TRACES OFAZTEC CULTURAL MEMORY INSIXTEENTH-CENTURY SONGS ANDCHRONICLES: The Case of Tlacahuepan

ABSTRACT: This article aims to analyze traces of Aztec cultural memory recorded in sixteenth-century cultural sources of Central Mexico. It is a study of the particular case of an Aztec heronamed Tlacahuepan, whose glorious death was commemorated in many songs and chronicles.The texts in question reveal highly symbolic language, as well as clearly established narrativepatterns. The study of their discursive tools can cast considerable light on the ideologicalbackground that underlies the oral tradition on which these stories have been based. It canalso contribute to a better understanding of the methods and strategies employed by theAztecs to memorize the past and explain the present.

KEYWORDS: Aztecs, cultural memory, myth, history, songs (cuicatl)

One of the most admired occupations among the Aztecs, next to warfare,was the composition of songs. The texts of the Nahua cuicatl, whichcould be translated as “song-dance” and were collected in the

sixteenth-century manuscripts of Cantares mexicanos and Romances de los señoresde la Nueva España, are examples of relatively direct transmission of the Nahuaverbal art. Orality was also one of the channels through which the official stateideology, knowledge of the past, and cultural patterns were transmitted. That iswhy, as David Damrosch observed, many of these songs, apart from theelaborate aesthetic discourse on values such as friendship, beauty, or war, alsoreflect the shifting historical contexts in which they were composed orreworked.1 In fact, according to Damrosch, being a direct product of thecolonial reality and yet deriving from the aesthetics of precolonial oral tradition,

I would like to express my deep gratitude to the anonymous readers for The Americas for their valuable comments thatgreatly enriched my work. I am also indebted to Julia Madajczak, Agnieszka Brylak, and John F. Schwaller for theirconstructive suggestions, advice, and support. The results presented in this article are part of the investigation project“The Cultural Topoi in the Pre-Hispanic and Early Colonial Oral Tradition of Central Mexico,” financed by theNational Science Centre of Poland (UMO-2018/28/C/HS2/00227).

1. David Damrosch, “The Aesthetics of the Conquest: Aztec Poetry before and after Cortés,” Representations 33(1991): 101–120.

T H E A M E R I C A S77:4/October 2020/513–537

© THE AUTHOR(S) 2020. PUBLISHED BY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSON BEHALF OF ACADEMY OF AMERICAN FRANCISCAN HISTORY. THIS IS AN OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE, DISTRIBUTED

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many of these “poems” can be interpreted in a bivalent way, frequently makingreference to the precontact and postconquest events at the same time.2

Undervalued for many years, the texts of cuicatl were rediscovered at the end ofthe nineteenth century when several of them were translated into English andpublished by Daniel Brinton.3 In the twentieth century, they became an objectof more careful study with the works of Leonhard Schultze Jena, and above all,in the translation prepared by Ángel María Garibay Kintana.4 The work ofGaribay was continued by Miguel León-Portilla and Patrick Johansson.León-Portilla also supervised the publication of the most recent translation ofthe manuscript of Cantares mexicanos into Spanish.5 As for the renderings ofthese songs into English, both manuscripts have been translated by JohnBierhorst, who also prepared the Nahuatl-English Dictionary and Concordance tothe Cantares Mexicanos.6 Furthermore, the songs in question were the subjectof study of such scholars as Richard Haly, David Damrosch, Kay A. Read andJane Rosenthal, Camilla Townsend, Marie Sautron, Miguel Figueroa Saavedra,Agnieszka Brylak, and Katarzyna Szoblik, among others.7

The idea proposed in this article is that the Nahua songs concerned with historicalevents played an essential role in the process of constructing and transmitting Azteccultural memory. Jan Assmann defines cultural memory as an institutionalized and

2. Damrosch, “The Aesthetics”: 108.3. Daniel Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems

(Philadelphia: Brinton, 1887).4. Gerdt Kutscher, The Translation of the “Cantares Mexicanos” by Leonhard Schultze Jena (Copenhagen:

Munksgaard, 1958); Ángel María Garibay Kintana, Poesía náhuatl I. Romances de los Señores de la Nueva España,Manuscrito de Juan Bautista de Pomar (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México [hereafter UNAM],1964); Ángel María Garibay Kintana, Poesía náhuatl II. Cantares mexicanos (Mexico City: UNAM, 1965); ÁngelMaría Garibay Kintana, Poesía náhuatl III. Cantares mexicanos (Mexico City: UNAM, 1968).

5. Miguel León-Portilla, Cantos y crónicas del México Antiguo (Madrid: Historia 16, 1986); Miguel León-Portilla,Quince poetas del mundo Náhuatl (Mexico City: Diana, 1994); Patrick Johansson, La palabra de los aztecas (Mexico City:Trillas, 1993); Patrick Johansson, Miccacuicatl: las exequias de los señores mexicas (Mexico City: Primer Círculo, 2016);Miguel León-Portilla et al., Cantares mexicanos (xico City: UNAM, Fideicomiso Teixidor, 2011).

6. John Bierhorst, Cantares mexicanos. Songs of the Aztecs (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985); JohnBierhorst, A Nahuatl-English Dictionary of Concordance to the “Cantares mexicanos,” Analytic Transcription andGrammatical Notes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985); John Bierhorst, Ballads of the Lords of the New Spain:The Codex “Romances de los Señores de la Nueva España” (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009).

7. Richard Haly, “The Poetics of the Aztecs,”New Scholar 10 (1986): 85–130; Damrosch, “The Aesthetics,” 101–120; Kay A. Read and Jane Rosenthal, “The Chalcan Woman’s Song: Sex as a Political Metaphor in Fifteenth-CenturyMexico,” The Americas 62:3 (2006): 313–348; Camilla Townsend, “‘What in the World Have You Done to Me, MyLover?’ Sex, Servitude, and Politics among the Pre-Conquest Nahuas as Seen in the Cantares Mexicanos,” The Americas62:3 (2006): 347–389; Marie Sautron, “El lenguaje sonoro del canto náhuatl prehispánico,” Hesperia: Anuario deFilología Hispánica 4 (2001): 115–136; Marie Sautron “In izquixochitl in cacahuaxochitl. Presencia y significación de unbinomio floral en el discurso poético náhuatl prehispánico durante la conquista de México,” Estudios de CulturaNáhuatl 38 (2007): 243–264; Miguel Figueroa Saavedra, Xopancuicatl: Cantos de lluvia, cantos de verano: estudio yedición bilingüe de cantos nahuas (Veracruz: Universidad Veracruzana, 2011); Agnieszka Brylak, “Some Remarks on theTeponazcuicatl of the pre-Hispanic Nahua,” Ancient Mesoamerica 27:2 (2016): 429–439; Katarzyna Szoblik, Entre lospapeles de ocelote entono mi canto yo, Quetzalpetlatzin (Mexico City; Bielsko-Biala: Centro de Estudios de Antropologíade la Mujer; Universidad de Bielsko-Biala–Campana Sumergida, 2015).

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ritualized way of memorizing the past that which plays an important role in shapingand reinforcing the sense of identity in a given community.8 According to FedericoNavarrete Linares, all of the altepetl (city-states) of the Basin ofMexico had their ownhistoric traditions, which narrated the history of the region in a way differing a littlefrom the others.9 As many of the investigators who study the Nahua narrations ofthe past indicate, all these stories were composed around the facts that describedthe process of the group’s identity formation, reasserted its rights to the occupiedterritories, and explained its political relations with the other altepetl.10 Theepisodes in question, in addition to purely referential elements, frequently alsocontained fragments that due to their symbolic character clearly evoked the realityof myth, explaining the present reality and defining the group’s identity in thelight of ideology and religious beliefs.

The basic context for the enshrinement and transmission of this historicknowledge was the royal house, tecpan, whose members could control the“official” version of the altepetl’s oral tradition.11 In this way, those Nahuasongs that were supposed to transmit the “authorized” narration of the pastwere a perfect tool for construction of cultural memory and transmission.12

According to Assmann, perpetuating the memory of the past in traditionalcultures included three basic elements: memorization of the information in apoetic form, its evocation during the ritual representation, and transmission viacollective participation.13 In precolonial Central Mexico, the spaces for thedevelopment of these three elements were the schools, called calmecac,telpochcalli, and cuicacalli. Those were the places where Aztec adolescents weretaught the songs and dances necessary to participate proficiently in ritualperformances. They also absorbed the ideology, according to which the mostvaluable destination of every man was to die in honor of the gods, either on thebattlefield or on the sacrificial stone.14 In consequence, the songs they learnedpresented such a death as the most desirable human destiny.

8. Jan Assmann, Pamieć kulturowa. Pismo, zapamietywanie i polityczna tozsamosć w cywilizacjach starozytnych(Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2008), 36.

9. Federico Navarrete Linares, Los orígenes de los pueblos indígenas del Valle de México. Los altepetl y sus historias(Mexico City: UNAM, 2011).

10. Navarrete Linares, Los orígenes, 21–92; Angela Herren Rajagopalan, Portraying the Aztec Past (Austin:University of Texas Press, 2019), 2–3. On the relation between the oral tradition and codices, see also CamillaTownsend, Annals of Native America: How the Nahuas of Colonial Mexico Kept Their History Alive (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2017).

11. Navarrete Linares, Los orígenes, 49.12. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex. General History of the Things of New Spain, Arthur

J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, eds. (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research, University of Utah, 1950–1982), 2:208; Fray Diego Durán, Historia de la Indias de la Nueva España e islas de Tierra Firme, Rosa Camelo andJosé Rubén Romero, eds. (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes [hereafter CONACULTA],1995), 2:194–196; Damrosch, “The Aesthetics,” 104–105.

13. Assmann, Pamieć kulturowa, 69.14. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, 2:55–67; Durán, Historia de las Indias, 2:193–196.

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To achieve this effect, the composers used awhole set ofmetaphorical expressions,principally based on flower- and bird-related associations. To give severalexamples, a war conducted with the objective of obtaining captives forsacrificial purposes was called xochiyaoyotl, “a flowery war,” while death in sucha war was referred to as xochimiquiztli, “flowery death.” The warriors werefrequently compared to eagles (quauhtli), quetzal birds (quetzalli), roseatespoonbills (tlauhquecholli), or Montezuma oropendolas (zacuanquecholli),among others. These metaphors were, in fact, directly corresponding to Aztecbeliefs, according to which the warriors who died a “flowery death” weretransformed into colorful birds and enjoyed their eternity sipping the nectar ofthe flowering trees in the land of abundance and happiness.15 The visions“painted” with the words of the songs were so picturesque that later, in thecolonial era, the same flower- and bird-related metaphors were adapted for therepresentation of the Christian paradise.16

Another essential tool for shaping the ideology of Aztec youths was references tothe cultural memory of the community. By recalling past events—migrations,foundations, wars, and genealogies, as well as the heroic deeds of the warriorswho died a “flowery death”—the singers of cuicatl justified and consolidated thecommunity’s social order and system of values. As a consequence, the charactersthat appear in these songs are also frequently mentioned by other sources,namely the chronicles written by the descendants of the indigenous nobility,among them Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Fernando Alvarado Tezozómoc,and Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, as well asin works by the Spanish clergy, such as fray Bernardino de Sahagún, fray DiegoDurán, and fray Juan de Tovar.17 Among the most frequently mentionedcharacters are famous Aztec governors such as Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina,Axayacatl, and Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, and two of the most distinguishedrulers of Tetzcoco, Nezahualcoyotl and his son, Nezahualpilli.

The historical identity of these figures is, therefore, not in question. However, ashas been mentioned above, cultural memory tends to elaborate its own version ofthe facts and shapes its heroes according to its own needs. For this reason, whenanalyzing the figures of heroes commemorated in songs, the following questionsshould be posed: Towhat extent is the image of these warriors presented in cuicatl

15. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, 2:49–50.16. Louise Burkhart, “Flowery Heaven: The Aesthetic of Paradise in Nahuatl Devotional Literature,”Res: Anthropology

and Aesthetics 21 (1992): 88–109.17. Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Historia de la nación chichimeca (Madrid: Dastin Historia, 2000); Fernando

Alvarado Tezozómoc, Crónica mexicana (Madrid: Dastin Historia, 1997); Domingo de San Antón MuñónChimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, Las ocho relaciones y el memorial de Colhuacán (Mexico City: CONACULTA; Cien deMéxico, 1998); Sahagún, Florentine Codex; Durán, Historia de las Indias; Juan de Tovar, Historia y creencias de los Indiosde México (Madrid: Miraguano, 2001).

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a reflection of their real lives? How were their stories reshaped by the singers tomeet expectations of the tecpan? What was the mechanism that underlay thesecreations? The following case study of Tlacahuepan, one of the mostdistinguished warriors mentioned by the cuicatl, is aimed at exploring answersto these questions.

TLACAHUEPAN, HERO OF THE AZTEC SONGS

The name Tlacahuepan is a compound of two nouns: tlaca[tl], “a man, person, ornobleman,” and huepan[tli], translated by Fray Alonso deMolina as “a beam to becarved” or “dragged wood” and also clearly related to the verb huepana “to dragwood.”18 The whole name could thus be translated principally as “HumanBeam,” and alternatively as “Man Dragged as Wood.”

The character of this name is evoked in the songs that are basically dedicated to warthemes, for example,Yaocuicatl, “WarSong,”orYaocuicacuextecayotl, “Huaxtec-styleWar Song,” among many others.19 The following lines present several samples oftext that illustrate the principal linguistic tools and metaphorical referencesemployed by the composers of the cuicatl when referring to this hero. The firstfragment comes from the song entitled Ycuic neçahualpilli yc tlamato huexotzinco.Cuextecayotl, Quitlali cuicani Tececepouhqui, or “The song of Nezahualpilli whenhe took captives in Huexotzinco. [It tells of] the Huastec themes, it was writtendown by the singer Tececepouhqui.” From the song:

The owners of the mounds. The owners of the captives make those of the burnthouses dance. The owners of the flowery drums, the owners of the preciousshields Eta.

He is already bleeding, my nobleman, the golden one, the Huastec Lord, theowner of the sapota skirt, Tlacahuepan. He is rejoicing in Quenonamican aoyyayeaye oyayayaa

With the flowery liquor of war, he is drunk, my nobleman, the golden one, theHuastec Lord Eta.20

The image created by this song is very vivid and picturesque. While the victoriouswarriors, “the owners of the flowered drums, the owners of the precious shields,”begin to prepare their captives for sacrifice by making them perform a captive

18. Fray Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana, y mexicana y castellana (Mexico City:Porrúa, 1992): huepantli, 2:115v, 1:117v, 13v; huepana 2:156v, 1:13v.

19. Miguel León-Portilla, ed., Cantares mexicanos (Mexico City: UNAM, 1994), fol. 64r, fols. 65r-66r.20. Ye tlatileque ya yolimaleya anca quimittotia in ihuatzalhuã huehuexochihuaque o ça queçal Eta. Ye ço yahqui

nopillotzin coçahuic cuextecatotec tzapocueyeha tlacahuepan motimalohuaya, quenonamicã aiyyaye aye oya yayaa.Yaoxochioctica yhuintitiaqui aa nopillotzin coçahuic cuextecatotec Eta. Cantares mexicanos, fols. 55v-56r, paleogr.Bierhorst, Cantares, 326. English translation is by the author.

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dance, on the battlefield there lies one of the Aztec captains, Tlacahuepan. Hefought very well, for “with the flowered liquor of war he is drunk,” and yet hewas hurt, and now, still bleeding, he is passing to the eternal glory, expressedhere with one of the Nahuatl terms for the otherworld, Quenonamican, “TheMysterious Place.” The text of the song describes him with two titles, whichrequire some explanation: Cuextecatotec, “the Huastec Lord,” andnopillotzincoçahuic, tzapocueyeha, “my nobleman, the golden one, the owner ofthe sapota skirt.”

Cuexteca is the name with which the colonial sources refer to the inhabitants ofCuextlan, the land known today as the Huasteca. It is situated on the coast ofthe Gulf of Mexico, extending approximately from the Cazones River in thesouth to the Soto de la Marina River in the north.21 Due to its warm climateand lush vegetation, the Huasteca was considered by the Nahua as a land offertility. The informants of fray Bernardino de Sahagún describe this land: “Andthere are all kinds of food; many different kinds of food grow there, none ofwhich appear here, [such as] the one named quequexquic. Many otherwonderful [plants] grow there; the sweet potato every month. There are alldifferent kinds of cotton. It is called the land of food, the land of flowers.”22

What is more, Hernando de Alvarado Tezozómoc reports that the coastal regionswere obliged to pay tribute to Tenochtitlan with various luxurious goods, such as“precious stones, emeralds, other chalchihuitl stones, gold, precious plumage ofdifferent types and colors, different types of precious birds, called xiuhtototl,tlauhquechol, tzinitzcan . . . and precious birds called zacuan and toznene,various species of parrots, and ayocuan, eagles.23

All the bird species enumerated by Alvarado Tezozómoc appear in various Aztecsongs as metaphors for the warriors who died in a battle or sacrifice. They couldappreciate the eternal happiness of the otherworld on a vast plain, full of woods,situated in the place where the Sun rises, that is, in the east.24 Thus, it seemsnatural, that the eastern coastal plain of the Huasteca, with its lush vegetationand abundance of bird species, must have been conceptualized by the Nahua as

21. Felipe Solís Olguín, “Los huastecos,” Arqueología Mexicana 14:79 (2006): 28–31.22. Auh ixqujchvnca in tonacaiotl, ocmjectlamantli, in vmpamochioaxuchiqualli, in atlenjcanneci, in jtoca,

quequexqujc: ocmjec in maviztic, vmpamochioa, in camotli, in jxqujch in metztli: mocha vnca in nepapanichcatl, in xuchitl,mjtoa Tonacatlapan, xuchitlapan. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, 10:185. Translation is by Anderson and Dibble.

23. piedras preçiosas, esmeraldas, otras piedras chalchihuitl, oro, preçiada plumería de diversas maneras y colores, de diversasmaneras de preçiada abes bolantes, nombrados xiuhtototl, tlauhquechol, tzinitzcan (. . . ) y preçiadas abes bivas <que> llamanzacuan y toznene, papagayos de muchas maneras, y ayocuan, águilas.Alvarado Tezozómoc,Crónica mexicana, 91. Translationis by the author.

24. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, (Madrid: Sociedad QuintoCentenario – Alianza Editorial, 1988), 1:222–223.

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the threshold of the House of the Sun. Tlacahuepan, whom the analyzedfragment presents as dying, can, then, be described as the Huastec Lordbecause he is about to depart to the House of the Sun. Alternatively, maybe heis already there, transformed into one of the tropical birds, enjoyingTonacatlapan, xuchitlapan, the “land of food, the land of flowers.”25

On the other hand, it must be remembered that the inhabitants of the Huasteca,called by the Nahua Cuexteca or Tohueyome, or “People like us,” according toinformants of Sahagún, were stereotyped by the inhabitants of the central plateauas libertines and drunkards.26 According to one of the Nahua myths, in theprimordial times, when all groups were still travelling together, the leader of theHuastecs, called Cuextecatl, got drunk with pulque and denuded himself inthe sacred place of Mount Chichinauhia. As a result of this lack of respect fordivinity, he and his people, the Huastecs, were forced to separate themselves fromthe rest of the migrants and go back to the place from whence they had come,that is, to the coast.27 Like this mythic Huastec lord, Tlacahuepan is described inthe song as metaphorically besotted with the liquor of war, which forced him toseparate himself from those who survived and follow the road toward the easternshore. As for the sexual excess of the Huastecs, the relation between Tlacahuepanand another “Huastec Lord,” Tohueyo, will be discussed in subsequent sections.

Another important expression, nopillotzin coçahuic, tzapocueyeha, “my nobleman,the golden one, the owner of the sapota skirt,”makes reference to one of the Aztecgods, Xipe Totec, “Our Lord, the Owner of the Skin.” According to theinformants of Sahagún, the cult of this god was brought to Central Mexicofrom the Huasteca, for which reason the title of the Huastec Lord, discussedabove, could be also treated as one of the titles of Xipe.28 This and the otherexpressions are in fact the enumeration of the characteristics of this deity. Thegolden-color skin of the flayed men worn by Xipe on one hand refers to thecolor of maize, underlining his relationship with agriculture; on the other, it isa sign of his strong connection with gold and goldsmiths, of whom he waspatron.29 The skirt made of the sapota leaves was another characteristic featureof Xipe Totec’s image (see Figure 1).

For the Aztecs, Xipe Totec, also known as Tlatlauhqui Tezcatlipoca, or “RedTezcatlipoca,” was the god of spring, vegetation renewal, and new life

25. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, 10:185.26. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, 10:193.27. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, 10:185–186, 193–194.28. Sahagún, Historia general, 1:8829. Elizabeth Baquedano, “El oro azteca y sus conexiones con el poder, la fertilidad agrícola, la guerra y la muerte,”

Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 36 (2005): 359–381.

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emerging from death.30 Thus, it can be stated that by comparing Tlacahuepan toXipe Totec the singer meant to show him as undergoing the crucialtransformation—when the life essence, which until that moment had beenenclosed in the “shell” of his body, was finally emerging to start a new life asone of the glorious Sun companions.

FIGURE 1Xipe Totec Wearing Flayed Yellow Skin, the Sapota Skirt and the Headdress of the

Roseate Spoonbill Feathers

Source: Codex Borbonicus (1980) Códice Borbónico. Manuscrito mexicano de la biblioteca del Palais Bourbon(Libro adivinatorio y ritual ilustrado),Mexico, Siglo XXI, f. 14, redrawn by Katarzyna Szoblik

30. Ángel María Garibay Kintana, Teogonía e historia de los mexicanos: tres opúsculos del siglo XVI (Mexico City:Porrúa, 1979), 23; Peter T. Markman and Roberta H. Markman, Masks of the Spirit: Image and Metaphor inMesoamerica (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 117.

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Xipe was also a god related to war, nobility, and death. In fact, at least three of theAztec supreme rulers, Axayacatl, Ahuitzotl, and Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, arereported by the sources to wear the insignia of Xipe Totec in war campaigns.31

According to Guilhem Olivier, by adorning themselves with the emblems ofvarious divinities, the huey tlatoque were identifying themselves with their mostimportant characteristics in order to recreate the primordial divine influence onthe life of the world.32 Kay Read goes even further, claiming that the individualwho put on a ritual costume of a given divinity was becoming this divinity, as“every mask, effigy, and object embodied a particular force. To wear it meant totake on its face (ixtli), to become its identity.”33 In other words, the Aztec hueytlatoque, by wearing the insignia of Xipe Totec, were in fact becoming theteixiptla, “local embodiment” of this divinity.34

Maybe it was for this reason that, as fray Toribio de Benavente OMotolinía states,the war insignias of the huey tlatoani were not to be used by any other man, onpain of death.35 However, Diego Durán reports that in the campaign ofHuexotzinco, which is told in the song analyzed here, MotecuhzomaXocoyotzin honored his brother Tlacahuepan with the insignia of Xipe Totec.In this divine array, he was to lead the Tenochca troops to start the war inwhich he fell.36

The second fragment to be analyzed comes from the text titledYaocuicacuextecayotl, “The War Song of Huastec Style/on Huastec Themes.” Ascan be seen in the following lines, again the underlying motif is Tlacahuepan’sflowery death:

Duck from the place of preciousness, you went flying around, you, my floweredgreat man, Tlacahuepantzin. He just followed their father to Quenonamican.

To the coast he is going to sing, he is going to speak, flowery liquor of preciouswater makes him drunk. He is going to chirp among his fellow quecholli birds,the noblemen, the Huastecs, in the land of maguey.37

31. Codex Cozcatzin (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia; Universidad Autónoma dePuebla, 1994), fol. 15r; Codex Vaticanus A (Mexico City: Graz-México: ADEVA- Fondo de Cultura Económica,1996) fol. 83v; Carlos J. González, Xipe Tótec. Guerra y regeneración del maíz en la religión mexica (Mexico City:Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2011), 338–343.

32. Guilhem Olivier, Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God: Tezcatlipoca, “Lord of the Smoking Mirror”(Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2008), 207–208).

33. Kay Read, Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 147.34. Molly Basset, The Fate of Earthly Things (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015).35. Fray Toribio de Benavente oMotolinía,Memoriales. Libro de oro (Mexico City: Colegio de México, 1996), 484.36. Durán, Historia de las Indias, 2:433.37. In quetzallaxomotzin tonpapatlantiya tinoxochihueyotzin in tlacahuepantzin aya çã quitocac yta quenonamicã Anã.

Aytic yen õcuica a ontlatohua o ayaye in quetzalaxochioctli quitlahuanaya onchachalacaya yquecholpohuan y teucpipilti yncuexteca y meEtlan. Cantares mexicanos, fols. 65r-66v, paleogr. Bierhorst, Cantares, 362. English translation is by theauthor.

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The first of the expressions with which the singer refers to Tlacahuepan isquetzallaxomotzin, which can be translated as “duck from the place ofpreciousness.” The basic noun, xomotl, is explained by Francisco JavierClavijero as a “certain aquatic bird, whose feathers were used by the ancientpeople in their clothing.”38 The custom of applying the feathers of differentbirds, such as quetzal, heron, roseate spoonbill, or eagle in the attire of warriorsand noblemen was a common practice among the Aztecs. However, thereference to Tlacahuepan as an aquatic bird, moreover one that comes from theregion of the precious things, would be another allusion to the Huasteca,known also among the Nahua as the place from which the cultivation of themaguey plant came. Thus, it is there, “in the land of the maguey,” the coastalregion, where Tlacahuepan is about to make his final step to follow hisancestors to Quenonamican. He can already enjoy the company of otherdeceased noblemen, described as his fellow quecholli birds and the Huastecs.

As for the quecholli, bird names that include this term are plentiful in Nahuasongs. Among the most frequent there are teoquechol, zacuanquechol,tlauhquechol, and xopanquechol. According to Garibay, all these names—some ofwhich make reference to actual bird species, while the others seem to be poeticcreations—are meant, in fact, to recall a general notion of a bird whose feathersare red or light pink, similar to the light, flame, and Sun at dawn. According toLegend of the Suns, the darts given by the Sun to the Mimixcoa at thebeginning of the times in order to initiate the human sacrifice were madeprecisely of the plumage of precious birds.39 These darts, metaphoricallycreated by the Sun at the dawn of the world, could thus be compared tosunbeams at daybreak and the precious birds become perfect metaphors for thedeceased warriors, who are accompanying the Sun and sharing itscharacteristics.40

Among all these bird species special importance is given to the tlauhquecholli,which is the Nahuatl name for the roseate spoonbill. As Leonardo López Lujanand Guilhem Olivier observe, the Nahua considered this particular species ofbird as ruling over other birds, and thus, belonging to the tlatoque of theanimal world. Others were iztacmazatl or white deer, who was the ruler over alldeer, atotolin or pelican, who governed the aquatic birds, and tecuhtlacozauhqui,the rattlesnake, which was considered chief of all the snakes.41 As such, the

38. Francisco Javier Clavijero, Historia antigua de México (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1945).39. John Bierhorst, History and Mythology of the Aztecs: The Codex Chimalpopoca (Tucson: University of Arizona

Press, 1992), 150.40. Ángel María Garibay Kintana, Veinte himnos sacros de los nahuas (Mexico City: UNAM, 1958), 161.41. Leonardo López Lujan and Guilhem Olivier, “De ancestros, guerreros y reyes muertos. El simbolismo de la

espátula rosada (Platalea ajaja) entre los antiguos nahuas,” in De saber ha hecho su razón de ser . . . Homenaje a Alfredo

522 KATARZYNA SZOBLIK

tlauhquecholli was a perfect metaphor for the nobility. In fact, the headdress of itsplumage also formed part of Xipe Totec’s attire (commented on above in relationto Figure 1) and of the insignia worn by the rulers on the battlefield. What ismore, as a predatory bird known to catch and eat its prey alive, tlauhquecholliwas considered similar to jaguar and eagle, the two principal symbols of theAztec warriors.

It is no surprise then, that tlauhquecholli is the name given to Tlacahuepan in thenext of the fragments presented here. The text comes from the song entitledMexica xopancuicatl, “Mexica Summer Song”:

Your roseate spoonbill is getting anxious. Nobleman, Tlacahuepan, your fame isgrowing. You are gone. The Lord of Turquoise, the Fire-Eagle has come to shaveyou.

Under your charge the war is now sparkling and boiling, a noise of cracklingflames spreads all around. You have gone to hide yourself, our Lord, the goldenflowers are spreading around where is now my Lord Tlacahuepan.42

Like a bird free to fly away towards the Sun, so is Tlacahuepan becoming anxiousto abandon the “shell” of his body and fly to meet the Lord of Turquoise, theFire-Eagle. He has been captivated by the Sun itself, which is expressed in theact of being “shaved” by this god; this ritual will be described in subsequentsections. At the same time, under his charge, the battle is still going on, paintedhere with the metaphors of crackling fire on one hand and summer-floweryscenery on the other.

To sum up this part, these several short but highly eclectic metaphors reveal therich imagery created by the Nahua state ideology around this warrior’s deathon the battlefield. On one hand, Tlacahuepan embodies such key concepts asnobility, power, courage, and sacrifice; on the other, his death evokes thenotions of glory, happiness, abundance, and freedom. There is, however, animportant question to be asked at this point: Why him? Why was itTlacahuepan—and not any other of the many noblemen who had fallen innumerous war campaigns held by Tenochtitlan—the one who became sofamous? The answer can be found in the narrations of the events mentioned

López Austin, EduardoMatosMoctezuma and Ángela Ochoa, eds. (Mexico City: Secretaría de Cultura, Instituto Nacionalde Antropología e Historia, UNAM, 2017), 181.

42. Çan motlauhquechol moyauhtiuh on yn ica toya in titepiltzin a yn Tlacahuepan mopopoyauhtaya tiyaqui yancohuinmitzhualxima Xippilli Quauhtlehuanitl ahuayya ohuaya Çan mopan iya ye oncã milini poçoni yehuaya ỹ tlachinollion ỹcocomocatima ye tonmotlatian totec teocuitlaxochitl momoyahua ye oncan Nopiltzino in tlacahuepani ahuayya a on ahuaya.Cantares mexicanos, fol. 61v, paleogr., in Bierhorst, Cantares, 348. English translation is by the author.

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above, as recorded by various colonial chroniclers on the basis of the indigenouscodices and oral tradition.

TLACAHUEPAN AND THE HUEXOTZINCO WAR

The war of Huexotzinco, which was so important for the inhabitants of the Basinof Mexico that it became one of the themes repeatedly recalled insixteenth-century Nahua songs, took place shortly before the arrival ofSpaniards, under the rule of the last of the Tenochtitlan tlatoque,Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin. The colonial chronicles provide two basic versionsof this war, one focusing its attention on the role of Tenochtitlan and the otheron the role of Tetzcoco. Although the first of the songs quoted above refers inits title to the Tetzcoco ruler Nezahualpilli, the version of the story proposed byFernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl does not mention Tlacahuepan by name. Forthis reason, the main attention will be given here to the works by Diego Duránand Hernando de Alvarado Tezozómoc.43 These two sources are judged byinvestigators as highly “suspicious,” first because of the strong Christianinfluence visible in them, especially in Durán’s Historia, and second because oftheir clear bias toward the Tenochca point of view and the abundantrecurrences of mythical reality creeping into the historical facts.44 Yet, it isprecisely for this last reason that they are of great interest for the present study,which aims at tracing the methods and strategies used by Aztec culturalmemory to construct its own vision of the past.

