What the Textbooks Have To Say About the Conquest of Mexico:
Some Suggestions
for Questions to Ask of the Evidence
(Note All of the Passages Below Are Quoted Verbatim)
Bulliet, Crossley, Headrick, Hirsch, Johnson, and Northrup, The Earth and It’s Peoples: A Global History, Vol. II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997), 505-506.
The most audacious expedition to the mainland was led by an ambitious and ruthless nobleman, Hernándo Cortés (1485-1547). He left Cuba in 1519 with six hundred fighting men and most of the island’s stock of weapons to assault the rich Aztec Empire in central Mexico, bringing the exploitation and conquest that had begun in the Greater Antilles to the American mainland on a massive scale.
Like the Caribbean Indians, the people of Mexico had no precedent by which to judge these strange visitors. Later accounts suggest that some Indians believed Cortés to be the legendary ruler Quetzalcoatl, whose return to earth had been prophesied, and treated him with great deference. Other Indians saw the Spaniards as powerful human allies against the Aztecs, who had imposed their rule during the previous century.
From his glorious capital city Tenochtitlan, the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II (c. 1502-1520) sent messengers to greet Cortés and to try to figure out whether he was god or man, friend or foe. Cortés advanced steadily toward the capital, overcoming Aztec opposition with cavalry charges and steel swords and gaining the support of thousands of Amerindian allies from among the Aztecs’ unhappy subjects.. When they were near, the emperor went out in a great procession, dressed in all his finery, to welcome Cortés with gifts and flower garlands.
Despite Cortés’s initial promise that he came in friendship, Moctezuma quickly found himself a prisoner in his own palace, his treasury looted, and its gold melted down. Soon a major battle was raging in and about the capital between the Spaniards and the supporters of the Aztecs. At one point the Aztecs gained the upper hand, destroying half the Spanish force and four thousand of their Amerindian allies and offering their gods a sacrifice of fifty-three Spaniards and four horses, their severed heads displayed in rows on pikes. Reinforced by new troops from Cuba, Cortés was able to regain the advantage by means of Spanish Cannon and clever battle strategies. The capture of Tenochtitlan was also greatly facilitated by the spread of smallpox from the Antilles, which weakened and killed many of the city’s defenders. When the capital fell, the conquistadors overcame other parts of Mexico.
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Last Updated: October 7, 2008
