by Buddy Levy
Hernán Cortés nodded. He now had an army he believed sufficient to confront this man Montezuma, whoever he was and however powerful he might be.35
CHAPTER SIX
The Massacre of Cholula
CORTÉS WAS ELATED TO FINALLY LEAVE the rough and exposed hill of Tzompach behind. On September 23, 1519, three weeks after the first battle with the Tlaxcalans, he mounted his stallion and led his company to Tlaxcala. He came as an invited guest of Xicotenga the Elder, and here his bedraggled men and horses would rest and recover from the labors of invasion until they were fit enough to continue on to Mexico. Cortés insisted on bringing along a few remaining Aztec emissaries, to whom (and subliminally to Montezuma) he wished to demonstrate his allegiance with Tlaxcala and the force he was amassing.
Thousands of curious onlookers lined the streets as the Spanish army approached Tlaxcala after a trek of nearly thirty miles. Cortés and his men rode in as celebrated victors, the streets lined with flowers in anticipation of their arrival, and even inhabitants of outlying villages came to witness these strangers. Cortés was moved by the organization and layout of the city, remarking in a letter to his king: “This town is so big and so beautiful that all one could say about it would be unbelievable. It is bigger than Granada and better fortified. Its houses, its buildings, and the people that inhabit it are more numerous than at Granada at the time we conquered it, and very much better supplied with the produce of the land, namely bread, fowl, game, and fresh-water fish.”1 Robed priests along the route burned incense, their black hair tangled and matted with dried blood; their ears, recently mutilated in ritual sacrifice, dripped fresh blood. After dismounting and formally meeting the blind elder Xicotenga, Cortés followed a procession of hosts to his quarters, where his men were put up in large flat-roofed stone houses and palaces, and all the horses, many lame and limping, were provided with comfortable quarters. The Totonacs, who had fought bravely beside the Spaniards, were also given food. For three weeks the Spanish expeditionary force remained in Tlaxcala, gorging on fish and fowl at feasts and enjoying the company of some of the three hundred native women given Cortés as a gift in lieu of gold,*17 which their hosts claimed not to possess. By day they visited the bustling central market, where thousands of people from the region came to trade. Still, though they were being treated as royalty, Cortés positioned sentries and guards and instructed his men to sleep armed and ready.
While in Tlaxcala Cortés spent a great deal of time, flanked by Malinche and Aguilar, in conversations with nobles, elders, and members of the high council, who were remarkably forthcoming. Once their allegiance was formally and ceremonially sealed and Cortés had received assurances of significant Tlaxcalan military support, Cortés inquired pointedly about many aspects of the neighboring Aztecs and their ruler Montezuma. Xicotenga the Elder and his council informed Cortés that the great city of Tenochtitlán was, and had been for as long as they could remember, highly fortified and impenetrable. Its grandness was of a scale beyond measuring. The Tlaxcalans had managed to avoid complete conquest but only at very high costs. Montezuma maintained strict embargoes and blockades that denied the Tlaxcalan people many important trade items, including cotton goods (needed for armor), coveted gemstones, precious metals like silver and gold, and salt. The Tlaxcalans went on to describe, using hand-drawn illustrations on stretched maguey fiber, the Aztec arts of warfare and weaponry and even crucial details about the city, such as the fact that all its fresh water came from a single aqueduct at Chapultepec.2
Most interesting was the discussion of the generations-long Flower Wars that were held between the warring sides. Quite commonly practiced in the region (but utterly new and perplexing to Cortés), these were mock or staged battles between the finest warriors from each side, as well as young warriors hoping to prove themselves. More like competitions or tournaments than actual battles, these Flower Wars served a number of functions, including keeping the warriors practiced and trained for battle without killing them on such a scale as to deplete their forces. Most important, the winning side in a particular battle gained prisoners for human sacrifice, which both sides required (especially the Aztecs) in large numbers. Dressed in full regalia and fully armed, the enemies confronted each other at predetermined battlefields and engaged violently but took precautions to injure and subdue rather than kill. The Tlaxcalans and Aztecs had engaged in such staged wars for decades. Montezuma later boasted that his armies could have legitimately conquered the Tlaxcalans with ease anytime he wished, but the protracted Flower War provided convenient training for his men and never-ending sacrificial victims.3
While his soldiers rested, Cortés remained busy with diplomacy and military planning. He drafted a letter and dispatched it via mounted messenger to Juan de Escalante, who continued to hold down and construct the fort at Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz. He reminded Escalante of the importance of maintaining collegial relations with the Totonacs, who had fought bravely at his side. He instructed him to unearth from his personal quarters there two vats of wine and a sealed container of sacrificial wafers needed for mass and to send the messenger back with them immediately.
