by Buddy Levy
Next he encountered a group of women who were busy working on a large statue of the war god Huitzilopochtli, whose image he recognized from the one in the shrine on the summit of the Great Temple. He stared at the weird figure, which was raised on poles and covered with the kneaded dough of ground amaranth seed, the dough laced with honey and thickened with the blood of fresh sacrifice victims. Above and below the ghastly eyes were painted crossbars, and the ears bore turquoise serpent earrings, gold hoops dangling from them. The nose was adorned with a ring in the form of a war arrow and was made of gold and gemstones. The women placed a headdress of hummingbird feathers on the statue’s head.
The body of the statue was adorned with ornately decorated, flowing cloaks painted with images of skulls and human bones; the outer vest depicted “dismembered human parts: skulls, ears, hearts, intestines, torsos, breasts, hands, and feet.”4 The head of the god was matted with feathers and painted with brilliant blue stripes. The statue held a bamboo shield of eagle feathers aloft in one hand, with four arrows; the other hoisted a paper banner drenched in human blood.5
These images and rituals unsettled Alvarado, but the presence of what appeared to be sacrificial victims—men and women captives, drawn and diminished from fasting—particularly set him on edge. He learned, too, that for the Toxcatl festival the image of the Virgin Mary atop the temple pyramid would be removed and replaced with the elaborate, transformed statue of Huitzilopochtli. Alvarado’s men reported seeing thick coils of ropes at the base of the pyramid, as well as pulleys and scaffolding that would be used to heave the statue up to the summit of the Great Temple.
Alvarado and his men encountered three finely dressed Indians with freshly shaved heads, each man tied to a separate Aztec idol and appearing very much like a potential sacrifice victim. Alvarado untied these men and brought them back to the palace for questioning, using an interpreter named Francisco. When they proved uncommunicative, Alvarado resorted to brutal torture, searing their stomachs with burning logs. Still these stoic unfortunates refused to speak, so after much torture Alvarado ordered one of the Indians heaved to his death from the palace roof, forcing the others to watch. (Apparently Alvarado deemed brutal physical torture and execution less repugnant than ritualized human sacrifice for religious purposes.) Seeing this, one of the others offered some information, saying he had heard that very soon after the festival the Aztecs were going to revolt and attack the Spaniards. Incensed, Alvarado called forth two of Montezuma’s close relatives and tortured them until they confirmed an imminent rebellion among the Mexica; the Spaniards were to be taken prisoner and sacrificed.6
Alvarado called on Montezuma, telling the emperor what he had learned and demanding that he put a stop to any planned insurgence against the Spaniards. Montezuma replied only that, imprisoned as he was, he had no control over his people. Angry with this lack of cooperation, and made anxious by rumors that the Aztecs were chiseling holes in the palace’s rear walls and setting up ladders to scale to the upper floors, Alvarado placed a large guard around Montezuma, putting him under constant surveillance. He ordered that Montezuma neither witness nor participate in the festival.
Alvarado attended the festival, nervously waiting for an attack. The first few days passed without incident. On its fourth day the impetuous and apprehensive captain struck in a way that shocked the Aztec world to its core. Leaving sixty men—half his soldiers—to guard Montezuma, Alvarado and the remaining sixty, plus a number of Tlaxcalan allies, moved in full battle armor into tactical positions. He posted musketeers atop the walls enclosing the Patio of Dances, where the elaborate Serpent Dance was to commence. And he positioned heavily armed horsemen and foot soldiers at the three main gates that accessed the sacred patio. These special gates had names and iconic connections: the Eagle Gate, the Gate of the Canestalk, and the Gate of the Obsidian Serpent.7
In anticipation of the Serpent Dance, the main patio began to fill with high and lesser nobles. The aristocracy were all dressed in their finest ceremonial costumes: they donned marvelous headdresses plumed with quetzal and macaw feathers. The dancers’ cotton loincloths were intricately embroidered, over which were draped flowing woven cloaks made of feathers and fine animal skins of puma, jaguar, ocelot, and rabbit. The dancing nobles covered themselves in fine jewelry, with bracelets and armbands, some in gold, some in leather or hide and beaded with jade pieces. Dangling from their necks were shell or jade chains, and their pierced ears and noses displayed shining amber crystals. Their feet and legs, lifting and falling rhythmically to the beat of the drums, were covered in ocelot skin sandals, beautiful tan-yellow with black spots. Dangling gold bells jingled as they danced.8
By the time the drumming, flute playing, and dancing began, four to five hundred dancers and a few thousand Aztec observers—watching or participating in minor roles—filled the dance patio and courtyard. They swayed and gyrated in unison to the thumping of the drums, some upright, played by hand, others laid level and beaten with round, rubber-headed hammers. The dancers coursed and chanted, undulating in a roiling, rhythmical wave, to hollow horn sounds blown through bone fifes, shell conches, and flutes. On and on the dancers pulsated, consumed by spirits, enveloped and alive, the line of writhing Aztec nobles becoming the physical embodiment of a serpent. The music and drumming and chanting rose over the patio walls and poured into the streets of the city. Commoners stopped to listen in awe, aware of the sacredness of the spectacle.