According to these relations, the conflict in question was in fact a flowery war,xochiyaoyotl. As it is described by Durán, Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, havingconquered most of the neighboring cities and finding no other reasons for war,sent his messengers to Huexotzinco with the proposal of a combat “for exerciseand diversion.”45 Thus, it was not a conflict for lands or domination, but aplanned battle, held in order to practice warfare and to honor the gods.Motecuhzoma did not mean to participate in it directly but delegated thepower to his brother Tlacahuepan. The visible sign of this was an act ofhanding him over the insignia of Xipe Totec. Accordingly, both AlvaradoTezozómoc and Durán report that while receiving those gifts Tlacahuepan wasalready sensing his imminent death, so, bidding farewell to his royal brother, he

43. Durán,Historia de las Indias, 1:495–500; Alvarado Tezozómoc,Crónica mexicana, 386–395; Alva Ixtlilxochitl,Historia de la nación, 211–213.

44. Sylvie Peperstraete, “El cihuacoatl Tlacaélel: su papel en el imperio azteca y su iconografía,” in Símbolos del poderen Mesoamérica, Guilhem Olivier, ed. (Mexico City: UNAM, 2008), 376.

45. Durán, Historia de las Indias, 1:495.

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entrusted his family to him.46 The battlewas fierce, andmany of the Tenochca andtheir allies fell.

Seeing this bloodbath of his companions, Tlacahuepan decided to gain his fameby breaking through the enemy’s formation. He was immediately surrounded bythe Huexotzinca but would not surrender for a long time, killing every warriorwho came close to him. Finally, when he felt that he had no more energy todefend himself, he threw his weapons aside and turned himself in to theHuexotzinca. Both Alvarado Tezozómoc and Durán describe the moment ofhis death, underlining the fact that he was dismembered on the battlefield andthat the Huexotzinca then took parts of his body as relics. When Tlacahuepanwas killed, the Mexica troops tried to fight for some time longer, but soon theywere forced to retreat. 47

This story seems to be like those of the many wars that took place in the Basin ofMexico in preconquest times, and yet the structure of this narration reveals someof the symbolic meanings given to it by the cultural memory of the Nahua. First,by wearing the insignia of Xipe Totec, Tlacahuepan was made not only torepresent the tlatoani on the battlefield, but also to share an identity with Xipe,maybe even becoming his teixiptla. Molly Basset translates this term generallyas “local embodiment of the divinity,” but at the same time indicates that in thesources its exact meaning would be dependent on the context. In this way, inmilitary contexts teixiptla could refer to “a military delegate” of tlatoani, whilein the ritual ones this relation between the source of power and its localembodiment would be more direct: “A teixiptla is the being whom it embodies;it is neither an impression nor a representation of that thing.”48

The situation in which Tlacahuepan is converted into teixiptla in fact covers bothof these contexts. The flowery wars, such as the one held in Huexotzinco,although they certainly had political implications, were different from the“regular” conflicts. Due to their ritualized character and underlying religiousmotivation, they could be considered as a form of religious ritual in which thesacrifice to the gods took a spontaneous form of death on the battlefield.Tlacahuepan was tlatoani’s delegate to perform the role of the localembodiment of Xipe Totec, and repeat the action of this god who, according tothe myths, was the initiator of the xochiyaoyotl in primordial times. In this waythe story of his death became a part of the Nahua historiographic framework,based on the cyclical repetition of certain motifs and the re-elaboration of fixed

46. Alvarado Tezozómoc, Crónica mexicana, 389–390; Durán, Historia de las Indias, 1:496.47. Alvarado Tezozómoc, Crónica mexicana, 390–391; Durán, Historia de las Indias, 1:497.48. Basset, The Fate, 132–133.

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narrative structures, both of which had their origin in the primordial reality ofmyth.

As the Annals of Cuauhtitlan inform, the first xochiyaoyotl was organized as aprelude to the first celebration of the Tlacaxipehualiztli, the “Flaying of Men”feast, which was one of the omens foretelling the fall of Tollan, a greatCentro-Mexican civilization that preceded the Aztec domination in the Basin:

13 Reed [1063]: At this time there were many evil omens in Tollan. At this time,too, there was beginning of the war that the devil Yaotl started. The Toltecs wereengaged [in battle] at a place called Nextlalpan. And when they had takencaptives, human sacrifice also got started, as Toltecs sacrificed their prisoners.Among them and in their midst the devil Yaotl followed along. Right on thespot he kept inciting them to make human sacrifices.

And then, too, he started and began the practice of flaying humans.49

According to various narratives, which will be commented on in more detailbelow, the fall of Tollan was preceded by the introduction of different types ofhuman sacrifice to this once peaceful place. Like the mythical Yaotl, a title givenmostly to Tezcatlipoca but also to Xipe Totec, Tlacahuepan incites both theTenochca and the Huexotzinca warriors to fight and take captives. As in themythical dimension, it was crucial to persuade the Toltecs to undertake humansacrifices. Tlacahuepan, as teixiptla of Xipe Totec, initiates the Tlacaxipehualiztlifeast with the end his own life, a sacrifice of which he was apparently consciousfrom the very moment in which he donned the god’s insignia. After a fiercefight he was killed in a way resembling the sacrifice held during the Flaying ofMen. First of all, the hearts extracted from the captives duringTlacaxipehualiztli were offered to the Sun, which, in the description of thisfeast, Sahagún’s informants call “The Lord of Turquoise, The Fire-Eagle.”50

This is the same title with which one of the songs quoted above refers to the Sunwhen saying to Tlacahuepan: “The Lord of Turquoise, The Fire-Eagle, has cometo shave you.” The act of shaving the head of the captives by their captors was oneof the preparatory rites celebrated before the sacrifice, which might suggest thatthe song presents Tlacahuepan as the captive of the Sun itself.51 Finally, thesacrificed captives were taken to local temples, where their bodies were

49. 13 acatl. Iniquac {miec} mochiuhtin onca tetzahuitl in tollan, ø niman no ompa peuh y yaoyotl inquitzinti Diabloyaotl, ompa in mitoa nextlalpan qui mixnamicque in Tolteca, auh in otlamato niman no oncan peuh in tlacamictiliztli in quinmictique in malhuan tolteca in tzallan in nepantla icatinenca in Diablo yaotl inic huel oncan quenitlahuiltitinenca, inictlacamictizque. Auh niman no contzinti compehualti in tlacaxipehualiztli. Bierhorst, History and Mythology, 40.

50. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, 2:47.51. Sahagún, Historia general, 1:107.

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dismembered and treated as relics, parts of which were then ritually eaten.52

Although neither Alvarado Tezozómoc nor Durán report on the ritualanthropophagy among the Huexotzinca after the battle, it might be supposed,taking into consideration the information of how they divided the remains ofthe Mexica captain among themselves, that the rest of the story was self-evidentfor the Nahua public and needed no extra verbalization. On the other hand, itshould be remembered that the sacrifices celebrated during the Flaying of Men,apart from killing war captives, also included the death of Xipe Totec’s teixiptla,that is, a person who personified the god in question by wearing his attire.What is more, Durán also reports that the principal offerings during this feastincluded golden-yellow bunches of corncobs wrapped in sapota leaves, whichsymbolically also might have represented “the golden one, the Huastec Lord,the owner of the sapota skirt.”53

In other words, the figure of Tlacahuepan as presented in songs and storiesthrough different symbolic underpinnings evokes the nature of Xipe Totec, aswell as the victims, offerings, and rituals celebrated during the Flaying of Men.His death in the flowery war between Tenochtitlan and Huexotzinco seems tobe the ritual repetition of the mythical initiation of the cult of Xipe Totec,Tlacahuepan being at the same time the teixiptla of the god and the firstarchetypal victim. This supposition may be supported also by the fact that inAlvarado Tezozómoc’s and in Durán’s relations the story has its directcontinuation in the war waged by Tenochtitlan against the cities of Yancuitlanand Çoçolan. As these chroniclers recount, the decision to organize thiscampaign was taken by Motecuhzoma soon after the news of Tlacahuepan’sdeath had reached him. As a result, both cities were conquered with ease andwith nearly no loss of life on the Mexica side, while their inhabitants weretaken captive, and dedicated to dying in the Tlacaxipehualiztli feast.54

TLACAHUEPAN AND THE CHALCAN WAR

As has already been suggested, one of the components of the Nahuaunderstanding of history was the idea of circularity of time, in which certainevents could repeat, recreating the first primordial actions of gods. It seems thatTlacahuepan’s death was one of these: according to the sources, years beforethe confrontation between the Mexica troops and their Huexotzinca enemieson the plains of Atlixco another battle was held, in which the high-ranking

52. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, 2:47.53. Durán, Historia de las Indias, 2:105.54. Alvarado Tezozómoc, Crónica mexicana, 394–396; Durán, Historia de las Indias, 2:497–500.

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nobleman of this name was killed. It was a campaign organized by Tenochtitlanand its allies against Chalco. Both Durán and Alvarado Tezozómoc state thatthe reason for initiating this war was Tenochtitlan’s goal to conquer Chalco,which at that time was one of the few still unconquered places in the region.

An excuse for provocation was soon found in the construction of the temple ofHuitzilopochtli.55 It was a great project to which all the subject city-states weresupposed to contribute with some kind of tribute, either by providing materialsfor construction or by delegating the workforce. Messengers were also sent toChalco to ask for the rocks and stones necessary for the temple sculptures, butthe city rulers denied the request. As a result, a prolonged conflict, separated bynumerous truces, began. As both chroniclers recount, the crucial confrontationtook place in the days preceding the feast in honor of Camaxtli, who was thepatron god of Chalco, Huexotzinco, and Tlaxcalla, and to whom the Chalcahad promised to make offerings with the blood of the Tenochca warriors. TheTenochca, who also had planned a bloodbath during the consecration of thetemple of Huitzilopochtli, and another during the approximating feast ofXocotl Huetzi, made a similar vote to their gods. The battle turned out to beunexpectedly long, arduous, and cruel. It ended without a decisive winner, asboth parties lost many lives and many important warriors were taken captive,among them Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina’s brother, Tlacahuepan.56

As recounted in the Crónica mexicana, once the Chalca noticed that he was notdead, as they had thought, they decided not to kill him but rather to ask him tostay among them and to act as the ruler of the other Mexica captives. Hearingthis offer, Tlacahuepan responded that first he desired to entertain himself withhis companions. For this purpose he needed a tall beam and some instruments,which the Chalca promptly brought him. Tlacahuepan climbed to the top ofthe beam and once he had gotten into position the other Tenochca warriorsinitiated a sad song in a low tone and started to dance around the beam. In thenext moment the completely surprised Chalca heard Tlacahuepan’s voicepronouncing an ominous prophecy: “Lords of Chalco, today I buy you for myslaves, you are to serve and pay tribute to our sons and grandsons, theMexicans. And be aware that what I’ve just said is sure to become true.”57

These words could seem an idle threat of a defeated man facing his end, andyet they must have been meaningful to the spectators of this scene, for theChalca became really terrified. As told by Alvarado Tezozómoc, in panic, theystarted to give him signs and tried to stop him, promising to make him a ruler

55. Durán, Historia de las Indias, 1:183–202; Alvarado Tezozómoc, Crónica mexicana, 153.56. Durán, Historia de las Indias, 1:183–202; Alvarado Tezozómoc, Crónica mexicana, 153.57. Alvarado Tezozómoc, Crónica mexicana, 133–134.

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not only over the Mexica, but over all of them, but it did not work. Tlacahuepanbade farewell to his companions, advising them to continue their song, and threwhimself down from the top of the beam.58

The fear of the Chalca, who at first glance seemed to dominate the situation,points to the symbolic aspects of this story. The death of Tlacahuepan is not asuicide, but a planned human sacrifice of great ritual and magical power,flowing out from its bonds to the reality of myth. Again, Tlacahuepan’svoluntary death repeats the mythical initiation of the human sacrifices,celebrated within the framework of the Aztec solar calendar, xiuhpohualli,which in primordial times brought destruction to the famous city of Tollan. Byarranging his death in this particular manner, Tlacahuepan imposes on theChalca the celebration of the Xocotl Huetzi (“Fruit Falls Down”) feast, hehimself being the principal sacrificial victim.59

As told in various sources, the central point of the Xocotl Huetzi celebrations wasthe high beam called xocotl, prepared in advance during the preceding feast ofTlaxochimaco.60 The similarity between the festive beam and the onedemanded from the Chalcas by Tlacahuepan is quite apparent. On the top ofthe beam the ritual specialists situated the teixiptla of the xocotl (fruit), whichaccording to different sources could have had one of the following forms: abundle of weapons, a multicolor paste bird, a human figure decorated withritual paper, or a captive decorated with the insignia of Otontecuhtli, “TheLord of the Otomi,” the patron god of the warriors.61 Thus, again,Tlacahuepan is converted into the teixiptla of the divine force to whom thecelebrated feast was dedicated. As Sahagún’s informants report, once the beamwas ready, the captives who were dedicated to die in the fire sacrifice, like thoseof the Tlacaxipehualiztli feast, started their ritual dance together with theircaptors.62 They were dressed like the Mimixcoa, the 400 gods created inprimordial times to initiate the sacred war and become the first humansacrificial victims.63 This brings to mind the dance and song performed by

58. Alvarado Tezozómoc, Crónica mexicana, 134.59. Michel Graulich, Mitos y rituales del México Antiguo (Madrid:Istmo, 1990), 416–419; Michel Graulich, Ritos

aztecas: las fiestas de las veintenas (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1999), 412–415.60. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, 2:104–109; Durán, Historia de las Indias, 1:271–273; Codex Borbonicus, Códice

Borbónico. Manuscrito mexicano de la biblioteca del Palais Bourbon (Libro adivinatorio y ritual ilustrado), publicado enfacsímil (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1980), 29; Elizabeth Hill Boone, The Codex Magliabechiano and the Lost Prototype ofthe Magliabechiano Group, Elizabeth Hill Boone (Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press,1983), 77.

61. Tovar,Historia y creencias, 27–28; Durán,Historia de las Indias, 1:125–126); Sahagún, Florentine Codex, 2:105;Codex Magliabechiano, fols. 76-77.

62. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, 2:106.63. Graulich, Mitos y rituales, 411.

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Tlacahuepan’s companions around the beam. Like the mythical Mimixcoa, all ofthem were later sacrificed by shooting with arrows.

One of the critical moments of Xocotl Huetzi was the race to the top of the beamin which the young warriors could achieve fame similar to that given to thosewhohad taken captives on the battlefield. Once on the top of the beam, the winner ofthe race threw the xocotl down, so that it broke into many parts that were thendistributed among the participants. As soon as its pieces fell among the people,there started a clamor, tumult, and war cry, as if a real fight was going on.64

This ritual battle, initiated by the crashing down of the xocotl, in Chalco tookthe form of a real conflict launched by Tlacahuepan’s death. OnceMotecuhzoma had learned about it, he sent all his forces against Chalco. Thewar ended with the conquest of Chalco, and the captives taken by the Tenochcawere then sacrificed during the feast of Xocotl Huetzi in Tenochtitlan.

In both stories narrated above, Tlacahuepan, “The Human Beam,” performs adouble role. On one hand, as a valiant warrior, unafraid of death and devotedto his people and his values, he becomes a perfect educational model to bepresented to the Aztec youths during dance and song classes. On the otherhand, the last moments of his life and his sacrificial death are described in away that gives them highly symbolic meaning. In the oral narrations of theseevents, which were the source of knowledge for the written texts, Tlacahuepanwas presented as the one who voluntarily decided to perform a role of teixiptlaof the god, the role which in most of the ritual contexts of xiuhpohualli wasconnected to the sacrificial death.

TLACAHUEPAN IN THE MYTHICAL NARRATIONS

As has been mentioned above, the Nahua historiographic framework could bedescribed as circular, in a sense that all the significant past events represented byit were believed to be repetition of actions that had already taken place, at leastonce, in the primordial reality of myth. The story of Tlacahuepan’s death refersto one of the most important events in Aztec mythology, namely the fall ofTollan and the shift of power from the Toltecs to the Aztecs. This significantchange, which was used by the Aztecs to legitimize their domination in theBasin of Mexico, was inscribed into a much broader cosmogonic narration,according to which the Earth has been created five times. In other words, theworld known to the Nahua cultural memory’s audience in the sixteenth centurywas not the first version of reality: the universe had already been created and

64. Sahagún, Historia general, 1:146.

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destroyed four times. The story of these preceding four eras or “Suns” can befound in slightly different versions in numerous colonial sources, among themthe Legend of the Suns, the Annals of Cuauhtitlan, the Codex Vaticanus A, andHistoria de los mexicanos por sus pinturas.65 Although differing in detail, all thesesources present the cyclical process of the subsequent creations and destructionsof the world as caused by the continuous fight between two cosmic forcesembodied by the gods called Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl. Each change of erawas a shift of power from one of these two gods to the other.

The fourth era, which directly preceded the period of Aztec domination, was thehegemony of the city of Tollan. As Michel Graulich has observed, the story of therise and decline of the Toltec civilization metaphorically reflected the sunrise andsunset of their principal god, the Sun, Quetzalcoatl, “The Feathered Serpent.”66

Now, if the Sun of the Toltecs was Quetzalcoatl, it is not surprising that all themyths concerning the last years of his domination are presented as the time ofincreased activity of Quetzalcoatl’s principal antagonist, Tezcatlipoca, “TheLord of the Smoking Mirror.”

In the narrations of the fall of Tollan the figure of Tezcatlipoca appears as related toseveral other deities, namely: Huitzilopochtli, the Mexica tutelary god of solarcharacteristics, who is associated with war; Xipe Totec, reported by the Historiade los mexicanos por sus pinturas as Tlatlauhqui Tezcatlipoca, “Red Tezcatlipoca”;and Tlacahuepan.67 This last character was, in the author’s opinion, the basicmodel on which the figures of both noblemen discussed here was been based.

According to the informants of Sahagún, Quetzalcoatl fell victim to a schemehatched by the three “sorcerers” Titlacahuan, Tlacahuepan, and Huitzilopochtli,all of whom were, at least to some extent, the avatars or messengers ofTezcatlipoca.68 To begin with, Tlacahuepan went to the marketplace of Tollanand exhibited to the Toltecs a little human figure dancing on the palm of hishand. It was a sign of the forthcoming change, as the figure in question wasHuitzilopochtli, the new Sun, who would soon replace Quetzalcoatl in hisruling position. Similarly, the Tenochca nobleman Tlacahuepan, who went todie in Chalco, is presented in the cultural memory as the portent of theapproaching new era, the era of Mexica domination over Chalco.

65. Bierhorst, Codex Chimalpopoca, 25–26, 139–162; Codex Vaticanus A, fols. 4v-7r; Garibay Kintana, Teogonía,27–32.

66. Michel Graulich, “Los reyes de Tollan,” Revista Española de Antropología Americana 32 (2002): 87–114.67. Garibay Kintana, Teogonía, 23–24; González González, Xipe Tótec, 241–390.68. Sahagún, Historia general, 1:209–218; Olivier, Mockeries, 155.

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The convergence between the two characters goes further as the story continues.The Toltecs, attracted by the performance, swarmed around Tlacahuepan and, inconsequence, many of them perished by suffocating. Likewise, both Tlacahuepanof Chalco and the one of Huexotzinco are reported to have caused the death ofmany of their enemies on the battlefield, where they were crowding aroundthem and trying to reach them with their weapons. Finally, the Toltecs killedTlacahuepan and the little Huitzilopochtli by throwing stones at them. As soonas they did it, the corpse of Tlacahuepan started to stink so much that thehorrible smell killed many of the Toltecs.

Similarly, the death of Tlacahuepan in Chalco brought the revenge ofMotecuhzoma and caused the death of many of its inhabitants. The Toltecs,trying to get rid of the lethal corpse, decided to haul it outside of the city, butit turned out to be impossible to move it from the place where it had fallen.69

The images from the Florentine Codex (Figure 2) and the Codex Vaticanus A(Figure 3) show a group of people struggling in vain with ropes to dragTlacahuepan, “The Human Beam,” away. This scene brings to mind thepreparations for the Xocotl Huetzi ritual, where the crucial point was to dragthe beam. As has been mentioned before, in Nahuatl, the verb to describe thisaction is huepana, which is also clearly related to the name of Tlacahuepan.

What should be mentioned here as well is the presentation of the death ofTlacahuepan in Chalco in one of the images that accompany the work byDurán (Figure 4). Especially worthy of attention is the tiny detail visible in thebackground of the main scene. It is a human body lying on the ground, beingdragged, like a beam, by another person. This human body is linked to thehead of the main protagonist, following the convention used in the Nahuacodices for proper name glyphs. In other words, the graphic way ofrepresenting Tlacahuepan is similar in both cases, clearly connecting his namewith his role.

Another aspect of the role played by Tlacahuepan in both myths and culturalmemory narrations is his identity as a foreigner and, in particular, as a Huastec.According to the chroniclers, both these warriors, whose deaths inHuexotzinco and Chalco were then commemorated with the picturesquenarrations of the Nahua cultural memory, belonged to the Tenochca aristocracy.Thus, the fact of describing Tlacahuepan as a Huastec in the songs must havehad purely symbolic and metaphorical meanings. Some of them have alreadybeen commented on in the section dedicated to the analysis of the songs. Yet,there are also mythical bases for this comparison.

69. Sahagún, Historia general, 1:214–215.

532 KATARZYNA SZOBLIK

The role of the Huastecs in the myths of the fall of Tollan constitutes them as thearchetypal sacrificial victims. As mentioned above, among the omens predictingthe fall of Tollan, there was the introduction of various feasts of the ritualcalendar called xiuhpohualli. According to the Annals of Cuauhtitlan, theHuastec captives were used as victims in the initiation of the feast of Izcalli:

8 Rabbit [1058] In that year there were many evil omens in Tollan. Well, it wasthe same year that sorcerers arrived, the so-called ixcuinanme, the female devils.And according to the stories of the old people, which tell how they came, theyissued forth from Cuextlan. And at so-called Cuextecatlichocayan [Place Wherethe Cuexteca Weep] they spoke to the captives they had taken in Cuextlan andmade them a promise, saying, “We are going to Tollan now. You will go withus, and when we get there, we will use you to make a celebration, for there hasnever been an arrow shoot. And we are the ones who are going to start it by

FIGURE 2Toltecs Dragging the Corpse of Tlacahuepan

Source: Bernardino de Sahagún, (1950-1982), , Florentine Codex, A.J.O. Anderson and Ch. E. Dibble(eds.), Santa Fe, The School of American Research-University of Utah; bk. 3: 11, redrawn by KatarzynaSzoblik

TRACES OFAZTEC CULTURAL MEMORY 533

shooting you.” When the captives heard this, they wept, they grieved. Then thearrow shoot began, and in this way a feast used to be celebrated in honor of theixcuinanme at the time of the so-called Izcalli.70

The Huastecs are presented here as sacrificial victims, whose death is intended tosupport the plans of Tezcatlipoca. In the same way, the sacrificial death ofTlacahuepan—the Huastec, as presented in Nahua cultural memory—wascalculated into the plans of Motecuhzoma to bring destruction to Chalco.Finally, it should be mentioned that the Huastec, or Tohueyo, was also one ofthe forms taken by Titlacahuan to mislead the Toltecs. According to Sahagún’sinformants, the huge naked member of the anonymous foreigner who cameone day to sell green chilis on the marketplace in Tollan provoked such apassion in the Huemac’s daughter, that the ruler had no other possibility thanto propose her in matrimony to the Huastec.71 In this way, the rule over Tollan

FIGURE 3Toltecs Dragging the Corpse of Tlacahuepan

Source: Códice Vaticano A (1996) F. Anders, M. Jansen and L. Reyes García (eds.), Graz-Mexico,Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt –Fondo de Cultura Económica, f. 8v, redrawn by Katarzyna Szoblik

70. 8 tochtli. Ipan in in xihuitl in cenca miec tetzahuitl mochiuh timanca Tollan. Auh no iquac ipan in in xihuitl oncanacico in tlatlacatecollo inmitoaya Ixcuinanme cihua Diablome; auh inyuhca in tlatol huehuetque conitoa inic huallaqueCuextlampa in quizaco. Auh in ompa mitoa Cuextecatl ichocayan, oncan quin nonotzque in malhuan qui maciqueCuextlan quin polyuhtlamachtique in quimilhuique ca ye tihui in Tollan, amocatlaltechtacizque amocatilhuichihuazque, caaya ic tlacacalihua ø tehuantin ticpehualtitihua tamech miminazque in oquicacque in malhuan, niman ic chocaquetlaocoxque oncan tzintic y in tlacacaliliztli, inic ilhuichihuililoya Ixcuinanme, iniquac mitoaya Itzcalli. Bierhorst, CodexChimalpopoca, 39–40.

71. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, 3:17–18.

534 KATARZYNA SZOBLIK

was given to the foreigner—who could be described as theHuastec Lord—and allthe attempts undertaken by Huemac to get rid of the unwanted son-in-law bysending him to death in an arranged war campaign resulted in futility.

CONCLUSIONS

Both narrations analyzed in this article, with their similar narrative structures,evoke the heroes and events of primordial times as archetypes for the historicalcharacters’ actions, and thus perfectly reflect the cyclical character of the Nahuaunderstanding of time and history. Their basic mythical point of reference is thefall of Tollan, which, according to different myths, had been prophesied by aseries of omens, among which were the initiation of the flowery war, theintroduction of human sacrifices and other rituals of the feasts of xiuhpohualli,and the death of the new Sun’s messenger, called Tlacahuepan.

In the political reality of fifteenth-century CentralMexico, this new “Sun” comingto reign over the local communities was the domination of the Aztecs, represented

FIGURE 4The Death of Tlacahuepan According to Diego Durán

Source: Diego Durán (1579) Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e Islas de la Tierra Firme, digitalizedmanuscript accessible on: http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000169486&page=1, f. 52r, redrawn byKatarzyna Szoblik

TRACES OFAZTEC CULTURAL MEMORY 535

by the solar characteristics attributed to the supreme ruler of Tenochtitlan. That iswhy Tlacahuepan, delegated by Motecuhzoma to bring war to the problematiccity-states, repeats the actions of his mythical namesake, intentionally arranginghis death in such a manner that it can be classified as a sacrifice. The songs callhim a Huastec, the foreigner from the land of dawn, a title which, amongother metaphorical meanings, obviously makes reference to his role as Sun’smessenger and a model sacrificial victim.

There is, however, one substantial difference between the two tales. In Chalco,Tlacahuepan manages to fully repeat the role of his mythical archetype bybringing destruction to the enemies and “buying” with his death the victory ofthe Mexica. In Huexotzinco however, despite his sacrifice, the Mexica areforced to retreat. What is more, they do not dare to go back and challenge theHuexotzinca again. Instead, they organize a campaign against some weakercommunities, whose members do not even come to face them on thebattlefield, but simply abandon the cities in fear.

The explanation of this difference can be found in the analysis of the workssupposedly based on the same lost manuscript of so called Chronicle X. Assuggested by Sylvie Peperstraete, the sources in question, already writtendown in the colonial reality and by authors familiar with the history of therecent Spanish conquest, repeat the same narrative model with which themyths presented the history of Tollan. They illustrate the development anddecline of Tenochtitlan’s hegemony as metaphorically resembling the way ofthe Sun in the firmament. According to Peperstraete, the concordance ofnames between Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina and Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, aswell as the numerous parallels between the stories of their rule, are by nomeans accidental.

The first ruler, registered as the middle one on the list of the Tenochca tlatoque,personifies in fact the Sun at noon, when it is the most powerful. For thisreason, the period of his rule is also the time of the greatest splendor ofTenochtitlan, which seems literally invincible. Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, onthe other hand, takes power on the eve of the Spanish conquest, and for thisreason, he personifies the sun at sunset, which is old, weak, heavy, and headingtoward its destruction.72 That is why, in the author’s opinion, the ritual deathof Tlacahuepan was not able to change the result of the conflict withHuexotzinco. The power delegated by the tlatoani to his messenger proved notto be strong enough to repeat the successes from Tollan and Chalco. Thisfailure revealed the forthcoming end of Aztec domination and was one of the

72. Peperstraete, “El cihuacoatl,” 376–377.

536 KATARZYNA SZOBLIK

portents of the approaching shift of power that would take placewith the arrival ofthe Spaniards. In this way another cycle of time in the Nahua historiography wasconcluded, and the new era began.

KATARZYNA SZOBLIKUniversity of WarsawWarsaw, Polandkszoblik@uw.edu.pl

TRACES OFAZTEC CULTURAL MEMORY 537

Journal of Strategy and Politics (2019), Volume 2, Number 2, pp. 76-116. © Institute for the Study of Strategy and Politics 2019. Published subject to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License.

Hernan Cortez: Of Contracts and Conquest*

Richard C. Thornton

Institute for the Study of Strategy and Polit ics

At this moment in history, February 1519, the Spanish

enterprise in the Americas was floundering as the king’s appointed

governors were placing their personal interests above those of the

crown. Governor Pedrarias in Panama had just executed the great

explorer Balboa, throwing Castilla del Oro into turmoil (and setting

back the discovery of Peru by a decade). Balboa was preparing to set

off for the South American continent when Pedrarias arrested him. So,

too, with Hernan Cortez: Governor Diego Velasquez of Cuba was doing

everything in his power to prevent Cortez from launching his

expedition to Mexico. In both cases personal greed overrode the

crown’s interest in exploration and discovery of the riches of the

Americas. It did not help that King Charles was more interested in the

affairs of Europe than America, delegating responsibility for American

affairs to his Council of the Indies.

Cortez and Governor Velasquez

In truth, Cortez and Velasquez had a mercurial relationship.

When, at nineteen years of age, in 1504, Cortez arrived on Española,

Governor Nicolás de Ovando, a distant relative, arranged for him to

receive a repartimiento (distribution) of land and slaves. Cortez

worked the land and acted as a notary for the small town of Azua, but

after seven years grew restive, saying “I came to get rich not to till the

soil, like a peasant.” In 1511, when Ovando’s successor Diego

* This article is Part II of “Spain: Accident and Design in the Rise of the First Global Empire,” by Richard C. Thornton, forthcoming.

H E R N A N C O R T E Z : O F C O N T R A C T S A N D C O N Q U E S T | 77

Columbus made the decision to conquer Cuba, assigning Diego

Valesquez to command, Cortez signed on. After brutally pacifying the

island, Valesquez became governor and rewarded Cortez for his

courageous service, naming him as one of his secretaries and allotting

him land and slaves.1

Then things soon turned

sour. Cortez was a handsome,

charismatic man of fine bearing;

literate, but not learned; and he

was also gregarious and a rake with

promiscuous habits. He became

romantically involved with Catalina

Suarez, one of the daughters of a

wealthy Spanish landowner on the

island. But his reluctance to marry

her caused a rift with Velasquez,

who was courting one of Catalina’s

sisters. Thereafter, Cortez became a

magnet for those with a grievance

against the governor. They decided to present their complaints to

Diego Columbus in Santo Domingo, electing Cortez for the mission.

Velasquez discovered their plan and imprisoned Cortez. Although he

escaped and found temporary sanctuary in a church, he was caught

and imprisoned a second time, and slated for trial. Escaping yet a

second time, Cortez saw that his best course would be to marry

Catalina and reconcile with the governor. 2

1 William H. Prescott, Mexico and the Life of the Conquerer, Hernando Cortes, Vol. I (New York: Peter Fenelon Collier and Son, 1900), 173-174. 2 Hubert Howe Bancroft, The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume IX, History of

Mexico, Vol. I. 1516-1521 (San Francisco: A.L. Bancroft and Company, 1883), 48-52.

Hernán Cortés

Book of America, R. Cronau

78 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

Over the next several years Cortez made a reputation for

himself, suppressing his ambition for adventure, growing wealthy from

working the land and gold mines, and being elected mayor of

Santiago, the new capital of Cuba. He was happy and seemingly

content—until opportunity beckoned. Governor Velasquez had sent

two expeditions to the mainland in search of gold and slaves. The first

under Francisco Hernandez de Cordova in February 1517 had shown

promise in regard to both categories. The second, under the command

of his nephew Juan de Grijalva a year later, apparently had been lost.

The governor decided to send a mission to rescue Grijalva, which

prompted Cortez to grasp the opportunity to lead the mission.

