Lecture 20

EUH 2001 Spring 2022

Document 1 – Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, Florentine Codex

This is a native Mexica account of the Spanish arrival in Tenochtitlan.

Next they went to Moctezuma's storehouse, in a place called Totocalco, where Moctezuma kept

his personal goods. Happy and eager, they patted each other on the back, so cheerful their heart

was.

And when they arrived, when they entered the house of treasures, it was like they had arrived in

Paradise. They searched everywhere and coveted everything, for, yes, they were dominated by

their greed.

Then they took out all of the goods which were his [Moctezuma's] own exclusive possessions:

his personal belongings, all of which were precious: necklaces with thick stones, arm bands of

quetzal feathers, bracelets of gold, golden bands with shells for the knees, ankle bracelets with

little gold bells, and the royal crowns and all the royal attire, without number, everything that

belonged to him and was reserved to him only.

They took everything, they appropriated everything, all they snatched as if it were their own.

They appropriated everything as if it was their luck [to find it]. And after they removed the gold,

when they had torn it all off, they piled it up all the precious feathers, everything else in the

middle of the courtyard, in the center of it.

And when all of the gold had been gathered, then Malinche summoned all the noblemen. She

climbed upon the roof, on a parapet. She said: "Mexicanos, come here! The Spaniards are greatly

afflicted. Bring them food, fresh water, and all that is needed. For they are already tired and

exhausted. Why don't you want to come? It seems like you are angry."

The Mexicas were too frightened to approach. They were crushed by terror and would not risk

coming forward. They shied away as if the Spaniards were wild beasts, as if the hour were

midnight on the blackest night of the year. Yet they did not abandon the Spaniards to hunger and

thirst. They brought them whatever they needed, but shook with fear as they did so. They

delivered the supplies to the Spaniards with trembling hands, then turned and hurried away.

EUH 2001 Spring 2022

Document 2 – Diary of Díaz del Castillo, Vol. 2, chapter 109.

This is a Spanish account of the collection of gold and other valuables from the Mexica.

As Captain Diego de Ordas and the other soldiers already named by me, arrived with samples of

gold and the report that all the land was rich, Cortés, by the advice of Ordas and the other

Captains and soldiers, decided to speak to, and demand of Moctezuma, that all the Caciques

[Nobles/Lords] and towns of the land should pay tribute to His Majesty, and that he himself as

the greatest Chieftain, should also contribute from his treasure. Moctezuma replied that he would

send to all his towns to ask for gold, but that many of them did not possess any, only some jewels

of little value, which they had inherited from their ancestors.

He at once dispatched chieftains to the places where there were mines and ordered each town to

give so many ingots of fine gold, of the same size and thickness as others that they used to pay as

tribute [to Moctezuma], and the messengers carried with them as samples two small ingots. From

other parts they only brought small jewels of little value.

We began to melt it down with the help of the Indian goldsmiths, who were, as I have said,

natives of Escapuzalco and they made broad bars of it, each bar measuring three fingers of the

band across. When it was already melted and made into bars, they brought another present

separately which the Grand Moctezuma had said that he would give, and it was a wonderful

thing to behold the wealth of gold and the richness of the other jewels that were brought, for

some of the chalchihuites [precious green stones or turquoise] were so fine that among these

Caciques said they were worth a vast quantity of gold. The three blowguns with their pellet

moulds, and their coverings of jewels and pearls, and pictures in feathers of little birds covered

with pearls and other birds, all were of great value. I will not speak of the plumes and feathers

and other rich things for I shall never finish calling them to mind.

Let me say that all the gold I have spoken about was marked with an iron stamp, which had been

made by order of Cortés and the King's Officers, who had been appointed by Cortés with the

consent of all of us and in the name of His Majesty until he should give other instructions.

EUH 2001 Spring 2022

Document 3 – Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, Florentine Codex

This is a native account of life during the Spanish siege of Tenochtitlan.