Roaming the city, some of Cortés’s men came upon the disturbing sight of prisoners bound and pinioned inside wooden latticework cages. The prisoners were fed daily rations of a special diet designed to quickly fatten them for sacrifice and consumption. Seeing these unfortunates and their condition, Cortés railed against such practices, hoping to impress upon the Tlaxcalans the teachings and truth of Christianity, about which he lectured long and often through Malinche and Aguilar. He even suggested to the elders and nobles the benefits of destroying their own idols and replacing them with his, showing them illustrations and pictures of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. They should convert immediately, submitting to baptism to avoid burning in a fiery hell in the afterlife. The elders, including Xicotenga, balked. They had no intention of forsaking their own gods. As in Cempoala, Cortés favored a forced conversion, but once more the judicious Father Olmedo argued for prudence, pointing out that real and lasting conversion took time and religious understanding, and at any rate the Spaniards certainly had no need to create conflict and tensions with their brand-new allies. And once more Cortés had the good sense to take the advice of his trusted religious counselor. For their part, in a remarkable show of religious concession and tolerance, the Tlaxcalans provided one temple where the Spaniards could erect a cross and worship their idols. Here Cortés had his priests hold daily public mass; the ceremonies were attended not only by his men but by scores of the city’s inhabitants and those of neighboring villages.4
(Although Cortés is sometimes interpreted as feigning devotion and piety as a justification for his actions and behavior, he appears to have been authentically, deeply religious. As a product of his time and place, he could have believed in the rightness of his mission and viewed the conversion of the Mexican population—either forced, as he preferred, or by slower degrees and education, as his priests advised—as actually bringing them salvation. Obviously Cortés believed that he had much to gain financially and in terms of power by his mission of conquest, but his religious zeal as he marched through the country was at all times evident and consistent. He was to that end, in effect, the first man to sow the seeds of Christianity on the soil of the Americas.*18 )5
The Spanish men and horses and dogs were regaining strength, and Cortés discussed with his aides and captains their imminent departure and the best route to take. The Tlaxcalans and the Aztec emissaries who were accompanying him gave him conflicting opinions. The Aztec ambassadors vehemently urged Cortés to take the route through Cholula; its leaders, they claimed, were complacent allies of Montezuma and would treat the Spaniards well, and there he could await final word on Montezuma’s decision to meet Cortés in person. The Tlaxcalans disagreed, countering that as allies of the Aztecs, the Cholulans could not be trusted—they were wicked and duplicitous people, and it might well be a trap. They argued for a ro
ute through the town of Huexotzinco, whose people were confirmed friends.
After some meetings and contemplation, Cortés opted to take the Aztec ambassadors as guides and go through Cholula, a decision that turned out to have both political and tactical reasons. To appease the disgruntled Tlaxcalans, who were visibly unhappy about his decision, Cortés offered presents of cloth to Xicotenga the Elder and said that he would happily now accept his host’s offer of warriors to take along with him on his quest. The diplomacy worked, and the Tlaxcalan ruler offered an army of 100,000 men. Cortés thanked him for his generous support of his cause, adding that he would require only some six thousand at the moment.