Cortez sent word of his interest through mutual friends who

were close advisors to the governor. One of these was Velasquez’

secretary, Andrés de Duero, who would play a most vital role later in

this story. As recompense for interceding with Velasquez, Cortez

promised to give Duero a third of whatever he found. When the

governor’s first choices turned down his call to lead the expedition,

Cortez was there, ready and willing to risk his fortune for the chance

to discover new land and riches. Accordingly, the governor obtained a

license from the king’s authorities in Santo Domingo and the two men

entered into a contract on October 23, 1518.3

Cortez, thirty-three years old and in the prime of his life, was

elated at the prospect of leading an expedition to the mainland. It

would be his first adventure since his participation in the pacification

of Cuba six years before. It would be his first opportunity to lead a

large group of men into battle in a new and unknown land. He reached

out to his many friends and any who were thirsting for adventure to

contribute to the provision of ships, guns, men, and supplies. They

flocked to his banner. Risking much of his fortune, he was well on the

way to outfitting his armada, having acquired six ships and recruited

3 “Instructions Given By Velasquez, Governor of Cuba, to Cortes, on His Taking Command of the Expedition; Dated at Fernandina, October 23, 1518,” in William H. Prescott, Mexico and the Life of the Conqueror, Fernando Cortes, Vol. II (New York: Peter Fenelon Collier and Son, 1900), 423-426.

H E R N A N C O R T E Z : O F C O N T R A C T S A N D C O N Q U E S T | 79

three hundred men. Suddenly, Cortez’s hopes were placed in doubt

with news of Grijalva’s safe return.

The Grijalva expedition returned to port in Cuba some time in

November 1518; by at least one account, arriving in Santiago as late as

November 15, three weeks after Velasquez and Cortez had signed

their contract.4 At every stop they were feted royally, as Grijalva

regaled all with stories of vast riches in New Spain. Governor

Velasquez was “well contented” with the gold brought back, in all the

substantial sum of about 20,000 dollars, but angry with Grijalva (in

part for not establishing a settlement in so rich a land, even though

that was not his primary mission). The venal Velasquez feared that

someone else would claim the land and “rob him of his reward.”5

Indeed, he perceived and was increasingly led to believe by

those around him that the usurper would be none other than the man

with whom he had so recently signed a contract, Hernan Cortez. The

lure of gold had prompted Velasquez to change his mind and he

sought to wriggle out of his contract. At first, he sought to dissuade

Cortez from proceeding on the grounds that Grijalva had returned, so

there was no longer a reason for the expedition. Cortez refused,

insisting that a contract was a contract. Then, Velasquez ordered his

officials to confiscate Cortez’ ships. Upon learning of this decision,

Cortez hastily gathered his ships and men and cast off three days later,

on November 18, 1518.

For three months, between November 18, 1518 and February

18, 1519, Cortez played the game of catch-me-if-you-can with the

4 Arthur Helps, The Spanish Conquest of America and Its Relation to the History of

Slavery and to the Government of Colonies, Vol. II (London: John Parker and Son West

Strand, 1855), 228. There are various other accounts about the timing of Grijalva’s

return. See, e.g., Bancroft, History of Mexico, Vol. I, 30-31, esp. note 8; and Charles St.

John Fancourt, The History of Yucatan (London: John Murray, 1854), 21-23.

5 Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, trans. Alfred Percival Maudslay, M.A. (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1908), 63-65; Bancroft, History of Mexico, Vol. I, 31-33.

80 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

governor. Cortez had been in the midst of outfitting his expedition

when he cast off on November 18 to elude Velasquez’ officials.

Attempting to build up sufficient stores for his expedition, he moved

from port to port from east to west—Macaca, Trinidad, Havana—even

sending an aide to Jamaica for supplies. Cortez eluded, bluffed, or

recruited to his cause the governor’s men who came with orders to

seize him and his ships. By the middle of February 1519, he was ready.

He now had eleven ships, over five hundred soldiers, one hundred

sailors, two hundred native bearers, about two dozen women,

fourteen cannon, and all the provisions and equipment needed for an

extended campaign, including sixteen horses and numerous war dogs.

Departing February 18, 1519 from San Antonio, on the far

western tip of Cuba, Cortez sailed first to Cozumel off the northeast

coast of Yucatan where, after a stormy voyage, fate smiled. A Spanish

ecclesiastic who had been shipwrecked eight years earlier and held

captive made his way to Cortez and rescue. Jeronimo de Aguilar

would become a valued adviser and interpreter with the Maya whose

Cortez’ expedition to Mexico, 1519-1521

map source: https://hernandocortes-laurel.weebly.com

H E R N A N C O R T E Z : O F C O N T R A C T S A N D C O N Q U E S T | 81

language he had learned. In discussions with several of the captains

who had sailed with Grijalva and had joined his expedition, Cortez

planned his initial strategy. Departing Cozumel in early March, Cortez

passed by the places where Cordova and Grijalva had encountered

hostile receptions and stopped at the Tabasco River on March 25,

where Grijalva had first encountered and had a profitable exchange

with Indian chiefs. The Tabascan people were tributaries to the Aztecs,

who determined their policies.

Cortez’ reception, however, was “unlike what he had reason

to expect,” from members of the Grijalva expedition. The Indians

attacked his forces as he attempted to land, despite protestations that

he had come in peace. The attack was unsuccessful. In retrospect,

however, it is clear that Montezuma, ruler of the Aztecs, had decided

upon a test of strength. He evidently assumed that he could

overwhelm Cortez’s relatively small force with numbers. As noted in

the previous chapter, Montezuma had a network of intelligence and

communication that spanned the empire, so he was able to assess

Cortez’s strength and movements from the beginning, just as he had

earlier followed Cordova and Grijalva.6

After an uneasy night and more skirmishes the next day,

Cortez learned that further inland at Centla, a very large force (later

reported to be forty thousand natives) was preparing to attack. Cortez

responded, as was his wont, by taking the offensive rather than

conceding the initiative to the Indians. He decided upon a pincer

attack. He sent his foot soldiers, supported by cannon brought from

the ships, on a frontal assault against massed Indian forces, while he

circled around behind with his armored horses. The result was a major

defeat for the Indians, who fled in fright from the booming cannon

6 William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico and History of the Conquest of

Peru (New York: The Modern Library, 1843), 125, note 14; Bancroft, History of Mexico, 100.

82 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

and the powerful horses, which they had never before seen.7 While

not mentioned by historians cited here, Cortez likely also used his

terrifying war dogs as weapons in the battle against the Tabascan

warriors. Natives throughout the Americas bred small dogs for food

but had never come upon the large, ferocious carnivorous beasts that

the Spaniards brought with them.8

The Tabascans had endured enough. Next day, their chiefs

approached the Cortez headquarters with a peace offering that

included many gold ornaments, food, cotton cloth, and twenty slave

girls. Cortez, too, offered peace, glass beads, and trinkets, but

demanded to know the source of the gold. Their reply was that the

7 Diaz del Castillo, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, 116-120; Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico 152-157; Bancroft, History of Mexico, 87-90. 8“The Dogs of the Conquistadors,” doglawreporter-Bay-Net, http://doglawreporter-bay-net.blogspot.com/2011/11/the-dogs-of-conquistadors.html; “Spanish War Dogs, Edible Dogs of the Conquistadors and Aztecs,” El Valle de Anton, Panama...The Volcanic Village…History, Attractions and Information, https://elvalleinformation.wordpress.com; Graham Hancock, “The Spanish use of Animals as Weapons of War,” Ancient Origins, October 6, 2013, https://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/spanish-use-animals-weapons-war-00898,.

“Spanish War Dogs,” World History Amino

H E R N A N C O R T E Z : O F C O N T R A C T S A N D C O N Q U E S T | 83

source of the gold lay further to the west, in Mexico. Cortez’ course

was now set; he would head for the capital of the Aztecs. Before

departing, he made a display of religious power. He organized a

procession to the principal temple of Tabasco, where an altar had

been installed and Indian idols had been taken down and replaced

with the cross and statues of the Virgin Mary. He insisted that the

Tabascans tender their allegiance to the Spanish king and God (whose

warriors, the natives had witnessed, possessed the power of thunder

and lightning).9 It was but the first of many instances in which Cortez

would systematically tear down the belief system of his adversaries by

toppling their idols and replacing them with Catholic symbols. Later,

this practice would nearly bring about his own destruction.

It is said that success

brings its own luck and the

victory over the Tabascans

seemed to prove it. As his ships

sailed west along the coast to

Mexico, Cortez discovered that

one of the slave girls on board

was educated in both the

language of the Maya and

Nahuatl, the language of the

Aztecs. Thus, within a few days

of his arrival on the American

mainland, Cortez had acquired

two people who would be

invaluable, enabling him to

communicate with his

adversaries. The slave girl, whom the Spaniards christened “Marina,”

but who was called “Malintzen” or “Malinche” by the Aztecs,

reportedly was beautiful and intelligent. She became a close adviser,

9 William H. Prescott, Mexico and the Life of the Conqueror, Fernando Cortes, Vol. I (New

York: Peter Fenelon Collier and Son, 1900), 205-206.

La Malinche ─Xavier L. Medellin and

Felix HInz, “Doña Marina,”

Medellinhistoria.com

84 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

interlocutor, and, eventually, mistress to Cortez, bearing him a son.

She would be Cortez’ voice when he interacted with Montezuma.

Indeed, the Aztec emperor would frequently address Cortez as

“Malinche.”

Anchoring April 20 off the coast of San Juan de Ulúa, Cortez’

first task was to establish a defensible coastal base of operations, as

the place where they had landed was a combination of sand dunes

and marshes infested with swarms of mosquitoes. Accordingly, he

sent out armed reconnaissance teams by land and by sea to find a

more accommodating location. The site selected was a bay near

Quiahuiztlan, located further up the coast, about 20 miles north of

Cempoala, the capital city of the Totonac tribe (the Totonacs were an

unhappy people who were tributaries of the Aztecs and were more

than amenable to cooperating with the Spaniards). There, Cortez

established the settlement of Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz.

The establishment of Vera Cruz served a political as well as

military purpose. Pursuant to the establishment of the settlement a

dispute broke out between Cortez’ supporters and a handful of

Velasquez’s. The latter claimed that Cortez had no mandate to

establish a settlement and insisted that they therefore return to Cuba.

Refusing to cut short his expedition, the captain put the leaders in

irons aboard one of his ships and dispersed the others among his men,

winning them over one by one. Nevertheless, Cortez knew that

Velasquez remained a formidable threat to his expedition. His lack of a

mandate meant that Velasquez could take away everything he might

gain in Mexico through legal action in Spanish courts, or by appealing

directly to the king.

Therefore, Cortez decided to follow the precedent

established by Velasquez himself and set up a legitimate political base,

which would enable him to act independently of the governor. A few

years earlier, when Velazquez conquered Cuba, he did so under a

contract with the governor of Santo Domingo, Diego Columbus.

Establishing the city of Santiago, Velasquez abrogated this contract

H E R N A N C O R T E Z : O F C O N T R A C T S A N D C O N Q U E S T | 85

and designated himself as governor of Cuba under the Spanish crown.

The king accepted his fait accompli and legalized his position as

governor.10

Thus, Cortez sought to do the same. He established the city of

Vera Cruz, naming town officials and magistrates, who, in turn, elected

him as both captain general and chief magistrate. Being head of a

settlement, Cortez argued, superseded his contract with Velasquez

and signified that his expedition was no longer under the authority of

the governor, but under that of the king. Both Velasquez and Cortez

would appeal directly to King Charles for validation of their charges

against each other. This, in fact, would be the purpose of the first of

five extensive letters Cortez would send to the king, which would

accompany the shipment of the king’s portion of whatever treasure

Cortez would find.11

Cortez had been warmly welcomed by the local Totonac tribal

leaders but was surprised by an equally warm, but unexpected visit by

Aztec representatives of emperor Montezuma. Discussions with the

Totonac leaders revealed that they were but one of many disaffected

tributaries of the Aztecs. Although Montezuma ruled over a vast and

populous empire of vassal states, it was rent with dissension and

ruthlessly held together by force used to put down frequent outbreaks

of revolt. There were some thirty-eight provinces, each paying tribute

of various kinds to the capital of Tenochtitlan (the present site of

Mexico City).

To enforce the peace and Aztec rule, Montezuma deployed

military garrisons in every province to keep order and to protect the

tax collectors, who exacted tribute of all kinds, including sons and

daughters of vassal states who were sacrificed to the gods. Cortez

10 “Hernán Cortés,” New World Encyclopedia,

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Hernán_Cortés

11 David Marley, Wars of the Americas: A Chronology of Armed Conflict in the New World, 1492 to the Present (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1998), 17.

86 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

quickly realized that he could pursue a divide-and-conquer strategy in

which he would ally with tributary states against the powerful Aztec

center. His first alliance would be with the Totonacs, whom Cortez

promised to protect against the Aztecs, starting with defending their

decision to refuse payment of tribute to Montezuma’s tax collectors.

This audacious defiance of Montezuma served to create the first

cracks undermining his rule, as word spread throughout the empire.

At the same time that he was allying with the Totonacs, Cortez

adopted a diplomatic approach to Montezuma’s emissaries who had

come bearing gifts of gold and other Aztec riches soon after he had

landed. By the time of Cortez’ arrival, Montezuma had accumulated a

significant amount of intelligence about the invading Spaniards from

both direct and indirect contacts with earlier expeditions. He knew

they were more powerful than he in every respect but numbers. Each

time they had come they came stronger than before, the recent battle

at Tabasco revealing new weapons the Aztecs had never before

beheld.

Principal sites of Mesoamerican civilization ─Britannica.com

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Montezuma: Uneasy Lies the Crown

It was uncanny that Cortez had arrived at just the time

foretold by Aztec prophecy and that he and his men bore a strong

resemblance to their chief god, Quetzalcoatl, a bearded white man,

who had left in ages past, but who had promised to return to resume

his rule over the empire. Indeed, the Aztecs justified their rule in the

name of this deity. But it was doubtful that Montezuma believed that

Cortez was this god; he had seen enough of the Spanish to know that

they were men; powerful men with a technology he could not match,

but men, nonetheless. But could he employ Cortez to shore up his

own shaky rule? The record is ambiguous, but during the period

between late June 1519 through early November when Cortez entered

Tenochtitlan, Montezuma appears to have followed a twofold strategy

of peaceful talk while setting traps for Cortez, rather than a strategy of

direct confrontation proposed by some of his advisers.

At first Montezuma sought to

dissuade Cortez from visiting his capital. Yet,

the tactic he employed to turn Cortez away

had the very opposite effect of enticing him in.

Montezuma knew the Spanish were after gold,

above all. Cortez had told his emissaries that

the Spanish were afflicted by a disease that

only gold could cure. Thus, it made no sense

for Montezuma to send gifts in enormous

quantities of the very items that Cortez sought

and expect him to turn away. No, the answer

must be that Montezuma sought to draw

Cortez to him with promises of more gold,

attempting to learn about his weaknesses,

while setting traps along the way. In short,

Montezuma employed a strategy of attrition.

Montezuma II

─Britannica.com

88 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

Montezuma’s objective was to deplete Cortez’s forces by leading him

into conflicts with his recalcitrant allies. If that failed (as we know it

did), then he would seek to exploit the notion that Cortez was the

returning god Quetzalcoatl and claim that the god’s purpose was to

rule through reinforcing Aztec authority over a fractious realm. It was

a risky strategy; it would preclude Montezuma’s deployment of his

own forces against the presumed deity in whose name he would claim

to rule, for such a course could trigger uncontainable revolts

throughout the empire. Attrition could work both ways.

At the end of June Montezuma sent another large delegation

to Cortez, again laden with gold and treasure. This time, however, it

was to inform him that he could travel to Tenochtitlan after all, but

with no guarantee that he could actually meet Montezuma. Cortez

was excited at this news, but before he could marshal his forces and

set off, there occurred an event that forced a delay. On July 1 a single

ship arrived from Cuba with a dozen crew professing their interest in

joining Cortez’ forces. The men were welcomed, but it was the news

they brought with them about governor Velasquez that galvanized

Cortez into action.

Their news was that the king had issued a decree appointing

Velasquez as Adelantado of Cuba “giving him authority to trade and

found settlements.” It was Cortez’ worst fear because now the

governor had the legal right to deprive him of everything he had

claimed in Mexico. Cortez decided to inform the king of what he had

done and beg his confirmation. Accordingly, he loaded one of his best

ships with as much of the treasure he had so far accumulated,

including all he had parceled out to his men, as his gift to the king.

Along with the treasure, he sent his first letter (which has recently

been discovered), as well as a petition signed by all of his men

supporting Cortez in all of his actions.12

12 Diaz del Castillo, The True Story of the Conquest of New Spain, 192-198; and John Schwaller with Helen Nader, The First Letter From New Spain: The Lost Petition of Cortez and his Company, June 20, 1519 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014).

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Departing for Spain on July 26, the ship stopped first in Cuba

to take on food and water, but, despite admonitions to take

precautions against leaking news of their trip to Velasquez, the

governor discovered it. Although he tried and failed to intercept the

ship, which sailed on to Spain unhindered, the governor now decided

to use his new authority to mount an expedition to Mexico to seize

and imprison Cortez and claim the land for himself. It would be almost

a year before the governor’s expeditionary force would arrive in

Mexico (June 1520) and when it did it would trigger a sequence of

events that would lead to the near defeat of Cortez’ entire effort in

Mexico. But that is a part of the narrative to be taken up later.

In the meantime, word of the king’s decree sparked renewed

unrest in the camp. A handful of men secretly planned to steal a ship

and return to Cuba. Upon learning of the plot, Cortez dealt harshly

with the dissidents, executing the two leaders and severely punishing

the others. It now transpired that Cortez also discovered that his

remaining nine ships were no longer seaworthy, having been

weakened by shipworm. One vessel he was able to salvage, but the

others had to be taken apart, sails and hardware stored, and the

rotting planks burned. Cortez offered free passage aboard the

remaining ship to anyone who wished to leave, but there were no

takers. Dismantling his fleet had several positive consequences. Not

only did it strengthen the resolve of his men once they realized that

they had no choice but to march with Cortez, but also, it strengthened

his force by adding roughly a hundred sailors who were now free to

accompany him.

On August 16, Cortez set off for Montezuma’s inland capital

of Tenochtitlan with four hundred Spaniards, strengthened by the

addition of over a thousand Totonac warriors and porters, plus fifteen

horses, a like number of cannon and numerous war dogs. On the

advice of his Totonac allies, Cortez headed directly for Tlaxcalan

territory in the expectation that he could enlist them as allies, for the

Tlaxcalans were determined adversaries whom the Aztecs had never

90 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

been able to subdue. For the first two weeks, tribes encountered

along the march were uniformly friendly and hospitable, welcoming

Cortez as a liberator from the Aztec yoke. But, reaching the border of

Tlaxcala on August 31, Cortez once again was confounded by what he

encountered.

Contrary to what he had been led to expect, the Tlaxcalans

immediately began a series of large-scale attacks on Cortez’s forces

lasting nearly three weeks, including a night attack, which war dog

sentries foiled. Although Cortez’s forces fought the Tlaxcalans to a

standoff, the battles weakened both sides. In the end the Tlaxcala

leadership decided to reverse policy; they sued for peace and

indicated a willingness to join an alliance with Cortez. It would become

one of the most enduring and crucial alliances the Spanish would ever

make in Mexico. Having a secure base of operations in the very heart

of the Aztec empire would be a critical component of his eventual

victory. The question was: what explained the Tlaxcalan decision to

attack the enemy of their mortal foe in the first place? The answer lay

in the internal politics of the Tlaxcala realm, which was composed of

four provinces whose leaders both cooperated and contended with

each other for supremacy, even colluding with the Aztecs on

occasion.13

In the debate over how to deal with the Spaniards, there was

considerable disagreement among the leaders. Xicotencatl the

Younger, the warrior son of one of the four leaders of the Tlaxcalan

confederacy, saw advantage in attacking Cortez, as part of his bid for

leadership. Others were opposed, seeing advantage in an alliance for

their long struggle against the Aztecs. The decision to attack was

therefore not unanimous and dissension spread to the forces in the

field. In the end, Xicotencatl the Younger lost not only the battle and

his bid for leadership, but later on he would be executed for what was

13 Ross Hassig, “Xicotencatl: Rethinking An Indigenous Mexican Hero,” Estudios de

Cultura Náhuatl, No. 32, 2001.

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determined to be a traitorous policy of opposing the decision to ally

with Cortez.

Whatever the domestic explanation for the Tlaxcala attack on

Cortez’s forces, the objective reality was that their battles served the

attrition strategy of Montezuma. Montezuma could hardly have been

more pleased than to see his two main adversaries facing off against

each other in mutually draining engagements. But Montezuma’s

pleasure soon faded at the grim prospect of having to face both

adversaries once they reconciled and entered into alliance against

him. Worse, news of Cortez’ successes on the battlefield had spread

throughout the country, drawing many disgruntled tributaries to his

side.

While recuperating in Tlaxcala, where they would spend the

better part of a month, Cortez received yet another emissary from

Montezuma. The emperor’s message was to congratulate Cortez on

his military prowess and to offer him tribute in any amount he wished,

for as long as he wished, if only he would not come to Tenochtitlan.14

Accepting the offer of tribute, Cortez courteously insisted that he must

meet Montezuma in person to convey the message of his sovereign. A

personal meeting would also enable them to “iron out” any

misunderstandings. That being the case, the Aztec emissaries were

authorized to invite Cortez to proceed by the direct route that passed

through the religious center of the empire, Cholula.

Cholula would be the next trap in Montezuma’s larger attrition

strategy against Cortez. Cholula was the holy city of the Aztecs, the

equivalent of Jerusalem for the Christians, or Mecca for the Muslims.

Its great pyramid was nearly as large as the grand pyramid of Giza in

Egypt. By the middle of October, his troops refreshed and ready,

Cortez set out for Cholula accompanied by six thousand Tlaxcalan

warriors (most of his Totonac allies had decided to return to their

coastal homeland). Upon arrival, the Cholula chiefs warmly welcomed

14 Diaz del Castillo, The True Story of the Conquest of New Spain, 264.

92 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

Cortez into the city, but required the Tlaxcalans, who were their

enemies, to camp outside the city walls.

After a few days of cordial interaction, the mood changed.

Sending several of his Indian aides out on a carefully disguised

reconnaissance of the city, what they saw alarmed him. Cortez knew

from the outset that Cholula was a strong ally of Montezuma and so

he approached the city with caution. His scouts now confirmed his

worst fears. Streets were being barricaded, stones (ammunition)

placed on rooftops, stake pits to trap horses were being dug and

camouflaged, children were being sacrificed to appease their gods,

women and elderly were leaving the city en masse, and a large Aztec

force was being deployed nearby. Malinche, befriending one of the

chieftains’ wives, confirmed that their plan was to massacre the

Spaniards in the city streets in a close quarter engagement that would

neutralize the Spanish advantages of mobility and firepower.15

It was a difficult situation, but Cortez reacted in characteristic

fashion by taking the initiative rather than waiting passively for his

enemies to strike. He set his own trap, informing Cholula’s leaders that

he would be leaving the next morning and requesting their presence

to send him off. When the chiefs and ranking members of the city

arrived in the central courtyard the next morning, Cortez confronted

them, exposing their plot. His men slammed the gates shut and

massacred the people trapped in the courtyard. Cortez signaled his

Tlaxcalan allies, who also stormed the city, preventing any assistance

from reaching the courtyard.

Cortez had ordered a preemptive attack that thwarted the

planned Cholula attack on him. He deliberately eradicated the entire

leadership along with several thousand men, removing it as an ally of

Montezuma and sending a clear message to the Aztec emperor and his

allies that the same fate would attend to them if they resisted. Several

neighboring cities quickly sent envoys to Cortez’ camp tendering their

allegiance. Cortez brought the city back to order, treating its

15 Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, 267-268.

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inhabitants with compassion and encouraging a return to normal

activity. He also installed pro-Tlaxcala leaders into power, insuring that

his supply line from Vera Cruz to Tlaxcala to Cholula was securely in

the hands of allies.

Montezuma hastily sent envoys to Cortez laden with rich

presents, disclaiming any connection to the events at Cholula. He

explained away the presence of the Aztec force in the vicinity as being

there to put down disorders. Renewing his invitation to Cortez to

come to Tenochtitlan, Montezuma laid yet another trap. As Cortez’

forces advanced, they came upon a fork in the road with one route

recently blocked. The other route led through narrow passages and

ravines, perfect territory for an ambush. So, taking a page from

Hannibal’s book, Cortez set off over the mountains to arrive at

Tenochtitlan by a more circuitous route that was geographically

challenging, but militarily safer.16

Cortez in Tenochtitlan

On November 8, appearing on the doorstep of Montezuma’s

island capital, Cortez presented him with what was in effect a fait

accompli. The Aztec emperor was forced to implement Plan B, the

Machiavellian tactic of keeping one’s friends close, but his enemies

closer. He did this by literally embracing Cortez as the embodiment of

the long-prophesied return of Quetzalcoatl. Welcoming Cortez at the

entrance of Tenochtitlan, Montezuma said:

Our lord, you are weary. The journey has tired you, but now

you have arrived on the earth. You have come to your city,

Mexico. You have come here to sit on your throne, to sit

under its canopy. The kings who have gone before, your

representatives, guarded it and preserved it for your

coming…. The people were protected by their swords and

sheltered by their shields. Do the kings know the destiny of

16 Marley, Wars of the Americas, 18.

94 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

those they left behind, their posterity? If only they are

watching! If only they can see what I see! No, it is not a

dream. I am not walking in my sleep. I am not seeing you in

my dreams…. I have seen you at last! I have met you face to

face! I was in agony for five days, for ten days, with my eyes

fixed on the Region of the Mystery. And now you have come

out of the clouds and mists to sit on your throne again. This

was foretold by the kings who governed your city, and now it

has taken place. You have come back to us, you have come

down from the sky. Rest now and take possession of your

royal houses. Welcome to your land, my lords!17

Showered with gifts of gold and feted lavishly, Cortez, his

men, and Tlaxcalan allies were housed by Montezuma in the palace of

Axayacatl in the center of the island capital. There can be little doubt

that neither Montezuma nor his chiefs believed Cortez was the god

Quetzalcoatl; but saying that he was reinforced his people’s

awestruck, almost reverential reaction to him. It also offered the

opportunity to show that they were allied, thus shoring up his

fractious regime against further defections. Montezuma would rule,

but at the behest of the long absent deity. In co-opting Cortez,

Montezuma also bought time to work out a plan to defeat him.

After a week of festivities, Cortez began to feel less like a god

than a lamb being fattened for sacrifice. Though its buildings were

magnificent, the layout of the capital lent itself to the feeling of

entrapment. The city was an island fortress that could only be entered

or exited by three causeways across water that could quickly be shut

by raising drawbridges. When the bridges were raised the city was

nearly impregnable to attack from without, but that same feature

17 Jill Lepore, Encounters in the New World: A History in Documents (New York: Oxford,

2000), 62-65. Compare to the version offered by the Spanish priest Bernardino de

Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 12, Chapter 16, who rewrites this speech to omit all

reference to Cortez’ passage from heaven to earth, coming out of the clouds, and

coming down from the sky.

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could isolate those within the city’s walls. Cortez had bearded the lion

in his den, but now looked for a way to escape.

Pondering their predicament, Cortez and his officers rejected

withdrawal from the city either secretly or openly as leaving

themselves vulnerable to attack, especially if caught on the narrow

causeways. Even if they should successfully retreat to their coastal

Tenochtitlan, its causeways and surrounding islets on the western

edge of Lake Texcoco ─Image: Wikimedia Commons

96 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

base 240 miles away, they would be judged as having failed to achieve

their objective. Instead, based upon Montezuma’s treatment of him,

Cortez hit upon the idea of seizing the emperor and holding him

hostage. They would be safe as long as they kept him under control

and could rule in his name until they could accumulate sufficient

treasure as ransom and arrange for a safe exit. Cortez, too, would

keep his friends close and his enemies closer.

Then, an event occurred that offered Cortez the opportunity

to put his plan into action. He received news of an attack on their base

at Vera Cruz. The Aztec governor of the adjoining province, on the

pretext of offering allegiance to Cortez, had drawn the garrison’s fifty-

man guard into an ambush, with the evident purpose of seizing

control of Cortez’s coastal base. Although commander Juan de

Escalante and his men had beaten off the attack, they had suffered the

loss of eight men, including Escalante himself, who died afterward

from his wounds. One of their Indian prisoners confessed that the

attack was undertaken “at the instigation of Montezuma.” Worse, the

natives had cut off the head of one of Escalante’s men, which they

“sent to the Aztec emperor.”18

Cortez was both outraged and alarmed, for there could be no

mistaking the significance of the attack. Capture of their coastal base

would have cut them off from any source of reinforcements,

communication, or escape. It would be the penultimate turn of the

screw isolating them in the Aztec capital from which they would never

hope to depart alive. Indeed, there would be no base to which to flee.

Requesting an audience with Montezuma, Cortez arrived with an

armed guard. Laying out the charge against the attacker and against

the emperor as instigator, he demanded an investigation. Montezuma

professed his innocence, blaming the incident on one of his enemies,

but agreed with Cortez’ demand that he summon the accused to stand

trial.

18 Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, 342-343.

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Cortez additionally insisted that to insure against any

mutinous action, Montezuma should move his residence to Cortez’

palace until the investigation had ended. Although vigorously refusing

to consent to such a “degradation” of his authority, when confronted

with the angry retinue surrounding him, Montezuma complied.

Although his nobles were aghast, Montezuma himself made plain that

he was “visiting his friends of his own accord,” bringing his entire

household with him. Ensconced comfortably in the palace of Axayacatl

and treated with the utmost deference and homage by the Spaniards

attending him, Montezuma nevertheless was now effectively under

house arrest and Cortez’ hostage.19

Upon the accused governor’s arrival for trial, Montezuma

disavowed him, but the defendant maintained that he served no other

sovereign but his emperor. Moreover, he admitted his role in the

attack and the killings. Investigation concluded, he and his chief

officers were condemned to be burned at the stake in front of

Montezuma’s palace. Cortez ordered that the funeral pyre be

composed of the “arrows, javelins, and other weapons,” drawn from

the capital’s arsenal. To insure against any last-minute eruption, just

prior to the execution, Cortez confronted Montezuma, charging him

with being the instigator of the entire affair, and fettered his ankles.

When it was over, Cortez released him from his bonds, but

declined to permit him to return to his palace, a decision in which

Montezuma gloomily acquiesced. As the emperor whiled away his

time in captivity over the winter months, Cortez busied himself with

devising means of avoiding entrapment in the capital. In a stroke of

tactical genius, he decided to begin building two sailing vessels armed

with cannon, which could transport fifty or sixty troops. These would

enable him to relieve his dependence on the causeways and offer a

way to barge out of the city if trapped there. Materials—sails, iron,

cordage, nails, even cannon—were sent from the Vera Cruz base in

coming days.

19 Ibid, 344-346.

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Challenges to Empire

Meanwhile, a noble of the empire, Cacama, who had once

been a rival of Montezuma, concocted a plan to mount an insurrection

against the Spaniards ostensibly in order to restore the emperor to

power. The scheme contained within it, however, a deeper plan to

succeed Montezuma as the vanquisher of the intruders. Cortez

discovered the plot, proposing an open confrontation, but Montezuma

offered a subtler approach, recognizing the threat to himself in any

successful rebellion carried out by a rival. Calling for a meeting of the

plotters in a town near Tenochtitlan, the emperor had the plotters

arrested and imprisoned. He also sent his men to each of their

provinces to root out potential rebels.20

Having snuffed out an internal threat, Cortez now required

that Montezuma formally declare his fealty to King Charles.

