by Marie Arana
Mexico, 1519
“That’s it?” said the captain. “This is all you are offering as welcome?” “It is all we have, my lord.”
—Hernán Cortés and Montezuma’s messenger, 1519.
Landing in Cozumel, Cortés’s army moved quickly to the north, rounded the peninsula of Yucatán, swarmed overland, and engaged the natives in bloody battle. Although it was one Spaniard for every three hundred Indians—thousands of brightly painted faces racing at them over the savannah—Cortés’s men handily routed them, falling upon them with all the force of their cavalry. The Indians were stunned by the sight of a bizarre enemy galloping toward them, pounding the earth with metal hooves. Horses had never been seen before in the Americas, and their effect was calamitous for the Indians. For the first terrifying moments of the invasion, they believed they were witnessing the approach of a terrifying beast: a sword-wielding leviathan with two heads and four legs. Alarmed by the wheeling animals, the slavering mastiffs alongside, the deafening cannon balls overhead, the Indians beat a hasty retreat and surrendered the next morning. Forty chieftains, clad in richly woven mantles, waving incense and bearing gifts of gold, food, and slaves, begged Cortés to cease the slaughter. They had lost eight hundred men to the steel swords and guns. Cortés had lost two.
It was immediately apparent to Cortés that any gold these natives might produce was flimsy, all too scarce, and probably filched from elsewhere, but he was intrigued by their description of the Mexica, a fiercely ambitious empire in the North that was said to have much of it. The Mexica were roundly hated for their rapaciousness and brutality; a warrior culture that combed the land for captives to offer up in human sacrifices, ripping fresh hearts from the living to satisfy hungry gods. Clearly, this was the powerful civilization that Spaniards had heard about all along. But Cortés had not lost time in his exploits in the Yucatán. He had gained allies and would continue to do so, accumulating collaborators as he advanced.
Before continuing toward the setting sun, where the Mexica were rumored to be, Cortés dashed all possible hope of desertion by scuttling his ships and making conquest his men’s sole avenue to survival. Every Spaniard, including every deckhand on the ships’ crews, was now committed to the journey inland. No one would stay behind. He incorporated two “tongues”—interpreters he had recruited along the way—who proved essential to the effort. One was a shipwrecked Spanish priest named Gerónimo de Aguilar, who had escaped cannibals, wandered the Yucatán for years, and become fluent in the language. The other was a winsome Aztec slave, La Malinche, who had been captured by Mayans and so was proficient in both languages. Offered to Cortés as war booty, La Malinche would quickly learn Spanish and become his personal translator, lover, and slave. She would wield remarkable authority, trusted as she was by conquistadors and revered by the conquered tribes. The principal negotiator in the exchange between Cortés and the Aztec emperor, she would be Cortés’s avatar, strategic advisor, and mother of his first child: in other words, a slave with extraordinary power. Without her, any human interaction between Spaniards and Mexicans—and perhaps the very conquest itself—would have been impossible.
By the time Cortés came upon the great capital of Tenochtitlán, where the emperor Montezuma II resided, he had learned a thing or two about the challenges he would face in the land of the Mexicas. Unlike Columbus, he had seen cities here that matched Granada in size and architecture, rivaled the Republic of Venice in reach and governance. He had seen bustling marketplaces, where gold and silver were traded briskly. Everywhere he looked, he would later remark, he saw order, intelligence, courtesy, and a land graced with beautiful valleys. Mexico was a thriving territory—carefully cultivated, profitably harvested, bristling with people. But it had not escaped Cortés that, in outlying areas especially, their emperor, Montezuma, was roundly despised. He quickly understood that if he were to ally with these malcontents in borderlands of empire, he might gain military advantage, but he would also run a perilous course of provocation. He could see, too, that the Mexica alliance was a vast machinery of commerce and war, a fact made ever more vivid as he pressed overland—through cities, over brush, skirting volcanoes—and witnessed its power firsthand. From caciques, the tribal leaders who spoke candidly to La Malinche, Cortés learned of Montezuma’s traits and eccentricities: his devotion to the war god, his grisly sacrifices, his cupidity, his love of luxury, his caprices. From Montezuma’s ambassadors, who brought Cortés bribes to keep him from entering the city—gigantic discs of gold and silver, exquisitely woven fabrics, finely worked jade—he was now sure that he was approaching a formidable but anxious and mercurial emperor. From Montezuma’s nephew, who ventured out to greet him when it was clear that the Spaniards would not be averted easily, Cortés witnessed a pomp and splendor the likes of which he had never seen. But he could not have anticipated the sight before him as he and his troops crossed the towering Sierra Madre, stood on high ground, and beheld the Mexican capital in the distance for the first time.
