The Aztec Account of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico

The Aztec Account of the Spanish subjection of Mexico Miguel Leon-Portillas allow The Broken Spears Introduction Other resources Aztec life sentence Mexica Culture Mexica Medicine Religion of the juvenile Aztlan Movement Religion of the Mexica Bibliography Major Deitites of the Mexica chela Deitites of the Mexica Aztec Cannibalism An Ecological Necessity? Path of the Conquest On November 8, 1519, the Spanish conquistadors first entered the enormous city of Mexico, the metropolis the Aztecs had built on a lake island.Don Hernando Cortes, who was accompanied by six hundred Spaniards and a great many native allies, at last could devour for himself the temples and palaces ab divulge which he had heard so many marvels. The Spaniards arrived from the direction of Tlalpan, to the south of the city, momentary crosswise one of the wide causeways that connected the island with the mainland. When they reached a locality known as Xoloco, they were welcomed by the last of the Motecuhzoma s, who had come out to meet them in the belief that the tweed men must be Quetzalcoatll and early(a) gods, returning at last from across the waters now known as the Gulf of Mexico.Thus Cortes and his men entered the city, not exclusively as guests, but also as gods coming home. It was the first direct take place between one of the most extraordinaire(postnominal) pre-Columbian cultures and the strangers who would eventually destroy it. Cortes land on the coast at Veracruz on Good Friday, April 22, 1519 the Aztec capital surrendered to him on imperious 13, 1521. The events that took place between these two dates gestate been recounted in a number of chronicles and new(prenominal) writings, of which the best known are the garner Cortes wrote to King Charles V and the True chronicle of the Conquest of Mexico by Bernal Diaz del Castillo.These two works, along with a few others also indite by Spaniards, until now strike been roughly the provided basis on which historians a ttain judged the conquest of one of the greatest civilizations in pre-Columbian America. But these chronicles present only one side of the story, that of the conquerors. For some reason-scorn, perhaps-historians have failed to consider that the conquered might have fasten down their own version in their own language. This book is the fir