When Montezuma Met Cortes

by Matthew Restall

  2.Gemelli (1704: 514–15).

  3.Gemelli (1704: 547); Buccini (1997: 18–20). Verne’s novel was first published in French in 1873; its enormous global success since then, in every conceivable medium from musical theater to television, makes it difficult not to see earlier journeys and their accounts—such as Gemelli’s—through the prism of Verne’s story. Without digressing into a discussion of the modern era’s shifting perceptions of reality, it is worth emphasizing that eighteenth-century readers of Gemelli, unlike Verne’s modern audiences, enjoyed not only the narrated adventures of the main protagonists but also the revelations of the world’s wonders by a real eyewitness traveler.

  4.Gemelli (1704: 523).

  5.Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories series was started in the United Kingdom in 1993; by its twentieth anniversary, the series had sold more than 25 million copies, in thirty languages. Despite inevitably reflecting popular stereotypes on the Aztecs, as the Angry Aztecs cover illustrates, Deary’s writing also recognizes evolving scholarly opinions (“In the 1980s clever professors reckoned that the Aztecs had huge cannibal feasts. . . . In the 1990s even cleverer professors say this idea is potty”; Deary 1997: 54).

  6.Stories: Ogilby (1670: 46, 62–63); Elliott (1970: 21–25); Pagden (1982: 10); Boone (1989: 55–56); Restall (2003: 103–7); Davies (2016: Chs. 1, 5–6). Velázquez: Instructions written in Santiago de Cuba, 23 October 1518 (DC, I: 56; CDII, XII: 245) (diz que hay gentes de orejas grandes y anchas y otras que tienen las caras como perros, y ansi mismo donde y a que parte estan las amazonas).

  7.Whitehead (2011: 9–15, Las Casas quote on 15; original in the Apologética: Las Casas 1909: 380; also see a variant in LCHI Bk. 3, Ch. 117 [e.g., 1971: 231]); also see Grafton (1992: 244); Abulafia (2008: 125–30); two articles in the same issue of Ethnohistory, by Boruchoff (2015) and by Keegan (2015); Davies (2016: Chs. 3–4, 8); and Stone (2017). The tall tales of strange idols and human sacrifices from the Grijalva expedition, as they became repeated, were often accompanied by outlandish illustrations that bore not the slightest relation to actual Maya or Aztec architecture, culture, or religious practice (e.g., the well-known variant in Montanus 1671: 73, and its twin in Ogilby 1670: 77).

  8.“Worship”: Anonymous (n.d. [1556]); CDHM, I: 387, 398; Bustamante (1986: 129, 157) (adoran el miembro que tienen los hombres entre las piernas). “Solicitous” to “excessively”: Anonymous (n.d. [1556]); CDHM, I: 371, 374, 398; Bustamante (1986: 87, 97, 157–59) (Solían tener grandes guerras y grandes diferencias entre ellos, y todos aquellos que capturaban en la guerra o se los comían o se les hacía esclavos; Y es la gente más cruel que pueda encontrarse en guerra, porque no perdonan ni a hermano, ni a pariente, ni a amigo, les quitan la vida aunque sean mujeres y hermosas, que a todas matan y se las comen; Todos los de esta provincia de la Nueva España, e incluso los de otras provincias de su alrededor comen carne humana, y la aprecian más que todas las demás comidas del mundo, tanto que muchas veces van a la guerra y ponen en peligro su vida para matar a alguien y comérselo, son como se ha dicho, en su mayor parte sodomitas, y beben desmesuradamente). Early modern references to “Indians of New Spain” being cannibals are numerous; e.g., Jeronymo Girava Tarragonez’s Cosmographia, excerpted in Apiano (1575), which describes them as preoccupied with sacrificing humans, whom they then eat, but “they do not eat the flesh of friends: only that of enemies” (no comian de la carne del enemigo: pero comian de la del enemigo), with the ban on eating friends a religious one that was never broken, even if it meant starvation (appendixed p. x). Also see Ruy González’s 1553 Letter to Carlos V (AGI Patronato 184, ramo 46 [old citation 2, caja 2, legajo 5]; ENE, VII, #369: 31–36; Stabler and Kicza 1986; discussed in Chapter 8). Díaz’s obsession with indigenous cannibalism is well known, but note that he also seems to have copied passages from (or from the same source as) this 1566 Italian Relatione; e.g., CCVIII (1916, V: 262–63). Also see Boruchoff (2015).

