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

by Buddy Levy

  Montezuma processed these words and ideas slowly and thoughtfully, and though offended, he betrayed nothing of his emotions or indignation. He spoke with erudition, using a measured cadence. He had known of the Spaniards’ beliefs since his own ambassadors had returned from the sand dunes near the sea and brought back the books, paintings, and descriptions of those meetings. Then he straightened and spoke directly to Cortés: “We have given you no answer, since we have worshipped our own gods here from the beginning and know them to be good. No doubt yours are good also, but do not trouble to tell us any more about them at present.”4 It was more a command than a request, and Cortés took the cue to leave the matter. It had been his first real opportunity, and he had done his duty. He could press the emperor later, when the time was right.

  Montezuma mentioned that others like Cortés had arrived on the coast two years ago; were they also Spaniards? Cortés, knowing that he referred to the expeditions of his countrymen Córdoba and Grijalva, nodded affirmation, saying that they too served their great king, and had come to explore the seas and landings and find the route to this land, which they had done, making possible his own arrival. Now here he was.

  Montezuma waved to one of his nephews, who came over with more gifts, including finely embroidered cloaks for the captain-general and two gold necklaces each for the captains. Cortés thanked him, then noticed the late hour (and the hundreds of attendants moving about the quarters, preparing the emperor’s meal) and begged his leave. Montezuma encouraged Cortés to use the guides and servants provided, for he had permission to make a full tour of his city, which he hoped he would enjoy. Then he rose to leave, promising that they would meet again soon. Montezuma departed to dine and then to pray. For the next five nights he would ascend the steep steps of the Great Temple, the highest in Tenochtitlán, and pray vigorously to his god Huitzilopochtli, the hummingbird god of war and sacrifice, patron of the Aztecs. After his priests sacrificed a dozen children, believing that the survival of the universe depended on them, Montezuma would kneel before flickering firelight and pray for vision, for truth. He would desperately try to understand Cortés and these strangers, whose victories against the Tabascans and the Tlaxcalans, against terrific odds, were difficult to fathom. Kneeling before the stone idol—human hearts smoldering on a brazier, priests attempting to see the future in the fresh viscera of sacrificed doves and quail—Montezuma waited for a sign.5

  OVER the next week the remarkable City of Dreams unveiled itself to the Spaniards as they traveled about the thriving megalopolis accompanied by Aztec nobles. They toured the remainder of Montezuma’s grand palace, which Cortés noticed was heavily guarded by as many as three thousand armed warriors. Here were housed a few thousand women (150 of whom, presumably, Montezuma slept with); the emperor was attended to daily by more than one thousand servants. His personal rooms on the upper floors offered vistas of his sprawling realm. His meals were elaborate, for he ate only on the finest Cholulan ceramic ware, and he touched each plate or platter or bowl, it was said, only once. He selected daily from more than three hundred possible specially prepared dishes—“cooked fowl, turkeys, pheasants, quail, tame and wild duck, hares and rabbits”—then removed to a low table, where he dined alone in silence but for the occasional low whispers of his closest priests and chosen relatives. He finished his meal with a cup of cocoa frothed with chocolate and long drafts from his tobacco pipe, entertained by foot-jugglers, singers, poets, and even misshapen hunchbacks and dwarfs and albinos.6

  Cortés and his men were stunned by the range and scope of the palace, including the menagerie areas, which housed savage mountain lions and jaguars (rumored to be fed with the blood and remains of human sacrifice victims) as well as lynxes and wolves. There were deadly venomous snakes, rattlers and boa constrictors, and lizards and crocodiles. One house was devoted to birds of prey, with eagles and falcons and hawks in their own cages, and great tropical birds of resplendent plumage, including the highly revered quetzal; its chest feathers were the color of blood, and the long tail feathers were the color of polished jade. They strolled through immense and manicured tree-lined botanical gardens, where learned experts grew aromatic and medicinal herbs and roses the colors of sunrise and sunset.7