Alvarado and his men observed the dancing in confused wonder, impressed by the elaborate ritual and the skill of the participants but unable to comprehend the euphoria or trance that infused the dancers, who seemed utterly consumed by the enactment. The Serpent Dance brought the participants into a unity of the senses, a whole-human awakening or synesthesia, combining the aural, visual, and tactile experiences of dance with the ritual spiritual experience of seeing their gods—both as icons and as human impersonators—all at once, so that the mood became frenzied.9
Pedro de Alvarado had seen enough.
The gates to all three entrances were slammed shut and blocked by his armed soldiers. Above the pounding drums and ecstatic chants, Alvarado bellowed the order “Let them die!”10 and without warning set his men upon the unarmed, defenseless dancers. Musket shots from above pierced celebrants and spectators alike, scything them to the patio floor. The foot soldiers rushed headlong into the mass, swinging their sharpened Toledo swords. First they slayed the dance leader, a lone drummer. His arms were lopped from his body, and as he fell to the ground near his drum, he was beheaded with one stroke from a Spanish sword. The Aztecs, terrorized, ran for their lives.
But they were penned in. Trying to escape, they stampeded one another; some attempted to scale the courtyard walls, but few were successful, and the gates had been further blockaded by some one thousand armed Tlaxcalans.11 Alvarado’s swordsmen and pikemen hacked and slashed with impunity, cutting the hands from drummers who continued drumming, thrusting pikes and spears into the bodies of participants and spectators until runnels of their blood stained the patio stones. Aztec reports from a few nobles who managed to escape that day recalled the ruthless horror of the massacre: “They slashed others in the abdomen, and their entrails all spilled to the ground. Some attempted to run away, but their intestines dragged as they ran; they seemed to tangle their feet in their own entrails. No matter how they tried to save themselves, they could find no escape.”12
Some of the Aztec nobles managed to find sticks and swing them; others fought bare-handed. Fighting for their lives, they killed a handful of the butchering Spaniards and wounded many, but in the end wood and flesh were no match for steel. Aztecs who survived later recalled the horror they had experienced: “The blood of the warriors flowed like water and gathered into pools. The pools widened, and the stench of blood and entrails filled the air. The Spaniards ran into the communal houses to kill those who were hiding. They ran everywhere and searched everywhere; they invaded every room, hunting and killing.”13<
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In the grisly massacre, the music, drumming, and flute playing were supplanted by ghoulish screams and moans of the dying. In their frenetic bloodlust, the Spaniards killed until there was no one left to kill; then they knelt in the pooling blood to pilfer gold ornaments and stone jewelry from the slain and dying Aztecs.14 By the time Alvarado ordered his men to return to the Palace of Axayacatl, many thousands of the finest Aztec soldiers and the highest nobility lay heaped in grotesque attitudes on the sacred patio floor.
The cessation of the music and the terrified cries of the celebrants told the general populace of Tenochtitlán that something had gone dreadfully wrong. After a time the frantic beating of war drums came from atop the Great Temple pyramid, a general call to arms. The fleetest messengers tore among the houses calling out, “Méxicanos, come running! Bring your spears and shields! The strangers have murdered our warriors!”15 Grief was subsumed by rage as many stormed the precinct with spears and swords and javelins, wailing and whooping. The Spaniards engaged these furious Aztecs, fighting their way back to the palace. During the retreat a stone struck Alvarado in the head, gashing him deeply.
