Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs

by Buddy Levy

  When they arrived at Iztapalapa, Cortés was utterly impressed. The city was constructed next to a vast salt lake, half on land and the other half suspended on foundations and pylons seeming to hover over water. It was the domain of Cuitláhuac himself, brother of Montezuma and Cacama’s uncle. Cuitláhuac invited Cortés and his men to stay there for the night. They were shown about the nobles’ villas, many newly constructed, multistoried, and complete with kitchens and outdoor terraced gardens connected by gorgeous stone corridors lined by trees and herbs and flowers. The courtyards and corridors were covered with awnings made of woven cotton, for shade and shelter. Cortés remarked that the craftsmanship and design surpassed anything built in Spain:

  They have…cool gardens with many trees and sweet-smelling flowers; likewise there are pools of fresh water, very well made with steps leading down to the bottom…In the garden is a large reservoir of fresh water, well built with fine stonework, around which runs a well-tiled pavement…Beyond the pavement, toward the wall of the garden, there is latticework of canes, behind which are all manner of shrubs and scented herbs. Within the pool there are many fish and birds, wild ducks and widgeons, as well as other types of waterfowl; so many that the water is often almost covered with them.14

  Early the next morning Cortés gathered his troops and fitted them out in their most impressive battle regalia, determined to march into the city in impressive fashion, but also because, despite their recent royal treatment, they would be exposed and vulnerable along the five-mile causeway. Ready, they rode and marched in strict order, scanning the periphery for danger, noting the crowds lining the lance-wide causeway for miles. Bernal Díaz chronicled their entrance:

  It was so crowded with people that there was hardly room for them all…The towers and the temples were full, and they came in canoes from all parts of the lake. And no wonder, since they had never seen horses, or men like us, before. With such wonderful sight to gaze on we did not know what to say, or if this was real what we saw before our eyes. On the lakeside there were great cities, and on the lake many more. The lake was crowded with canoes.15

  The Spaniards marveled at the maritime architecture, such as they had never seen before. Small boats and canoes glided up and down an elaborate system of canals, the boats loaded with freshly harvested foods or handmade textiles and crafts for market. As they rode and marched, their mouths agape, they saw miraculous chinampas—floating gardens—islands of flowers and edible vegetables bobbing like living rafts along the waterways.*23 16 The place appeared enchanted, like fairy tales they had been told as children, or told to their own.

  The Aztecs were equally enraptured by the arrival of these foreigners from another world, and their own firsthand accounts recall the awe with which they regarded them.

  They assembled in their accustomed groups, a multitude, raising a great dust. The iron of their lances and their halberds glistened from afar. The shimmer of their swords was as of a sinuous water course. Their iron breast and back pieces, their helmets clanked. Some came completely encased in iron—as if turned to iron, gleaming…And ahead of them ran their dogs, panting, with foam continually dripping from their muzzles.17

  They stood back in fear at the snarling spotted mastiffs and the sun-sweated horses. The procession of Spanish soldiers brandished their swords; the crossbowmen were stoic, shouldering their weapons. In the rear rode Cortés himself, defiant and alert, surrounded by armed guards and harquebusiers. Malinche was there, too, near Cortés, and the Aztecs were awed and confused by her, traveling as she was alongside the Spaniards’ leader.

  The ride in, a regal display of bravado and daring, brought Cortés at last to a fortress bordered by two great towers. After a series of ceremonies orchestrated by Montezuma’s welcoming ambassadors, Cortés was led over a drawbridge to the main island and the gates at the heart of the city of Tenochtitlán. It was November 8, 1519. Nine months after sailing from Cuba and after three months of forced marching and fighting since leaving Villa Rica, Cortés had arrived at the gates of the Aztec empire. Malinche spoke to Cortés and Aguilar, then conferred with the hosts, who regarded her with suspect curiosity and reverence, because they could see that she spoke many languages, and they believed she must be a goddess. Malinche stepped away and leaned to whisper to Cortés.

  They must wait there. The emperor Montezuma was on his way.