It was early morning when Cortés’s army and its tribal cohort arrived at the causeway that separated the lakes and led into the great city of Tenochtitlán. Spread out before them, like a shimmering string of beads, were urban clusters that virtually sprang from the water; others that sprouted from dry land. And then there was the vast island city of Tenochtitlán itself, suspended on a blue lake, radiating such brilliance that, seen from afar, it seemed to be made of silver. The Spaniards were as dazzled as they were fearful of what might become of them in so grand a metropolis. Cortés’s men compared the sight to the moment in the legendary tale of Amadís of Gaul, the most popular chivalric romance of the day, when the hero and his companions first lay eyes on Constantinople—it had been the tale that inspired them to join the conquest in the first place. Was this city before them not the realization of a dream? Elaborate temples rose from the lake like great stone lilies. As they approached, they could see how spacious and well built they were—how beautiful the stonework, the carved cedar, the sweet-scented trees, the rose gardens, the canoes that skimmed gracefully along the canals. As one soldier later wrote, “I do not know how to describe it, seeing things that had never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about. . . . I stood looking at it all and thought that never in the world would there be other discoveries such as these.”
* * *
If Cortés harbored any apprehensions about the potential of this strange New World to deliver the wealth he and his king craved, those doubts would be dispelled now. Earlier conquests had been relatively modest: Columbus and his crews had subjugated villages of naked tribespeople easily, taken what they wanted by cunning or brute force. Spain’s firm grip on Hispaniola, Cuba, and the coast of Panama had brought a modicum of hard-won gold, pearls, a new slave trade, and a growing plantation economy, but the vast metropolis Cortés was entering now was something else—something with infinitely more luster and promise.
Rattled by his visitors’ brazenness, Montezuma made it clear that he wanted no Spaniards in his capital and delegated his nephew to bribe Cortés with an additional three thousand pesos of gold, along with a plea that Cortés turn back for any number of desperately concocted reasons: because food in the city was scarce, because Montezuma was indisposed, because the roads were perilously rough. The emperor had determined from spies and ambassadors that what the bearded men wanted was silver, gold, precious stones, and he had offered Cortés annual tributes of these in as great quantities as his king required. But these offers and gifts only sharpened Cortés’s appetite. His army pressed on with greater resolve and with all the attendant support of the Aztecs’ most rabid enemies. Cortés had it on good authority that Montezuma had contemplated capturing and killing twenty Spaniards to prevent them from coming any nearer. Or allowing them all to enter Tenochtitlán and then killing every last one. But at every turn, Cortés’s unfailing charm—and his assurances to Montezuma’s emissaries that he wanted only to see the great capital and relay a message from K
ing Carlos—paved his way into the heart of the Aztec polestar.
Montezuma finally relented and agreed to admit the impertinent, mercenary courier from the faraway kingdom. If Cortés had an advantage, it was this: he was being given a courtesy on the assumption that he was an ambassador, not an aggressor. A king or chieftain in these lands would have had the prerogative to attack; a diplomat would not. Some chroniclers—including Cortés himself—have claimed that Montezuma believed that the fair-haired Spaniard arriving on his shores was the incarnation of the legendary god-king Quetzalcoatl, who had sailed off to the east many years before, vowing to return and rule again. It may be convenient to think that Mexicans lived in fear of an angry god’s triumphant return. It was certainly convenient for Cortés to pose as one. It may also be useful to project a certain insecurity—and illegitimacy—on the part of a great civilization so easily conquered. But these are Western projections on the Amerindian mind, not likely true. Once he was persuaded that the brash captain approaching his inner sanctum was a mere functionary delivering greetings from a king, Montezuma warily threw open the doors.