Once inside they bolted all the doors and entrances shut. Alvarado soon learned that the second phase of his two-tiered attack plan had been perpetrated: those left to guard Montezuma and the other highest lords had assassinated Cacama, the deposed lord of Texcoco, and a good number of others. They spared only Cuitláhuac (ruler of Iztapalapa), Izquauhtzin (governor of Tlatelolco), and Montezuma himself. As the citizens of Tenochtitlán stormed the palace, attempting to burrow beneath the foundations and even lighting fires to burn the doors down, they were beginning to understand the heinous scope of the massacre—nearly the entire rank of elite nobles, the finest warriors, and the most skillful military leaders of the Aztec empire had been slain. Their king, Montezuma, was shackled in leg irons.16 It was a devastating and deeply painful—and to the Aztecs, inexplicable—act of barbarity, defying all protocols of proper warfare.
As civilians and what warrior troops remained besieged the Spaniards in the palace, mourners walked to the sacred patio to identify and recover their dead. Mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters leaned over their loved ones, dumbfounded, wailing and weeping. One by one the victims were carried home for proper grieving. Many were later transported to sacred places, Eagle Urn and the House of Young Men, where they were ritually burned; cremation smoke lifted blood-black into the sky.17 The mourning would continue for nearly three months.
Alvarado ordered harquebusiers and crossbowmen on top of the palace walls to contend with the gathering horde of Aztecs; they bombarded them with cannon blasts as well. Superior firepower allowed the Spaniards to hold their ground, if barely, but the Aztec insurgency grew general and widespread. Alvarado then received terrible news: the Aztecs had set the four brigantines ablaze, sending Cortés’s escape ships up in flames. When and if Cortés returned to the city, Alvarado would have much to answer for.
Fearing that all might soon be lost, Alvarado went to Montezuma, ordering him to calm the populace. Montezuma reiterated that as he was imprisoned, there was nothing he could do. Alvarado yanked a long knife from his belt and held the sharp steel tip at Montezuma’s chest, saying that the emperor must speak to his people and calm them or be vented on the spot.18 Both Montezuma and the lord Itzquauhtzin were then taken to the rooftop, where they reluctantly took turns appealing to the people to cease their attacks on the palace. With the sun dying in the sky, Itzquauhtzin was led to the edge and made this plea: “Méxicanos, your king, the lord Montezuma, has sent me to speak for him…We are not strong enough to defeat them…We are not their equals in battle. Put down your shields and arrows…Stop fighting, and return to your homes. Méxicanos, they have put your king in chains; his feet are bound with chains.”19
The impassioned pleas did temporarily pacify the mob, many returning to their homes for a time. But the massacre had devastating and irreparable consequences, dismantling any semblance of political order in the region and turning the population resolutely against the Spaniards while publicly undermining Montezuma’s ability as a ruler. The massacre had eradicated the Aztec military command and nearly all of the finest warriors, but for the Spaniards as well it came at a very high cost. They were out of food and fresh water and too fearful for their lives to leave the palace compound in search of more. Many of the bridges were being dismantled, they learned, reducing any chance for escape, and all Christian symbols—crosses and images of the Virgin—were being ransacked and removed from the Aztec temples and prayer houses.
At night, lying on pallets, their lips cracked and their tongues bloated with thirst, the Spaniards listened to the discordant, mournful beating of funeral drums and the lamentations of women and girls pleading for retribution from their gods. The harmony of Tenochtitlán and its people had been shattered.20
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Montezuma’s Ironic Fate
THE NEWS OF THE UPRISING IN THE CAPITAL spurred Cortés to action. At the conclusion of the battle with Narváez, he had sent out several colonizing and settlement expeditions, and now he recalled them, rerouting them for immediate rendezvous in Tlaxcala.1 Each of these expeditions numbered about two hundred men, and Cortés knew he would need them all if he were to calm the siege and win back control of the empire. Once again only the weakest and least able were left at the outpost city of Villa Rica.