  The central marketplace of Tlatelolco was astounding, surpassing anything the Spaniards knew of in Europe. Here daily more than sixty thousand people came from far and wide to buy and barter and trade, making it the greatest commercial center in all of the Americas. Everything imaginable (and much, to the Spaniards, that was previously unimaginable) was traded here, from textiles to slaves to butchered human body parts. All the items were grouped by kind in well-organized stalls (for which the vendor paid a sum to the government). There were stalls for pottery, for building materials, for the skins of animals—deer and jaguars tanned or raw, some with fur or hair, some without; there were feathers, skinned birds, and whole birds, the work of skilled taxidermists. There were crucial trade goods like salt and cotton, and sheaves of tobacco and slabs of chocolate, both novel to the Spaniards, and the important fibers of maguey and palm, used for pictographs. Apothecaries sold seeds and roots and bark and herbs for healing, while craftspeople manufactured toys for children, including some that rolled on small wheels.8

  The food booths amazed the visitors, for the Aztec palate seemed to know no boundaries. Cortés later recorded:

  They will eat virtually anything that lives: snakes without head or tail; little barkless dogs, castrated and fattened; moles, dormice, mice, worms, lice; and they even eat earth which they gather with fine nets, at certain times of the year, from the surface of the lake. It is a kind of scum, neither plant nor soil, but something resembling ooze, which solidifies…it is spread out on floors, like salt, and there it hardens. It is made into cakes resembling bricks, which are not only sold in the market [of Mexico], but are shipped to others far outside the city. It is eaten as we eat cheese; it has a somewhat salty taste, and, when taken with chilmole,*27 is delicious.9

  Cortés was most impressed by the quarter of the market comprising jewelers and metalsmiths, whose skill was such that they had no rivals in Europe. They made fish with intricate scales in gold and silver; tiny kettles cast with miniature handles; replicas of tropical birds, macaws and parrots, with moving beaks, tongues, and wings; and most remarkable, lifelike cast-metal monkeys that could move their hands and feet and even appear to hold and eat fruit. These men sold not only precious metals but turquoise and jade and pearls, all finely wrought.10

  The Spaniards roamed the city, awestruck by its wonders. For his part, Cortés was all the while thinking how to make it his. He had to be impressed by Montezuma’s power, by the incredible reverence paid him, and by the order he commanded. Even the streets they walked were washed daily with water and scrubbed with brooms. But there were disconcerting, even disturbing sights as well. Some of Cortés’s men reported being shown a morbid place, an ossuary of human skulls, constructed to resemble a viewing theater of slain sacrifice victims. Set in stacks of five, on tiered poles between large supporting towers, were some 136,000 skulls, all the heads facing outward, the open-mouthed faces bleached to a bone-white patina from the high-altitude sun. For the Spaniards, it was a macabre and chilling sight.11 During his tour of the palaces and marketplace, Cortés would also have heard about other equally gruesome ritual practices, including the slashing open of the throats of infants, the beheading of young women, and the dressing of teenagers in recently flayed human skins. The shock and disgust that he felt (notwithstanding his own recent personal acts of barbarity) must have fueled his sense of mission and righteousness.*28 12

  The Spaniards saw evidence of sports and leisure activities, too. Near Montezuma’s palace they came upon large, well-constructed ball courts, laid out in great rectangles with stone-stepped viewing areas for large groups of spectators. The court itself was shaped like a huge capital I, and at its center were suspended two large stone rings or hoops through which competitors had to pass a r
ubber ball (which fascinated the Spaniards, who had never seen rubber) using only their elbows or hips. Participants in the game, called tlachtli, wore special leather shoulder, knee, elbow, and even chin guards for the violent encounters, performed primarily by and for the nobility. The “game” was as much ritual as play for the sake of play, and victory was considered to be determined less by the participants’ athletic abilities than by the will of the gods. As such, like almost every aspect of Aztec life, it bore a religious element. The ball game was often used to determine questions of divinity, solve perplexing problems or decide omens or prophecies. During discussions with Montezuma’s priests, Cortés might have discovered an interesting and foreboding anecdote. A few years before the Spaniards came, the sage Nezahualpilli, ruler of Texcoco, had interpreted a comet blazing through the sky to be a sign of the end of the Triple Alliance and a portent of the destruction of the Aztec empire. Montezuma disagreed vehemently, so the two had played a game of tlachtli to let the gods rule on the matter. Montezuma had lost the game.13

