Montezuma: Warlord of the Aztecs

Notes

Notes Preface 1. The name “Aztec” is derived from their place of origin—Atzlan. On their journey, their deity ordered them to change their name to “Mexica.” After the Conquest, when their history was studied , the name Aztec was revived and applied to all the Náhuatlspeaking inhabitants of Central Mexico. Chapter 1 1. Richard F. Townsend, The Aztecs, rev. ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), 65. 2. The name “Cihuacoatl” is that of a goddess; the title probably originated as a priestly office. 3. R. C. Padden, The Hummingbird and the Hawk: Conquest and Sovereignty in the Valley of Mexico 1503-1541 (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 6–7. In their southward migration, the Mexica passed through the land of the Tarascans in Michoacán. The Tarascan primary deity was a hummingbird, its name, tzinzuni, yielded the Náhuatl word huitzilin, to which was added opochtli, meaning “on the left.” In Mesoamerica right and left signified north and south. The Mexica had learned of the cult as they passed south through the land of the Tarascans before entering the Valley of Mexico. In their days of empire the Mexica would import green hummingbird feathers from Michoacán to adorn the idol of Huitzilopochtli. This “aura of divinity” was later attached to a strong leader whose memory evolved into a hero cult and then a divinity. Additionally, the hummingbird image had a consistently fixed association with sacrifice in Mesoamerica. 98 4. Nigel Davies, The Aztecs (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 125. 5. Frances Gillmor, The King Danced in the Marketplace (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1964), 10–11. 6. Diego Durán, The History of the Indies of New Spain, trans. Doris Heyden and Fernando Horcasitas (New York: Orion, 1964), 184–85. 7. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1956), 217. 8. Durán (p. 199) insists that the figure of 80,400 is accurate, having checked numerous other Indian sources in “written and painted manuscripts.” This figure has generated one of the great controversies of Mexican history. Many prominent historians scoff at the figure as an administrative impossibility, simply from the perspective of body disposal. The Nazis also found body disposal a serious problem, in the death camps; however, it was not a problem that was allowed to interfere with the killing. 9. Ibid., 199. 10. Tezozomoc, “Crónica Mexicayótl,” Anales de Museo de Arqueologia, Historia y Etnografia, epcoa 4, vol. 5 (1927), 333; Jonathan Kandell, La Capital: The Biography of Mexico City (New York: Henry Holt, 1989), 54. 11. Tezozomoc, 384. 12. Neil Baldwin, Legends of the Plumed Serpent: Biography of a Mexican God (New York: Public Affairs, 1998), 39. Chapter 2 1. Diego Durán, The History of the Indies of New Spain, trans. Doris Heyden and Fernando Horcasitas (New York: Orion, 1964), 220. 2. Ibid. 3. R. C. Padden, The Hummingbird and the Hawk: Conquest and Sovereignty in the Valley of Mexico 1503–1541 (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 79. 4. Fray Bernadino de Sahagún, The Florentine Codex, Book 10, The People, Part XI (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1961), 15. 5. Codex Ramírez (Mexico City: Editorial Leyenda, 1944), 97; quoted in Davies, The Aztecs, 209. notes 99 100 notes 6. Codex Ramírez, 97–98, quoted in Davies, 214. 7. Davies, The Aztecs, 97–98. 8. Durán, 215. 9. Ibid., 215–16. 10. Ibid., 224. 11. Padden, 11. 12. There is an interesting parallel with the way Mohammed elevated the patron deity of his Koresh tribe, Allah, the Arabian moon god, one among many in the pagan Arab pantheon, into the only god. 13. Ixtlilxochitl, Historia, caps. lxxi–lxxii, cited in Padden, 89. 14. Tezozómoc, Hernando Alvarado, Crónica Mexicana (Mexico City: Editorial Leyenda, 1944), 402; in Davies, 213. 15. C. A. Burland, Montezuma: Lord of the Aztecs (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1973), 149–50. 16. Davies, 217. 17. Ibid., 228. 18. William H. Prescott, History of The Conquest of Mexico (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1873), 2: 82; Burland, 146; Hernan Cortés, Letters from Mexico, ed. and trans. Anthony Pagden (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), 109. 19. Burland, 119, 121, 126. 20. Cortés, 110–11. 21. Ibid., 112. Chapter 3 1. Diego Durán, The History of the Indies of New...