Montezuma agreed, informing his astonished people that the ancient

prophecy of the return of Quetzalcoatl to resume his rule over the

kingdom had come true. Cortez also suggested that as a sign of fealty,

Montezuma should send a gratuity to the king to cement his good will.

Thereupon the emperor sent his tax collectors to the far ends of the

empire to bring back as much gold tribute as they could carry. The

emperor himself added to the hoard, turning over several rooms of his

palace that were filled to the ceiling with the yellow metal.21

When asked about the source of the gold, Montezuma

revealed that they obtained most of it from distant rivers and from

earlier conquests. Cortez sent men to locate the sources, confirming

that the Aztecs had obtained gold mainly by panning for it or picking

up small nuggets washed down the rivers. Yet this source of gold was

insufficient to account for the enormous horde possessed by the

natives. Some mines were discovered that showed signs of not having

been worked for hundreds of years. It was a puzzle.

20 Ibid, 357-359. 21 Ibid, 361-363.

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The Aztec was a stone-age culture. They had no iron or steel

like the Spaniards. Their weapons were of wood and flint. They had no

written language, the simple wheel was unknown to them, and they

used no currency. Yet, the mines that Cortez’ men discovered had

been worked with hard metallic tools in the distant past. The same

was true of the magnificent temple/pyramids whose stones had been

cut by hard-edged instruments. Like the hermit crab or the cuckoo

bird, the Aztecs occupied and built upon a habitat that they had not

created. Cortez and his men were too busy collecting loot to ponder

this conundrum and simply accepted as fact that the Aztecs were the

architects of their domain.22

Cortez seemed to have accomplished all he had set out to do.

In the name of the king he ruled an empire through Montezuma as

large as any in Europe, and perhaps wealthier. But now he took a step

too far. He demanded that he and his men be allowed to practice their

religion openly in one of the many temples in the city. Although

Montezuma was startled by the request, he agreed to turn over a

temple. The temple was scrubbed down of sacrificial blood and

adorned with the crucifix and a mass was held, which Cortez’ entire

army attended. It was an extraordinary sight, but a final indignity to

the Aztecs who witnessed the celebration of a Catholic mass as the

profanation of their own religious beliefs. It also directly contradicted

Cortez’s personification of Quetzalcoatl reborn.

The public desecration of the temple roused the Aztec lords,

priests, and people and the emperor was not slow to take advantage

of the opportunity. Calling Cortez to his apartments, he insisted that

the Spaniards must all leave the country immediately, or “every Aztec

in the land will rise in arms against you.” Cortez responded that while

he would regret leaving the country, he could not yet do so because

he had no ships. Were it not for this he would leave at once. Not to be

outdone, Montezuma offered to help build new ships. Cortez retorted

22 For an incisive exploration of this conundrum, see Zecharia Sitchin, The Lost Realms (New York: Harper, 1990), 14-16.

100 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

that if he had to leave under these threatening circumstances, he

would have to take the emperor with him.23

Over the following weeks, now under an increasingly

inhospitable atmosphere in Tenochtitlan, Cortez’ and Montezuma’s

men worked together in Vera Cruz constructing a new fleet. (Cortez,

however, passed the word to his men to slow-walk the entire

construction process.) The correlation of forces was still adverse.

Cortez was surrounded, safe only as long as he held Montezuma

hostage, but even that security measure was compromised by the

unsubtle inflammatory attempt to flaunt Catholicism in the face of the

Aztecs, which only built resentment among the populace, lord and

lowly alike.

The Spaniards were stuck. Any withdrawal/escape plan

required traversing the two-hundred-and-forty-mile distance from

Tenochtitlan to Vera Cruz—although there were presumably safe

havens along the way at Cholula and Tlaxcala. But would there be

ships to sail away on? Moreover, there were possible ambushes along

the way, beginning with the problems of departing from the Aztec

capital itself. Tenochtitlan, a capital city of 300,000, was the center of

a populated area of lakeside towns and villages of close to 400,000

people. Now in early May of 1520, nearly six months after entering

Tenochtitlan, “tidings came from the coast, which gave greater alarm

to Cortez than even the menaced insurrection of the Aztecs.”24

Plot and Counterplot—Spanish and Aztec

Earlier, Governor Velasquez, upon learning of the fabulous

riches Cortez had discovered in Mexico, had begun to build an

expedition to seize them for himself (in the name of the king).

Scouring Cuba for ships, men, and weapons, by the spring of 1520 he

had assembled the largest expedition that had ever been sent to

Mexico. There were eighteen ships, over a thousand men, eighty

23 Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, 369-370. 24 Ibid, 371.

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horses, one hundred and fifty crossbows, eighty riflemen, forty

cannon, and one thousand island natives along with ample provisions

of food and weapons. The main weakness of the force was not

immediately apparent, but it was that many of the men he recruited

for the expedition were neither well trained, nor fully dedicated to the

governor. They were drawn primarily by the news of Cortez’s

discovery of Mexico’s riches, rather than any allegiance to Velasquez.

Departing Cuba in early March under the command of Panfilo

de Narvaez, the armada dropped anchor off San Juan de Ulúa on April

23. Finding this anchorage as unacceptable as Cortez had, he moved

his encampment further to the north, near Cempoalla and Villa Rica de

la Vera Cruz. Montezuma’s coastal watchers quickly informed him of

the fleet’s arrival and the Aztec chieftain sent envoys with gifts and a

message of friendship. Narvaez reciprocated, condemning Cortez as a

rogue profiteer whom he had come to imprison and send back to

Spain for trial for insubordination to the king. It quickly became

apparent that the two leaders had a common enemy, as their course

of action would reflect. Whether fully articulated or not, their strategy

was to coordinate their maneuvers. When Narvaez began his assault

on Cortez, Montezuma was to trigger an uprising from within

Tenochtitlan. It was an obvious strategy, but one that would never get

beyond its first step.25

Whether Cortez learned of their connivance sooner or later

was immaterial. He said later that he thought they had secretly

“connived” against him.26 Narvaez’ very presence on the coast

25 “Cortés Struggles with Narváez,” in Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The History of the

Conquest of New Spain, ed. David Carrasco (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico,

2008), 209: In his introduction to this section, Carrasco says Montezuma and Narvaez

formed an “alliance.” Marley, Wars of the Americas, 20, says “Cortés …is also angry with

Montezuma, having learned the emperor secretly contacted his antagonist Narváez

during the recent coastal campaign, promising friendship.”

26 Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol. I, trans. John Ingram Lockhart (Project Gutenberg eBook # 32474, May 21, 2010), 338.

102 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

presented the conquistador with the crisis of his life. But Cortez would

react the way he had to every other crisis he had faced to date. He

would seize the initiative and not passively await the attack being

prepared. To throw Narvaez off guard and lead him to believe that

there was no urgency, Cortez sent several messengers with letters

proposing cooperation with him, including an offer to divide Mexico

and all of its treasure between them. He also sent agents to sow

division among his troops with gifts of gold and promises of much

more.

The problem Cortez faced was how to defeat a two-front

attack against numerically superior forces? His answer was to hold at

Tenochtitlan while striking preemptively at Cempoalla before Narvaez

was ready. Thus, Cortez put one of his top officers, Pedro de Alvarado,

in charge of the Tenochtitlan defense. For this purpose, Alvarado

would have the majority of their total force—140 men, all of the

cannon and most of the muskets. Then, Cortez took his best 70 men

and in the second week of May, travelling light, set off for Narvaez’s

encampment outside Cempoalla, planning to carry out a surprise

attack. Along the way, by prearrangement he stopped at Cholula

where he was joined by Velasquez de Leon with 120 men and, further

along, met with Gonzalo de Sandoval and 66 more from Vera Cruz.

Sandoval had also brought along dozens of long lances tipped with

copper blades for use against Narvaez’s horsemen. In all, after a series

of forced marches over two weeks, he arrived with 266 lightly armed

men a few miles from Narvaez’s encampment on the night of May

28.27

There he received another group of envoys from Narvaez,

one of whom fortuitously was an old friend, Andrés de Duero. Duero

was a double agent and secret ally of Cortez who, recall, had been

instrumental as secretary to Velasquez in persuading the governor to

27 Troop numbers throughout this history are in dispute. These come from Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, 383. See also, Sigurdsson, “Battle of Cempoala: Cortez & His Men Defeat Force Sent to Arrest Him,” Burn Pit, May 24, 2013, who claims that the force was “nearly 400.” www.burnpit.us

H E R N A N C O R T E Z : O F C O N T R A C T S A N D C O N Q U E S T | 103

enter into the original contract with Cortez. He now brought an offer

from Narvaez. If Cortez would surrender, he and his entire force would

be transported safely back to Cuba with no charges to be brought

against them. Cortez declined this offer, instead reaffirming the

original deal he had made with Duero for one third of all the wealth he

obtained in Mexico. Realizing how much more valuable that deal was

now, Duero was convinced and promptly disclosed to Cortez

invaluable information about Narvaez’ overconfidence, his lax security

measures, and dispositions of troops, cannon, and cavalry.28

Cortez decided to strike hard and immediately that very

night. The circumstances were perfect. It had begun to rain, a

torrential downpour, which would conceal their movements. He

assigned the main task of capturing or killing Narvaez to Sandoval,

giving him sixty men for the job. He gave Francisco Pizarro the task to

silence the cannon by pouring wax into the firing holes, also with sixty

men. To Leon he gave sixty men to neutralize Narvaez’s main force

under Diego Velasquez. Cortez took twenty men and five horses to use

as a mobile reserve and left the remainder of some forty men as a

secondary reserve. He also sent a handful of men secretly into

Narvaez’ camp to cut the girths of the horses’ saddles.29

After midnight, still in a downpour, at the agreed signal

Cortez’ men mounted the assault. Surprise was nearly complete

despite one of the sentries having sounded the alarm. Sandoval’s

forces climbed up to the temple-top headquarters where Narvaez lay

asleep and in a brief but fierce battle subdued the commander,

literally smoking him out of his quarters by setting fire to the thatched

roof of his compartment and by knocking out one of his eyes with a

blow from a lance. Claiming that Narvaez was killed, Cortez’ men

quickly persuaded his troops to give in. Cortez had lost but two men in

28 Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, 387-388 29 Diaz del Castillo, The Memoirs of the Conquistador, 322-323; and “Conquest of the Aztec Empire, Part II,” Spanish War History, spanishwars.net.

104 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

the attack to about a dozen for Narvaez, with several more wounded

on each side.

It was a complete victory accomplished in a matter of hours.

Engaging with Narvaez’ troops, Cortez won them to his side, again

with gold handouts and promises of more to come. He had quintupled

his forces to thirteen hundred men augmented by two thousand

Tlaxcalan warriors. He also now had ninety-six horses, forty cannon,

eighty crossbows, and eighty muskets, all with a full complement of

ammunition and stores. Cortez, as he had done before, dismantled

most of the ships, reserving their armament, sails, rigging, rudders,

compasses, and hardware. Cortez appeared to be in a stronger

position with a more powerful force than he had when he originally

entered Mexico, but his euphoria was short-lived as news came from

Alvarado that Tenochtitlan was in revolt and his forces were under

siege.

Victory at Cempoalla ─Adapted from map entitled “Cortes’ landing and inland

march,” MexicanHistory.org

H E R N A N C O R T E Z : O F C O N T R A C T S A N D C O N Q U E S T | 105

The uprising at Tenochtitlan was a second major crisis for

Cortez, threatening to take away everything he had gained in Mexico.

What exactly happened is still shrouded in controversy regarding the

origin of the turmoil. Most scholars blame Alvarado for provoking the

insurrection by deliberately massacring several hundred Aztec leaders

who were peacefully celebrating a feast day in the courtyard adjacent

to Alvarado’s temple headquarters. The argument professing the

peaceful intent of the Aztecs is unconvincing. Evidence suggests that

the resulting uprising was consistent with the joint plan Narvaez and

Montezuma had put together.

The trouble began on May 16 as soon as Cortez had left

Tenochtitlan. According to an early Spanish source, “the Mexica

intended to have murdered all the Spaniards on this occasion, for

which purpose they had concealed their arms in the buildings

adjoining the temple. This was told the Spaniards by the women, from

whom they always learnt the truth.”30 Another source says that

Alvarado tortured several priests who divulged the plan for the

insurrection.31 Still another notes that the uprising was not a

spontaneous reaction to the massacre but showed “signs of

organization.”32

It is difficult to believe that Montezuma, who only weeks

before had threatened Cortez with a revolution of the entire Aztec

nation against him if he did not leave Mexico forthwith, would now

meekly request permission from Alvarado to hold a peaceful

celebration in the courtyard of the conquistadors’ headquarters. More

likely, Montezuma saw his opportunity to eliminate the Spaniards’

weakened presence in Tenochtitlan as Narvaez presumably was

30 Antonio de Herrera, Historia General de las Indies Occidentales, 366, as quoted in Diaz del Castillo, The Memoirs of the Conquistador, 397, note 86. 31 Buddy Levy, Conquistador: Hernan Cortez, King Montezuma and the Last Stand of the Aztecs ( New York Bantam, 2008), 166. 32 Miguel Leon-Portilla, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 77.

106 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

destroying Cortez’ small force on the coast. Alvarado partially upset

this plan by striking preemptively, perhaps triggering prematurely the

uprising planned against him anyway.

To Montezuma’s surprise, it was Cortez who defeated

Narvaez. And as soon as Montezuma was informed of this fact he

called off the uprising in Tenochtitlan, although he maintained the

cutoff of water and food to Alvarado’s embattled troops. The tables

had turned once again. Instead of the destruction of Cortez’ forces in

both places, Montezuma was now confronted with the largest Spanish

force he had ever faced, and it was coming to Tenochtitlan. The Aztec

leader hastily put another plan into action. He would put the blame on

Alvarado for the uprising, denying any responsibility, while laying a

trap for Cortez in the capital when he arrived. He would lure Cortez

into the capital and then seal it shut, trapping them all inside. The

embattled Alvarado would be bait for this trap.

Montezuma’s first act was to send a high level four-man

delegation to Cortez while he was still on the coast. They tearfully

complained that

Pedro de Alvarado sallied out from his quarters with all the

soldiers that Cortés had left with him and for no reason at all,

fell on their chieftains and Caciques who were dancing and

celebrating a feast in honour of their Idols…33

In other words, the story of Alvarado’s brutal massacre of innocent

Indians came from Montezuma, and its purpose was to blame the

Spaniards for precipitating the uprising and to exonerate himself.

Montezuma also expected that the news would bring Cortez quickly

back to Tenochtitlan. He was right.

Cortez decided to return to Tenochtitlan immediately, not

only to rescue Alvarado, but also to regain control of the empire. His

first destination was Tlaxcala where he put his forces in order,

33 Carrasco, ed., The History of the Conquest of New Spain, 210.

H E R N A N C O R T E Z : O F C O N T R A C T S A N D C O N Q U E S T | 107

augmenting them with two thousand fresh men from his ally. Beyond

Tlaxcala the reception his men received from villages along the way

was increasingly cool, and when he arrived at Texcoco on the east side

of the lake, downright frigid. At Texcoco Cortez received two

messages. From Alvarado came word that hostilities had ceased, but

the blockade continued. From Montezuma came a missive promising

to lift the blockade as soon as Cortez arrived at Tenochtitlan and once

again disclaiming any responsibility for the uprising which he said had

occurred against his orders.34

Arriving at the southern causeway entrance to Tenochtitlan

on June 24, the scene was decidedly different from his first entrance

the previous November. Thousands welcomed him along the route the

first time, but now the city seemed deserted, though the gates were

open. Against the advice of his Tlaxcalan allies who smelled a trap,

Cortez took his entire force over the causeway and into the city,

receiving a joyful reception by Alvarado’s men, but there was only

eerie silence in the rest of the city. After a testy exchange with

Montezuma during which Cortez demanded that the local markets be

reopened, and food and water supplied, the Aztec emperor suggested

that releasing his presumptive heir, Cuitláhuac, would lead to that

result. Instead, when released, Cuitláhuac became the leader of the

revolt.

Within hours, it became clear that the city was up in arms.

Hordes of warriors began to descend upon Tenochtitlan from the

surrounding countryside and men previously hidden on rooftops in the

city emerged armed with stones to sling at the Spaniards. All the

entrances to the city were shut and the causeway drawbridges were

raised. Cortez realized they had fallen into a trap but believed that his

superior firepower would prevail as it had in the past. The entire

contingent was lodged in their palace at Axayacatl, a walled enclosure

with the usual temple in the center. The walls, however, were not high

enough to be a significant barrier to a determined aggressor and

34 Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, 402-403.

108 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

higher surrounding temples offered vantage points from which to rain

down stones and arrows on Cortez’ men.

Thus began the siege of Cortez at Tenochtitlan. Over the next

week hordes of Aztec warriors attempted to storm the palace, while

the Spaniards responded with their thirteen cannons strategically

placed for defense and muskets trained at those who breached the

walls. Nevertheless, breaches occurred, resulting in close order hand-

to-hand combat. Today, the Aztec strategy would be recognized as a

human wave attack designed to reduce the strength of the adversary

by repeated advances until eventually overwhelming him. Cortez

sought to break through the Aztec lines by repeatedly charging out of

the fortress with his cavalry, but the Indians simply withdrew behind

hastily constructed barricades only to reemerge when the horsemen

retreated. Cortez was winning battles but losing the war to a

determined foe possessing seemingly unlimited numbers.

To provide some protection from the slings and arrows,

Cortez devised a wheeled wooden canopy called a manta, under

which two-dozen men could safely advance and fire their muskets.

Several were constructed but they were too heavy and visibility was

poor. The Aztecs were able to thwart this stratagem by rushing the

mantas and pushing them over. Cortez was growing desperate. There

was no letup of the siege and food and water were dwindling fast. The

only answer was to break out from the blockade and retreat to

friendly territory in Tlaxcala where he could regroup and rebuild his

forces. However, the causeways leading from the city to the mainland

were constructed of stone buttresses spanned by wooden

drawbridges. There was constant conflict over the bridges. Cortez’

men sought to establish control of the main causeway and its seven

bridges, but the Aztecs tore down each connecting wooden bridge as

it was rebuilt.

At last, Cortez turned to Montezuma, who initially refused to

meet with him, declaring that it was no use: “you will never leave

these walls alive.” When Cortez promised to leave Mexico and return

H E R N A N C O R T E Z : O F C O N T R A C T S A N D C O N Q U E S T | 109

to Spain if given the opportunity to depart in peace, Montezuma

relented and agreed to address his people. Calling to his people from

the top of the Axayacatl palace, he declared that any further conflict

was unnecessary, as the Spaniards had agreed to depart and leave

their land. But the sentiment among the Aztecs was adverse, spurred

on by Cuitláhuac, leader of the rebellion and Montezuma’s

presumptive heir. The throng denounced the emperor, their words

followed by a rain of stones and arrows, several of which struck and

badly injured Montezuma.35 He would expire a few days later, at forty-

one years of age. Indeed, a council of chiefs had elected Cuitláhuac to

be acting sovereign even before Montezuma had addressed the

crowd.36 Cuitláhuac always had been an outspoken advocate for

fighting the Spaniards. There would be no armistice. It would be a war

of annihilation.

Cortez was truly desperate. They had expended all the

ammunition for the muskets and the powder for the cannon was

gone. They were down to swords and lances and twenty-three horses.

There was no alternative but to attempt a breakout. He had earlier

instructed his men to construct a portable wooden span to place over

the broken bridges connecting the stone causeway segments.

Unfortunately, they had managed to build only one. They would

depart well after midnight on June 30/July 1. Although advising his

men to travel as light as possible, many were loath to leave behind the

treasure in the palace and would attempt to take as much of it with

them as they could carry, slowing them down.

They had chosen the shortest of the three causeways for

their escape route that led to the lakeside city of Tlacopan two miles

35 Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, 420-422. Prescott records that

Guatemozin (Cuauhtémoc, who acceded to the throne after Cuitláhuac), was reported

to have fired the first arrow: 422, note 15.

36 Maurice Collis, Cortés and Montezuma (New Directions Publishing, September 15,

1999), 184.

110 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

distant to the west. To divert attention from their plan, Cortez

delivered the dead body of Montezuma to the Aztecs, who took him

off for ritual burial. In a constant drizzle they set off, with horses’

hooves padded to muffle their sound. Using the portable bridge, the

advance guard passed over the first segment safely, but, before they

could move it to the second they were discovered. The Indians,

evidently prepared for the breakout, were arrayed in strength along

the banks of the causeway and in hundreds of canoes along its length.

It was a massacre, perhaps the worst defeat in Spanish military

history. Cortez’ men, confined along the narrow causeway and

struggling to make it to the mainland, divested themselves of the

treasure they carried to lighten their load and speed their pace. The

defeat became known as La Noche Triste, the night of sorrows.

Although their losses were serious, there is no agreement as

to the number of deaths sustained in the breakout. Estimates range

from 150 to 1,000 Spaniards, and from 2,000-4,000 Tlaxcalan warriors.

Escape from Tenochtitlan ─Image: Lago de Texcoco posclasico.png: Yavidaxiu,

via Wikimedia Commons

H E R N A N C O R T E Z : O F C O N T R A C T S A N D C O N Q U E S T | 111

Most historians credit Cortez with retreating from Tenochtitlan with

the same number of troops he had when he first set foot on Mexican

soil, about 440, which would set Spanish losses at around 800. But

that was small comfort. The survivors were badly battered, almost all

were wounded, and had only the weapons they carried with them.

Traveling northward around the lake, they headed for Tlaxcala. Each

village they passed sent out locals to harass the travelers, refusing

them either food or water. Oddly, however, the main Aztec army that

had driven them from Tenochtitlan had not followed in pursuit.

If Cortez thought fortune had smiled at this welcome

breathing space, he was shortly disabused of the notion. For, on the

seventh day of the march, at the village of Otumba on the high plain

leading to Tlaxcala there appeared thousands of Aztec warriors, many

drawn from surrounding principalities, blocking their route and clearly

intent on finishing them off. But sometimes fortune smiles in

unexpected ways. Unknown to Cortez until later, the reason the

Aztecs’ main force had not pursued him out of Tenochtitlan was

because of a completely fortuitous event.

One of Narvaez’s black slaves who had traveled with Cortez

back to Tenochtitlan had smallpox, which he spread into the Aztec

community completely by chance. The Aztecs had no immunity to the

disease, which quickly began to ravage the inhabitants, including

Montezuma’s successor Cuitláhuac, who became incapacitated and

would perish in November.37 The outbreak of the disease disrupted

their leadership and debilitated their ranks, causing the Aztecs to

delay in the pursuit of Cortez, giving him the needed breathing space.

They nevertheless rallied their tributary allies, directing them to

intercept Cortez before he reached Tlaxcala. Then, for whatever

reason, the Aztecs had decided to wage the final battle against Cortez

on open flat ground that was more favorable to him than to the

37 Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650 (Cambridge University Press, February 13, 1998) 68-69.

112 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

Aztecs. In fact, even with only twenty horses Cortez directed cavalry

charges to disrupt and disorganize the attacking natives.

Still, it appeared that Aztec numbers would be decisive, and

as they were about to overwhelm Cortez’ forces, the conquistador

espied the Aztec commander surveying the course of battle from a

small rise. Calling for support from his men, Cortez and a handful of

horsemen charged the hill and killed the commander in a brief

skirmish. He raised his banner and exclaimed triumph, whereupon

Aztec forces became disorganized and demoralized, and began to

retreat. It was either a brilliant stroke of battlefield ingenuity or luck,

but against great odds, Cortez’ forces broke through the encirclement

to struggle onward to Tlaxcala and safety.

Destruction of the Aztec Empire

While Cortez and his men were tending their wounds and

rebuilding their forces at Tlaxcala, the Aztecs were being ravaged by

an epidemic of smallpox at Tenochtitlan. By some estimates the

population of the capital was decimated from over 300,000 to 200,000

by the fall, including the death of Montezuma’s successor Cuitláhuac

in late November. By then, the Aztecs too were in recovery mode,

rallied by a new emperor, Cuauhtémoc. Smallpox would eventually

spread throughout Mexico, devastating the population of five million

by ninety percent.

Meanwhile, good fortune continued to smile on Cortez.

Governor Velasquez, assuming Narvaez had been successful, sent two

ships to Vera Cruz loaded with supplies and ammunition, which

Cortez’ men seized. Around the same time the governor of Jamaica

had sent two ships to support an expedition sent to Pánuco, a

settlement some 230 miles north of Vera Cruz. In both cases Cortez

persuaded the crews to join him. A merchant from the Canary Islands,

perceiving a commercial opportunity, sent a galleon loaded with

military stores. He was right. Cortez purchased it all with gold,

including the ship. These serendipitous arrivals cheered and

H E R N A N C O R T E Z : O F C O N T R A C T S A N D C O N Q U E S T | 113

augmented Cortez’s forces by a hundred and fifty men, twenty horses,

and copious stores of weapons and ammunition.

Cortez had also sent out his own call for help. During these

months, some members of Narvaez’s expedition had become

disenchanted with the life of the conquistadors and wanted to return.

Cortez sent them home with messages to his friends in Santo

Domingo, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico (but not Cuba), asking for help. His

calls were answered during the fall as reinforcements began to trickle

in from the islands. By December, Cortez had rebuilt his army to over

1,000 men, including 84 cavalry, 194 musketeers, 680-foot soldiers,

several hundred sailors, a handful of cannon, and over 20,000

Tlaxcalan warriors.

Cortez was ready to begin his return to Tenochtitlan. His plan

was to turn the tables on the Aztecs. He would lay siege to their

capital, destroy the heart of their empire, and restore Spanish rule. He

knew the strengths and weaknesses of the island fortress, having

occupied it for nearly seven months and having been on the wrong

end of a siege there. He would isolate the Aztecs by cutting all sources

of food and water. He would persuade or coerce the people of the

villages along the lake to turn away from the Aztecs and support him.

He would enforce the city’s isolation by gaining control of the

causeways to it and establish naval supremacy on the lake with his

own ships. He commissioned thirteen brigantines, averaging forty feet

in length, equipped with sails, and armed with cannon for this

purpose.

The Aztec emperor Cuauhtémoc understood Cortez’

objectives and sought to counter with a spoiling strategy. Thus, when

Cortez sent armed reconnaissance probes to lakeside villages and

towns, Aztec forces were there to contest him in the struggle over

hearts and minds. When he tried to cut off the water viaduct, they

battled to keep it open. When Cortez sought to seize the causeways,

Cuauhtémoc’s forces contested every foot. When Cortez pushed to

114 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

gain control of the lake, hundreds of canoe-born Aztecs were there to

battle him, including an attempt to drown the Spanish leader at

Iztapalapa by opening the canals and raising the water level.38

However, in each case superior Spanish firepower and determined

persistence prevailed.

By the middle of June 1521, with more and more of the Aztec

former tributaries flocking to Cortez’s side—by some estimates

amounting to 75,000 men—his forces reached the gates of

Tenochtitlan. The last stand for the Aztecs had commenced. It was

savage, long, and decisive. In a two month-long campaign in which no

quarter was given by either side, Cortez gradually tightened the

blockade while his forces and his Indian allies forced their way across

the causeways and advanced through the city in what can fairly be

described as house to house and hand to hand combat. To counter the

remaining Aztec advantage of attacking Cortez’ forces from the temple

heights and rooftops of houses, Cortez decided to raze the entire city,

tearing it down brick by brick and using the breakage to fill in the gaps

in the causeways. The capital of the Aztec empire was no more.

38 Carrasco, ed., The History of the Conquest of New Spain, 244.

Conquest of Tenochtitlan ─Jay I. Kislak Collection, Rare Book and Special

Collections Division, Library of Congress.

H E R N A N C O R T E Z : O F C O N T R A C T S A N D C O N Q U E S T | 115

With Aztec forces weakened to exhaustion by disease and

combat, deprived of food and water, and with the end in sight,

emperor Cuauhtémoc attempted to flee Tenochtitlan by canoe across

the lake with his retinue and wealth but was chased down by one of

the brigantines. Brought before Cortez on August 13, 1521, he

surrendered. That would not be the end of the killing, however, as the

former subjects of Aztec tyrannical rule now exacted their revenge,

scouring towns and villages, raping and pillaging everything they

considered representative of Aztec rule, despite Cortez’s attempts to

rein them in. When it was over Cortez brought the leaders of all the

former clansmen of the empire to Tenochtitlan to witness firsthand its

utter devastation and the superiority of Spanish rule.

Cortez laid the foundation of the Spanish empire in Mexico.

He rebuilt Tenochtitlan, which would become the eventual site for

Mexico City. He settled new towns across the country, improved the

Aztec transportation network and developed gold mining operations,

importing thousands of black African slaves for the purpose. As the

economy developed, maritime commerce between Spain and New

Spain, as it was called, ballooned. The church followed in a plan to

convert the natives to Catholicism. Thousands of people poured into

Mexico to settle, explore, and marvel at the wonders of the New

World.

Years later, Spanish historians would glorify Cortez’ exploits,

but at the time he was treated shabbily by the Spanish crown and the

Council of the Indies where Governor Velasquez had friends. In the

familiar bureaucratic struggle among the crown, the governors

abroad, and the conquistadors, the bureaucrats triumphed. Claiming

to fear that he would break with Spain and establish himself as head

of an independent country, the crown moved to insure control of its

great colony by sending administrators to replace Cortez. The king

lauded his work, accorded him land and titles, but denied him the

authority he wanted in Mexico. Cortez left Mexico for Spain in 1528,

returned in 1530 for a decade in which he explored into present-day

116 | R I C H A R D C . T H O R N T O N

California searching for the fabled land of El Dorado—the rumored

repository of gold—before returning to Spain in 1541. He would die

six years later attempting to return to Mexico.

Although Cortez had seized a great deal of gold and treasure

from the Aztecs, (wealth that they themselves had looted from their

enemies), he never discovered the sources he so assiduously sought.

The mines he restarted never lived up to their promise, although the

slaves he imported proved to be a permanent addition to the land.

Gold shipped to Spain in Cortez’ time averaged about a ton a year,

significant but not the riches that had been expected. Yet Cortez

played an important role. He destroyed the Aztec empire and opened

the door to the sources of gold and especially of silver that would

finance the Spanish empire for the next two hundred years, but he

would not live to see it. That glory would accrue to unknown later

governors of the colony, and especially in Peru, ironically within but a

few years of the return of Cortez to Spain.

Mexico City, 1524 ─Roger Atwood, “Under Mexico City,” Archeology,

July/August 2014

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T H I S   W O R K   I S   L I C E N S E D   U N D E R   A   C R E A T I V E   C OMMON S   A T T R I B U T I O N -­‐ N O N C OMM E R C I A L -­‐ S H A R E A L I K E   4 . 0  I N T E R N A T I O N A L   L I C E N S E .                                                                                                                                                                             1  

 

9th  Grade  Aztec  Inquiry  

What  Do  the  Buried  Secrets  of  Tenochtitlán  Tell  Us  About  the  Aztecs?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Public  domain.  Reproduced  from  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TenochtitlanModel.JPG  

Supporting  Questions  

1. Where  was  Tenochtitlán?  2. What  do  three  archaeological  artifacts  tell  us  about  the  Templo  Mayor?  3. How  did  Tenochtitlán  sustain  itself?  4. How  was  Tenochtitlán  buried?    

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T H I S   W O R K   I S   L I C E N S E D   U N D E R   A   C R E A T I V E   C OMMON S   A T T R I B U T I O N -­‐ N O N C OMM E R C I A L -­‐ S H A R E A L I K E   4 . 0  I N T E R N A T I O N A L   L I C E N S E .                                                                                                                                                                             2  

9th  Grade  Aztec  Inquiry    

What  Do  the  Buried  Secrets  of  Tenochtitlán  Tell  Us  About  the  Aztecs?  

New  York  State  Social  Studies  Framework  Key  Idea  &  Practices  

9.8  AFRICA  AND  THE  AMERICAS  PRE-­‐1600:  The  environment,  trade  networks,  and  belief  systems  influenced  the  development  of  complex  societies  and  civilizations  in  Africa  and  the  Americas  ca.  1325–1600.  