  THE stage was set for a moment unprecedented in human history: a meeting between two civilizations, two completely autonomous worlds with no prior encounters or understanding of each other. The native Americans whom Cortés saw for the first time were a race of people who had evolved, isolated from the rest of the outside world, for more than fifty thousand years, and the complex, advanced civilization he was encountering had until only recently been thought not to exist. Yet here it was before him.18

  Cortés shifted in his saddle and eyed the gates, the crenellated battlements, and the rooftops of the houses overflowing with onlookers; he realized that he was utterly exposed here, his military position less than tenuous. He could not believe, despite everything he had been told about Tenochtitlán, the size and scope and grandeur of the place. He and his company, against great odds and perhaps against good judgment, had ridden into the most powerful and most populated city in the Americas, perhaps even in the entire world,*24 19 and they were now surrounded by water on all sides. All he had left to do now was wait for Montezuma and see what would transpire.

  Cortés looked up to see two long processions of people approaching. They were elaborately dressed Aztec nobles bedecked in ornately feathered headdresses, their dyed cotton garments embroidered with gold. In the center four noble attendants bore a gold-plated litter, its awning adorned with brilliant quetzal feathers and lined with silver, gold, gemstones, and pearls. Cortés dismounted as the attendants came to a halt, and from the litter the great monarch Montezuma emerged and stepped down onto cloaks laid at his feet so that they would not have to touch the ground; other attendants, averting their gaze, swept the ground before him as he strode regally forward to meet this brash and irreverent foreigner Hernán Cortés.

  Lords Cacama and Cuitláhuac walked next to Montezuma, followed by other lords of local tributaries. Though the others were barefoot, Montezuma wore gold-soled sandals, the jaguar-skinned thongs bejeweled with precious stones. As they came face to face for the first time, the two regarded each other. Cortés observed a man five years his senior, regal, perhaps softened from the indulgences of kingship, but lean and dark, his black hair cropped tight, his eyes piercing, deep, and meditative. He wore a brilliant green quetzal feather headdress and an embroidered cotton cloak studded with jewels. His lower lip was pierced with a blue stone hummingbird, his ears with turquoise, and his nose with deep green jadestone. He moved with dignity and grace. In Cortés, Montezuma beheld a bearded man hardened by recent toil and battle, his white face and limbs scarred, his eyes defiant. There was an awkward pause, during which Montezuma leaned forward to smell Cortés, at which point Cortés wondered what to do next. He would later say of the exchange, “I stepped forward to embrace him, but the two lords who were with him stopped me with their hands so that I should not touch him.”20

  Though Cortés had met numerous lords and caciques along his route, the reverence required in greeting Montezuma was clearly of another magnitude entirely, with a level of pomp and ceremony Cortés had not previously encountered. He presented the emperor with a necklace made of pearls and cut glass and scented with musk. Through Malinche, he inquired with a directness that must have surprised the emperor: “Are you Montezuma?” With measured calm came the reply, “Yes, I am he.” Flanked by dignitaries, the two men strolled a short distance up the street, and then Montezuma waved for an attendant to bring him a bundle of cloth, which he handed to Cortés. Wrapped inside were two necklaces, which the Spaniard graciously accepted. They were “made from red snails’ shells, which they hold in great esteem; and from each necklace hung eight shrimps of refined gold almost a sp
an in length.”21 Montezuma had given him the highly revered “wind necklace,” a design said to have been worn by Quetzalcoatl himself.22 He also presented his visitor with garlands of aromatic flowers.

  Montezuma then took his leave, climbing again into his litter to be borne back to his palace. To Cortés he said, “You are weary. The journey has tired you. But now you have arrived…Rest now.” Then he instructed Cacama to lead Cortés and his company to their accommodations. The Spaniard thanked the emperor through Malinche, saying, “Tell Montezuma that we are his friends.”23 Cacama led him and his company, including the Tlaxcalans (who were regarded with suspicion and enmity by the general Aztec populace), to an expansive and immaculate compound. The low-lying buildings with a walled central courtyard had formerly been the royal domicile of Axayacatl, Montezuma’s father. Captains and men of rank were given the best quarters, with woven reed floors and palm-leaf mat bedding; even the horses were pampered, sleeping on beds of flowers.24 The Tlaxcalans, the remaining few Cempoalans, and all the slave porters received more basic dwellings in the courtyards, exposed to the air but sheltered by cloth awnings. Cortés lodged in the Palace of Axayacatl, which was just northwest of the main plaza and adjacent to the Tacuba causeway, the western exit from the island city. Across the way, to the east, Cortés could see the city’s ball court, and beyond, the sacred precinct including the Great Temple (Templo Mayor).