  AFTER four days of passing by the temples that defined the ritual center of Tenochtitlán, Cortés wished to see them for himself. He sent to inquire of Montezuma whether he might visit the Great Temple and see the shrine to Huitzilopochtli. The request was quite forward, even bold, for it was Montezuma’s special place of worship and was sacred. Montezuma hesitated, wondering whether to allow it. Finally, in the afternoon, he made the decision to escort Cortés personally. He arrived borne in his litter, and Cortés brought Malinche, a number of his captains, and some armed foot soldiers and followed in the shadow of Montezuma’s imperial train.

  At the foot of the great pyramid Montezuma halted and descended from his litter. Once again servants spread out mats and swept the ground before him. He instructed Cortés to wait and ascended the 114 steps, which were dangerously steep (designed so that sacrifice victims would plunge, unimpeded, from the stone at the top the entire 150 feet to the bottom). The Spaniards craned their necks as, assisted by attendants, Montezuma rose to the summit and disappeared. Not long afterward some priests descended, sent as a courtesy by Montezuma, to aid Cortés and his company on the difficult climb to the top. Cortés was standoffish, ordering the priests not to touch him or his men. Some of his men even drew their swords, knowing what happened in these Aztec places of worship. The priests had backed off, and Cortés led his troop upward, awkwardly hiking the uneven steps one at a time, until he came at last to the flat top where the shrines were located. The high elevation of Tenochtitlán (7,400 feet) and their armor made Cortés and his men huff for air; Montezuma smiled and remarked, “You must be tired from the climb.” Cortés, attempting to quickly catch his breath, retorted arrogantly, “Spaniards are never tired.”14 Montezuma must have found this claim amusing, given the gasping of Cortés and his men.

  The summit area was wide and paved perfectly smooth with flat, broad stones. Montezuma swept his open palm in all directions, indicating the miraculous panoramic view of the city stretching for miles in all directions, the water of the lakes finally giving way to croplands, and indeed the entire Valley of Mexico, which Cortés viewed with a keen military eye. He peered down, hawklike, noting carefully the directions of the causeways and the placement of the drawbridges. It was all marvelous, literally breathtaking, and at the same time quite unbelievable.

  Cortés found the shrines themselves both beautiful and unsettling. The two shrines were to honor Huitzilopochtli, god of war, and Tezcatlipoca, the “smoking mirror” and omnipotent power. In front of each was a sacrificial stone stained dark by the blood of many victims. Black-robed priests stood nearby, their faces eerily pale from fasting and bloodletting, their ears cut and shredded, their black hair matted and knotted with blood.15 Steeling his nerve, Cortés asked Montezuma if he might see the inner sanctum of the shrine to Huitzilopochtli, where the emperor prayed. After consulting his priests, Montezuma consented and led Cortés inside, where the Spaniard witnessed images and scenes that few mortals other than the highest priests and chieftains had ever seen. The idol of Huitzilopochtli loomed over the room, his gigantic form seated on a litter. His eyes were of bright stone, and he bore in one hand a gold bow, in the other gold arrows. His face was bespattered with blood, both fresh and dried, and near him stood smaller idols equally frightening, dragons and “other hideous figures,” including a “fanged serpent.” From his neck hung a chain of gold and silver hearts, symbols of the most important sacrifice. Before the idols burned braziers, in which freshly extracted human hearts spat and sizzled.16

