Montezuma: Warlord of the Aztecs

Bibliographic Note

The surviving native sources on the history of Mesoamerica are magnificent but lonely. Almost all native books in existence were destroyed after the Conquest by the Spaniards, who believed they were an impediment to the hispanization of the Indians. Of course, the infamous Tlacaélel was also an imperial book burner, but his reach was more focused and not as great. The native sources that speak to us are essentially post-Conquest writings based on now-lost original sources. Among the native sources that stand out is the Anales de Tlatelolco, which is the first work written using Náhuatl in Latin letters, probably 1524–28. It has been brilliantly adapted by Miguel León-Portilla, La Visión de los Vencidos [The broken spears: The Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico] (Boston: Beacon, 1992). León-Portilla has also produced an enchanting compilation of other native sources: Pre-Columbian Literatures of Mexico (Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1986). The grandson of Motecuhzoma II, Hernando Alvarado Tezozómoc, wrote in 1598 an account based on firsthand informants—Crónica Mexicana (Mexico City: Editorial Leyenda, 1944). Crónica Mexicoyotl (Mexico City: Editorial Leyenda, 1949) was a 1609 revision. Tezozómoc asserted his primary sources by identifying them as his mother, Doña Francisca de Motecuzoma, and his father, a Mexica of noble birth. He also had access to numerous other individuals who had lived before the Conquest, as well as now-vanished written native 106 Bibliographic Note accounts. The chief among them appears to have been an original immediately post-Conquest Náhuatl chronicle, the lost Crónica X, which also apparently was a major primary source for other histories in the late sixteenth century. The Dominican friar Fray Bernadino de Sahagún prepared one of the greatest ethnological studies in history, The General History of the Things of New Spain (Santa Fe, N. Mex.: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1975), in thirteen books, also known as the Florentine Codex, of which Book 12 is The Conquest of Mexico. This study was based on the testimony, based on questionnaires, of committees of Indians who had lived through the Conquest. It was composed originally in Náhuatl then translated into Spanish and ultimately finished in 1576–77. The work covered not only the Conquest but also, in its other books, recorded the culture of the Náhuatl-speaking world in incredible detail. Sahagún revised Book 12 under official pressure so as to justify Spanish actions. See Conquest of New Spain, 1585 Revision, trans. Howard F. Cline (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989). Sahagún’s effort was matched by his fellow friar, Fray Diego Durán, who had arrived in Mexico as a child and learned his Náhuatl from his playmates in Texcoco. His study was finished in 1581: The Aztecs: The History of the Indies of New Spain, trans. Doris Heyden and Fernando Horacasitas (New York: Orion, 1964); available in a revised edition as The History of the Indies of New Spain, trans. Doris Heyden (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994). Where Sahagún relied more on living informants , Durán employed native written sources, not only pre-Conquest codices but the rich post-Conquest Indian narratives and transcriptions of codices written in Náhuatl in Latin letters . It was said of Durán’s work that “its main value is that it is the first and only chronicle of the sixteenth century that gives a harmonious view of Tenochtitlan.” Durán also based much of his work on the lost Crónica X. This in turn may have been based on the official history of the Mexica commissioned by Tlacaélel himself and written down after the Conquest by a descendant, which may explain the ancient Cihuacoatl’s prominence in Durán’s bibliographic note 107 account. Durán’s manuscript was sent to Spain after its completion and was not rediscovered, in the National Library of Madrid, until 1854. The Spanish accounts of their image of the Mesoamerican world and their histories of the Conquest as used in this book rely primarily on four works. Cortés himself wrote five letters to Charles V of Spain during his expeditions—Letters from Mexico, ed. and trans. Anthony Pagden (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986). Cortés provided an invaluable and often detailed first-person narrative...