  Cortés must have felt slightly apprehensive to be housed so near the religious and civic lifeblood of this magnificent city. He must have felt vulnerable, for he immediately placed guards and sentries all about his periphery and ordered cannons and artillery stationed at key points of defense around the Palace of Axayacatl and the courtyard. Then, as a show of military force and to herald their arrival, Cortés directed his men through some formations in the central square and had them fire repeated volleys with the harquebuses and falconets. The discharges erupted with noise and flame and smoke, amazing and frightening the onlookers, who coughed and choked at the smell of the spent gunpowder. The Aztecs later recalled how “people scattered in every direction…they were all overcome by terror, as if their hearts had fainted. And when night fell the panic spread through the city and their fears would not let them sleep.”25

  Despite this rude and aggressive display, Montezuma determined to try to understand these foreigners, perhaps learn from them, and if he could, even comprehend something of their powers. Later in the afternoon, after Cortés and his men had supped on fowl and tortillas, Montezuma summoned his visitor, his chosen captains, and Malinche and Aguilar into the great hall of the palace. The emperor took his seat on a throne and seated his guest next to him on another throne. There Cortés received a lengthy procession of gifts, constituting an immense display of Montezuma’s wealth and power. There were thousands of woven garments and textiles, dazzling and intricate featherwork, and more gold and silver than Cortés had ever seen or could even have imagined. Certainly the exhibit impressed him, but it also had the unintended effect of further inflaming his greed and determination to possess what he saw, and more.

  Montezuma then straightened in his throne and called for silence. He addressed Cortés with great formality and measured, even poetic language, conveying the following through Malinche:

  Our lord, thou hast suffered fatigue, thou hast endured weariness. Thou hast come to arrive on earth. Thou hast come to govern the great city of Mexico. Thou hast come to descend upon thy mat, upon thy seat, which for a moment I have guarded for thee. For thy governors are departed—the rulers Itzcóatl, Montezuma the Elder…who yet a very short time ago had come to govern the city of Mexico. O, that one of them might witness, might marvel at what to me now hath befallen, at what I see now. I do not merely dream that I see thee, that I look into thy face. I have been afflicted for some time. I have gazed upon the unknown place whence though hast come—from among the clouds, from among the mists. And so this. The rulers departed, maintaining that thou wouldst come to visit the city, that thou wouldst come to descend upon thy mat, upon thy seat. And now it has been fulfilled; thou hast come…Rest thyself. Visit thy palace.*25 26

  Cortés, duplicitous and manipulative, would later interpret the great lord’s words literally rather than figuratively (as they likely were meant) and assume that Montezuma believed the prophecy, that Cortés had returned to assume the mantle of his authority. For now Cortés’s response, through Malinche, was clipped and clever and patently disingenuous:

  Let Montezuma put his heart at ease. Let him not be frightened. We love him much. Now our hearts are indeed satisfied, for we know him, we hear him. For a long time we have wished to see him, to look upon his face. And this we have seen. Already we have come to his home in Mexico. At leisure he will hear our words.27

  Allusions to the story of the returning god appear in both the Aztec and the Spanish versions of this initial discourse. Cortés, for his part, appeared quite happy to embody the myth—it would serve him well. Montezuma, on the other hand, remained intensely curious and hoped to learn as much as he could about these Spaniards while he decided what to do with them. He wished to discover the secrets of their power and perhaps, if he could, possess these magical things for himself and for his people. It might cost him only a little gold, by which these Spaniards seemed intoxicated, as if drunk on pulque (liquor made from the maguey plant).