On the tenth of October6 Cortés mustered for departure. With a train of Tlaxcalan and Totonac warriors and bearers that trailed for miles behind, accompanied by Montezuma’s own ambassadors, Captain-General Hernán Cortés set out for Cholula. He was headed toward the city of Quetzalcoatl, at the time the most important pilgrimage destination in all of the Americas, famed because legend held that Quetzalcoatl, in his flight from ancient Tula (modern-day Mexico City) toward the Gulf Coast, had made his ceremonial first stop here.7
They marched most of the first day and camped that night on an exposed savanna; Cortés and his captains slept in slightly protected and sheltered ditches, with guards at watch. The next morning delegates from Cholula arrived, bringing turkey and maize cakes; the priests waved burning braziers to fumigate Cortés and his captains, while the robed dignitaries beat on drums and blew reed flutes and conch shells.8 After some ceremony they invited Cortés and his men to come to Cholula, but they did not want the Tlaxcalans, their enemies, to accompany them. He thought about it, then acquiesced, telling the Tlaxcalans that they would need to wait outside the boundaries of the city proper while he conducted his business there. He appealed to their sense of pride by telling them that they could not enter because the Cholulans feared them.
Leaving the bulk of the Tlaxcalan force outside the city limits, Cortés led his cavalry, the Totonacs, and bearers into Cholula. Having been continuously inhabited for more than one thousand years (first by Olmecs, later by the people of Tula), the place was remarkably well kept, and the Spaniards were impressed as they rode in and first caught sight of the massive temple high on the hill overlooking the entire city, the great pyramid to Quetzalcoatl. One hundred twenty steps led to the top of the stunning structure, the largest free-standing man-made edifice in the world, twice as long as the great Egyptian pyramid of Cheops.9 Highly revered as the former home of the man-god Quetzalcoatl, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims came to this towering holy center annually.10 Cortés would say that Cholula was “more beautiful than any city in Spain, for it is very well proportioned and has many towers.”11 Organized and, to the Spanish mind, civilized (they noted freshwater wells), Cholula was a thriving city of more than 100,000 inhabitants, renowned widely for its fine pottery and craftsmanship in textiles, including jewelry. The Spaniards observed that the people here dressed in immaculate robes and took great care in their polished appearance.
Cortés and his captains were well housed and cared for initially, the food supplies—always of vital concern—sufficient. According to conquistador Andrés de Tapia, a young Spaniard of twenty-four who became a trusted captain under Cortés and one of the few chroniclers to produce a written account of the Mexico campaign, here the priests explained in detail aspects of the Quetzalcoatl myth that they had not heard before. When he founded the city, for example, he had commanded the people to cease the sacrifice of human beings and instead to build great temples “to the creator of the sun and heavens, in which to offer him quail and other things of the hunt.”12 The second day in Cholula another group of Aztec ambassadors arrived and asked for a meeting with Cortés, during which they said that the Cholulans had not the food stores to continue feeding the Spanish army, lest they themselves starve. (Cortés doubted the claim, having seen the size of their central marketplace.) They argued, additionally, that the road to Tenochtitlán was dangerous, barely passable, and that in the great city Montezuma possessed a magnificent zoo (he did), where fearsome animals like lions and alligators could be unleashed and set upon unwelcome visitors. This last was a thinly veiled attempt, perhaps issued by Montezuma himself, to keep the Spaniards from continuing their inexorable march toward the capital of Mexico. Cortés remained unmoved. He would take his chances with any savage beasts that might be loosed upon him.13
But the food supplies did indeed dwindle, then stop altogether by the fourth day, when they were offered only water, and some wood, presumably to cook their own provisions. And visits by Cholulan lower representatives (important civic leaders, despite requests by Cortés, had yet to make an appearance) diminished as well. Some of his Totonac bearers reported to Cortés that they had seen many people, carrying goods and possessions on their backs, leaving the city, women and children among them. More ominous still, rumors reached Cortés that large, covered trap-holes had been discovered in the streets, their bottoms lined with sharp stakes, and that a number of the city’s streets had been cordoned off, with warriors positioned on rooftops, sitting next to huge piles of stones. Cortés had to wonder whether the Tlaxcalans had been right to suspect a trap.