The meeting with Montezuma on November 8, 1519, confirmed every hope Cortés nurtured about wresting glory and a sizable fortune for the Crown. The Mexican emperor received his guest cordially at the causeway to the capital: he arrived on a litter under a magnificent canopy of emerald-green feathers, encrusted with gold and silver and hung with pearls and jade. As a coterie of caciques helped him from his perch, Cortés could see that the soles of the emperor’s sandals were of pure gold; the straps, adorned with glittering gems. Montezuma approached in full regalia, as lords busily swept the earth and rolled out a rug beneath him, anticipating his every step. Cortés was astonished by “the barbarian king’s baubles”—thrilled by the validation of his quest to find them. He swung off his horse to offer the great man his hand. Startled by that surprising gesture, Montezuma did not take it, and so the Spaniard reached for something else instead. He produced a necklace of stained glass beads scented with musk and draped it around his host’s neck. Cortés then moved to embrace the man, but was restrained by Montezuma’s vigilant entourage. To touch the great Aztec lord, much less to gaze on him so openly, was considered a great affront.
It’s worth noting here that to the fastidious, hygiene-conscious Aztecs, the Spanish conquistadors were a foul, slovenly lot. Sixteenth-century Europeans were largely indifferent to personal cleanliness and unaccustomed—even averse—to bathing. Indeed, whenever Aztec emissaries visited with the Spaniards, they insisted on fumigating them with incense before an exchange. All the same, Montezuma welcomed the rude Spaniard warmly. He lodged him splendidly in his father’s palace, awarded him a highly coveted necklace of gold, and regaled him for days with sumptuous dinners.
Cortés’s crudely outthrust hand was a harbinger of more indignities to come. As he later informed King Carlos, the conquistador had already decided that “it would benefit” the king to hold Montezuma hostage, seize his power, and claim the empire for Spanish rule. Six days after ingratiating himself to the emperor, Cortés got word that two Spaniards had been killed by Indians in a distant city. He took advantage of that news to blame his host, put Montezuma in irons, and take him prisoner in his own apartment. Montezuma’s royal court, paralyzed by this unexpected turn of events, could do nothing lest the invaders kill their sovereign and inspire their enemies to war.
Even as Cortés plotted the most efficient way to fully hijack the empire and avail himself of its riches, he continued to dupe Montezuma with trumped-up accusations. He explained to his prisoner, with courteous apologies, that he was simply meting out justice, reconnoitering the area, and serving his god and king. He insisted that he be shown the mines from which Montezuma obtained his exquisite gold. Alarmed by the indignity, fooled by Cortés’s charm, the Mexican obliged all too willingly. He called for his servants to accompany four detachments of Spaniards to the provinces—to Cosalá, Tamazulapa, Malinaltepec, and Tenimes—where gold was being panned from the rivers. A full report on the empire’s gold operations was the result, with postscripts on the land that lay between: Mexico’s fields were bursting with maize, beans, cacao, chicken farms. The land not only promised Spain metal fortunes, it was a bread basket, too.
We cannot presume to know what Montezuma was thinking, but the actions speak for themselves: he agreed to whatever his amiable captor wanted. Lodged in the comforts of his own father’s palace, issuing directives as if he were still in full charge, he demanded that Cortés’s every desire be satisfied: Artists produced maps of navigable rivers. Chieftains of conquered tribes sent gold on the backs of slaves. Whole cities were commanded to defer to the Spaniards as they built fortresses and amassed booty. Within the course of five months, Cortés had collected and melted down a veritable mountain of artifacts, jewelry, gold bars, and silver sheets amounting to almost a million pesos. One-fifth of that plunder, which today would have been worth more than $20 million, was eventually sent to King Carlos in a single shipment. Cortés kept an equivalent fifth for himself, and the rest was divided up among his troops, according to rank and service. For all the claims that Spain’s conquest of the Indies was a mission to enlighten the world and spread God’s word to the infidels, little mention of that sacred ministry was made in the initial report to the Crown. Like Columbus’s first letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, Cortés’s letter to King Carlos made clear the objective. Spain’s radiant lodestar in the New World was hard gold.
GOLD LUST
They come armed with lightning . . . and they belch fire.
—Montezuma’s messengers
We can only imagine the Aztec emperor’s puzzlement at Cortés’s metal obsessions. Montezuma was partial to gold—he liked to wear it—but it was little more than an ornament, really, and certainly not the most precious. The small jade stones, chalchihuites, which he had lavished on Cortés before his arrival and now offered in greater number, were far more valuable to him. One small stone, Montezuma assured Cortés, was worth two large loads of gold. The emperor could not have known that precious metals were the prize that had driven centuries of European history. It was gold—and before that, silver—that had emerged in the 1300s as the preferred specie of Europe’s monied classes after the massive human losses during the Black Death, and then five hundred years later in the Great Famine. The near constant warfare that followed that dark era in Europe had produced a rash of demands for ransoms. Gold was needed throughout the fourteenth century, if only as a means to rescue kings and free their armies. Eventually gold became the fungible commodity that drove the economy from Constantinople to Calais. But no one had more of it than the merchants of Venice, who had amassed vast stores of gold and silver in a brisk market of slaves and lumber, making their city the most prosperous in Europe.
