut off and eaten, just as we eat beef from the butcher in our country. I even believe they sold it in the tianguez or markets.”
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*12These five missives have come to be known collectively as Letters from Mexico. Written over a seven-year span directly to Charles I of Spain, they comprise one of the most impressive and detailed first-hand accounts of the conquest of the Americas. Though they must be read with severe circumspection, understood in broad context as highly political documents, and considered vis-à-vis all the other accounts, both Spanish and indigenous, they provide tremendous insight into the mind and character of Hernán Cortés. In these letters, Cortés repeatedly and vehemently underscores his loyalty to the king and to the church.
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*13Though the Mesoamericans did invent wheels to use for children’s toys, they never considered building larger ones for use as traction devices or transportation, in part because they lacked proper draft animals for such purposes but also because much of the terrain was unsuitable, especially during the rainy seasons. See Charles C. Mann, 1491 (New York, 2005), 19, 222–23.
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*14Cortés, it will be remembered, was the first to reintroduce horses to Mexico since their extinction from the northern hemisphere during the Ice Age.
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*15The exact number of Tlaxcalan warriors is impossible to determine. Cortés, prone to exaggeration, estimated the army at over 100,000, while Bernal Díaz offered the more modest 40,000. Other sources confirm that Chief Xicotenga could quickly assemble, for battling the enemy Aztecs, an army of 40,000.
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*16A number of the chroniclers, including Cortés himself, say that he had the spies’ entire hands removed, but this rings as exaggerated and highly unlikely, as they most certainly would have bled to death before reaching the city of Tlaxcala. Díaz mentions that Cortés had “some of their thumbs cut off,” which seems more plausible.
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*17Cortés had said that he would accept them only if the Tlaxcalans would destroy their own idols and agree to give up human sacrifice; he later agreed to take them only if they were allowed to be baptized. Once they were baptized, Cortés distributed them among his men.
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*18Cortés would eventually found a college for theology students training for the priesthood, a hospital, and a monastery, as well as provide financial endowments for the building and maintaining of Catholic churches.
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*19Cortés mentions this episode in his second letter to King Charles V, and Malinche’s “discovery” is widely and similarly reported by most of the Spanish chroniclers. Because the subsequent massacre is unprecedented by Cortés and might well have been unprovoked, the “discovery” rings to the skeptical ear as a bit too convenient, like an after-the-fact justification. For an intriguing argument against the likelihood of Malinche’s discovery of this supposed “plot,” see Ross Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest (Norman, Okla., 2006), 97–98.
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*20“Col” is a pass or depression.
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*21Diego de Ordaz was himself so impressed with the volcano Popocatépetl that in 1525 he requested of his king, and was granted, the right to install the image of a smoking volcano on his family’s coat of arms.
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*22A dedicated Dominican friar, Sahagún spent nearly forty years preparing his General History of the Things of New Spain (the Florentine Codex), a thirteen-volume work translated from Nahuatl Indians who were present before, during, and after the conquest. The work records every conceivable aspect of Aztec life and culture. (See “A Note on the Text and the Sources” at the end of the book.)
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*23Chinampas—fields constructed in the lakes of the Valley of Mexico—were a brilliant Aztec agricultural innovation beginning around 1450. It involved staking the lakebeds and dumping lake-bottom soil into these “enclosures,” which created islands of extremely fertile soil (augmented with fertilizer that included human feces, a form of waste management) that did not require irrigation since crop roots could tap the water table below. The design also left crops impervious to frost. The creation of chinampas dramatically helped Tenochtitlán supply its own food and reduce the need for outside sources and is in large part responsible for the great size of the city, which, at 200,000 inhabitants, far outnumbered any other Mesoamerican metropolis. At their height the chinampas fields of the southern lakes Chalco and Xochimilco comprised approximately 2.3 million acres.
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*24The population of Tenochtitlán at the time is estimated to have been between 200,000 and 300,000; the entire Valley of Mexico, Tenochtitlán’s metropolitan area, contained between 1 million and 2.6 million people. By contrast, Europe’s largest city then was Paris, with 100,000 to 150,000. London had between 50,000 and 60,000. Many scholars agree that at the time Tenochtitlán was the largest city in the world.
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*25Montezuma’s speech to Cortés will remain among the most perplexing, intriguing, and problematic in history, the subject of endless interpretation and discussion. How his speech is interpreted underlies and informs the essence of this unprecedented meeting. Cortés’s version appears in a letter he wrote to the king of Spain ten months later, and it is suspect because of its highly politicized nature. The Nahuatl version (quoted above), gleaned from oral histories and here translated into English, is deeply poignant, revealing Montezuma as aristocratic and dignified but also burdened by confusion, self-doubt, and an unwavering belief in destiny.
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*26Cortés, of course, was exaggerating this part, since his king had not yet sanctioned his endeavors.
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*27A dark and spicy recado or seasoning combination.
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*28The hypocrisy of Cortés’s response to Aztec ritual practices cannot be overlooked or overstated, especially given Spain’s recent history of barbarity and cruelty during the Inquisition and its treatment of the Moors and the Jews. Cortés had just weeks before sanctioned the th
roat-slitting of six thousand innocent civilians in Cholula. His reaction simply reinforces the historical truth that one people’s passion is another’s perversity.
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*29Aztec chroniclers also recorded the Spaniards’ discovery of the treasure: “They went to Montezuma’s storehouse where his personal treasures were kept. The Spaniards grinned like little beasts and patted each other with delight. When they entered the hall of treasures, it was as if they had arrived in paradise. They searched everywhere and coveted everything: they were slaves to their own greed.”2
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**30Sometime later Cortés actually told Montezuma that he had discovered the treasure, and Montezuma asked only that the Spaniards not disturb or take any of the gorgeous and revered featherwork, which rightfully belonged not to him but to his gods. The gold, he said, they could keep.
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*31Cortés had actually learned of this skirmish while mopping up the massacre in Cholula, but he had chosen to withhold the news from his men so as not to alarm them or cause discord among them. He also wanted further confirmation of the events, which he now had.
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*32According to William Prescott, some of the soldiers decided to take their shares of gold, which they had melted and then, with the aid of Tenochtitlán’s best jewelers, fashioned into gaudy chains that they wore around their necks as displays of wealth. See Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, (New York, 2001), 487–88.
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*33Montezuma’s acquiescence to Cortés while in captivity has long been puzzled over and debated, some calling Montezuma weak, cowardly, pathetic, and at the very least enigmatic. But it would certainly make sense to apply some modern psychology to him, and the Stockholm syndrome, in which a captive becomes sympathetic to and ultimately identifies with his captor (initially out of fear), certainly applies here.