Gathering,  Using,  and  Interpreting  Evidence   Geographic  Reasoning   Economics  and  Economic  Systems   Comparison  and  Contextualization  

Staging  the  Question  

Look  at  photographs  of  the  excavation  of  Tenochtitlán  in  2012  and  use  the  Question  Formulation  Technique  (QFT)  to  generate  questions  about  the  Aztec  city.  

 Supporting  Question  1   Supporting  Question  2   Supporting  Question  3   Supporting  Question  4  

Where  was  Tenochtitlán?   What  do  three  archaeological  artifacts  tell  us  about  the  Templo  Mayor?  

How  did  Tenochtitlán  sustain  itself?  

How  was  Tenochtitlán  buried?  

Formative    Performance  Task  

Formative    Performance  Task  

Formative    Performance  Task  

Formative    Performance  Task  

List  key  features  from  a  series  of  maps  and  describe  how  each  map  uniquely  answers  the  question  “Where  is  Tenochtitlán?”  

Write  a  description  of  three  archaeological  artifacts  found  at  the  Templo  Mayor  site.  

Develop  a  chaîne  opératoire  (operational  sequence)  for  three  Aztec  economic  innovations.  

Develop  a  claim  with  evidence  about  the  demise  of  Tenochtitlán.  

Featured  Sources   Featured  Sources   Featured  Sources   Featured  Sources  

Source  A:  Image  bank:  Maps  of  the  Aztec  Empire  and  Tenochtitlán  

Source  A:  The  Coyolxauhqui  Stone  (temple  entry  stone)  Source  B:  Tzompantli  (skull  rack)  Source  C:  Tonamatl  (Aztec  calendar  stone)  

Source  A:  Hernán  Cortés’s  second  letter  to  Charles  V  Source  B:  Codex  Mendoza  Source  C:  Model  of  chinampas  

Source  A:  Excerpt  from  Guns,  Germs,  and  Steel  by  Jared  Diamond  Source  B:  Excerpt  from  Daily  Life  of  the  Aztecs:  People  of  the  Sun  and  Earth  by  David  Carrasco  with  Scott  Sessions  

 

Summative  Performance  Task  

ARGUMENT  What  do  the  buried  secrets  of  Tenochtitlán  tell  us  about  the  Aztecs?  Construct  an  argument  (e.g.,  detailed  outline,  poster,  or  essay)  that  addresses  the  compelling  question  using  specific  claims  and  relevant  evidence  from  historical  sources  while  acknowledging  competing  views.  

EXTENSION  Create  an  exhibition  card  for  an  artifact  from  Tenochtitlán  to  make  a  classroom  archaeological/museum  exhibit.  

Taking  Informed  Action  

UNDERSTAND  Investigate  the  ethical,  environmental,  and/or  historical  challenges  that  modern-­‐day  archaeologists  face  as  they  unearth  Tenochtitlán.    ASSESS  List  the  opportunities  and  challenges  of  uncovering  the  remains  of  lost  societies  such  as  Tenochtitlán.    ACT  Write  an  editorial  for  Dig  Into  History  magazine  that  makes  young  readers  aware  of  one  or  more  problems  archaeologists  face  in  digging  up  the  past.  

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Overview  

Inquiry  Description  

This  inquiry  leads  students  through  an  investigation  of  the  Aztec  Empire  through  the  study  of  its  capital  city,  Tenochtitlán.  Scholars  debate  the  significance  of  the  role  of  the  Aztec  Empire  in  Mesoamerican  culture.  While  some  observers  see  great  innovation  in  architecture,  agriculture  and  economic  systems,  others  see  a  simplistic,  militaristic,  and  flawed  empire.  Further  complicating  these  arguments  is  the  limited  number  of  sources  and  archaeological  evidence.    

By  investigating  the  compelling  question  about  the  burial  of  Tenochtitlán  and  its  impact  on  our  understanding  of  the  history  of  the  Aztecs,  students  will  need  to  consider  the  ways  in  which  the  excavation  of  Tenochtitlán  provides  a  useful  opportunity  for  learning  about  the  Aztecs  and  the  extent  to  which  historic  understanding  is  shaped  by  the  work  of  archaeologists.  The  content  signaled  in  this  inquiry  is  derived  from  Key  Idea  9.8,  Africa  and  the  Americas  pre-­‐1600.  The  compelling  question  provides  students  with  an  opportunity  to  learn  about  the  complexity  of  societies  and  civilizations  through  a  case  study  of  the  city  of  Tenochtitlán  and  the  Aztec  Empire.    

Students  will  learn  about  the  geographic  characteristics  of  Tenochtitlán,  the  cultural  significance  of  artifacts  excavated  from  the  Templo  Mayor  (Great  Temple),  the  economic  factors  involved  in  sustaining  the  Aztec  Empire,  and  ultimately,  the  reasons  for  the  empire’s  demise.  Intertwined  with  their  learning  about  the  Aztecs,  students  use  the  language,  evidence,  and  tools  from  archaeology  as  well  as  secondary  sources  to  take  positions  on  historical  events.  The  Summative  Performance  Task  asks  students  to  synthesize  what  they  have  learned  by  making  a  claim  and  support  it  with  evidence  as  they  consider  how  the  unearthing  of  Tenochtitlán  sheds  light  on  the  legacy  of  the  Aztecs.    

In  investigating  the  archaeological  and  anthropological  evidence  of  Tenochtitlán,  students  should  develop  an  understanding  of  the  Aztecs  and  their  history  and,  more  importantly,  begin  to  evaluate  the  extent  to  which  we  can  ever  fully  unearth  or  uncover  an  ancient  civilization’s  secrets.  

NOTE:  This  inquiry  is  expected  to  take  six  to  eight  40-­‐minute  class  periods.  The  inquiry  time  frame  could  expand  if  teachers  think  their  students  need  additional  instructional  experiences  (i.e.,  supporting  questions,  formative  performance  tasks,  and  featured  sources).  Inquiries  are  not  scripts,  so  teachers  are  encouraged  to  modify  and  adapt  them  to  meet  the  needs  and  interests  of  their  particular  students.  

Content  Background  

At  the  height  of  the  Aztec  Empire,  the  city  of  Tenochtitlán  was  home  to  as  many  as  300,000  people.  When  Spanish  conquistador  Bernal  Díaz  arrived  in  Tenochtitlán  in  1519,  he  was  astounded  by  what  he  saw:    

These  great  towns  and  cues  [temples]  and  buildings  rising  from  the  water,  all  made  of  stone,  seemed  like  an  enchanted  vision  from  the  tale  of  Amadis.  Indeed,  some  of  our  soldiers  asked  whether  it  was  not  all  a  dream.  It  is  not  surprising  therefore  that  I  should  write  in  this  vein.  It  was  all  so  wonderful  that  I  do  not  know  how  to  describe  this  first  glimpse  of  things  never  heard  of,  seen  or  dreamed  of  before.    

—  Letters  from  Bernal  Díaz,  1519–1526.    

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The  Aztecs  built  the  great  city  of  Tenochtitlán  as  the  fulfillment  of  a  prophecy.  The  people  who  would  become  the  Aztecs  had  wandered  Mexico  for  almost  100  years  looking  for  a  specific  sign  from  Huitzilopochtli,  the  sun  god.  According  to  the  Aztecs,  when  they  saw  an  eagle  perched  on  a  cactus  situated  on  a  rock  in  the  center  of  a  lake  and  eating  a  serpent,  the  prophecy  was  fulfilled  and  they  built  their  empire  around  this  location,  Tenochtitlán.    

At  the  center  of  Tenochtitlán  was  the  Templo  Mayor.  The  temple  was  built  to  honor  Huitzilopochtli  and  acted  as  a  government  and  religious  center.  All  religious  ceremonies,  including  human  sacrifices,  took  place  at  the  temple.  The  temple  also  served  as  the  center  of  the  social  hierarchy  of  the  Aztecs;  proximity  to  the  temple  indicated  higher  status.  Other  important  aspects  of  the  city  included  the  market,  the  chinampas  (floating  islands  for  crops),  and  the  causeways.  Outside  the  city  was  an  extensive  network  of  other  indigenous  communities  that  were  economically  tied  to  the  Aztec  Empire  through  a  system  of  tribute  (taxation).    

In  1519,  Spanish  conquistadors  under  Hernán  Cortés  arrived  on  the  coast  of  Mexico.  Although  they  initially  befriended  the  Aztec  leaders,  Cortés  and  his  army  would  later  combine  forces  with  other  indigenous  peoples  to  try  to  overthrow  the  Aztecs.  However,  the  demise  of  Tenochtitlán  was  aided  by  the  introduction  of  smallpox,  which  would  eventually  kill  over  half  of  the  Aztec  population  who  had  no  natural  immunity.    

Historians’  and  archaeologists’  work  on  interpreting  the  life  of  the  Aztecs  is  complex.  Much  of  this  complexity  stems  from  the  difficulties  of  trying  to  interpret  the  life  of  a  civilization  with  limited  archaeological  evidence.  The  complexity  also  stems  from  the  Spanish  and  European  bias  inherent  in  many  of  the  sources  on  Aztec  life  (e.g.,  the  diaries  of  Cortés  and  Díaz).  Much  of  the  early  historical  work  on  the  Aztecs  focused  on  the  perspectives  of  the  Spanish  imperialists,  which  often  strengthened  arguments  that  the  Aztecs  were  a  cohesive  group  of  people.  More  recent  scholars  have  focused  on  the  social  history  of  the  Aztecs  and  the  diversity  of  the  various  groups  of  people  who  made  up  the  Aztec  Empire.  Furthermore,  more  recent  ethnohistorical  scholarship  on  the  Aztecs  has  given  strength  to  perspectives  of  indigenous  peoples.    

Throughout  the  inquiry,  students  are  learning  and  using  the  place  names  and  some  of  the  vocabulary  of  the  Aztecs  and  of  archaeologists.  It  is  important  to  have  students  use  historical  and  cultural  vocabulary  out  of  respect  for  the  people  they  are  studying  and  as  a  way  to  make  their  work  with  archaeology  and  history  more  authentic.  Understandably,  students  might  stumble  as  they  work  through  this  vocabulary.  To  help  them,  a  vocabulary  guide  is  included  at  the  end  of  the  inquiry  that  provides  pronunciations  and  definitions  for  words  used  throughout  the  inquiry  (See  Appendix  A).    

Content,  Practices,  and  Literacies    

In  addressing  the  compelling  question—“What  do  the  buried  secrets  of  Tenochtitlán  tell  us  about  the  Aztecs?”—students  will  need  to  weigh  evidence  and  counterevidence  from  a  variety  of  sources.  In  the  first  formative  performance  task,  students  use  a  series  of  maps  to  identify  key  features  and  describe  how  the  maps  contribute  to  their  understandings  of  where  Tenochtitlán  is.  Next,  students  explore  the  Templo  Mayor  and  the  Aztecs’  religious  and  cultural  practices  through  a  series  of  archaeological  discoveries  unearthed  at  the  temple.  Students  then  move  to  considering  the  economic  success  of  Tenochtitlán,  including  its  market,  its  tribute  system,  and  its  agricultural  innovations,  such  as  the  chinampas.  Finally,  students  recognize  the  complexity  of  the  fall  of  Tenochtitlán  as  they  explore  the  role  of  Spanish  conquest.    

Throughout  the  inquiry,  students  are  asked  to  do  increasingly  complex  tasks  that  will  develop  their  cognitive  capacity  to  deal  with  the  Summative  Performance  Task.  In  the  first  formative  performance  task,  students  are  asked  

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to  identify  key  features  and  to  describe  how  the  maps  spatially  identify  where  Tenochtitlán  is  located  (Gathering,  Using,  and  Interpreting  Evidence;  Geographic  Reasoning).  The  second  formative  performance  task  asks  students  to  explain  the  importance  of  three  archaeological  sources  excavated  from  the  Templo  Mayor  site  (Gathering,  Using,  and  Interpreting  Evidence;  Comparison  and  Contextualization).  The  third  formative  performance  task  asks  students  to  develop  a  chaîne  opératoire  for  three  Aztec  economic  innovations  (Gathering,  Using,  and  Interpreting  Evidence;  Economics  and  Economic  Systems).  The  final  formative  performance  task  asks  students  to  form  claims  about  the  demise  of  Tenochtitlán  that  are  supported  by  evidence  (Gathering,  Using,  and  Interpreting  Evidence;  Chronological  Reasoning  and  Causation).    

The  New  York  State  P–12  Common  Core  Learning  Standards  for  English  Language  Arts  &  Literacy  offer  social  studies  teachers  numerous  opportunities  to  integrate  literacy  goals  and  skills  into  their  social  studies  instruction.  The  Common  Core  supports  the  inquiry  process  through  reading  rich  informational  texts,  writing  evidence-­‐based  arguments,  speaking  and  listening  in  public  venues,  and  using  academic  vocabulary  to  complement  the  pedagogical  directions  advocated  in  the  New  York  State  K–12  Social  Studies  Framework.  At  the  end  of  this  inquiry  is  an  explication  of  how  teachers  might  integrate  literacy  skills  throughout  the  content,  instruction,  and  resource  decisions  they  make.    

   

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Staging  the  Compelling  Question  Compelling  Question   What  does  Tenochtitlán  tell  us  about  the  Aztecs?  

Featured  Sources  Source  A:  Photographs  of  the  excavation  of  Tenochtitlán  Source  B:  “Mexico  City’s  Aztec  Past  Reaches  Out  to  Present”  

The  inquiry  opens  by  engaging  students  in  the  archaeological  wonders  and  challenges  of  the  Tenochtitlán  excavation  in  Mexico  City.  Using  the  Question  Formulation  Technique  (QFT)  developed  by  the  Right  Question  Institute  (RQI),  teachers  could  have  students  generate  a  variety  of  questions  centered  on  a  quote  and  accompanying  images  from  the  September  2,  2012,  New  York  Times  article  “Mexico  City’s  Aztec  Past  Reaches  Out  to  Present.”    

The  QFT  begins  with  a  question  focus.  For  this  initial  exercise,  teachers  could  use  the  following  quote  from  the  article:  “It  is  like  a  book  that  we  are  trying  to  read  from  the  surface  to  the  deepest  point”  (from  Raúl  Barrera,  who  leads  the  exploration  of  the  city’s  center  for  the  National  Institute  of  Anthropology  and  History).  This  quote  could  be  paired  with  one  or  both  of  the  images  within  the  article  (see  Featured  Source  A).  

Once  students  are  given  the  question  focus,  they  move  through  three  distinct  but  important  steps  in  generating  their  own  questions  (see  the  student  handout):  

• Step  one:  Produce  your  own  questions.  • Step  two:  Categorize  your  questions.  • Step  three:  Prioritize  your  questions.  

In  step  one,  students  are  placed  in  small  groups  and,  using  the  question  focus,  produce  as  many  questions  as  they  can  without  stopping  to  judge  or  answer  the  questions.  A  recorder  should  be  assigned  to  write  down  every  question  exactly  as  stated  and  change  statements  into  questions.  

In  step  two,  students  work  together  to  categorize  those  questions  by  labeling  them  as  “closed”  or  “open”.  Close-­‐ended  questions  can  be  answered  with  a  yes  or  no  and  open-­‐ended  questions  require  a  longer  explanation.  Students  mark  the  questions  with  a  C  or  an  O.  Teachers  should  then  discuss  the  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  asking  both  types  of  questions  focusing  on  the  utility  of  each.    

In  step  three,  students  prioritize  the  questions  they  have  generated,  choosing  the  three  most  important  questions  and  providing  explanations  for  why  they  chose  those  three.  

At  this  point,  teachers  may  want  to  introduce  the  compelling  question  for  this  inquiry  and  ask  students  to  think  about  how  their  questions  relate.  For  example,  if  students  ask  a  question  such  as  “How  will  we  ever  really  know  about  the  Aztecs  if  the  civilization  was  literally  buried?”  teachers  might  bridge  the  two  questions.  Teachers  could  talk  about  how  the  students  will  be  reading  a  variety  of  sources,  including  newspaper  articles,  maps,  and  firsthand  accounts,  stressing  how  important  it  will  be  for  students  to  consider  the  credibility  of  the  sources  and  the  problem  of  an  incomplete  historical  record.  Additionally,  teachers  will  want  to  look  for  questions  raised  by  students  that  mirror  the  questions  that  frame  this  inquiry  and  then  acknowledge  any  gaps.  In  the  cases  where  the  students’  questions  help  further  the  inquiry,  teachers  could  construct  another  formative  performance  task(s)  or  augment  the  current  tasks.  In  this  way,  students’  curiosity  is  woven  intentionally  into  the  teacher-­‐designed  instructional  sequence,  and  students’  intellectual  efforts  are  recognized  as  important  contributions  to  the  inquiry  process.  

 

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Teachers  may  want  students  to  keep  special  notebooks  for  this  inquiry  to  house  their  “field  notes”  from  this  initial  exercise  and  the  remainder  of  the  inquiry.  The  field  notebooks  could  take  on  an  archaeologist’s  flair  and  house  the  images,  articles,  artifacts,  and  other  sources  students  are  working  with  alongside  the  tasks,  which  ask  students  to  use  information  and  evidence  to  support  their  answers  and  analyses.  Teachers  should  not  be  afraid  to  encourage  students  to  be  creative  in  designing  their  notebooks.  Constructing  weathered  or  decorated  notebook  covers  could  be  a  way  for  students  to  personalize  their  efforts.  

 

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The  RQI  Question  Formulation  Technique  ü Produce  Your  Own  Questions    ü Improve  Your  Questions    ü Prioritize  Your  Questions    

Produce  Your  Own  Questions    

Four  essential  rules  for  producing  your  own  questions    

• Ask  as  many  questions  as  you  can.   • Do  not  stop  to  discuss,  judge,  or  answer  the  questions.   • Write  down  every  question  exactly  as  it  is  stated.   • Change  any  statement  into  a  question.  

Categorize  Your  Questions    

Categorize  the  questions  as  closed-­‐  or  open-­‐ended.  

• Closed-­‐ended  questions  can  be  answered  with  a  yes  or  no  or  with  one  word. • Open-­‐ended  questions  require  an  explanation  and  cannot  be  answered  with  yes  or  no  or  with  one  word.

Find  and  mark  closed-­‐ended  questions  with  a  c;  mark  open-­‐ended  questions  with  an  o.  

Name  the  value  of  each  type  of  question:  

• Advantages  and  disadvantages  of  asking  closed-­‐ended  questions   • Advantages  and  disadvantages  of  asking  open-­‐ended  questions  

Change  questions  from  one  type  to  another:  

• Change  closed-­‐ended  questions  to  open-­‐ended   • Change  open-­‐ended  questions  to  closed-­‐ended  

Prioritize  Your  Questions  

Choose  your  three  most  important  questions:  

1.  2.  3.  

Why  did  you  choose  these  three  as  the  most  important?    

Next  Steps  

How  are  you  going  to  use  your  questions?  

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Staging  the  Compelling  Question  Featured  Source   Source  A:  Photographs  of  the  excavation  of  Tenochtitlán  from  the  newspaper  article  “Mexico  City’s  

Aztec  Past  Reaches  Out  to  Present,”  New  York  Times,  September  2,  2012  

Images  to  Prompt  Question  Formulation  Technique  

Archaeologists  removed  human  bones,  among  nearly  2,000,  including  10  skulls,  found  recently  at  the  Templo  Mayor  site.  REUTERS/INAH/Handout.

The  ruins  of  the  Aztecs’  Templo  Mayor,  in  Mexico  City’s  famous  Zócalo,  where  it  abuts  a  Spanish-­‐built  cathedral.  From  The  New  York  Times,  September  2  ©  2012  The  New  York  Times.  All  rights  reserved.  Used  by  permission  and  protected  by  the  Copyright  Laws  of  the  United  States.  The  printing,  copying,  redistribution,  or  retransmission  of  this  Content  without  express  written  permission  is  prohibited.  

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Staging  the  Compelling  Question  Featured  Source  

Source  B:  Elisabeth  Malkin  and  Sofia  Castello  y  Tickell,  newspaper  article  describing  the  challenges  of  uncovering  how  past  societies  lived,  “Mexico  City’s  Aztec  Past  Reaches  Out  to  Present,”  New  York  Times,  September  2,  2012  

September  2,  2012  

Mexico  City’s  Aztec  Past  Reaches  Out  to  Present  By  ELISABETH  MALKIN  and  SOFIA  CASTELLO  Y  TICKELL  

MEXICO  CITY  —  The  skeleton  is  that  of  a  young  woman,  perhaps  an  Aztec  noble,  found  intact  and  buried  in  the  empire’s  most  sacred  spot  more  than  500  years  ago.  Almost  2,000  human  bones  were  heaped  around  her,  and  she  is  a  mystery.  

There  are  other  discoveries  yet  to  be  deciphered  from  the  latest  excavation  site  at  the  heart  of  this  vast  metropolis,  where  the  Aztecs  built  their  great  temple  and  the  Spanish  conquerors  laid  the  foundation  of  their  new  empire.  

Before  announcing  the  finding  of  the  unusual  burial  site  and  the  remains  of  what  may  be  a  sacred  tree  last  month,  archaeologists  had  also  recently  revealed  a  giant  round  stuccoed  platform  decorated  with  serpents’  heads  and  a  floor  carved  in  relief  that  appears  to  show  a  holy  war.  

Mexico  City  might  be  one  of  the  world’s  classic  megacities,  an  ever-­‐expanding  jumble  of  traffic,  commerce,  grand  public  spaces,  leafy  suburbs  and  cramped  slums.  But  it  is  also  an  archaeological  wonder,  and  more  than  three  decades  after  a  chance  discovery  set  off  a  systematic  exploration  of  the  Aztecs’  ceremonial  spaces,  surprises  are  still  being  uncovered  in  the  city’s  superimposed  layers.  

“It’s  a  living  city  that  has  been  transforming  since  the  pre-­‐Hispanic  epoch,”  said  Raúl  Barrera,  who  leads  the  exploration  of  the  city’s  center  for  the  National  Institute  of  Anthropology  and  History  here.  

“The  Mexicas  themselves  dismantled  their  temples,”  to  build  over  them,  he  explained,  using  the  Aztecs’  name  for  themselves.  “The  Spanish  constructed  the  cathedral,  their  houses,  with  the  same  stones  from  the  pre-­‐Hispanic  temples.  What  we  have  found  are  the  remains  of  that  whole  process.”  

Perhaps  nowhere  else  in  the  world  is  the  evidence  of  a  rupture  between  civilizations  as  dramatic  as  in  Mexico  City’s  giant  central  square,  known  as  the  Zócalo,  where  the  ruin  of  the  Aztecs’  Templo  Mayor  abuts  the  ponderous  cathedral  the  Spanish  erected  to  declare  their  spiritual  dominance  over  the  conquered.  

“I  think  the  ideological  war  was  more  difficult  for  the  Spanish  than  armed  warfare,”  said  Eduardo  Matos  Moctezuma,  the  archaeologist  who  first  led  the  excavation  of  the  Templo  Mayor.  

There  are  other,  older  places  in  the  world  where  ruins  rise  from  traffic-­‐clogged  streets,  where  foreign  invaders  ended  empires.  But  it  is  different  here,  academics  say.  

“They  blew  the  top  of  it  off;  they  didn’t  do  that  to  the  Colosseum,”  said  Davíd  Carrasco,  a  historian  of  religions  at  Harvard  University  who  has  written  on  the  Aztecs  and  the  excavations  at  the  Templo  Mayor.  “In  Rome,  the  ancient  Roman  city  stands  alongside  the  medieval  and  the  modern  city.”  

A  Spanish  chronicler  of  the  conquest,  Bernal  Díaz  del  Castillo,  wrote  that  “of  all  these  wonders”  of  the  Aztec  capital,  Tenochtitlan,  “all  is  overthrown  and  lost,  nothing  left  standing.”  

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Since  1790,  though,  when  construction  work  to  pave  the  Zócalo  unearthed  the  first  giant  Aztec  carvings,  Tenochtitlan  has  been  giving  up  its  secrets.  Archaeologists  began  exploring  the  Templo  Mayor  a  century  ago,  but  the  discovery  of  a  giant  monolith  depicting  the  decapitated,  dismembered  Aztec  moon  goddess  Coyolxauhqui  in  1978  led  to  a  full-­‐scale  excavation  that  continues  today.  

In  the  first  five  years,  archaeologists  had  uncovered  large  parts  of  the  temple  that  lay  underneath  a  structure  razed  by  the  Spanish  after  the  1521  conquest.  Past  Aztec  emperors  had  built  new  temples  over  earlier  ones,  which  unwittingly  spared  the  older  structures.  

The  archaeological  project  “wasn’t  just  that  we  were  going  to  find  an  enormous  temple,”  Mr.  Matos  said.  “It  was  what  it  meant  within  Aztec  society.  That  building  was  very  important  because  for  them  it  was  the  center  of  the  universe.”  

There  is  still  much  more  to  uncover  around  the  Templo  Mayor.  The  16th-­‐century  Franciscan  Friar  Bernardino  de  Sahagún  left  a  record  of  what  Mr.  Matos  calls  the  Aztecs’  sacred  precinct  of  temples  and  palaces,  now  a  densely  packed  square  about  seven  blocks  on  each  side.  

The  Sahagún  account,  compiled  from  Aztecs’  recollections  of  their  lost  city,  has  proved  strikingly  accurate.  Of  the  78  structures  he  described,  archaeologists  have  found  vestiges  of  more  than  half.  

During  the  most  recent  excavation,  underneath  a  small  plaza  wedged  between  the  Templo  Mayor  and  the  cathedral,  Mr.  Barrera  had  been  looking  for  the  round  ceremonial  platform  because  it  had  been  described  in  the  Sahagún  record.  

Much  of  what  the  friar  and  other  witnesses  chronicled  now  lies  as  deep  as  25  feet  underground.  To  get  there,  Mr.  Barrera’s  team  must  first  navigate  the  electricity  lines  and  water  mains  that  are  the  guts  of  the  modern  city  and  then  travel  down  through  a  colonial  layer,  which  yields  its  own  set  of  artifacts.  

“It  is  like  a  book  that  we  are  trying  to  read  from  the  surface  to  the  deepest  point,”  he  said.  

But  despite  the  guidance  from  historical  records,  Mexico  City’s  archaeologists  cannot  dig  anywhere  they  please.  

Part  of  the  sacred  precinct  is  now  a  raucous  medley  of  the  mundane.  The  street  vendors  hawking  pirated  Chinese-­‐made  toys  and  English-­‐language  lesson  CDs  from  crumbling  facades  are  merely  the  loudest.  To  excavate  under  the  area’s  hotels,  diners,  cheap  clothing  stands  and  used  bookstores  would  entail  fraught  negotiation.  

Along  the  quieter  blocks  of  the  precinct,  handsome  colonial  structures  are  now  museums  and  government  buildings,  themselves  historical  landmarks.  

Archaeologists  believe  that  the  Calmécac,  a  school  for  Aztec  nobles,  extends  under  the  courtyards  of  Mexico’s  Education  Ministry  building.  For  now,  the  only  part  of  the  Calmécac  that  has  been  excavated  are  several  walls  and  sculptures  on  display  under  a  building  housing  the  Spanish  cultural  center,  discovered  when  it  was  remodeled.  

Still,  in  a  strange  sort  of  payback,  the  ruins  themselves  sometimes  make  it  possible  for  the  archaeologists  to  enter  private  property  and  begin  digging.  

Since  the  16th  century,  the  city  has  pumped  water  from  deep  wells  to  satisfy  its  thirst,  causing  the  clays  beneath  the  surface  to  sink  as  water  is  sucked  from  them,  rather  like  a  dry  sponge.  

But  the  buildings  settle  unevenly,  buckling  over  the  solid  stone  Aztec  ruins  below,  lending  many  of  the  sacred  precinct’s  streets  a  swaying,  drunken  air.  

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As  cracks  open  and  the  buildings  tilt,  many  of  them  need  restoration,  which  by  law  allows  archaeologists  from  the  anthropology  and  history  institute  to  keep  watch.  If  historic  remains  are  found,  the  owner  must  foot  the  bill  to  restore  them.  

When  the  cathedral  needed  to  be  rescued  in  the  1990s,  engineers  dug  30  shafts  to  stabilize  the  structure  and  Mr.  Matos  and  his  team  descended  as  far  as  65  feet  to  see  what  was  underneath.  

“It’s  the  vengeance  of  the  gods,”  he  said.  “The  cathedral  is  falling  and  the  monuments  to  the  ancient  gods  are  what’s  causing  it  to  fall.”  

Among  other  things,  the  archaeologists  found  the  remains  of  Tenochtitlan’s  ball  court,  where  Aztecs  played  a  ritual  ballgame  common  across  ancient  Mesoamerica.  It  remains  sealed  deep  under  the  cathedral’s  apse  and  the  cobblestone  street  to  its  north.  

“That  whole  part  of  the  city  is  like  a  graveyard  of  people  and  of  significant  cultural  objects,”  Mr.  Carrasco  said.  “And  they  awaken  every  time  Mexico  reaches  for  its  future.”  

From  The  New  York  Times,  September  2  ©  2012  The  New  York  Times.  All  rights  reserved.  Used  by  permission  and  protected  by  the  Copyright  Laws  of  the  United  States.  The  printing,  copying,  redistribution,  or  retransmission  of  this  Content  without  express  written  permission  is  prohibited.

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Supporting  Question  1  Supporting  Question   Where  was  Tenochtitlán?  

Formative  Performance  Task  

List  key  features  found  on  a  series  of  maps  and  describe  how  each  map  uniquely  answers  the  question  “Where  is  Tenochtitlán?”  

Featured  Source   Source  A:  Image  bank:  Maps  of  the  Aztec  Empire  and  Tenochtitlán  

Conceptual  Understanding  

(9.8c)  Complex  societies  and  civilizations  made  unique  cultural  achievements  and  contributions.  

Content  Specifications  

Students  will  investigate  the  achievements  and  contributions  of  the  Aztec,  Inca,  and  Songhai  empires.  

Social  Studies  Practices  

   Gathering,  Using,  and  Interpreting  Sources  

   Geographic  Reasoning  

Supporting  Question  

To  answer  the  compelling  question—“What  do  the  buried  secrets  of  Tenochtitlán  tell  us  about  the  Aztecs?"—students  will  need  to  establish  a  foundational  understanding  of  the  absolute  and  relative  location  of  the  city  as  well  as  the  unique  geographic  characteristics  that  contribute  to  our  understanding  about  the  city  today.  The  supporting  question  for  this  task—“Where  is  Tenochtitlán?”—seems  obvious  at  first:  Tenochtitlán  is  located  in  modern-­‐day  Mexico  and  was  a  city  within  the  Aztec  Empire.  While  that  is  true,  the  question  of  where  the  city  is  located  is  much  more  interesting  when  students  are  challenged  to  think  about  the  dimensions  of  “whereness”  using  key  features  of  the  maps  provided.  In  doing  so,  students  start  to  unpack  the  compelling  question  as  they  consider  where  the  city  was  unearthed  and  what  Tenochtitlán  reveals  about  the  Aztec  people.  

Formative  Performance  Task  

The  formative  performance  task  calls  on  students  to  identify  key  features  of  a  series  of  maps  and  describe  how  each  map  uniquely  answers  the  question  “Where  is  Tenochtitlán?”  Each  map  within  the  collection  uses  a  different  scale  and  reveals  unique  characteristics  about  the  city.  The  maps  are  ordered  so  that  students  begin  with  the  largest  scale  (e.g.,  the  city  within  the  scope  of  the  Aztec  Empire),  move  to  topographical  maps  that  show  geographic  challenges  and  innovations  (e.g.,  the  city’s  location  on  an  island  in  the  middle  of  Lake  Texcoco),  and  then  end  by  zooming  in  on  a  model  of  the  city  created  by  the  National  Museum  of  Anthropology  in  Mexico  City.    