  9.Cervantes de Salazar (1953 [1554]: 74).

  10.“Care and devotion”: DC, I: 165; also in RC; AGI Justicia 220, legajo 4: ff. 342–49, with a copy (not seen by me) in AGN Hospital de Jésus cuad. 1: ff. 1–4 (su principal motive e intencion sea apartar y desarraigar de las dichas idolatrias a todos los naturales destas partes). “Received reports”: DC, I: 260; original in the archive of the ayuntamiento of Mexico City, also reproduced as CC, document 5.

  11.Adorno (2011: 35–41); Sepúlveda quote from the seventh of his 1552 “Twelve Objections” to Las Casas (in Lane 2010: 50; also see 6–13); Pagden (1982: 44–47).

  12.Villagrá (1610: f. 29v, f.30r; translations mine, adapted from the looser ones in 1933: 65; the original lines are el horrible infierno / Tuvo todos los años de tributo, / De mas de cien mil almas para arriba, / Que en solos sacrificios bomitava, / La gran Ciudad de Mexico perdida). The poem is primarily about the early history of New Mexico but seeks to tie that history to the triumph over the Aztecs and to conquistador glories in general.

  13.Quoted sources, in sequence: Valadés (1579: 170); Palomera (1988: 374); Valadés (1579: 171) (Latin original: lachrymosum profecto & flebile spectaculum); CDII, I: 470 (Zumárraga); Padden (1967: 96, 244); Palomera (1988: 375–76).

  14.Quotes from Ogilby (1670: 239, 275); also see Montanus (1671).

  15.“Human Sacrifices” is included in the Gallery; it was first published in Theodore de Bry, Peregrinationes in Americam, Germanice, Pars IX (Frankfurt, 1601), 3rd part, Plate VIII (the image here), then again by de Bry in 1602 in his Americae, Nona et postrema pars, and then in numerous publications through to the present century. Boone (1989: 73) noted its “sinister and oppressive tone”; also see Klein (2016: 275–80). Variations: For example, an engraving in a 1707 Dutch edition of Herrera’s Historia General, accompanying Herrera’s passage detailing the horrors of Aztec sacrifice (Aa 1706–1708, vol. 10 [1707]: 185–204). Tell us: Klein (2016: 293).

  16.Keen (1971b: 190–92): 70; Boone (1989: 57–67); Pagden (1990: 94–97); Elliott (2006: 241); Adorno (2011: 106–9; 2014); Laird (2014; 2016). No drawings or designs of the arch have survived, but Sigüenza published a small book of explanation (Sigüenza y Góngora 1680; 1928 [1680]: 1–148). I thank Rolena Adorno for drawing my attention to Sigüenza’s book. Also see Fernández (2014: 26–67).

  17.León y Gama (1792); Carrasco (2012: 10–12, from whom I borrow the León y Gama quotes); Adorno (2011: 117–21).

  18.Nicholson (1961: 390); Hajovsky (2012; 2015: 119).

  19.Campe (1784: 176–77) (my translation from this French edition: barbares superstitions; les portoient chez eux, & les mangeoient avec leurs amis; N’est-il pas vrai, mes enfants, que cela est horrible? Mais préparezvous à entendre quelque chose qui l’est encore beaucoup plus).

  20.Ranking (1827: 366–67).

  21.Cook (1946). Cited, for example, by Padden (1967: 73–74) as evidence that “the holocaust went on unabated for four days and nights, with tens of thousands perishing on the slabs.”

  22.Prescott (1994 [1843]: 42); Morgan (1876: 286, 307, 308). Carrasco (2012: 12–13) drew my attention to Morgan’s views; “influential” is Carrasco’s adjective, quotes also used by him. Prescott quotes also used by Clendinnen (1991a: 3).

  23.Morgan (1876: 308); Abbott (1904 [1856]: 64, 182) (I used this 1904 edition, but found 1884 and 1901 editions too; Abbott lived 1805–77).