And all the common people suffered from hunger; many died of hunger. They no longer drank

good, pure water, but the water they drank was salty. Many people died of it, and because of it

many got dysentery and died. Everything was eaten--lizards and swallows; and maize straw, and

grass that grows on salt flats. And they ate colorin wood; they chewed on glue flowers, plaster,

leather, and deerskin, which they roasted, baked, and toasted so that they could eat them, and

they ate rough herbs and even mud [bricks]. There had never been such suffering. It was

terrifying how it is to be besieged, and great numbers died of hunger. And little by little they [the

enemy] pressed us back against the wall; hemmed us in and contained us.

Document 4 – Philip T. Hoffman, Why did Europe Conquer the World? (2015)

A historian explains how Cortes was able to conquer the Aztec Empire.

For some military historians, the answer is clear: the Europeans simply had better technology.

Epidemics and divisions among the natives helped in the Americas, Australia and the Pacific

Islands, but technology gave the Europeans the edge, particularly against centralized empires like

the Aztecs and Incas… What was the technology? It was, first and foremost, the weapons and

defenses spawned by a military revolution that swept through early modern Europe as

gunpowder transformed warfare: firearms, artillery, ships armed with guns, and fortifications that

could resist bombardment. It also included older piercing and cutting weapons that had been

honed during the Middle Ages…

With…the same technology, Cortes and Pizzaro could vanquish much bigger Native American

armies. The cutting weapons—in particular, the swords and lances in the hands of horsemen—

were Pizzaro’s greatest advantage, along with discipline and experience… Cutting weapons and

discipline helped Cortes too, but so did other parts of the technology—in particular thirteen small

armed galleys—brigantines—that he constructed in order to take Tenochtitlan. He needed them

because the Aztec capital lay on an island in the middle of a lake…

Although there was certainly more to Cortes’ victory than just brigantines, they were clearly part

of the gunpowder technology he had at his disposal. Some historians would nonetheless deny

that the technology really mattered much at all. In their view, Cortes won not because of

brigantines or other weapons, but because of other natives’ animosity to the Aztecs, which he

could exploit to gain allies and eventually take the emperor’s place at the top… But we must not

forget that siding with Cortes was a strategic decision for his allies. They chose to join him for a

simple reason: defeat of the Aztecs was possible only if they fought alongside Cortes… In short,

his technology and their numbers made Cortes look like a winner. Their decision to join him was

in fact clear evidence of the power of technology, not a sign that it was irrelevant.

EUH 2001 Spring 2022

Document 5 – Bartolome de las Casas, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies (1542)

This is a Spanish account of the conquest of the Caribbean and Mainland of the Americas.

Bartolome de las Casas was a famous defender of Native American rights.

And of all the infinite universe of humanity, these people [Natives] are the most guileless, the

most devoid of wickedness and duplicity, the most obedient and faithful to their native masters

and to the Spanish Christians whom they serve. They are by nature the most humble, patient, and

peaceable, holding no grudges, free from embroilments, neither excitable nor quarrelsome. These

people are the most devoid of rancors, hatreds, or desire for vengeance of any people in the

world. And because they are so weak and complaisant, they are less able to endure heavy labor

and soon die of no matter what malady... They are also poor people, for they not only possess

little but have no desire to possess worldly goods. For this reason they are not arrogant,

embittered, or greedy. Their repasts are such that the food of the holy fathers in the desert can

scarcely be more parsimonious, scanty, and poor… They are very clean in their persons, with

alert, intelligent minds, docile and open to doctrine, very apt to receive our holy Catholic faith, to

be endowed with virtuous customs, and to behave in a godly fashion. And once they begin to

hear the tidings of the Faith, they are so insistent on knowing more and on taking the sacraments

of the Church and on observing the divine cult that, truly, the missionaries who are here need to

be endowed by God with great patience in order to cope with such eagerness.

Yet into this sheepfold, into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who

immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for

many days. And Spaniards have behaved in no other way during the past forty years, down to the

present time, for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing,

and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods

of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola once

so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a

population of barely two hundred persons… All the people were slain or died after being taken

into captivity and brought to the Island of Hispaniola to be sold as slaves.