Montezuma himself may have played a role in the perceived plot to ambush the Spaniards. While Cortés was battling the Tlaxcalans, Montezuma had summoned his high priests and oracles, seeking divine guidance in dealing with Cortés and these strange but powerful foreigners. He wished to discover their true nature and to see whether it might be possible to alter the prophecy of the second coming of Quetzalcoatl. After he spent days in intense meditation, an oracle came to him claiming to have experienced a vision, one that presaged that the Spaniards were destined to die in the great and sacred city of Cholula. Believing this prophecy, Montezuma immediately sent a division of his handpicked and best-trained warriors to Cholula, along with men carrying long poles to which they would tether the Spanish prisoners and lead them back to Tenochtitlán.14
Amazingly, a chance encounter by Malinche would propel Cortés toward his most uncharacteristic and perplexing act of the entire campaign. During their first few days in Cholula, Malinche had struck up a friendship with one of the local women, a wife of a Cholulan nobleman. The woman entertained Malinche in her home, fed her, and after a time suggested that for her own safety, Malinche should leave the Spaniards and come live with her—she could even provide a suitable husband, her son, for Malinche. Her husband was a captain in the Cholulan army, she informed Malinche, and the Cholulans, under Montezuma’s orders, were massing a large force to attack the Spaniards on the road from Cholula to Tenochtitlán. For their assistance in the ambush, the Cholulans would be given twenty Spaniards to sacrifice themselves. If Malinche wished to escape imprisonment and probable death by sacrifice, she should seek refuge with her.15 But Malinche, now completely loyal to Cortés, convinced the noblewoman that she needed to get some things first, and she hurried to report her discovery to him.*19
Cortés listened intently. The mood in the city was tense and ominous, and the exodus of the townspeople continued. Acting quickly on Malinche’s intelligence, he rounded up a pair of Cholulan priests and bribed them with jadestone gifts; when they remained tight-lipped, he tortured them into submission. The priests admitted that as far as they knew, Aztec forces were indeed stationed outside the city, along the route to Tenochtitlán. The Cholulans’ role was to help lead the Spaniards into the trap as they left the city. In preparation for a successful ambush, a special sacrifice was currently under way that included a handful of small children, both boys and girls. Cortés quietly fumed at this last, then demanded at swordpoint that they go to the city’s chiefs and tell them that he wished to speak with them. When these nobles did arrive, Cortés calmly thanked them for their hospitality and informed them that he and his troops would be leaving in the morning so as to no longer burden the kind people of Cholula. They agreed to provide him with some bearers for his departure.
Cortés promptly convened his captains to discuss the situation. They disagreed about the best course of action, some suggesting they return to Tlaxcala or at the very least, should they proceed toward Mexico, take an alternative route. But Cortés had another idea, a punitive preemptive strike that would send a message reverberating through the badland plains and all across the Valley of Mexico.
Feigning preparations for departure, Cortés requested that all the lords of Cholula convene at the large central courtyard of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, where he could bid them farewell. He also requested that his escort of Cholulan bearers be brought forth. Then he asked to speak with the leaders of the city, the main nobility, in private in his quarters. They came forth. Once they were inside, Cortés barred the doors. He accused them of conspiring with the Aztecs, said he knew of their plans and that for such treason they must die. The lords at first denied duplicity, but when pressed, they blamed the scheme on Montezuma, saying that as his subservient tributaries they had had no choice. By now the courtyard of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl had filled with Cholulans, including most of the city’s dignitaries, as well as the many bearers Cortés had requested. Cortés waved for a harquebus to be fired, his signal for the massacre to commence. Spanish soldiers rode in and sealed off all the courtyard exits. The infantry—both Spanish and the few Tlaxcalans who had been allowed into the town—rushed the crowded courtyard, wielding their swords and spears, crossbowmen and harquebusiers in support. They fell upon the mostly unarmed populace in wholesale slaughter. Arrows whirred in horrific volleys, scything down scores in minutes as musket balls plowed others. Women and children ran screaming, many trampled by horses or by their own fleeing people. Some priests managed to escape to the top of the high Temple of Quetzalcoatl, from which spot they feebly hurled stones to defend themselves or, despondent, took their own lives. Witnesses later reported, “They hurled themselves from the temple pyramid…and they also hurled the idol Quetzalcoatl headfirst from the pyramid, for this form of suicide had always been a custom among them, and it was their custom…to die headlong. In the end, the greater part of them died in despair, by killing themselves.”16 Cortés ordered the temple set ablaze, and it burned for two days straight.