Within  this  task,  students  are  working  directly  with  the  social  studies  practices  of  Gathering,  Using,  and  Interpreting  Evidence  and  Geographic  Reasoning  as  they  read  and  analyze  each  of  the  maps  for  spatial  patterns.  This  spatial  perspective  allows  students  to  consider  “whereness”  through  questions  like  “Where  is  Tenochtitlán  located  (e.g.,  absolute  and  relative  location  of  the  city)?  Why  did  the  Aztecs  locate  Tenochtitlán  there?  What  were  the  consequences?”  A  graphic  organizer  is  included  within  this  task  to  help  scaffold  students’  reading  and  analysis  (see  the  Mapping  Tenochtitlán  handout),  but  teachers  will  want  to  challenge  students  to  think  about  additional  questions  as  they  conduct  their  analyses.    

Depending  on  students’  familiarity  with  reading  and  analyzing  maps,  teachers  may  organize  this  exercise  in  different  ways.  The  graphic  organizer,  Mapping  Tenochtitlán,  included  within  the  inquiry  focuses  students  on  two  major  points  of  analysis:  (1)  key  features  of  the  map  and  (2)  how  the  map  helps  in  answering  the  supporting    

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question,  “Where  is  Tenochtitlán?”  For  students  who  need  additional  scaffolding,  teachers  may  want  to  do  direct  teaching  about  the  key  features  of  a  map.  For  example,  teachers  could  discuss  the  following  features  to  help  anchor  students’  analysis:  title,  orientation,  scale,  legend,  and  grid.  Teachers  might  also  use  the  following  map  analysis  worksheet  by  the  National  Archives  as  guided  practice  for  Map  A  and/or  B:  http://www.archives.gov/education/  lessons/worksheets/map_analysis_worksheet.pdf.  As  students  demonstrate  proficiency  in  reading  a  map,  they  could  work  through  the  rest  of  the  collection  independently  or  in  small  groups.  

Students’  understanding  of  the  vastness  of  the  Aztec  Empire  and  the  absolute  and  relative  location  of  Tenochtitlán  within  the  empire,  along  with  its  unique  geographic  characteristics,  establish  an  orientation  for  examining  the  Templo  Mayor  in  Formative  Performance  Task  2,  the  markets  and  tribute  system  in  Formative  Performance  Task  3,  and  ultimately,  the  demise  of  the  city  in  Formative  Performance  Task  4.    

Featured  Source  

The  featured  source  for  this  task  is  a  collection  of  maps  featuring  Tenochtitlán  at  different  scales  and  with  different  purposes  in  mind.  Students  will  use  these  maps  to  gather  key  information  about  the  Aztecs  as  well  as  geographic  characteristics  about  the  city  of  Tenochtitlán.  As  students  work  through  analyzing  each  of  the  maps,  they  should  be  thinking  about  how  the  map  contributes  to  the  supporting  question  “Where  is  Tenochtitlán?”    

For  example,  Map  A  shows  Tenochtitlán  as  a  city  within  the  vast  Aztec  Empire  that  spanned  most  of  Central  America  by  1519.  In  Map  B,  students  are  able  to  see  that  the  empire  was  built  over  a  century  and  that  Tenochtitlán,  while  founded  in  1325,  began  annexing  city-­‐states  between  1427  and  1520.  In  Map  C,  students  can  examine  the  cultural  diversity  of  the  Aztec  Empire  and  consider  how  that  diversity  affected  the  city.  In  Map  D  and  E,  students  start  to  zoom  in  on  the  location  of  Tenochtitlán  on  an  island  in  Lake  Texcoco  and  how  the  Aztecs  responded  by  building  a  grid  of  causeways  that  allowed  them  to  travel  more  easily  within  and  around  the  city.  In  doing  so,  students  can  begin  to  make  inferences  about  the  Aztecs  and  what  Tenochtitlán’s  location  might  begin  to  reveal  about  the  Aztec  people.    

Map  F,  the  “Nuremburg  Map”  is  the  only  historical  map  in  the  collection  and  is  occasionally  attributed  to  Hernán  Cortés  (1524).  This  map  is  important  for  a  variety  of  reasons:  (1)  it  provides  a  different  orientation—a  bird’s  eye  view  of  the  city;  (2)  it  allows  students  to  consider  the  perspective  and  validity  of  the  map  as  it  was  made  almost  500  years  ago  without  the  mapping  tools  of  today;  and  (3)  it  previews  an  important  historic  figure  that  students  will  begin  to  read  about  in  Formative  Performance  Task  3,  Cortés.  Teachers  may  want  to  pause  on  this  map  to  discuss  its  uniqueness  within  the  collection.    

The  last  map  is  actually  a  three-­‐dimensional  model  of  the  Tenochtitlán,  a  city  buried  under  modern-­‐day  Mexico  City.  The  model  is  housed  at  the  National  Museum  of  Anthropology  in  Mexico  City  and  allows  students  to  see  how  archaeologists  and  historians  have  pieced  together  the  story  of  Tenochtitlán  through  this  modern-­‐day  replica.  Students  who  want  to  know  more  about  the  model  should  be  encouraged  to  read  the  National  Geographic  articles  listed  in  the  Additional  Resources  section  and  think  about  the  way  historians  and  archaeologists  continue  to  work  together  to  literally  unearth  the  city  and  piece  together  the  story  of  the  Aztec  people.  

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Additional  Resources  

Three  additional  resources  are  included  within  this  section  as  a  reference  and  for  additional  student  exploration.  All  three  articles  are  from  a  1980  special  issue  of  National  Geographic  that  focused  on  the  Aztecs  and,  more  specifically,  the  excavation  of  Tenochtitlán.  The  issue  is  available  from  the  National  Geographic  website  (http://nationalgeographic.com)  or  from  the  Harvard  University  system  (http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/  icb.topic1173786.files/Montes.pdf)  (subscription  needed  for  both):    

• Eduardo  Matos  Moctezuma  and  David  Hiser,  “New  Finds  in  the  Great  Temple.”  National  Geographic,  December  1980.  

• Bart  McDowell,  David  Hiser,  and  Felipe  Dávalos.  “The  Aztecs.”  National  Geographic,  December  1980.  • Augusto  F.  Molina  Montes  and  Felipe  Dávalos,  “The  Building  of  Tenochtitlan.”  National  Geographic,  

December  1980.    

For  information  on  more  current  excavations  at  Tenochtitlán,  see  the  following:  

• Robert  Draper,  “Unburying  the  Aztec.”  National  Geographic,  November  2010.  http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/11/greatest-­‐aztec/draper-­‐text/1.  

Additionally,  teachers  may  want  to  show  students  the  modern-­‐day  Mexican  flag  focusing  students  on  the  coat  of  arms  and  the  symbolism  that  traces  the  founding  of  Tenochtitlán,  now  modern-­‐day  Mexico  City.  Teachers  could  pair  this  with  the  Mendoza  codex,  which  depicts  the  founding  of  Tenochtitlán:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/  Codex_Mendoza#mediaviewer/File:CodexMendoza01.jpg.  Students  will  examine  other  Aztec  codices  more  closely  in  Formative  Performance  Task  3.  

Additional  images  of  Tenochtitlán  can  be  found  at  the  Foundation  for  the  Advancement  of  Mesoamerican  Studies  website  in  “The  Aztecs:  Tenochtitlán”  found  on  John  Pohl’s  Mesoamerica  section:  http://www.famsi.org/research/  pohl/pohl_aztec2.html.  

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Mapping  Tenochtitlán  

  Title  of  Map   Identify  key  features  of  this  map  that  provide  information  about  the  location  of  Tenochtitlán  

How  does  this  map  uniquely  answer  the  question:  Where  is  Tenochtitlán?  

A   Extent  of  the  Aztec  Empire  in  1519  

   

B   Growth  of  the  Aztec  Empire,  1427–1520  

   

C  

Independent  kingdoms,  borders,  and  distinct  ethnicities  in  the  Aztec  Empire  

   

D  

Valley  of  Mexico,  including  the  volcanoes  Iztaccihuatl  and  Popocatepetl  

   

E  Tenochtitlán-­‐Tlatelolco  and  its  causeways  

   

F   The  Nuremberg  Map,  1524  

   

G  

Model  of  the  Aztec  city  of  Tenochtitlán  at  the  National  Museum  of  Anthropology  in  Mexico  City  

   

 

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Supporting  Question  1  Featured  Source   Source  A:  Image  bank:  Maps  of  the  Aztec  Empire  and  Tenochtitlán  

 

 Map  1:  Extent  of  the  Aztec  Empire  in  1519.  Created  for  the  New  York  State  K–12  Social  Studies  Toolkit  by  Agate  Publishing,  Inc.,  2015.      

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 Map  2:  Growth  of  the  Aztec  Empire,  1427–1520.  Created  for  the  New  York  State  K–12  Social  Studies  Toolkit  by  Agate  Publishing,  Inc.,  2015.      

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 Map  3:  Independent  kingdoms,  borders,  and  distinct  ethnicities  in  the  Aztec  Empire  Created  for  the  New  York  State  K–12  Social  Studies  Toolkit  by  Agate  Publishing,  Inc.,  2015.      

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 Map  4:  Valley  of  Mexico,  including  the  volcanoes  Iztaccihuatl  and  Popocatepetl.  Created  for  the  New  York  State  K–12  Social  Studies  Toolkit  by  Agate  Publishing,  Inc.,  2015.    

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Map  5:  Tenochtitlán-­‐Tlatelolco  and  its  causeways.  Created  for  the  New  York  State  K–12  Social  Studies  Toolkit  by  Agate  Publishing,  Inc.,  2015.      

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 Map  6:  The  Nuremberg  Map,  1524  (occasionally  attributed  to  Hernán  Cortés).  Reprinted  with  permission  from  bpk,  Berlin  /  Ibero-­‐Amerikanisches  Institut.  /  Deitmar  Katz/Art  Resource,  NY.      

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 Map  7:  Model  of  the  Aztec  city  of  Tenochtitlán  at  the  National  Museum  of  Anthropology  in  Mexico  City.  Public  domain.  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TenochtitlanModel.JPG  

   

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Supporting  Question  2  Supporting  Question  2   What  do  three  archaeological  artifacts  tell  us  about  the  Templo  Mayor?  

Formative  Performance  Task  

Write  a  description  of  three  archaeological  artifacts  found  at  the  Templo  Mayor  site.  

Featured  Sources  Source  A:  The  Coyolxauhqui  Stone  (temple  entry  stone)  Source  B:  Tzompantli  (skull  rack)  Source  C:  Tonamati  (Aztec  calendar)  

Conceptual  Understanding  

(9.8c)  Complex  societies  and  civilizations  made  unique  cultural  achievements  and  contributions.  

Content  Specifications   Students  will  investigate  the  achievements  and  contributions  of  the  Aztec,  Inca,  and  Songhai  empires.    

Social  Studies  Practices            Gathering,  Using,  and  Interpreting  Evidence              Comparison  and  Contextualization  

Supporting  Question  

For  the  second  supporting  question,  students  build  on  their  understanding  of  Tenochtitlán  by  analyzing  three  archaeological  objects  found  during  the  excavation  of  the  Templo  Mayor.  The  Templo  Mayor,  or  Grand  Temple,  was  the  largest  and  most  important  of  all  the  temples  within  the  city  and  is  symbolic  of  the  Aztecs’  deeply  held  spiritual  beliefs  or  cosmology.  The  temple  was  built  and  rebuilt  seven  times  but  was  ultimately  destroyed  by  Hernán  Cortés  and  then  built  over  by  the  Spanish  (see  the  image  from  Staging  the  Compelling  Question).  While  archaeologists  and  historians  knew  of  its  existence,  the  temple  was  discovered  by  accident  in  1978  with  the  unearthing  of  the  Coyolxauhqui  Stone.  By  examining  this  object,  along  with  two  other  excavated  objects,  students  will  better  understand  the  central  role  religion  and  human  sacrifice  played  in  the  lives  of  Aztecs  in  Tenochtitlán.    

Formative  Performance  Task  

The  formative  performance  task  for  this  supporting  question  requires  students  to  explain  the  importance  of  three  archaeological  artifacts  found  at  the  Templo  Mayor  site.  Using  the  graphic  organizer  provided  in  this  section  (see  Digging  for  Clues:  Templo  Mayor  Artifact  Analysis),  students  engage  in  a  two-­‐part  exercise.  The  first  part  involves  students  creating  hypotheses,  using  photographs  of  three  objects  found  at  the  Tempo  Mayor  excavation  site:  (1)  the  Coyolxauhqui  Stone  (temple  entry  stone),  (2)  a  tzompantli  (skull  rack),  and  (3)  a  tonamatl  (Aztec  calendar  stone).  During  this  part  of  the  exercise,  students  are  asked  to  describe  the  object:  What  are  your  first  impressions?  What  is  the  object  made  of?  How  big  does  the  object  appear  to  be?  Is  it  intact  or  does  it  look  like  parts  are  missing?  Students  then  make  hypotheses  about  what  the  purpose  of  the  object  might  have  been  or  how  the  Aztecs  might  have  used  it.  Teachers  wanting  students  to  do  a  closer  read  of  these  objects  might  use  the  Smithsonian’s  guide  to  reading  objects,  Engaging  Students  with  Primary  Sources  (pp.  48–51):  http://historyexplorer.si.edu/  primarysources.pdf.    

Once  students  have  discussed  their  initial  analysis,  they  should  be  given  the  three  Exhibition  Cards  included  in  this  section.  The  Exhibition  Cards  are  short  descriptions  of  the  objects  that  might  be  used  in  a  museum  exhibit.  Students  use  this  additional  information  about  the  objects  to  evaluate  their  hypothesis  and  finish  their  analysis  by  describing  what  the  object  tells  us  about  the  Templo  Mayor.  As  students  work  to  decipher  the  meaning  and  

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purpose  of  these  objects  within  their  historic  context,  they  are  using  the  social  studies  practices  of  Gathering,  Using,  and  Interpreting  Evidence  and  Comparison  and  Contextualization.    

Featured  Sources  

To  introduce  this  task,  teachers  may  want  to  recall  two  of  the  sources  used  earlier  in  the  inquiry.  Featured  Sources  (images)  within  Staging  the  Compelling  Questions  along  with  Map  G  in  Formative  Performance  Task  1,  remind  students  that  the  Templo  Mayor  was  located  at  the  heart  of  Tenochtitlán,  was  the  largest  structure  within  the  city,  and  is  buried  under  modern-­‐day  Mexico  City.  

FEATURED  SOURCE  A  is  an  image  of  the  Coyolxauhqui  Stone,  which  was  accidentally  unearthed  in  1978  by  an  electric  company  digging  in  central  Mexico  City.  Its  discovery  paved  the  way  for  the  excavation  of  the  Templo  Mayor.    

FEATURED  SOURCE  B  shows  the  remnants  of  a  tzompantli,  or  skull  rack,  that  was  unearthed  from  excavations  of  the  Templo  Mayor  over  the  past  30  years.  The  skull  carvings  represent  prisoners  of  war  the  Aztecs  had  captured  in  various  battles  as  well  as  Aztecs  who  were  sacrificed  to  appease  their  many  gods.    

FEATURED  SOURCE  C  is  a  tonamatl,  or  Aztec  calendar  stone,  that  was  unearthed  in  1790  during  renovations  on  the  Mexico  National  Cathedral  near  Templo  Mayor.  For  more  information  on  each  of  the  sources,  see  the  Exhibition  Cards.  

Additional  Resources  

For  students  wanting  to  do  additional  research  on  the  three  artifacts,  the  following  two  sources  will  shed  additional  light  on  the  Aztec  practice  of  human  sacrifice  and  details  on  the  Aztec  calendar.  

• John  M.  Ingham,  “Human  Sacrifice  at  Tenochtitlan,”  Comparative  Studies  in  Society  and  History  15  (1984):  379–400.  http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/aztecs/aztec_human_sacrifice.pdf.  (Teachers  are  recommended  to  use  excerpts  from  this  piece  to  shed  light  on  reasons  for  human  sacrifice.)  

 

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Part  One—Digging  for  Clues:  Templo  Mayor  Artifact  Analysis  Name  of  the  Object   Describe  the  object.   How  do  you  think  the  Aztecs  used  the  object?  

Coyolxauhqui  Stone  

   

Tzompantli  

   

Tonamatl  

   

   

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Part  Two—Digging  for  Clues:  Templo  Mayor  Artifact  Analysis  Name  of  the  Object   Was  your  hypothesis  correct?  How  so  or  not?   What  does  the  object  tell  us  about  the  Templo  Mayor?  

Coyolxauhqui  Stone  

   

Tzompantli  

   

Tonamatl  

   

 

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Digging  for  Clues:  Exhibition  Cards  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ©  Miguel  Alvarez.  

The  Coyolxauhqui  Stone  (Temple  Entry  Stone)  

The  Coyolxauhqui  Stone  (temple  entry  stone)  was  accidentally  unearthed  in  1978  by  an  electric  company  digging  in  central  Mexico  City.  Its  discovery  would  pave  the  way  for  the  excavation  of  the  Templo  Mayor.  The  statue  is  almost  11  feet  in  diameter,  weighs  9.4  tons,  and  was  sculpted  in  the  15th  century.  The  stone  tells  of  the  death  of  the  moon  goddess,  Coyolxauhqui.  The  story  goes  that  Coyolxauhqui  is  jealous  that  her  mother,  Coatlicue,  has  become  pregnant  and  summons  her  400  brothers  to  attack  their  mother.  Coatlicue  immediately  gives  birth  to  an  adult  warrior  god  named  Huitzilopochtli  who  defeats  Coyolxauhqui.  After  the  defeat,  Coyolxauhqui  is  dismembered  by  Huitzilpochtil,  a  scene  that  is  illustrated  in  the  monolith.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ©  Werner  Forman/Universal  Images  Group.  

Tzompantli  (Skull  Rack)  

This  image  shows  the  remnants  of  a  tzompantli,  or  skull  rack,  that  was  unearthed  from  the  excavations  of  the  Templo  Mayor  over  the  past  30  years.  The  skulls  in  the  photograph  are  estimated  to  be  around  500  years  old.  The  skulls  represent  prisoners  of  war  the  Aztecs  had  captured  in  various  battles  as  well  as  Aztecs  that  were  sacrificed  to  appease  their  many  gods.  According  to  Spanish  documents  from  the  time  of  their  arrival  in  Tenochtitlán  after  1519,  the  complete  tzompantli  comprised  60,000  skulls  and  the  complete  structure  was  60  meters  long  and  30  meters  wide.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ©  Rob  Young.  Used  under  the  Creative  Commons  License.  

Tonamatl  (Aztec  Calendar  Stone)  

This  tonamatl,  or  Aztec  calendar  stone,  is  almost  12  feet  in  diameter,  is  three  and  a  half  feet  thick,  and  weighs  24  tons.  The  stone  was  unearthed  in  1790  during  renovations  on  the  Mexico  National  Cathedral  near  Templo  Mayor.  In  the  center  circle  of  the  sculpture  is  a  depiction  of  the  sun  god,  Tonatiuh,  with  an  open  mouth.  The  second  circle  references  the  different  ages  that  had  collapsed.  The  Aztecs  believed  the  world  was  destroyed  four  times  before  the  establishment  of  their  empire.  The  next  two  circles  in  the  stone  address  two  time  cycles.  The  365-­‐day  cycle  called  the  xiuhpohualli  is  believed  to  chart  agricultural  cycles  because  it  was  based  around  the  sun,  while  the  260-­‐day  cycle  called  the  tonalpohualli  is  believed  to  be  a  sacred  calendar  because  it  divided  days  and  rituals  among  the  gods.  

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Supporting  Question  2  Featured  Source   Source  A:  The  Coyolxauhqui  Stone  (temple  entry  stone)  

 

 ©  Miguel  Alvarez.  

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Supporting  Question  2  Featured  Source   Source  B:  Tzompantli  (skull  rack)  

 

 ©  Werner  Forman/Universal  Images  Group.  

   

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Supporting  Question  2  Featured  Source   Source  C:  Tonamatl  (Aztec  calendar  stone)    

 ©  Rob  Young.  Used  under  the  Creative  Commons  License.    

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Supporting  Question  3  Supporting  Question   How  did  Tenochtitlán  sustain  itself?  

Formative  Performance  Task  

Develop  a  chaîne  opératoire  (operational  sequence)  for  three  Aztec  economic  innovations.  

Featured  Sources  Source  A:  Excerpt  from  Hernán  Cortés’s  second  letter  to  Charles  V  Source  B:  Codex  Mendoza  Source  C:  Model  of  chinampas  

Conceptual  Understanding  

(9.8c)  Complex  societies  and  civilizations  made  unique  cultural  achievements  and  contributions.  

Content  Specifications  

Students  will  investigate  the  achievements  and  contributions  of  the  Aztec,  Inca,  and  Songhai  empires.  

Social  Studies  Practices  

         Gathering,  Using,  and  Interpreting  Evidence              Economics  and  Economic  Systems  

Supporting  Question  

To  answer  the  compelling  question—“What  do  the  buried  secrets  of  Tenochtitlán  tell  us  about  the  Aztecs?”—students  will  need  to  establish  an  understanding  of  the  Aztec  civilization.  By  answering  the  supporting  question  “How  did  Tenochtitlán  sustain  itself?”  students  will  need  to  break  down  the  economic  and  agricultural  systems  that  contributed  to  Tenochtitlán’s  success.  In  doing  so,  students  will  move  toward  answering  the  compelling  question  by  forming  connections  between  Tenochtitlán’s  economic  success  and  the  larger  success  of  the  Aztec  Empire.    

Formative  Performance  Task  

The  formative  performance  task  calls  on  students  to  create  a  chaîne  opératoire,  or  operational  sequence,  for  each  of  the  three  economic  innovations:  the  market,  the  tribute  system,  and  the  chinampas  (see  the  example  later  in  this  section).  Chaîne  opératoire  is  a  process  archaeologists  use  to  reflect  the  “entanglement  of  mental  operations  and  social  relationships  with  technical  processes”  (Linda  S.  Levstik,  A.  Gwynn  Henderson,  and  Youngdo  Lee,  “The  Beauty  of  Other  Lives:  Material  Culture  as  Evidence  of  Human  Ingenuity  and  Agency,”  The  Social  Studies  105  [2014]:  184–192).  By  having  students  sequence  the  operations  of  the  economic  innovations  highlighted  in  this  task,  it  allows  both  teachers  and  students  to  combat  student  misconceptions  about  human  intelligence  and  stereotypes  about  indigenous  peoples.  A  chaîne  opératoire  can  take  numerous  forms,  but  most  look  like  flow  charts  that  highlight  each  step,  material,  or  invention  needed  to  get  to  the  final  product  or  innovation.  For  example,  using  Hernán  Cortés’s  second  letter  to  Charles  V  (Featured  Source  A),  students  can  develop  a  chaîne  opératoire  focusing  on  the  aspects  of  the  marketplace  in  Tenochtitlán.  To  develop  their  chaîne  opératoire  students  will  need  to  take  the  following  steps.    

First,  students  will  need  to  use  the  featured  source  to  list  or  locate  the  final  innovations  or  products  for  each  of  their  chaînes  opératoires.  For  example,  when  reading  Cortés’s  letter,  students  could  highlight  the  following  passage:    

 

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more  than  sixty  thousand  souls,  engaged  in  buying  and  selling;  and  where  are  found  all  kinds  of  merchandise  that  the  world  affords,  embracing  the  necessaries  of  life,  as  for  instance  articles  of  food,  as  well  as  jewels  of  gold  and  silver,  lead,  brass,  copper,  tin,  precious  stones,  bones,  shells,  snails,  and  feathers.  There  are  apothecaries'  shops,  where  prepared  medicines,  liquids,  ointments,  and  plasters  are  sold;  barbers'  shops,  where  they  wash  and  shave  the  head;  and  restaurateurs,  that  furnish  food  and  drink  at  a  certain  price.  

 .  .  .  .  An  abundant  supply  of  excellent  water,  is  conveyed  by  one  of  these  pipes,  and  distributed  about  the  city,  where  it  is  used  by  the  inhabitants  for  drink  and  other  purposes.  

From  this  passage,  students  could  begin  forming  lists  of  final  innovations  or  products,  which  might  include,  food,  lead,  bones,  feathers,  restaurants,  medicines,  water,  pipes,  and  so  on.    

Second,  students  will  use  these  lists  of  final  innovations  or  products,  to  begin  forming  conjectures  about  the  other  steps  necessary  to  create  these  innovations  or  products.  For  example,  in  order  to  have  restaurants,  students  might  think  of  the  other  products  or  innovations  necessary,  such  as  food  production  and  farming,  water,  and  a  monetary  system.  It  is  important  to  note  that  not  every  student  will  describe  these  steps  in  the  same  ways  and  that  some  students  may  see  more  or  fewer  steps  for  these  innovations.  What  is  important  is  that  students  notice  the  variety  of  advances  needed  to  get  to  the  final  innovation  and  that  they  begin  to  consider  the  advances  made  by  the  Aztecs.    

Lastly,  students  will  take  their  lists  of  innovations  and  products  and  begin  to  form  their  chaînes  opératoires.  Again,  these  might  look  different  for  each  student  depending  on  how  they  structured  their  innovations  while  analyzing  the  sources.  An  example  of  a  chaîne  opératoire  focusing  on  the  economics  of  the  market  using  Featured  Source  A  might  look  like  this:    

Tenochtitlán  Market  (final  innovation/product  using  evidence  from  Cortés’s  Letter  in  bold)  

 

   

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Within  this  task,  students  are  working  directly  with  the  social  studies  practice  Gathering,  Using,  and  Interpreting  Evidence  as  they  read  and  analyze  each  source  by  highlighting  and  interpreting  evidence  in  order  to  create  their  chaînes  opératoires.  As  students  create  these  operational  sequences,  teachers  should  challenge  students  to  consider  the  evidence  available  for  their  conjectures  and  should  have  them  consider  what  else  might  have  been  necessary  (e.g.,  human  intelligence,  the  need  or  desire  for  innovation)  to  build  this  elaborate  economic  system.  In  doing  so,  they  are  using  Economics  and  Economic  Systems  to  deduce  the  skills,  knowledge,  and  resources  required  to  produce  goods  and  services.  

Because  forming  chaînes  opératoires  is  likely  going  to  be  new  for  most  students,  teachers  might  consider  modeling  this  exercise  using  the  market  example  described  earlier.  To  help  students  who  need  more  scaffolding,  teachers  might  want  to  have  students  work  in  pairs  or  small  groups  to  unpack  the  sources  through  the  use  of  lists  or  a  graphic  organizer  before  beginning  to  formulate  their  chaînes  opératoires.  Additionally,  some  students  might  benefit  from  comparing  their  lists  with  one  another  before  moving  to  their  chaînes  opératoires.  In  pairs  or  small  groups,  students  could  discuss  their  final  innovations  or  products  as  well  as  their  conjectures  about  the  steps  needed  for  these  innovations,  which  might  be  helpful  in  identifying  gaps  within  their  own  lists.  Students  could  also  continue  to  work  in  pairs  or  small  groups  as  they  form  their  chaînes  opératoires    

This  formative  performance  task  is  an  important  step  in  creating  a  summative  argument.  Students’  understanding  of  what  made  Tenochtitlán  sustainable  builds  upon  their  previous  understandings  of  its  location  (Formative  Performance  Task  1),  and  cultural  characteristics  (Formative  Performance  Task  2),  and  it  adds  to  the  complexity  of  their  understandings  of  the  demise  of  the  city  (Formative  Performance  Task  4).    

Featured  Sources  

FEATURED  SOURCE  A  is  an  excerpt  from  Cortés’s  1520  letter  to  Charles  V  that  describes  the  marketplace  in  Tenochtitlán.  In  using  this  source,  teachers  should  help  students  understand  that  this  description  of  Tenochtitlán  is  through  the  lens  of  a  Spanish  conqueror.  Although  students  will  wrestle  with  the  demise  of  Tenochtitlán  in  Formative  Performance  Task  4,  it  will  be  important  that  students  understand  the  perspective  of  this  source  in  this  exercise  before  moving  on  to  their  chaîne  opératoire.    

FEATURED  SOURCE  B  is  an  annotated  codex  of  the  tribute  system.  Teachers  will  want  to  make  sure  students  understand  that  the  Aztecs  used  the  tribute  system  as  a  system  of  taxes  to  be  paid  to  the  Triple  Alliance  by  the  other  local  governments  the  Aztec  Empire  controlled.  Most  of  the  tribute  went  to  Tenochtitlán.  Furthermore,  teachers  will  want  to  explain  the  origin  of  the  Codex  Mendoza  from  which  this  source  was  taken.  Although  the  images  in  the  codex  were  created  by  the  Aztecs,  they  were  commissioned  to  do  so  by  the  Spanish  about  20  years  after  their  conquest  in  order  to  explain  the  Aztec  way  of  life.  Examining  the  tribute  system  allows  students  to  broaden  their  understandings  of  the  economic  system  the  Aztecs  used  to  sustain  Tenochtitlán.  It  might  be  helpful  for  some  students  to  work  in  pairs  or  in  small  groups  as  they  examine  this  featured  source  and  create  their  lists  of  the  important  pieces  of  the  tribute  system  that  could  later  be  used  in  the  formative  performance  task.  When  examining  this  codex,  students’  lists  of  final  innovations  or  products  could  include  mantles,  loincloths,  other  clothing,  feathers,  shields,  grain,  gold,  honey,  wood,  and  copper;  they  may  also  add  the  names  of  the  towns  that  were  expected  to  pay  tribute.  Once  students  form  these  lists,  they  could  then  form  conjectures  about  what  steps  were  necessary  for  developing  these  innovations  or  products  and  then  move  to  their  chaînes  opératoires.    

FEATURED  SOURCE  C  is  a  model  of  chinampas,  a  method  of  agriculture  that  allowed  the  Aztecs  to  use  small  areas  of  fertile  land  to  grow  crops  on  the  shallow  lake  beds  that  surrounded  Tenochtitlán.  This  source  helps  students  to  break  down  the  agricultural  innovations  necessary  for  sustaining  Tenochtitlán.  When  examining  this  source,  

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 students’  lists  of  final  innovations  or  products  could  include  the  following:  posts,  woven  frameworks,  waterways,  agricultural  tools,  crops  (seeds),  willows,  farmers,  human  labor,  and  so  on.  Once  students  form  these  lists,  they  could  then  form  conjectures  about  what  steps  were  necessary  for  developing  these  innovations  or  products  and  then  move  to  their  chaîne  opératoire.  Teachers  might  also  have  students  think  about  how  these  agricultural  innovations  feed  into  the  Aztecs’  larger  economic  systems,  including  the  tribute  system  and  the  marketplace.    

Additional  Resources  

In  addition,  teachers  might  want  to  have  students  consider  other  portrayals  of  the  economic  and  agricultural  success  of  Tenochtitlán.  For  example,  Diego  Rivera  painted  murals  inside  the  National  Palace  of  present-­‐day  Mexico  City  in  1933.  The  mural  highlights  Tenochtitlán,  in  particular  its  marketplace  and  even  gold  production.  Teachers  might  use  the  murals  to  compare  Diego  Rivera’s  interpretation  of  life  in  Tenochtitlán  to  those  that  they  develop  through  their  inquiries  and  their  chaînes  opératoires.  Furthermore,  teachers  could  use  the  murals  as  additional  sources  to  help  students  complete  their  chaînes  opératoires  or  even  to  add  an  additional  chaîne  opératoire  to  their  formative  performance  task  responses.    

Images  from  Diego  Rivera’s  murals  may  be  found  here:    

• Mary  Ann  Sullivan  displays  and  describes  marketplace  images  from  the  mural  on  the  Bluffton  University  website:  http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/mexico/mexicocity/rivera/tenoch.html.    