  24.Spinden (1928: 201).

  25.Collis (1954: 51); Gibson (1966: 26); Padden (1967: 96, 97, 99); Harris (1977: 164); Coe (1984: 146; volume first published in 1962; a seventh edition came out in 2013); Clendinnen (1991a: 2); Pennock (2008: 15); MacLachlan (2015: 9, 68, 102, 220).

  26.Carrasco quote (2012: 61).

  27.“Century of genocide”: Hobsbawn (1994: 12); Levene (2000: 305, 307). Also see Meierhenrich (2014). Soustelle: (1964: 112) (I have here used the published English translation of the 1955 French original). Rowdon (1974: 10–16), in one early example of how the Aztec stereotype can be applied to those who forged it, argued that “violence became basic to Christian life
in the sixteenth century” and “an essential condition of Christian survival”; “narrow-minded,” incapable of respecting “the unfamiliar,” quick to justify the killing “in cold blood” of those who “looked different from Christians,” the Christian’s “attempts to spread his civilisation were therefore rather grotesque.” The literature on violence in sixteenth-century Spain, Europe, and the early modern Atlantic world is too vast to cite fully here (but recent examples that, for me, repeatedly underscored Soustelle’s point include the articles in the Journal of World History 17:1 [March 2006]; also Barker 2005; Meierhenrich 2014; Madley 2015; 2016).

  28.Montaigne: Quote and its translation borrowed from Elliott (1970: 46). Michel de Montaigne’s essay was first published in 1580. Ometochtzin: AGN Inquisición tomo 2, exp. 10 (I thank Robert Schwaller for sharing copies of the original documents with me); also see Don (2010: 146–76, citing the 1910 publication of this “Proceso inquisitorial”) and Benton (2017: 39–45).

  29.Harris (1977: 147). Note that this book prompted “a furious controversy” in academic publications (as Carrasco put it; 1992: 126); yet Harris helped keep the debate focused on why, not if, the Aztecs were cannibals, just as Díaz (1632) did centuries ago, and arguably that focus remains (Harris lived 1927–2001).

  30.Zorita and Vargas Machuca quotes in Elliott (2006: 64) (see Zorita 1994 [1566]; NCDHM, III: 71–227), but also see Vargas Machuca’s Defense and Discourse of the Western Conquests (Lane 2010), which is effectively a polemical essay on comparative cruelty and violence (and see Lane 2008); Las Casas (2003 [1552]: 29).

  31.Clendinnen (1991a: 89). A brilliant mind and gifted writer, Clendinnen (1934–2016) left us a body of work that will deservedly find readers for many generations to come.

  32.Carrasco (2012: 61).

  33.Carrasco (2012: 61); Graham (2011: 40–43). Also see Smith (2016: 6).

  34.Ventura (2014); “The Cannibal Kingdom” is the title of the Aztecs chapter in Harris (1977: 147–66); Díaz XCII (in 1632 ed., styled LXXXXII; 1632: ff. 69v–72v; 1910, II: 81; 2005, I: 241 (no se podrían contar porque heran muchos); Tapia (c.1545; Fuentes 1963: 42; J. Díaz et al. 1988: 105) also claimed that another conquistador, Gonzalo de Umbría, counted “136 thousand heads, not counting those on the towers,” impaled on skull racks in the central plaza of Tenochtitlan (hallamos haber ciento treinta y seis mill cabezas, sin las de las torres); Gómara copied this (1552: Ch. 82; 1964: 167), and from there it became part of the traditional narrative.

  35.Skull racks: The 2015 discovery hit the international media in August (see Martínez Torrijos 2015 but many examples are archived online). “No evidence”: Carrasco (2012: 62–63).