  Montezuma closed the encounter by inviting Cortés and his men to roam the city freely, with Aztec guides, and behold its magnificence. Then he retired to his own quarters for prayer. He certainly had much to contemplate. The events back in Cholula had raised some doubts about whether this Spaniard was actually Quetzalcoatl; but Cortés had miraculously arrived on the mainland in 1-Reed, the precise year Quetzalcoatl was predicted to return, and even more portentous, today was 1-Wind in the Aztec calendar, Quetzalcoatl’s day of “the whirlwind,” the very day when wizards and robbers do their black bidding, thieving treasure while their victims slumber.28 That night, having witnessed the arrival of these strange creatures, Montezuma and his people slept fitfully, if at all, for the atmosphere in the city was rife with apprehension. The order of their world seemed to have shifted, “as if everyone had eaten stupefying mushrooms, as if they had seen something astonishing…as if the world were being disemboweled. People went to sleep in terror.”29

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  City of Sacrifice

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, despite the populace’s palpable disquietude, the sun did indeed rise again over Tenochtitlán. The arrival of these strangers had not been the end of the world. Not yet. The city awoke as usual; women knelt in the kitchens of their sun-dried brick homes, fanned the fires for cooking, kneaded and slapped maize flour with their hands to make cakes, then left the house to carry goods to market. Canoes coursed the waters along the canals and causeways on their way to do business, or to trade, or to work the chinampas to the south. Craftsmen went off to workshops to produce their wares. Sons of the nobility walked to monasteries and schools to study religion and science and receive military training, while the priests and their attendants ascended the temples to clean them, filled the braziers with burning coals so that they would never extinguish, and made certain that the shrines were in suitable working order.1

  Montezuma rose from a night of prayer and sent attendants to make sure that Cortés and his people lacked nothing. He provided them with servants to prepare meals for them, fruit and fowl and of course maize cakes, and to care for their animals, supplying fresh grain to the horses and meat scraps and offal to the dogs. He then summoned Cortés and Malinche to visit him at his royal palace later in the day. Cortés took along Jerónimo de Aguilar to assist Malinche, as well as Pedro de Alvarado, Juan Velázquez de León, Gonzalo de Sandoval, and Diego de Ordaz, plus five others, including Bernal Díaz. The outside walls of the newly built stone compound bore banners of Montezuma and his ancestors, and painted images, including the coat of arms—an eagle, its talons outstretched, attacking a jaguar. The emperor greeted them
in the center of a large hall on the ground level, which was the political and governmental nerve center of the city and indeed of the Aztec nation. Montezuma led them on a tour of the halls and rooms, which were commodious and beautifully finished, with painted walls and ceilings, trimmed in regional timber. Copal incense burned in earthen braziers at the corners of the rooms, perfuming them with a rich, musky scent. The complex consisted of more than one hundred rooms spread over an enormous area; in addition to the administrative offices there were also workshops where the best craftsmen in the city—jewelers, potters, and feather-smiths—did their work.2 It was all very clean, well organized, and impressive, evidence of a highly ordered and structured civilization at its zenith.

  After the initial tour Montezuma seated Cortés beside him on a footless, matted chair while the emperor took his throne, surrounded by some of his chiefs and servants. Malinche remained close by, as did Aguilar, and the two leaders fell into a discussion, though the slow, awkward translation made it really more like one halting monologue followed by another. Cortés thanked the emperor for his kindness and hospitality and assured his host that he and his company were now quite well rested. He then abruptly launched into his routine discourse on Christianity (which he had memorized by now), pointing out that it was in part to instill these truths that they had come, on behalf of their own king.*26 They worshipped the one and only savior, Jesus Christ, he explained, who was the son of God, and all humankind were brothers and sisters, the off-spring of Adam and Eve. God had created the world and had included a heaven for those who worshipped and believed and lived good lives, and a hell where sinners and nonbelievers suffered a fiery eternity. Cortés had the audacity to add that the gods Montezuma worshipped were ugly, vile, and demonic, as was the Aztec people’s practice of human sacrifice. He reiterated that he hoped they could convince Montezuma to cease such false worship and embrace the true faith.3