By 1500, however, the amount of gold in Europe had dwindled to a few meager tons. According to one historian, “the total amount of gold in Europe in all forms—coins, hoards, and every manner of adornment and decoration—could have been fashioned into a cube only two meters in each dimension.” Indeed, in the century before Columbus’s discovery, the bullion reserves in Europe had shrunk by half. Little wonder that Spanish and Portuguese navigators were eager to find the legendary golden empires of the Orient. Now, holding a great emperor hostage, Cortés stood a chance to grant his own king—the newly proclaimed ruler of the Holy Roman Empire—the “greater Kingdoms and Dominions Your Royal heart so desires.”
Montezuma’s apparent goodwill and cooperation did not sit well with Cortés’s allies in the outlying provinces of Mexico. Rebellions flared as tribes that had signed on with Cortés defected altogether and refused to pay tribute to either side. But the greatest threat to Cortés came when another fleet of Spanish ships carrying nine hundred men and led by Captain Pánfilo de Narváez arrived at Veracruz, the seaport Cortés had founded and where he had sunk all his ships. Narváez had been sent by none other than Diego Velázquez, governor of Cuba, who, in his own
relentless quest for gold, had declared all-out war on his mutinous captain. Even as some of Cortés’s men were scouting out Montezuma’s gold mines near Veracruz, they stumbled upon the new arrivals, informed them about Cortés’s triumphs and newly won treasures, and—seduced by promises of greater rewards and a safe passage home—defected to Velázquez’s side.
Montezuma had been told of the fleet’s arrival, but he did not say a word about it to Cortés. Even in captivity, he had managed to stay informed. Indeed, through his spies, Montezuma secretly began sending gifts of gold and food to Narváez’s crews, hoping that this internecine breach among Spaniards might serve to foil his captor and save the empire. But in a fateful moment of confusion, Montezuma let slip the news to Cortés, and Cortés, suddenly grasping his perilous position, prepared frantically for the struggle that was sure to follow. He offered his men more gold for their loyalty. By now, gold and jewels had become firm badges of power among conquistadors. The higher the station, the more ornamentation they would flaunt. They pinned the hard-won metal to their chests, draped heavy gold chains—fanfarrones—around their necks, looped them ostentatiously around their shoulders. Cortés understood that the only way to maintain his troops’ allegiance was to assure them that they stood to win more. Wasting no time, he left the command of Tenochtitlán to his deputy, led a squadron against the new Spanish incursion, and succeeded in capturing Captain Narváez and buying his men’s loyalty with ever more metal promises.
All the same, things were not going well back in the Mexican capital. The retinue of Spaniards left behind began to fear that the locals would soon overpower them. One night, as crowds gathered in the sacred Patio of the Gods for dancing and ritual festivities, Cortés’s deputy Pedro de Alvarado panicked and, sensing a revolt, ordered a massacre. The Spanish forces, such as they were, rode out onto the square with their guns and swords, butchering hundreds mercilessly. The city was stunned, momentarily numb, but, in time, fought back with avenging fury. So it was that Cortés returned to a Tenochtitlán reeling with violence. Desperate to improvise a response, he sent the captive Montezuma out to calm the angry hordes. The emperor did as he was told and implored protesters to stop, but the rebel chieftains called out that he was no longer their sovereign—the power now belonged to his younger brother, Cuauhtémoc. Montezuma could barely absorb that humiliation before a hail of stones rained down on him, striking him senseless to the ground. Those last bitter blows at the hands of his own people proved too much for the emperor to bear. He refused all efforts to bind his wounds. Even as rioters pummeled the palace walls with blazing torches—even as Cortés, ironically, was forced to defend the emperor’s ground—Montezuma expired. The battle that raged into the night was all-consuming, feral. Streets and canals ran with blood and buildings were devoured by flames as Aztec loyalists, intent on routing the conquistadors once and for all, came at Cortés’s stronghold in waves. There was no choice now for the Spaniards but to flee the capital en masse. But how could they leave behind their accumulated plunder—the whole point of the invasion?