   

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Supporting  Question  3  Featured  Source   Source  A:  Hernán  Cortés,  descriptions  of  Tenochtitlán,  second  letter  to  Charles  V  (excerpt),  1520  

 Hernán  Cortés,  Second  Letter  to  Charles  V,  1520  

This  great  city  of  Temixtitlan  [Mexico]  is  situated  in  this  salt  lake  .  .  .  The  city  is  as  large  as  Seville  or  Cordova;  its  streets,  I  speak  of  the  principal  ones,  are  very  wide  and  straight;  some  of  these,  and  all  the  inferior  ones,  are  half  land  and  half  water,  and  are  navigated  by  canoes.  All  the  streets  at  intervals  have  openings,  through  which  the  water  flows,  crossing  from  one  street  to  another;  and  at  these  openings,  some  of  which  are  very  wide,  there  are  also  very  wide  bridges  .  .  .  

This  city  has  many  public  squares,  in  which  are  situated  the  markets  and  other  places  for  buying  and  selling  .  .  .  where  are  daily  assembled  more  than  sixty  thousand  souls,  engaged  in  buying  and  selling;  and  where  are  found  all  kinds  of  merchandise  that  the  world  affords,  embracing  the  necessaries  of  life,  as  for  instance  articles  of  food,  as  well  as  jewels  of  gold  and  silver,  lead,  brass,  copper,  tin,  precious  stones,  bones,  shells,  snails,  and  feathers.  There  are  apothecaries'  shops,  where  prepared  medicines,  liquids,  ointments,  and  plasters  are  sold;  barbers'  shops,  where  they  wash  and  shave  the  head;  and  restaurateurs,  that  furnish  food  and  drink  at  a  certain  price.  

Every  kind  of  merchandise  is  sold  in  a  particular  street  or  quarter  assigned  to  it  exclusively,  and  thus  the  best  order  is  preserved.  There  is  a  building  in  the  great  square  that  is  used  as  an  audience  house,  where  ten  or  twelve  persons,  who  are  magistrates,  sit  and  decide  all  controversies  that  arise  in  the  market,  and  order  delinquents  to  be  punished.  

There  are  fully  forty  towers,  which  are  lofty  and  well  built,  the  largest  of  which  has  fifty  steps  leading  to  its  main  body,  and  is  higher  than  the  tower  of  the  principal  tower  of  the  church  at  Seville.  

This  noble  city  contains  many  fine  and  magnificent  houses  .  .  .  An  abundant  supply  of  excellent  water,  is  conveyed  by  one  of  these  pipes,  and  distributed  about  the  city,  where  it  is  used  by  the  inhabitants  for  drink  and  other  purposes.  

The  Bodleian  Libraries,  The  University  of  Oxford.  Shelfmark:  MS.  Arch.  Selden.  A.  1,  fol.  20r.    

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Supporting  Question  3  Featured  Source   Source  B:  Codex  Mendoza,  an  annotated  manuscript  describing  the  Aztec  tribute  system,  ca.  1535  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A  list  of  tributes  to  be  paid  to  Tenochtitlan  by  its  vassals.  Short  Spanish  descriptions  attempt  to  make  the  list  more  understandable.    

The  ten  rectangles  at  the  top  represent  mantles,  loincloths,  and  other  items  of  clothing.  Each  feather  represents  400.  On  the  left  margin  and  at  the  bottom  the  names  of  thirteen  tribute-­‐paying  towns  are  noted.  Other  goods  pictured  are  civilian  clothes,  warrior  dresses,  shields,  grain,  gold,  turquoise,  honey,  planks,  wood,  copper,  and  copal  (tree  resin).    

The  Bodleian  Libraries,  The  University  of  Oxford.  Shelfmark:  MS.  Arch.  Selden.  A.  1,  fol.  20r.    

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Supporting  Question  3  Featured  Source   Source  C:  Te  Papa,  Photograph  of  a  model  of  Aztec  chinampas  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Aztec  chinampas  model  by  Te  Mahi.  ©  Te  Papa,  photographer.

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Supporting  Question  4  Supporting  Question   How  was  Tenochtitlán  buried?  

Formative  Performance  Task  

Develop  a  claim  about  the  demise  of  Tenochtitlán.  

Featured  Sources  Source  A:  Excerpt  from  Guns,  Germs,  and  Steel  by  Jared  Diamond  Source  B:  Excerpt  from  Daily  Life  of  the  Aztecs:  People  of  the  Sun  and  Earth  by  David  Carrasco  with  Scott  Sessions  

Conceptual  Understandings  

(9.8c)  Complex  societies  and  civilizations  made  unique  cultural  achievements  and  contributions.  

Content  Specifications  

Students  will  investigate  the  achievements  and  contributions  of  the  Aztec,  Inca,  and  Songhai  empires.    

Social  Studies  Practices  

         Gathering,  Using,  and  Interpreting  Evidence    

         Chronological  Reasoning  and  Causation  

Supporting  Question  

To  answer  the  compelling  question—“What  do  the  buried  secrets  of  Tenochtitlán  tell  us  about  the  Aztecs?”—students  will  need  to  address  the  demise  and  literal  burial  of  Tenochtitlán.  Having  examined  the  geographic,  cultural,  and  economic  aspects  of  Aztec  life  in  Tenochtitlán  in  the  previous  formative  performance  tasks,  students  will  be  asked  to  answer  the  supporting  question  “How  was  Tenochtitlán  buried?”  by  analyzing  the  perspectives  of  two  scholars  who  discuss  the  fall  of  Tenochtitlán  and  the  Aztec  Empire.  In  doing  so,  students  move  toward  answering  the  compelling  question  by  forming  connections  between  the  sacking  of  Tenochtitlán  and  the  fall  of  the  Aztec  Empire.    

Formative  Performance  Task    

The  formative  performance  task  requires  students  to  address  the  supporting  question  by  using  sources  to  describe  how  Tenochtitlán  was  buried  by  developing  claims  supported  by  evidence.  In  describing  the  fall  of  Tenochtitlán,  students  should  move  beyond  the  interpretation  of  European  superiority  and  should  add  to  the  complexity  of  their  understandings  of  the  demise  of  Tenochtitlán  by  noting  the  way  other  factors  played  significant  roles  in  aiding  the  Spanish  conquest  of  the  Aztec  Empire.    

Within  this  task,  students  are  working  directly  with  the  social  studies  practice  Gathering,  Using,  and  Interpreting  Evidence  as  they  read  and  analyze  each  source  while  making  claims  supported  by  evidence.  Students  are  also  working  with  the  social  studies  practice  Chronological  Reasoning  and  Causation  as  they  consider  the  various  factors  that  contributed  to  Tenochtitlán’s  demise  and  consider  how  these  factors,  both  inside  and  outside  of  Tenochtitlán,  developed  over  time.    

Depending  on  their  experience  with  making  claims  supported  with  evidence,  students  may  need  examples  or  guided  instruction  on  how  to  develop  a  claim  and  what  constitutes  a  claim  with  evidence.  The  scaffold  in  this  section  could  help  students  organize  their  claim(s)  and  evidence.    

   

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How  did  Tenochtitlán  get  buried?  

Your  emerging  claim  about  how  Tenochtitlán  was  buried  

Tenochtitlán  and  the  Aztec  Empire  were  buried  by  the  introduction  of  Eurasian  diseases,  such  as  smallpox,  to  which  they  had  no  immunity.  

Evidence  from  the  source  that  supports  your  claim  

“What  gave  the  Spaniards  a  decisive  advantage  was  smallpox,  which  reached  Mexico  in  1520  with  one  infected  slave  arriving  from  Spanish  Cuba.  The  resulting  epidemic  proceeded  to  kill  nearly  half  of  the  Aztecs,  including  Emperor  Cuitlahuac.”  Source  A:  Excerpt  from  Guns,  Germs,  and  Steel    

Featured  Sources  

Teachers  will  need  to  make  sure  students  understand  that,  beginning  in  1519,  Tenochtitlán  was  sacked  by  the  Spanish.  To  provide  some  context  for  these  events,  teachers  might  open  the  lesson  with  a  quote  from  Bernál  Díaz  del  Castillo  taken  from  the  Florentine  Codex,  1500s,  which  describes  the  burial  of  Tenochtitlán:  

 I  say  again  that  I  stood  looking  at  it  and  thought  that  never  in  the  world  would  there  be  discovered  lands  such  as  these,  for  at  the  time  there  was  no  Peru,  or  any  of  it.  Of  all  these  wonders  that  I  beheld  today  all  lies  overthrown,  and  lost,  nothing  left  standing.  

When  examining  the  quote,  teachers  can  ask  students  a  variety  of  questions  including  the  following:  Who  is  writing  this?  What  is  his  observation?  What  is  the  significance?  What  is  his  perspective?  

FEATURED  SOURCE  A  is  an  excerpt  from  Guns,  Germs,  and  Steel  by  Jared  Diamond  that  addresses  the  fall  of  Tenochtitlán.  Teachers  will  want  to  have  students  consider  the  point  Diamond  is  making  about  the  actual  role  the  Spanish  military  had  in  burying  Tenochtitlán  versus  the  epidemiological  cause  of  smallpox.  

FEATURED  SOURCE  B  is  an  excerpt  from  Daily  Life  of  the  Aztecs:  People  of  the  Sun  and  Earth  by  Davíd  Carrasco  with  Scott  Sessions.  Teachers  will  want  to  have  students  consider  the  role  that  different  forces  such  as  religion,  military,  politics,  and  biology  played  in  the  burial  of  Tenochtitlán.  Drawing  on  their  responses  to  Formative  Performance  Tasks  2  and  3,  students  should  consider  how  those  forces  that  helped  to  sustain  Tenochtitlán  could  also  be  described  by  Carrasco  and  Sessions  as  part  of  its  demise.  For  example,  Carrasco  and  Sessions  argue  that  the  uprising  of  locals  within  the  Aztec  Empire  helped  contribute  to  Spanish  success:    

The  conquest  was  more  of  a  massive  rebellion  of  other  Indian  communities  than  a  conquest  by  Spanish  soldiers  acting  shrewdly  and  heroically  .  .  .  .  After  more  than  one  hundred  years  of  Mexican  domination,  these  allies  and  enemy  states  were  looking  for  opportunities  to  break  the  control  the  might  Aztecs  had  over  them.    

Students  should  consider  the  extent  to  which  various  factors  caused  the  burial  of  the  Tenochtitlán  and  how  these  factors  could  have  arisen  by  the  larger  geographic,  cultural,  or  economic  aspects  of  the  Aztec  Empire  (e.g.,  lack  of  previous  exposure  to  European  diseases,  capturing  enemies  for  sacrifice,  tribute  system).    

 

 

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Additional  Resources  

Teachers  may  choose  to  expand  their  investigation  of  the  burial  of  Tenochtitlán  by  asking  students  to  examine  archaeological  journals  and  archives  from  the  Archaeological  Institute  of  America.  These  journals  discuss  the  literal  burial  of  Tenochtitlán  by  the  Spanish  as  well  as  problems  faced  by  archaeologists  as  they  attempt  to  unearth  the  Aztec  culture:    

• Roger  Atwood,  “Under  Mexico  City,”  Archaeology  magazine  website,  June  9,  2014.  http://www.archaeology.org/issues/138-­‐features/2173-­‐mexico-­‐city-­‐aztec-­‐buried-­‐world.  

Teachers  may  also  choose  to  expand  their  investigation  by  further  examining  the  perspective  of  Bernál  Díaz  del  Castillo:    

• The  Memoirs  of  the  Conquistador  Bernal  Diaz  del  Castillo,  vol.  1,  Project  Gutenberg.  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-­‐h/32474-­‐h.htm.  (Note:  Readers  may  also  link  to  vol.  2  from  this  page).  

   

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Supporting  Question  4  

Featured  Source   Source  A:  Jared  Diamond,  book  that  analyzes  the  impact  of  disease  on  social  change,  Guns,  Germs,  and  Steel  (excerpt),  1999  

The  importance  of  lethal  microbes  in  human  history  is  well  illustrated  by  Europeans’  conquest  and  depopulation  of  the  New  World.  Far  more  Native  Americans  died  in  bed  from  Eurasian  germs  than  on  the  battlefield  from  European  guns  and  swords.  Those  germs  undermined  Indian  resistance  by  killing  most  Indians  and  their  leaders  and  by  sapping  the  survivors’  morale.  For  instance,  in  1519  Cortés  landed  on  the  coast  of  Mexico  with  600  Spaniards,  to  conquer  the  fiercely  militaristic  Aztec  Empire  with  a  population  of  many  millions.  That  Cortés  reached  the  capital  of  Tenochtitlán,  escaped  with  the  loss  of  only  two-­‐thirds  of  his  force,  and  managed  to  fight  his  way  back  to  the  coast  demonstrates  both  Spanish  military  advantages  and  the  initial  naiveté  of  the  Aztecs.  But  when  Cortés’s  next  onslaught  came,  the  Aztecs  were  no  longer  naive  and  fought  street  by  street  with  the  utmost  tenacity.  What  gave  the  Spaniards  a  decisive  advantage  was  smallpox,  which  reached  Mexico  in  1520  with  one  infected  slave  arriving  from  Spanish  Cuba.  The  resulting  epidemic  proceeded  to  kill  nearly  half  of  the  Aztecs,  including  Emperor  Cuitlahuac.  Aztec  survivors  were  demoralized  by  the  mysterious  illness  that  killed  Indians  and  spared  Spaniards,  as  if  advertising  the  Spaniards’  invincibility.  By  1618,  Mexico’s  initial  population  of  about  20  million  had  plummeted  to  about  1.6  million.    

Reprinted  from  Jared  Diamond,  Guns,  Germs,  and  Steel.  New  York,  NY:  W.  W.  Norton,  1999:  p.  210.    

 

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Supporting  Question  4  

Featured  Source   Source  B:  David  Carrasco  with  Scott  Sessions,  analysis  of  the  fall  of  the  Aztec  Empire,  Daily  Life  of  the  Aztecs:  People  of  the  Sun  and  Earth  (excerpt),  1998  

The  Aztec  Empire  fell  because  of  a  combination  of  forces  that  worked  against  them.  First,  the  Spaniards  arrive  at  a  fateful  time  in  the  Aztec  calendar.  The  year  I  Reed  (ce  acatl)  of  1519,  was  associated  with  the  story  of  the  collapse  of  the  Toltec  kingdom  of  Toplitzin  Quetzalcoatl,  and  it  is  likely  that  this  tradition  was  in  the  head  of  the  Aztec  nobles  who  had  been  educated  so  thoroughly  in  their  calmecac  .  .  .  .  

Second,  the  conquest  was  more  of  a  massive  rebellion  of  other  Indian  communities  than  a  conquest  by  Spanish  soldiers  acting  shrewdly  and  heroically.  The  extravagant  Aztec  Empire  had  been  held  together  by  a  series  of  alliances,  conquests,  intimidations,  Flowery  Wars,  and  forced  payment  of  sacrificial  captives  and  wealth.  Many  rebellions  and  resistance  movements  had  occurred,  both  near  the  capital  and  in  distant  regions,  especially  during  the  twenty  years  before  the  Spanish  arrived.  After  more  than  one  hundred  years  of  Mexica  domination,  these  allies  and  enemy  states  were  looking  for  opportunities  to  break  the  control  the  mighty  Aztecs  had  over  them.  As  one  writer  notes,  “The  loose  structure  of  the  empire  was  the  weapon  of  its  own  destruction.”  

Third,  the  Aztecs  and  the  Spaniards  fought  wars  on  completely  different  terms,  which  favored  European  invaders.  The  Aztecs  conducted  campaigns  to  capture  enemy  warriors  for  humiliation  and  sacrifice  as  much  as  for  killing  on  the  battlefield.  They  entered  into  conflicts  with  the  Spaniards  with  those  goals  in  mind.  The  Spaniards  fought  to  kill  on  the  battlefield  with  little  concern  for  captives  except  to  drag  basic  information  from  them  through  intimidation  and  torture.  The  Spanish  also  had  formidable  weapons,  including  horses,  attack  dogs,  crossbows,  cannons,  harquebuses,  and  steel-­‐bladed  swords.  

Fourth,  the  impact  of  European  diseases  cannot  be  overestimated  in  understanding  the  process  of  conquest.  There  was  an  immediate  and  profound  impact  on  the  health  and  stability  of  the  population  at  large  and  the  military  units  in  particular  within  and  beyond  the  Aztec  capital.  And  throughout  the  next  century  there  was  enormous  material  destruction  in  terms  of  fields,  towns,  cities,  and  human  beings.  When  we  turn  to  the  statistics  of  conquest,  we  learn  that  the  human  population  in  America  went  from  80  million  in  1492  to  less  than  10  million  in  1600.  In  Mesoamerica  there  were  25  million  people  in  1519,  but  only  1  million  native  Americans  living  in  the  same  territory  in  1592.    

Reprinted  from  David  Carrasco,  with  Scott  Sessions,  Daily  Life  of  the  Aztecs:  People  of  the  Sun  and  Earth.  Indianapolis,  IN:  Hackett  Publishing,  2008:  p.  226.    

 

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Summative  Performance  Task  

Summative  Performance  Task  

ARGUMENT  What  do  the  buried  secrets  of  Tenochtitlán  tell  us  about  the  Aztecs?  Construct  an  argument  that  addresses  the  compelling  question  using  specific  claims  and  relevant  evidence  from  historical  sources  while  acknowledging  competing  views.  

EXTENSION  Create  an  exhibition  card  for  an  artifact  from  Tenochtitlán  to  make  a  classroom  archaeological/museum  exhibit.  

In  this  task,  students  construct  an  evidence-­‐based  argument  responding  to  this  prompt:  “What  do  the  buried  secrets  of  Tenochtitlán  tell  us  about  the  Aztecs?”  It  is  important  to  note  that  students’  arguments  could  take  a  variety  of  forms.  In  some  cases,  teachers  may  have  students  complete  a  detailed  outline  that  includes  claims  with  evidentiary  support.  In  other  cases,  teachers  may  want  students  to  write  a  paper  that  formalizes  their  arguments.  Teachers’  decisions  to  do  either  may  be  predicated  on  whether  they  plan  to  do  the  summative  extension  described  in  this  section.  

At  this  point  in  their  inquiry,  students  have  examined  the  geographic,  cultural,  and  economic  attributes  of  Tenochtitlán  that  reveal  unique  characteristics  of  the  Aztecs.  Students  should  be  expected  to  demonstrate  the  breadth  of  their  understandings  and  their  abilities  to  use  evidence  from  multiple  sources  to  support  their  distinct  claims.    

Before  the  Summative  Performance  Task,  it  may  be  helpful  for  students  to  review  the  sources  provided  and  the  graphic  organizers  created  during  the  formative  performance  tasks.  Doing  so  should  help  them  develop  their  claims  and  highlight  the  appropriate  evidence  to  support  their  arguments.  The  Evidence  Chart  in  this  section  can  be  used  to  provide  students  with  support  as  they  build  their  arguments  with  claims  and  evidence.    

Students’  arguments  likely  will  vary,  but  could  include  any  of  the  following:  

• The  practice  of  human  sacrifice  at  the  Templo  Mayor  and  the  forced  tribute  to  Tenochtitlán  tells  us  the  Aztecs  were  a  brutal,  militaristic,  and  conquering  people.  

• The  empire’s  elaborate  tribute  system,  along  with  the  use  of  chinampas  and  markets  within  Tenochtitlán,  tells  us  the  Aztecs  were  economically  innovative  and  highly  adaptive  to  their  environment.  

• The  development  and  endurance  of  Tenochtitlán  as  both  an  architectural  and  imperial  wonder  tells  us  the  Aztecs  were  one  of  the  great  civilizations  in  the  history  of  the  Americas.  

Additionally,  teachers  might  want  students  to  focus  on  evaluating  the  use  of  archaeology  to  synthesize  the  events  and  people  of  the  past.  Students’  arguments  will  vary,  but  could  include  any  of  the  following:    

• Artifacts  unearthed  at  Tenochtitlán  provide  a  more  authentic  perspective  on  the  history  of  the  Aztecs  because  they  represent  the  life  of  the  indigenous  people  in  Mexico.    

• There  are  limitations  to  using  archaeological  evidence  to  better  understand  the  Aztecs  because  many  artifacts  have  yet  to  be  unearthed  and  are  difficult  to  interpret  in  modern  context.    

• The  archaeological  evidence  unearthed  at  Tenochtitlán  illuminates  some  of  the  religious,  social,  and  economic  practices  of  the  Aztecs,  but  there  are  difficulties  in  using  artifacts  to  interpret  the  daily  life  of  the  indigenous  people  in  Mexico.    

It  is  possible  for  students  to  find  support  for  any  of  these  arguments  in  the  sources  provided  and  through  their  analysis  of  the  sources.  Furthermore,  teachers  might  have  students  write  arguments  that  reference  both  the  characteristics  of  Aztec  life  and  the  limitations  of  using  archaeological  evidence.    

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Extension  

Museum  curators  study  artifacts  to  understand  history  and  to  tell  a  story  about  the  past.  Objects  tell  something  about  the  people  who  designed,  made,  and  used  them.  Lubar  and  Kendrick  (“Looking  at  Artifacts,  Thinking  About  History,”  the  Object  of  History  website,  http://objectofhistory.org/guide/)  suggest  five  ways  of  thinking  about  artifacts:  

• Artifacts  tell  their  own  stories.  • Artifacts  connect  people.  • Artifacts  mean  many  things.  • Artifacts  capture  moments.  • Artifacts  reflect  changes.  

Students  could  begin  this  extension  by  using  these  five  ways  of  thinking  to  examine  an  artifact  from  Tenochtitlán  that  was  used  within  this  inquiry  or  one  they  have  found  on  their  own.  See  the  Object  of  History  website  for  a  guide  to  doing  this  type  of  exercise:  http://objectofhistory.org/guide/.  

Students  can  work  together  to  imagine  themselves  as  curators  who  are  drafting  exhibit  cards  for  an  artifact.  Students  should  select  two  artifacts  and  discuss  why  these  artifacts  should  be  included  within  the  exhibit.  Working  as  a  class,  students  should  decide  which  artifacts  tell  the  most  compelling  and  accurate  stories  of  the  Aztecs.  After  all,  museum  curators  also  have  to  make  decisions  about  which  artifacts  make  it  to  the  museum  floor.  Students  will  want  to  consider  the  objects’  historical  significance  and  the  way  in  which  they  might  engage  the  public.    

Once  selected,  students  could  create  an  exhibit  card  like  the  ones  in  Formative  Performance  Task  2  or  like  those  from  a  museum.  For  example,  the  National  Museum  of  American  History  annotates  its  objects  online  using  an  object  description.  Following  is  a  sample  description  of  George  Washington’s  camp  chest  (the  full  description  is  found  at  http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_434899):    

Armies  on  campaign  must  carry  with  them  much  besides  their  weapons.  At  the  time  of  the  American  Revolutionary  War  (1776-­‐1781),  various  boxes  and  chests  transported  soldier's  individual  effects,  wardrobes,  official  military  payrolls,  and  other  necessities.  Camp  chests  or  canteens  as  they  were  called  in  the  18th  century,  carried  utensils  and  cooking  apparatus  to  be  used  by  officers  and  their  staff  when  in  the  field  during  campaigns.  

George  Washington’s  well-­‐appointed  personal  camp  chest,  or  “mess  kit,”  enabled  him  to  dine  in  a  manner  reflecting  his  position  as  commander  of  the  Continental  Army.  Two  sets  of  leather  covered  canteens,  or  camp  chests,  were  bought  by  General  Washington,  on  May  3,  1776.  Another  set  of  “canteens”  captured  on  a  British  prize  ship  were  sent  for  Washington’s  use  in  October  1778.  By  1782,  General  Washington's  camp  equipage  which  included  canteens,  tents,  tables,  traveling  beds,  and  various  other  field  equipment,  was  so  extensive  that  he  had  to  request  that  two  horses,  “natural  pacers,”  be  selected  by  the  Quartermaster  General,  Timothy  Pickering,  just  to  carry  the  General's  camp  chests.  

We  do  not  know  which  of  the  several  camp  chests  belonging  to  Washington  is  in  our  collections;  however,  this  example  is  complete  with  all  original  utensils.  It  contains  tin  plates  and  platters,  tin  pots  with  detachable  wooden  handles,  glass  containers  for  condiments  such  as  salt,  pepper,  and  sugar,  as  well  as  knives  and  forks  with  dyed  black  ivory  handles.  The  chest  also  contains  a  tinder  box,  candle  stand,  and  folding  gridiron.  

 

 

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This  exhibit  card  should  include  background  information  about  the  object  so  that  future  researchers  know  what  historians  previously  discovered  about  the  object  and  its  context.  Students  could  print  out  images  of  their  artifacts  and  include  their  exhibit  cards.  A  class  of  students  could  invite  another  class,  a  group  of  adults  in  the  school,  or  parents  to  view  their  exhibit,  or  they  could  create  a  self-­‐guided  exhibit  in  the  school’s  hallway.  Students  could  act  as  docents  as  the  participants  move  through  their  exhibit.  

 

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Evidence  Chart  

Initial  Claim  

What  is  your  opening  claim  about  the  Aztecs?  This  claim  should  appear  in  the  opening  section  of  your  argument.  Make  sure  to  cite  your  sources.  

 

 Evidence  

What  evidence  do  you  have  from  the  sources  you  investigated  to  support  your  initial  claim?  Make  sure  to  cite  your  sources.  

 

 Additional  Claims  

What  are  some  additional  claims  you  can  make  that  extend  your  initial  claim?  Make  sure  to  cite  your  sources.  

 

 Additional  Evidence  

What  additional  evidence  do  you  have  from  the  sources  you  investigated  that  support  your  additional  claims?  Make  sure  to  cite  your  sources.  

 

 Double  Check  

What  ideas  from  the  sources  contradict  your  claims?  Have  you  forgotten  anything?  Make  sure  to  cite  your  sources.  

 

 Pulling  It  Together  

What  is  your  overall  understanding  of  the  compelling  question?  This  should  be  included  in  your  conclusion.  Make  sure  to  cite  your  sources.  

 

 

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Taking  Informed  Action  

Taking  Informed  Action    

UNDERSTAND  Further  investigate  the  ethical,  environmental,  and/or  historical  challenges  that  modern-­‐day  archaeologists  face  as  they  unearth  Tenochtitlán.  ASSESS  List  the  opportunities  and  challenges  of  uncovering  the  remains  of  lost  societies  such  as  Tenochtitlán.  ACT  Write  an  editorial  for  Dig  Into  History  magazine  that  makes  young  readers  aware  of  a  problem(s)  archaeologists  face  in  digging  up  the  past.  

Taking  informed  action  can  manifest  in  a  variety  of  forms  and  in  a  range  of  venues.  Students  may  express  action  through  discussions,  debates,  surveys,  video  productions,  and  the  like;  these  actions  may  take  place  in  the  classroom,  in  the  school,  in  the  local  community,  across  the  state,  and  around  the  world.  The  three  activities  described  in  this  inquiry  represent  a  logic  that  asks  students  to  (1)  understand  the  issues  evident  from  the  inquiry  in  a  larger  and/or  current  context,  (2)  assess  the  relevance  and  impact  of  the  issues,  and  (3)  act  in  ways  that  allow  students  to  demonstrate  agency  in  a  real-­‐world  context.    

For  this  inquiry,  students  draw  on  their  understandings  of  how  history  is  unearthed  and  how  it  is  shaped  by  archaeological  discoveries.  Clearly,  there  are  numerous  examples  of  archaeological  discoveries  that  have  changed  the  historical  record,  but  this  inquiry  focuses  in  on  the  literal  burial  of  the  ancient  Aztec  city  of  Tenochtitlán.  Because  much  of  Tenochtitlán’s  culture  is  still  unknown,  having  students  continue  their  inquiries  allows  them  to  continue  to  evaluate  the  ways  in  which  history  is  constructed  and  the  barriers  that  exist  to  archaeologists.    

To  understand  the  situation,  students  should  return  to  the  New  York  Times  article,  which  began  the  inquiry,  this  time  focusing  on  the  ethical,  environmental,  and/or  historical  problems  facing  archaeologists  trying  to  unearth  Tenochtitlán.  They  might  start  by  investigating  the  following  quote  from  the  article:    

But  despite  the  guidance  from  historical  records,  Mexico  City’s  archaeologists  cannot  dig  anywhere  they  please.  Part  of  the  sacred  precinct  is  now  a  raucous  medley  of  the  mundane.  The  street  vendors  hawking  pirated  Chinese-­‐made  toys  and  English-­‐language  lesson  CDs  from  crumbling  facades  are  merely  the  loudest.  To  excavate  under  the  area’s  hotels,  diners,  cheap  clothing  stands  and  used  bookstores  would  entail  fraught  negotiation.  Along  the  quieter  blocks  of  the  precinct,  handsome  colonial  structures  are  now  museums  and  government  buildings,  themselves  historical  landmarks.  Archaeologists  believe  that  the  Calmécac,  a  school  for  Aztec  nobles,  extends  under  the  courtyards  of  Mexico’s  Education  Ministry  building.  For  now,  the  only  part  of  the  Calmécac  that  has  been  excavated  are  several  walls  and  sculptures  on  display  under  a  building  housing  the  Spanish  cultural  center,  discovered  when  it  was  remodeled.  

Students  should  then  assess  the  opportunities  and  challenges  of  uncovering  the  remains  of  lost  societies  such  as  Tenochtitlán.  Students  could  consider  who  is  buried  and  why  and  how  they  should  be  unearthed.  Students  should  additionally  begin  to  assess  the  extent  to  which  history  can  be  uncovered  through  archaeological  discoveries.  Lastly,  drawing  upon  their  inquiry  of  the  unearthing  of  Tenochtitlán  students  should  take  action  by  writing  an  editorial  for  submission  to  Dig  Into  History  magazine  (http://www.digonsite.com/index.html)  in  which  they  make  young  readers  aware  of  a  problem  or  problems  archaeologists  face  in  digging  up  the  past  and  your  position  on  the  problem.  Alternatively,  students  could  write  a  letter  to  Dr.  Dig  (http://www.digonsite.com/drdig/index.html)  that  asks  questions  about  the  unearthing  of  Tenochtitlán  or  the  ability  to  uncover  history  using  archaeology.  

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Common  Core  Connections  Across  the  Grade  9  Inquiry  

Social  studies  teachers  play  a  key  role  in  enabling  students  to  develop  the  relevant  literacy  skills  found  in  the  New  York  State  P–12  Common  Core  Learning  Standards  for  English  Language  Arts  and  Literacy.  The  Common  Core  emphasis  on  more  robust  reading,  writing,  speaking  and  listening,  and  language  skills  in  general  and  the  attention  to  more  sophisticated  source  analysis,  argumentation,  and  the  use  of  evidence  in  particular  are  evident  across  the  Toolkit  inquiries.  

 Identifying  the  connections  with  the  Common  Core  Anchor  Standards  will  help  teachers  consciously  build  opportunities  to  advance  their  students’  literacy  knowledge  and  expertise  through  the  specific  social  studies  content  and  practices  described  in  the  annotation.  The  following  table  outlines  the  opportunities  represented  in  the  Grade  9  Inquiry  through  illustrative  examples  of  each  of  the  standards  represented.  

Compelling  Question What  do  the  buried  secrets  of  Tenochtitlán  tell  us  about  the  Aztecs?

 Common  Core  Anchor  Standard  Connections  

Reading  

CCSS.ELA-­‐LITERACY.CCRA.R.1  Read  closely  to  determine  what  the  text  says  explicitly  and  to  make  logical  inferences  from  it;  cite  specific  textual  evidence  when  writing  or  speaking  to  support  conclusions  drawn  from  the  text.  See  Formative  Performance  Tasks  1  and  2:  The  formative  performance  tasks  call  on  students  to  identify  specific  information  from  the  sources  that  help  answer  the  supporting  question.  CCSS.ELA-­‐LITERACY.CCRA.R.9  Analyze  how  two  or  more  texts  address  similar  themes  or  topics  in  order  to  build  knowledge  or  to  compare  the  approaches  the  authors  take.  See  Formative  Performance  Task  4:  Students  examine  sources  from  two  different  perspectives  in  order  to  make  a  claim  with  evidence  about  the  demise  of  Tenochtitlán.  