Cortés drove his force up and over the mountains and across the parchment-brittle badlands, the horses’ hooves kicking up clouds of dust. In the rumbling electric skies to the north and west, spring rains, for which the unfortunate celebrants of the festival of Toxcatl had been praying, threatened but did not come. The ground Cortés and his men rode was rutted and wind-raked and furrowed with dry faults, offering only sunburned grass for the horses and scant water for the men. The original troops from the expedition were strife-hardened, grown accustomed to such trials, but the conscripts appropriated from Narváez suffered.2
At Tlaxcala Cortés met up with the other two expeditions, swelling his force to nearly twelve hundred, and he recruited a sizable number—perhaps as many as two thousand—of Tlaxcalan warriors.3 Riding at the vanguard of his one-hundred-horse cavalry, Cortés heeled on toward Tenochtitlán, taking the northerly route through the city of Texcoco. From the shore of the great lake Cortés looked across to see smoke rising from the funeral pyres. The mood in Texcoco was dark. This time the Spaniards got no formal reception. “Not once on my journey,” Cortés would recall, “did any of Montezuma’s people come to welcome me as they had before.”4 In Texcoco only Ixtlilxochitl, Cacama’s brother, came out to formally greet him.
Cortés pressed to learn all he could about the situation in Tenochtitlán. Though trapped within the palace complex, he discovered, Alvarado’s main army remained alive. Six or seven had been killed in the fighting. A messenger arrived from the city by canoe, bearing communication from Montezuma. Cortés listened to the emperor’s words, translated by Malinche, explaining that the revolt in the city was not his fault and that he hoped, he deeply wished, that the captain-general would not harbor anger against him. Montezuma assured Cortés that if he came once again to Tenochtitlán, order would be restored and Cortés would dictate.
Knowing of the clandestine dealings between Montezuma and Narváez, and the perilous current rebellion, Cortés had reason to suspect a ruse. He bedded his troops down for the night as he contemplated the best approach to the city.
In the morning Cortés rode ahead as his army arced around the lake to the north, heading for Tacuba and the shortest causeway. He took this route partly to scout that landscape, which he had seen mostly from the water, but also because he had learned that some of the other causeways had been blockaded or had their bridges removed.5 The Spaniards encamped at Tacuba, where the local leaders were at least civil and at best conciliatory. Aware of the captain-general’s recent victory on the coast, they could see the frightening evidence of an impressive cavalry. The c
ivic leaders of Tacuba went so far as to suggest that Cortés remain out here on open ground, where he could better defend himself, rather than enter the dangerous city. If Cortés even considered taking the advice, he dismissed it, because the next morning, June 24, 1520, he rose, heard mass, then mounted and rode across the Tacuba causeway into Tenochtitlán.
No throngs of civilians lined the way to gape at the clomp of horse hooves or hear the clank and jangle of metal armor. Even the waters were spookily quiet, devoid of canoes.6 Behind a mask of desert dust, Cortés scanned for trouble, but the caravan rode into the city unencumbered. The streets were entirely empty save for a few children playing and odd clusters of citizens hauling goods. The creosote smell of cook fires came from the low houses. Most residents stayed shut inside their homes, peering out warily from doorways or through timbered window slats. It should have been a time of great celebration and spectacle, but the slaughter of Toxcatl had imposed eighty days of mourning.7 Even the famous market of Tlatelolco was shut down.
Cortés rode into a ghost city. His larger army required more quarters; Montezuma had provided them, sending the bulk of Narváez’s men to lodgings nearby. Cortés and his men returned to the Palace of Axayacatl. On his arrival Alvarado rose, shaken and war-weary, his emaciated men gaunt from lack of food and shriveled by thirst; recently they had been forced to scratch holes in the earth of the courtyard, over which they knelt to slurp from brackish seeps. They looked upon the arrival of Cortés as a happy miracle. “The garrison in the fortress received us with such joy,” Cortés recalled, “it seemed we had given back to them their lives which they deemed lost; and that day and night we passed in rejoicing.”8 But the festive mood of their reunion was short-lived. Cortés demanded an explanation for the massacre. Alvarado recounted the signs of rebellion, the rumors of impending attack and sacrifice, and the fear that Narváez had been on his way to free Montezuma. In the end, he explained, it had been a preemptive strike to avoid an Aztec attack at the conclusion of the festival, which, by all the information he possessed, had appeared certain.9