As for the vast mainland, which is ten times larger than all Spain, even including Aragon and

Portugal, containing more land than the distance between Seville and Jerusalem, or more than

two thousand leagues, we are sure that our Spaniards, with their cruel and abominable acts, have

devastated the land and exterminated the rational people who fully inhabited it. We can estimate

very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the

Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In

truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of the slain is more like fifteen

million.

EUH 2001 Spring 2022

Document 6 – Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism (1986)

An environmental historian gives a brief history of pigs in the Americas.

Pigs did not prosper in the very cold regions of the colonies, for obvious reasons, nor in bare, hot

country, because they cannot tolerate strong, direct sunlight and unmitigated heat; they must

have easy access to water and cover in the tropics. But in most of the early colonies in the

Americas and Australasia there was enough moisture and shade to satisfy pigs, plus an

abundance of roots and mast- and soon after the arrival of the whites a great plenty of pigs…

Healthy sows have large litters, up to ten or more piglets apiece, and with an abundance of food,

pigs can increase at the velocity of funds deposited at high compound interest. Within a few

years of Espanola’s discovery, the number running wild was “infinitos,” and “all the mountains

swarmed with them.” They spread to the other Greater Antilles and to the mainland in the 1490s,

where they continued to multiply rapidly. They followed in the footsteps of Francisco Pizzaro

(who allegedly began life as a swineherd) and were soon doubling and redoubling their numbers

in the area of the conquered Incan Empire…

Pigs were the favorite choice of explorers, pirates, whalers, and sealers for “seeding” remote

islands to assure a supply of meat on the hoof for the next set of transient Europeans… As a

result, pigs were already running wild on islands in the Rio de la Plata, on Barbados and

Bermuda, on Sable Island off Nova Scotia, on the Channel Islands off California, and on the

islands of the Bass Strait between Tasmania and the mainland when mention of these patches of

land first appears in the written record.

EUH 2001 Spring 2022

Document 7 – Felipe Fernandez Armesto, The World: A History (2010)

A world history textbook author assesses some of the explanations for Spain’s conquest of the

Americas.

How was it possible [the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Incan empires]? In early colonial

times, four explanations occurred to those who tried to make sense of the way the conquest had

turned out. They clergy favored the view that the conquest was miraculous and providential—

procured by God for his own purposes. The warriors who took part in the successful expeditions,

their heirs, and cronies explained it as the result of their own godlike prowess… The Spaniards’

Native American allies saw the overthrow of the Aztecs and Incas as their own work, with a little

help from their Spanish friends. Illustrations in documents of the Tlaxcalteca—the most

numerous and formidable of the Indian communities who joined the alliance against the

Aztecs—show Native Americans in the vanguard of every attack and Spaniards, typically,

brining up the rear. Along with the Tlaxcalteca, the Huexotzinca, another people hostile to the

Aztecs, claimed exemption from taxation in postconquest times on the grounds that the conquest

had been mainly their own work.

Document 8 - Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, Florentine Codex

This is a native account of the sickness that spread throughout the Mexica lands

But before the Spaniards had risen against us, first there came to be prevalent a great sickness, a

plague. It was in Tepeilhuitl that it originated, that there spread over the people a great

destruction of men. Some it indeed covered [with pustules]; they were spread everywhere, on

one's face, on one's head, on one's breast, etc. There was indeed perishing; many indeed died of

it. No longer could they walk; they only lay in their abodes, in their beds. No longer could they

move, no longer could they bestir themselves, no longer could they raise themselves, no longer

could they stretch themselves out face down, no longer could they stretch themselves out on their

backs. And when they bestirred themselves, much did they cry out. There was much perishing.

Like a covering, covering-like, were the pustules. Indeed many people died of them, and many

just died of hunger. There was death from hunger; there was no one to take care of another; there

was no one to attend to another.

And on some, each pustule was placed on them only far apart; they did not cause much suffering,

neither did many die of them. And many people were harmed by them on their faces; their faces

were roughened. Of some, the eyes were injured; they were blinded.