  36.“Stagger the faith”: Prescott (1994 [1843]: 42). Different picture: As a sequence of fine Aztec scholars have argued, in various ways, among them Soustelle (1964 [1955]), Keen (1971b), Clendinnen (1985; 1991a), Hassig (1985; 1988; 2001a; 2016), Smith (1986; 2016: 5–7), Matos Moctezuma (1987; 2009), Boone (1989; 1992; 1994), Gillespie (1989), Carrasco (1992; 2000; 2012), López Luján (1994), Evans (1998; 2000; 2004), Burkhart (2008), Pennock (2008), Maffie (2014), and Mundy (2015) (cited works are examples drawn from larger bodies of work by these scholars), in addition to “the giants upon whose shoulders Aztec scholarship rests” (Maffie 2014: xi), Miguel León-Portilla and Alfredo López Austin.

  37.“Society”: Carrasco (2012: 9). “Greatness”: Keen (1971b: 48).

  38.“Epitomize”: Boone (1989: 55). Madariaga (1969 [1942]) rendered the god’s name, with some eccentricity, as “Witchy Wolves.” Our Gallery includes “Uitzilipuztli: Principal Idol of the Mexicans” (Prévost 1746–59, XII [1754]: facing p. 546), a version of an image widely reproduced for centuries (albeit a relatively restrained variant, as some included devil’s horns and, above the satanic-goat legs, a monstrous face on the torso; e.g., Valadés 1579, Ogilby 1670, and Montanus 1671, Mallet 1683: 5, 311, reproduced in Boone 1989: 82, the 1707 Dutch edition of Herrera in Aa 1706–1708, vol. 10: and the 1724 Townsend edition of Solís). Such images, with the accompanying lurid descriptions of Aztec deities and their grisly sacrifical rituals, represented three centuries of European mythmaking regarding the Aztecs. Prévost was writing history at a time when the modern methodology of copious footnotes to specific sources was in its genesis; the abbot thus made it clear that his perspective was not marginal or excessively spiced with imagination, but based on his reading of the canon of early modern sources that had created the traditional narrative on the Aztecs, Montezuma, and their imperial demise (see his preface or “Avant-Propos” and its footnotes to Benzoni, Cortés, Díaz, Gómara, Herrera, Las Casas, Ogilby, Fernández de Oviedo, Martyr d’Anghiera, Solís, and others; 1746–59, XII [1754]: v–xiii).

  39.One hesitates to attribute everything to Cortés; his Letter may have been repeating what other Spaniards were saying or writing in long-lost missives (CCR 1522: f. 16v; 1960: 65; 1971: 107). The detail appears as early as June 1521 in testimony given in Cuba by conquistador Juan Álvarez, who claimed the dough contained “the blood of men, and of the hearts of the Indians who had been sacrificed” (maíz mollido con sangre de hombre e de corazones de los indios que habían sacrificado) (DC, I: 170–209, quote on 207). “Virgin boys”: Tapia (c.1545; Fuentes 1963: 41; J. Díaz et al. 1988: 103) (con sangre de niños e niñas vírgines); Boone (1989: 46–49). Wagner’s theory (1944: 190) that Tapia wrote his brief account in Spain c.1543 specifically for Gómara remains convincing (also Nicholson 2001a: 87; Roa-dela-Carrera 2005 has no comment; but see Martínez Martínez 2010). Bread to Cortés: García (1729 [1607]: 301). Another example of the blood-dough story is in Torquemada (1986 [1614], III: 380, 404–6; also see 1614, I: 87, 90, 620–21; Bk. 2, Chs. 1–2; Bk. 4, Ch. 100).

  40.Suggested: Argued by Jorge Gurría Lacroix (1978: 23–34); Boone (1989: 47) is skeptical of the argument.

  41.As Boone observed (1989: 49–51); Díaz XCII (in 1632 ed., styled LXXXXII; 1632: ff. 70v–72v; 1908, II: 76–77; 2005, I: 236–41). Díaz’s frequent copying of Gómara—his “ill-digested plagiarism,” in Brooks’s words (1995: 173)—is now widely documented by scholars (e.g., Adorno 1992; Roa-de-la-Carrera 2005; Miralles 2008; Duverger 2013).

  42.Acosta (2002 [1590]). Although commonly called the Codex Tovar, the manuscript (in JCB) is actually titled Relacion del origen de los Yndios que havitan en esta Nueva Espana segun sus historias (Tovar 1585).

  43.Montanus (1671: 73, 74, 82, 220–21 inter, 223); Ogilby (1670); Boone (1989: 4).