  Sickened, Cortés could only look away in horror, casting his eyes against the blood-drenched walls. The smell of the place overwhelmed him. He faced Montezuma and spoke to him as Malinche translated, “I cannot imagine how a prince as great and wise as your majesty can have failed to realize that these idols of yours are not gods but evil things…devils.” Montezuma heard these words with a steely-eyed stare but for the moment said nothing. Cortés, deciding the time was right, with brazen audacity suggested that a cross be erected here, as a symbol of the one true God. “Let us divide off a part of this sanctuary…as a place where we can put Our Lady, and then you will see, by the fear that your idols have of her, how grievously they have deceived you.”17

  Cortés did not comprehend (nor did he attempt to) the ancient, deeply held importance of ritual sacrifice in the Aztec religion, nor the importance of these idols in their worldview, though it was right there in front of him. For Montezuma and his people, the hearts and blood of the victims were not just desired but absolutely necessary. This was neither sport nor entertainment—it was a requirement, needed to live, like air or water, needed for the continuation of the world. Ritual human sacrifice was the supreme offering in the Aztec belief system. And here stood Cortés, this mysterious interloper, denigrating that which was most sacred. It was too much. It was inconceivable. Deeply affronted, Montezuma held up his hand in defiance. “If I had known that you were going to utter these insults, I should not have shown you my gods,” he said angrily. “We hold them to be very good…they give us health and rain and crops and weather, fertility, and all the victories we desire. So we are bound to worship them and sacrifice to them…Say nothing more against them.”18

  Cortés and his men were led away. As they reached the bottom of the steps, they heard the slow, rhythmic, diabolical beating of death drums and the eerie evening conch shells blown by the priests from the summit of the temple, signaling the setting of the sun and the commencement of ceremony.

  Montezuma remained in the shrine, dismayed and perturbed. He needed to make sacrifices now, to appease his gods for his transgression in bringing Cortés here, for surely they would be angered. He must pray to them. A religious war—between his innumerable gods and this one the Spaniards worshipped—was at full pitch.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Seizure of Empire

  CORTÉS FELT LIKE PRAYING, TOO, and desired a formal setting, a prescribed chapel where he and the men could hold daily mass, properly. For a few days he considered Montezuma’s rebuke to his suggestion of Christian worship at the Great Temple and waited for the emperor’s mood to improve. Then he sent to know whether he might build a chapel near or about his quarters, in the Palace of Axayacatl. To his surprise the emperor consented, even providing some of his masons and carpenters to assist in the project. In just two days a small Christian chapel was erected inside the palace, a seemingly small concession in a city dominated by Aztec temples, but symbolically, and certainly to Cortés, a powerful sign of progress. He and his men now had a legitimate Christian place of worship (overseen by fathers Bartolomé de Olmedo and Juan Díaz) in the epicenter of the Aztec spiritual world. It would hardly be the last.

  While constructing the chapel, one of Cortés’s own carpenters, Alonso Yanez, stumbled on an interesting discovery. He found a door in one of the walls that had quite recently been boarded and plastered over but was cracked at the edges and could still be opened. Because the entire build
ing was newly constructed, Cortés did not think much of it at first, but curious, he decided to investigate and brought men to pry the sealed door open. They followed a short corridor into a large hall, where they found woven baskets and crates. They began to open them quietly. They could hardly believe what they saw: a secret treasure of tributes and taxes paid or collected over Axayacatl’s thirteen-year reign, the blood-wrought spoils of imperial expansion. There were piles of gold and silver, fine jewelry and trinkets and large platters and goblets, as well as many objects crafted in stone, including a good deal of jade. Numerous containers were devoted solely to rich feather work, much of it quetzal. Bernal Díaz said of the wealth contained there, “I was a young man, and it seemed to me as if all the riches of the world were in that one room!”*29 1