  44.No stone statues: This may be because Huitzilopochtli was never represented in stone, but note too that his status in the Aztec pantheon—and the precious stones that adorned his statues—would have inspired immediate looting, dismemberment, and destruction by Spaniards (Boone 1989: 2). Codex: image from the Telleriano-Remensis is in the Gallery under “Divine Images”; the original codex is in BnF, image on f. 5r, this version from a 1901 reproduction (now in the public domain). The codex was created in sixteenth-century Mexico (but later acquired by Archbishop Le Tellier of Rheims, hence its name, and its location today in Paris). Teocalli: Found in 1926 beneath the site where Montezuma’s palace once stood, the Teocalli (as it is now called; Nahuatl for “temple”) is now in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Its paired representations of Huitzilopochtli and Montezuma are on the backrest of what is a stone-carved human-scale model of an Aztec temple, probably used as a throne, created during Montezuma’s reign. Huitzilopochtli is on the left of a solar disk, Montezuma on the right. Easily found in print or online.

  45.Xolotl: Codex Xolotl is in BnF (Manuscrits, division orientale, Mexicain 1.1); see Boone (1989: 31). In another codex in BnF, the Codex Azcatitlán, Huitzilopochtli is represented simply by a man wearing a full hummingbird costume, holding a spear and shield. Teocalli: Boone (1989: 16–17); Hajovsky (2015: 101–2, 109–13).

  46.Boone (1989: 31–37); talk and seminar discussion at Pennsylvania State University by John F. Schwaller, February 9, 2016.

  47.FC, I and XII (Boone 1989: 37
cites the original MS as Med. Palat. 218, f. 10r; 220, f. 437v).

  48.“Quintessential”: Boone (1989: 86).

  49.Boone (1989: 86); Nicholson (2001a: 291); Carrasco (2000: 63–103; 2012: 29–30, 91).

  50.Note that characterizing Aztec deities as having discrete areas of responsibility (“god rain,” etc.) reflects European influences of how we see Aztec religion. Ehecatl: Nicholson (2001a: 266–91). Cholula: The temple to Quetzalcoatl was long ago replaced by a church dedicated to the Virgin of the Remedies, but as a result the pyramid, still mostly intact, is still a pilgrimage site (Carrasco 2012: 31–32). St. Thomas: Durán (1971 [1579]: 57–69); Lafaye (1976: 177–208); Nicholson (2001a: 101, 105).

  51.Cholollan: Tapia (c.1545; Fuentes 1963: 34; J. Díaz et al. 1988: 92); Nicholson (2001a: 88). Tapia had briefly been encomendero of Cholula (meaning he had the right to maintain a household there and to collect tribute payments in goods and labor), so it is likely that he heard the deity’s name (which he renders as “Quezalcuate”) in that town. Sahagún: FC, II. Beginning with Sahagún, chroniclers and historians asserted the Cortés-as-Quetzalcoatl story as if it were well-known fact; of the few who cited sources, none could claim one that predated Sahagún. For example, when Dominican friar Gregorio García remarked in the 1729 edition of his Origin of the Indians of the New World that “Moteçuma and his Court believed that don Hernando Cortés was Quezalcoatl,” he cited Torquemada and Sahagún (García 1729 [1607]: 143). Torquemada’s book was published in 1614, seven years after the original edition of García, which was in turn one of Torquemada’s sources; the Torquemada citation was thus added by the editor of the 1729 edition—the circularity lending the weight of authenticity to Sahagún’s fiction. Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, one of Montezuma’s grandsons, wrote a “Mexican Chronicle” in 1598; he likewise repeats the story at the end of his book, having Montezuma conclude when the Spaniards first appear on the coast that “he is the god Quetzalcoatl for whom we have been waiting” (1878 [1598]: 687) (es el dios que aguardamos Quetzalcoatl). Not all contemporaries believed it worth repeating: Juan de Tovar, in his “Account of the Origins of the Indians of this New Spain,” written about 1585, ignored the myth completely—including when he mentioned Quetzalcoatl (1585; 1878 [1585]: 119–20) (also see Charnay 1903).