Writing  

CCSS.ELA-­‐LITERACY.CCRA.W.1  Write  arguments  to  support  claims  in  an  analysis  of  substantive  topics  or  texts  using  valid  reasoning  and  relevant  and  sufficient  evidence.  See  the  Summative  Performance  Task:  Construct  an  argument  using  specific  claims  and  relevant  evidence  from  historical  sources.  

Speaking  and  Listening  

CCSS.ELA-­‐LITERACY.CCRA.SL.2  Integrate  and  evaluate  information  presented  in  diverse  media  and  formats,  including  visually,  quantitatively,  and  orally.  See  Formative  Performance  Tasks  1,  2,  3,  and  4:  Students  will  evaluate  featured  sources  that  are  presented  through  a  range  of  media,  including  maps,  images,  and  text,  and  will  use  these  sources  to  answer  the  supporting  questions.  

Language  

CCSS.ELA-­‐LITERACY.CCRA.L.3  Apply  knowledge  of  language  to  understand  how  language  functions  in  different  contexts,  to  make  effective  choices  for  meaning  or  style,  and  to  comprehend  more  fully  when  reading  or  listening.  See  Appendix  A:  Vocabulary  Guide  for  Aztec  Inquiry:  Students  use  vocabulary  guide  to  understand  words  and  phrases  unique  to  archaeology  and  the  Aztecs.  

   

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Appendix  A:  Aztec  Inquiry  Vocabulary  

Term   Pronunciation   Definition  

calmecac   kal’mekak   School  for  the  sons  of  Aztec  nobility  where  they  would  receive  religious  and  military  training.  

chaîne  opératoire   shen-­‐  opra-­‐toire   French  for  “operational  sequence”  anthropologists  and  archaeologists  use  this  process  to  analyze  steps  in  production.  

Coatlicue   co-­‐at-­‐LI-­‐cue   Earth  goddess  and  mother  of  Huitzilopochtli  in  the  myth  of  Coatepec.  

Coyolxauhqui   co-­‐yol-­‐SHAU-­‐qui   Moon  goddess  and  warrior  daughter  of  Coatlicue  and  sister  of  Huitzilopochtli,  who  killed  and  dismembered  her  in  the  myth  of  Coatepec.  

Cuitláhuac   kwit’lawak   Emperor  and  10th  ruler  of  Tenochtitlán;  he  died  of  smallpox.  

harquebus   har-­‐que-­‐bus   A  matchlock  gun  invented  in  the  15th  century  which  was  portable  but  heavy  and  was  usually  fired  from  a  support.  

Huitzilopochtli   huit-­‐zi-­‐lo-­‐POCHT-­‐li   God  of  sun  and  of  war  and  patron  deity  of  the  Mexica  (Aztecs).  

Templo  Mayor   TEM-­‐plo  may-­‐OR   The  Great  Temple  of  Tenochtitlán,  the  symbolic  center  of  the  city  and  a  physical  replica  of  the  Aztec  cosmos.  

Tenochtitlán   te-­‐noch-­‐tit-­‐LAN   The  capital  city  of  the  Triple  Alliance,  founded  by  the  Mexica  (Aztecs)  around  1325,  located  on  an  island  in  the  lake  system  of  the  Basin  of  Mexico.  

Tonalpohualli   to-­‐nal-­‐po-­‐HUAL-­‐li   The  260-­‐day  ritual  cycle  in  the  Aztec  calendar.  

Tonamatl   to-­‐na-­‐ma-­‐tl   “Book  of  Days”  depicting  the  ritual  calendar  Aztecs  used  for  divination.  

Tonatiuh   to-­‐NA-­‐ti-­‐uh   A  solar  deity  who  presided  over  the  age  known  as  the  “fifth  sun,”  in  which  the  Aztecs  lived.  

Tzompantli   tzom-­‐PANT-­‐li   “Skull  rack,”  where  the  severed  heads  of  sacrificial  victims  were  hung  on  poles  at  Templo  Mayor  in  Tenochtitlán.  

Xiuhpohualli   sh-­‐uh-­‐po-­‐HUAL-­‐li   The  365-­‐day  Aztec  calendar  cycle  corresponding  to  the  solar  year.  

 

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Appendix  B:  Additional  Sources  for  Teaching  this  Inquiry  

Books  • David  Carrasco,  Daily  Lives  of  the  Aztecs:  People  of  the  Sun  and  Earth.  Westport,  CT:  Greenwood  Press,  1998:  

Provides  historical  content  about  the  Aztecs  and  the  building  of  Tenochtitlán.  • Michael  D.  Coe  and  Rex  Koontz.  Mexico:  From  the  Olmecs  to  the  Aztecs.  New  York,  NY:  Thames  and  Hudson,  

2003:  Guide  to  Tenochtitlán  and  the  Spanish  encounter.  Jared  M.  Diamond,  Guns,  Germs,  and  Steel:  The  Fate  of  Human  Societies.”  New  York,  NY:  Norton,  1999:  Examines  the  tribute  network  and  collapse  of  the  empire.  

• Migual  Leon-­‐Portilla,  ed.  Broken  Spears:  The  Aztec  Account  of  the  Conquest  of  Mexico,  new  expanded  edition.  Boston,  MA:  Beacon  Press,  2006:    Highlights  voices  of  indigenous  people.    

• James  Lockhart  and  Stuart  B.  Schwartz.  Early  Latin  America:  A  History  of  Colonial  Spanish  America  and  Brazil.  Cambridge,  UK:  Cambridge  University  Press,  1983:  Provides  a  general  history  of  Latin  America  in  the  period  between  the  European  conquest  and  the  gaining  of  independence  by  the  Spanish  American  countries  and  Brazil  (approximately  1492–1825)  

Article  • Linda  Levstik.  “Teaching  History  by  Connecting  Human  Intelligence,  Innovation  and  Agency,”  February  13,  

2014.  EduTopia  website.  http://www.edutopia.org/blog/teaching-­‐history-­‐intelligence-­‐innovation-­‐agency-­‐linda-­‐levstik:  Provides  guidance  on  working  with  students  to  develop  chaîne  opératoires.  

Websites  

• Silverio  A.  Barroqueiro,  “The  Aztecs:  A  Pre-­‐Columbian  History,”  1999,  Yale-­‐New  Haven  Teachers  Institute  website.  http://yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1999/2/99.02.01.x.html:  Overview  of  Aztec  society  

• Thayer  Watkins,  “The  History  of  the  Aztecs,”  San  Jose  State  University  website.  http://www.sjsu.edu/  faculty/watkins/aztecs.htm:  Examination  of  economic  and  social  aspects  of  Aztecs.  

• National  Museum  of  the  American  Indian  website.  http://www.nmai.si.edu:  Access  to  artifacts  that  were  found  at  Templo  Mayor  in  Tenochtitlán.  

Archaeological  Websites  

• Dig  Into  History  magazine,  http://www.digonsite.com:  Archaeological  magazine  geared  to  children  9  to  14  years  old.  

• Past  Horizons,  http://www.pasthorizonspr.com:  News  archive  and  article  source  that  examines  issues  and  adventures  in  the  field  of  archaeology.  

Five SunsIn the context of creation myths, the term Five Suns describes the doctrine of the Aztec and other Nahuapeoples in which the present world was preceded by four other cycles of creation and destruction. It isprimarily derived from the mythological, cosmological and eschatological beliefs and traditions of earliercultures from central Mexico and the Mesoamerican region in general. The Late Postclassic Aztec societyinherited many traditions concerning Mesoamerican creation accounts, while however modifying some aspectsand supplying novel interpretations of their own.

In the creation myths which were known to the Aztec and other Nahua peoples of the Late Postclassic era, thecentral tenet was that there had been four worlds, or "Suns", before the present universe. These earlier worldsand their inhabitants had been created, then destroyed by the catastrophic action of leading deity figures. Thepresent world is the fifth sun, and the Aztec saw themselves as "the People of the Sun," whose divine dutywas to wage cosmic war in order to provide the sun with his tlaxcaltiliztli ("nourishment"). Without it, the sunwould disappear from the heavens. Thus the welfare and the very survival of the universe depended upon theofferings of blood and hearts to the sun.

LegendFirst sunSecond sunThird sunFourth sunFifth sun

Variations and alternative mythsBrief summationIn popular cultureSee alsoReferencesFurther reading

From the void that was the rest of the universe, the first god, Ometeotl, created itself. Ometeotl was both maleand female, good and evil, light and darkness, fire and water, judgment and forgiveness, the god of duality.Ometeotl gave birth to four children, the four Tezcatlipocas, who each preside over one of the four cardinaldirections. Over the West presides the White Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, the god of light, mercy and wind.Over the South presides the Blue Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli, the god of war. Over the East presides the RedTezcatlipoca, Xipe Totec, the god of gold, farming and Spring time. And over the North presides the BlackTezcatlipoca, also called simply Tezcatlipoca, the god of judgment, night, deceit, sorcery and the Earth.[1]

Contents

Legend

First sun

It was four gods who eventually created all the other gods and the world we know today, but before theycould create they had to destroy, for every time they attempted to create something, it would fall into the waterbeneath them and be eaten by Cipactli, the giant earth crocodile, who swam through the water with mouths atevery one of her joints. The four Tezcatlipocas descended the first people who were giants. They created theother gods, the most important of whom were the water gods: Tlaloc, the god of rain and fertility andChalchiuhtlicue, the goddess of lakes, rivers and oceans, also the goddess of beauty. To give light, they neededa god to become the sun and the Black Tezcatlipoca was chosen, but either because he had lost a leg orbecause he was god of the night, he only managed to become half a sun. The world continued on in this wayfor some time, but a sibling rivalry grew between Quetzalcoatl and his brother the mighty sun, whoQuetzalcoatl knocked from the sky with a stone club. With no sun, the world was totally black and in hisanger, Tezcatlipoca commanded his jaguars to eat all the people.[2]

The gods created a new group of people to inhabit the Earth, this time they were of normal size. Quetzalcoatlbecame the new sun and as the years passed, the people of the Earth grew less and less civilized and stoppedshowing proper honor to the gods. As a result, Tezcatlipoca demonstrated his power and authority as god ofsorcery and judgment by turning the animalistic people into monkeys. Quetzalcoatl, who had loved the flawedpeople as they were, became upset and blew all of the monkeys from the face of the Earth with a mightyhurricane. He then stepped down as the sun to create a new people.

Tlaloc became the next sun, but Tezcatlipoca seduced and stole his wife Xochiquetzal, the goddess of sex,flowers and corn. Tlaloc then refused to do anything other than wallow in his own grief, so a great droughtswept the world. The people's prayers for rain annoyed the grieving sun and he refused to allow it to rain, butthe people continued to beg him. Then, in a fit of rage he answered their prayers with a great downpour of fire.It continued to rain fire until the entire Earth had burned away. The gods then had to construct a whole newEarth from the ashes.

The next sun and also Tlaloc's new wife, was Chalchiuhtlicue. She was very loving towards the people, butTezcatlipoca was not. Both the people and Chalchiuhtlicue felt his judgment when he told the water goddessthat she was not truly loving and only faked kindness out of selfishness to gain the people's praise.Chalchiuhtlicue was so crushed by these words that she cried blood for the next fifty-two years, causing ahorrific flood that drowned everyone on Earth. Humans became fish in order to survive.

Quetzalcoatl would not accept the destruction of his people and went to the underworld where he stole theirbones from the god Mictlantecuhtli. He dipped these bones in his own blood to resurrect his people, whoreopened their eyes to a sky illuminated by the current sun, Huitzilopochtli.[1]

The Tzitzimimeh, or stars, became jealous of their brighter, more important brother Huitzilopochtli. Theirleader, Coyolxauhqui, goddess of the moon, lead them in an assault on the sun and every night they comeclose to victory when they shine throughout the sky, but are beaten back by the mighty Huitzilopochtli whorules the daytime sky. To aid this all-important god in his continuing war, the Aztecs offer him the nourishmentof human sacrifices. They also offer human sacrifices to Tezcatlipoca in fear of his judgment, offer their own

Second sun

Third sun

Fourth sun

Fifth sun

blood to Quetzalcoatl, who opposes fatal sacrifices, in thanks of his blood sacrifice for them and give offeringsto many other gods for many purposes. Should these sacrifices cease, or should mankind fail to please the godsfor any other reason, this fifth sun will go black, the world will be shattered by a catastrophic earthquake, andthe Tzitzimitl will slay Huitzilopochtli and all of humanity.

Most of what is known about the ancient Aztecs comes from the few codices to survive the Spanish conquest.Their myths can be confusing not only because of the lack of documentation, but also because there are manypopular myths that seem to contradict one another because they were originally passed down by word ofmouth and because the Aztecs adopted many of their gods from other tribes, both assigning their own newaspects to these gods and endowing them with aspects of similar gods from various other cultures. Older mythscan be very similar to newer myths while contradicting one another by claiming that a different god performedthe same action, probably because myths changed in correlation to the popularity of each of the gods at a giventime.

Other variations on this myth state that Coatlicue, the earth goddess, was the mother of the four Tezcatlipocasand the Tzitzimitl. Some versions say that Quetzalcoatl was born to her first, while she was still a virgin, oftenmentioning his twin brother Xolotl, the guide of the dead and god of fire. Tezcatlipoca was then born to her byan obsidian knife, followed by the Tzitzimitl and then Huitzilopochtli. The most popular variation includingCoatlicue depicts her giving birth first to the Tzitzimitl. Much later she gave birth to Huitzilopochtli when amysterious ball of feathers appeared to her. The Tzitzimitl then decapitated the pregnant Coatlicue, believing itto be insulting that she had given birth to another child. Huitzilopochtli then sprang forth from her wombwielding a serpent of fire and began his epic war with the Tzitzimitl, who were also referred to as the CentzonHuitznahuas. Sometimes he is said to have decapitated Coyolxauhqui and either used her head to make themoon or thrown it into a canyon. Further variations depict the ball of feathers as being the father ofHuitzilopochtli or the father of Quetzalcoatl and sometimes Xolotl.

Other variations of this myth claim that only Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca were born to Ometeotl, who wasreplaced by Coatlicue in this myth probably because it had absolutely no worshipers or temples by the time theSpanish arrived. It is sometimes said that the male characteristic of Ometeotl is named Ometecuhtli and that thefemale characteristic is named Omecihualt. Further variations on this myth state that it was only Quetzalcoatland Tezcatlipoca who pulled apart Cipactli, also known as Tlaltecuhtli, and that Xipe Totec andHuitzilopochtli then constructed the world from her body. Some versions claim that Tezcatlipoca actually usedhis leg as bait for Cipactli, before dismembering her.

The order of the first four suns varies as well, though the above version is the most common. Each world's endcorrelates consistently to the god that was the sun at the time throughout all variations of the myth, though theloss of Xochiquetzal is not always identified as Tlaloc's reason for the rain of fire, which is not otherwise givenand it is sometimes said that Chalchiuhtlicue flooded the world on purpose, without the involvement ofTezcatlipoca. It is also said that Tezcatlipoca created half a sun, which his jaguars then ate before eating thegiants.

The fifth sun however is sometimes said to be a god named Nanauatzin. In this version of the myth, the godsconvened in darkness to choose a new sun, who was to sacrifice himself by jumping into a gigantic bonfire.The two volunteers were the young son of Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue, Tecuciztecatl, and the old Nanauatzin.It was believed that Nanauatzin was too old to make a good sun, but both were given the opportunity to jumpinto the bonfire. Tecuciztecatl tried first but was not brave enough to walk through the heat near the flames andturned around. Nanauatzin then walked slowly towards and then into the flames and was consumed.Tecuciztecatl then followed. The braver Nanauatzin became what is now the sun and Tecuciztecatl became themuch less spectacular moon. A god that bridges the gap between Nanauatzin and Huitzilopochtli is Tonatiuh,

Variations and alternative myths

who was sick, but rejuvenated himself by burning himself alive and then became the warrior sun andwandered through the heavens with the souls of those who died in battle, refusing to move if not offeredenough sacrifices.

Nahui-Ocelotl (Jaguar Sun) - Inhabitants were giants who were devoured by jaguars. Theworld was destroyed.Nahui-Ehécatl (Wind Sun) - Inhabitants were transformed into monkeys. This world wasdestroyed by hurricanes.Nahui-Quiahuitl (Rain Sun) - Inhabitants were destroyed by rain of fire. Only birds survived (orinhabitants survived by becoming birds).Nahui-Atl (Water Sun) - This world was flooded turning the inhabitants into fish. A coupleescaped but were transformed into dogs.Nahui-Ollin (Earthquake Sun) - We are the inhabitants of this world. Should the gods bedispleased, this world will be destroyed by earthquakes (or one large earthquake) and theTzitzimimeh will annihilate all its inhabitants.

The version of the myth with Nanahuatzin serves as a framing device for the 1991 Mexican film,In Necuepaliztli in Aztlan (Retorno a Aztlán), by Juan Mora Catlett.The version of the myth with Nanahuatzin is in the 1996 film, The Five Suns: A Sacred Historyof Mexico, by Patricia Amlin.Rage Against the Machine refers to intercultural violence as "the fifth sunset" in their songPeople of the Sun, on the album Evil Empire.Thomas Harlan's science fiction series "In the Time of the Sixth Sun" uses this myth as acentral plot point, where an ancient star-faring civilization ("people of the First Sun") haddisappeared and left the galaxy with many dangerous artifacts.The concept of the five suns is alluded to in Onyx Equinox, where Quetzalcoatl claims that thegods made humanity four times before. Tezcatlipoca seeks to end the current human era, sincehe believes humans are too greedy and waste their blood in battle rather than as sacrifices.

Aztec mythologyAztec religionAztec philosophyMesoamerican creation accountsThirteen Heavens

1. Smith, Michael E. The Aztecs 2nd Ed. Blackwell Publishing, 20052. Aguilar-Moreno, Manuel. The Aztec World. California State University, Los Angeles, 2006

Brief summation

In popular culture

See also

References

Further reading

Aguilar- Moreno, Manuel (2006). Handbook to life in the Aztec World. Los Angeles: CaliforniaState University.Smith, Michael E. (2003). The Aztecs 2nd Ed. UK: Blackwell Publishing.

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Four horsemen of theapocalypse, as depicted in theApocalypse work by AlbrechtDürer

EschatologyEschatology /ˌɛskəˈtɒlədʒi/ ( listen) is a part of theology concernedwith the final events of history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity. Thisconcept is commonly referred to as "the end of the world" or "endtimes".[1]

The word arises from the Greek ἔσχατος éschatos meaning "last" and -logy meaning "the study of", and first appeared in English around1844.[2] The Oxford English Dictionary defines eschatology as "the partof theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of thesoul and of humankind".[3]

In the context of mysticism, the term refers metaphorically to the end ofordinary reality and to reunion with the Divine. Many religions treateschatology as a future event prophesied in sacred texts or in folklore.

Eschatologies vary as to their degree of optimism or pessimism about thefuture. In some eschatologies, conditions are better for some and worsefor others, e.g. "heaven and hell". They also vary as to time frames.Groups claiming imminent eschatology are also referred to as doomsdaycults.

ReligionBaháʼí FaithBuddhismChristianity

Messianic JudaismHinduismIslamJudaismOld Norse religionTaoismZoroastrianism

Analogies in science and philosophyFutures studies and transhumanismAstronomy

See alsoReferencesFurther readingExternal links

Contents

In the Baháʼí Faith, creation has neither a beginning nor an end;[4] Baháʼís regard the eschatologies of otherreligions as symbolic. In Baháʼí belief, human time is marked by a series of progressive revelations in whichsuccessive messengers or prophets come from God.[5] The coming of each of these messengers is seen as theday of judgment to the adherents of the previous religion, who may choose to accept the new messenger andenter the "heaven" of belief, or denounce the new messenger and enter the "hell" of denial. In this view, theterms "heaven" and "hell" become symbolic terms for a person's spiritual progress and their nearness to ordistance from God.[5] In Baháʼí belief, the coming of Bahá'u'lláh (1817-1892), the founder of the Baháʼí Faith,signals the fulfilment of previous eschatological expectations of Islam, Christianity and other major religions.[6]

Christian eschatology is the study concerned with the ultimate destiny of the individual soul and of the entirecreated order, based primarily upon biblical texts within the Old and New Testaments.

Christian eschatological research looks to study and discuss matters such as the nature of the Divine and thedivine nature of Jesus Christ, death and the afterlife, Heaven and Hell, the Second Coming of Jesus, theresurrection of the dead, the Rapture, the Tribulation, Millennialism, the end of the world, the Last Judgment,and the New Heaven and New Earth in the world to come.

Eschatological passages occur in many places in the Bible, in both the Old and the New Testaments. In theOld Testament, apocalyptic eschatology can be found notably in Isaiah 24–27, Isaiah 56–66, Joel, Zechariah9–14 as well as in the closing chapters of Daniel, and in Ezekiel.[7] In the New Testament, applicable passagesinclude Matthew 24, Mark 13, the parable of "The Sheep and the Goats" and the Book of Revelation —Revelation often occupies a central place in Christian eschatology.

The Second Coming of Christ is the central event in Christian eschatology within the broader context of thefullness of the Kingdom of God. Most Christians believe that death and suffering will continue to exist untilChrist's return. There are, however, various views concerning the order and significance of othereschatological events.

The Book of Revelation stands at the core of much of Christian eschatology. The study of Revelation isusually divided into four interpretative methodologies or hermeneutics:

The Futurist approach treats the Book of Revelation mostly as unfulfilled prophecy taking placein some yet undetermined future.The Preterist approach interprets Revelation chiefly as having had prophetic fulfillment in thepast, principally in the events of the first century CE.The Historicist approach places Revelation within the context of history, identifying figures andpassages in Revelation with major historical people and events. This view was commonly heldby the early Christian church, then among the predecessors to Protestantism, such as JohnWycliffe,[8] and later by the majority of Protestant Reformers, such as Martin Luther,[9][10] JohnCalvin,[11] and John Wesley.[12] Further supporters of this view included Isaac Newton[13]

(1642-1727), among others.[14][15]

Religion

Baháʼí Faith

Buddhism

Christianity

The Idealist approach sees the events of Revelation as neither past nor future actualities, butas purely symbolic accounts, dealing with the ongoing struggle and ultimate triumph of goodover evil.

The Vaishnavite tradition links contemporary Hindu eschatology to the figure of Kalki, the tenth and lastavatar of Vishnu. Before the age draws to a close Kalki will reincarnate as Shiva and simultaneously dissolveand regenerate the universe.

Most Hindus believe that the current period is the Kali Yuga, the last of four Yuga that make up the currentage. Each period has seen successive degeneration in the moral order, to the point that in the Kali Yuga quarreland hypocrisy are the norm. In Hinduism, time is cyclic, consisting of cycles or "kalpas". Each kalpa lasts for4.32 billion years and is followed by a pralaya of equal length, which together makes one full day and night ofBrahma's 100 360-year lifespan, who lives for 311 trillion, 40 billion years. The cycle of birth, growth, decay,and renewal at the individual level finds its echo in the cosmic order, yet is affected by vagaries of divineintervention in Vaishnavite belief.

Some Shaivites hold the view that Shiva is incessantly destroying and creating the world.[16]

The sayings of the prophet Muhammad regarding the Signs of the Day of Judgement document Islamiceschatology.

Muhammad's sayings on the subject have been traditionally divided into Major and Minor Signs. He spokeabout several Minor Signs of the approach of the Day of Judgment, including:

Abu Hurairah reported that Muhammad said: "If you survive for a time you would certainly seepeople who would have whips in their hands like the tail of an ox. They would get up in themorning under the wrath of God and they would go into the evening with the anger of God."[18]

Abu Hurairah narrated that Muhammad said, "When honesty is lost, then wait for the Day ofJudgment." It was asked, "How will honesty be lost, O Messenger of God?" He said, "Whenauthority is given to those who do not deserve it, then wait for the Day of Judgment."'Umar ibn al-Khattāb, in a long narration relating to the questions of the angel Gabriel, reported:"Inform me when the Day of Judgment will be." He [Muhammad] remarked: "The one who isbeing asked knows no more than the inquirer." He [the inquirer] said: "Tell me about itsindications." He [Muhammad] said: "That the slave-girl gives birth to her mistress and master,and that you would find barefooted, destitute shepherds of goats vying with one another in theconstruction of magnificent buildings.""Before the Day of Judgment there will be great liars, so beware of them."[19]

"When the most wicked member of a tribe becomes its ruler, and the most worthless member ofa community becomes its leader, and a man is respected through fear of the evil he may do,and leadership is given to people who are unworthy of it, expect the Day of Judgment."[20]

Regarding the Major Signs, a Companion of the Prophet narrated: "Once we were sitting together and talkingamongst ourselves when the Prophet appeared. He asked us what it was we were discussing. We said it wasthe Day of Judgment. He said: 'It will not be called until ten signs have appeared: Smoke(Ad Dukhan), Dajjal

Messianic Judaism

Hinduism

Islam

Diagram of "Plain of Assembly"(Ard al-Hashr) on the Day of Judgment, fromautograph manuscript of Futuhat al-Makkiyya by Sufi mystic and philosopherIbn Arabi, ca. 1238. Shown are the 'Arsh(Throne of God), pulpits for the righteous(al-Aminun), seven rows of angels, Gabriel(al-Ruh), A'raf (the Barrier), the Pond ofAbundance, al-Maqam al-Mahmud (thePraiseworthy Station; where the prophetMuhammad will stand to intercede for thefaithful), Mizan (the Scale), As-Sirāt (theBridge), Jahannam (Hell) and Marj al-Jannat(Meadow of Paradise).[17]

(the Antichrist), the creature (that will wound the people), therising of the sun in the West, the Second Coming of Jesus, theemergence of Gog and Magog, and three sinkings (or cavingsin of the earth): one in the East, another in the West and a thirdin the Arabian Peninsula.'" (note: the previous events were notlisted in the chronological order of appearance)

Nasir Khusraw, an 11th century Muslim thinker, shares adifferent interpretation of the Quranic verses in his Face of theReligion (Wajh-i Dīn). He expounds on the verse in whichAllah declares that the earth was created in six days and thenrested on his throne (Quran 7:54). He explains that these 6 daysare neither 24-hour periods nor 1000 or 50,000-year eras, butcycles of creation demarcated by the arrival of severalconveyors of divine revelation (nāṭiqs), namely Adam,Nuh/Noah, Ibrahim/Abraham, ‘Isa/Jesus and Muhammad. Eachof these enunciators would then be followed by a line of Imamsin their descendants, culminating in the next enunciator. Finally,Hakim Nasir predicts that the line of Imams from the family ofMuhammad, beginning with ‘Ali b. Abi Talib, will culminate inthe arrival of the Lord of the Resurrection (Qāʾim al-Qiyāma).This individual, who symbolized by the Throne (al-ʿArsh) ofGod, is understood to be the pinnacle and purpose of creationthrough whom the world will come out of darkness andignorance and “into the light of her Lord” (Quran 39:69). Hisera, unlike that of the enunciators before him, is not one whereGod prescribes the people to work but instead one where Godrewards the people.[21]

Jewish eschatology discusses events that will happen in the endof days, according to the Hebrew Bible and Jewish thought.This includes the ingathering of the exiled diaspora, the comingof the Jewish Messiah, afterlife, and the revival of the deadTzadikim.

Judaism usually refers to the end times as the "end of days" (aḥarit ha-yamim, אחרית הימים), a phrase thatappears several times in the Tanakh. The idea of a messianic age has a prominent place in Jewish thought andis incorporated as part of the end of days.

Judaism addresses the end times in the Book of Daniel and in numerous other prophetic passages in theHebrew scriptures, and also in the Talmud, particularly Tractate Avodah Zarah.

Judaism

Old Norse religion

Taoism

Zoroastrianism

A diagram showing the life cycle of the Sun

Frashokereti is the Zoroastrian doctrine of a final renovation of the universe when evil will be destroyed, andeverything else will then be in perfect unity with God (Ahura Mazda). The doctrinal premises are:

1. Good will eventually prevail over evil.2. Creation, initially perfectly good, was subsequently corrupted by evil.3. The world will ultimately be restored to the perfection it had at the time of creation.4. The "salvation for the individual depended on the sum of [that person's] thoughts, words and

deeds, and there could be no intervention, whether compassionate or capricious, by any divinebeing to alter this". Thus each human bears the responsibility for the fate of his own soul, andsimultaneously shares in the responsibility for the fate of the world.[22]

Researchers in futures studies and transhumanists investigate how the accelerating rate of scientific progressmay lead to a "technological singularity" in the future that would profoundly and unpredictably change thecourse of human history, and result in Homo sapiens no longer being the dominant life form on Earth.[23][24]

Occasionally the term "physicaleschatology" is applied to the long-termpredictions of astrophysics.[25][26] TheSun will turn into a red giant inapproximately 6 billion years. Life onEarth will become impossible due to a risein temperature long before the planet isactually swallowed up by the Sun.[27]

Even later, the Sun will become a white dwarf.

Abomination of DesolationAncient Aztec eschatologyApocalypseApocalypticismArmageddonCosmogonyThe Day of the LordList of dates predicted for apocalyptic eventsDoomsday cultEschatology (religious movement)GötterdämmerungJudgment dayMillennialismMillenarianism

Analogies in science and philosophy

Futures studies and transhumanism

Astronomy

See also

MessianismRagnarökRealized eschatologyUssher chronologyWhore of BabylonList of eschatological topics

1. "BBC - Religions - Christianity: End Times" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/beliefs/endtimes_1.shtml). BBC Online. 2011-07-19. Retrieved 2017-11-10.

2. Dictionary – Definition of Eschatology (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eschatology). Webster's Online Dictionary.

3. "Eschatology, n.", def. a, Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 2016-05-18.4. Smith, Peter (2008). An Introduction to the Baha'i Faith (https://books.google.com/books?id=z7

zdDFTzNr0C). Cambridge University Press. p. 112 (https://books.google.com/?id=z7zdDFTzNr0C&pg=PA112&dq=%22the+physical+universe+asa+totality+has+always+existed+in+some+form,+having+neither+beginning+nor+end.%22). ISBN 978-0-521-86251-6.

5. Smith, Peter (2000). "Eschatology" (https://archive.org/details/conciseencyclope0000smit/page/133). A concise encyclopedia of the Baháʼí Faith. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. pp. 133–134(https://archive.org/details/conciseencyclope0000smit/page/133). ISBN 1-85168-184-1.

6. Buck, Christopher (2004). "The Eschatology of Globalization: The Multiple Messiahship ofBahá'u'lláh Revisited (pp. 143–178)" (http://bahai-library.com/buck_eschatology_globalization).In Sharon, Moshe (ed.). Studies in Modern Religions, Religious Movements and the Bābī-Bahā'ī Faiths. Boston: Brill. ISBN 9004139044.

7. Bauckham, R. J. (1996). "Apocalyptic". In D. R. W. Wood, I. H. Marshall, A. R. Millard, J. I.Packer, & D. J. Wiseman (Eds.), New Bible Dictionary (3rd ed., p. 53). Leicester, England;Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

8. Tyndale, William, Parable of the Wicked Mammon, c. 1526, (facsimile copy of later printing, noISBN, Benediction Classics, 2008) at pages 4-5

9. Luther, Martin, "Sermon for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Trinity; Matthew 24:15-28", ChurchPostil, 1525

10. J. H. Merle D'aubigne's History of the Reformation of the Sixteen Century, book vi, chapter xii,p. 215.

11. Calvin, John, "Lecture Fifty-Second", Commentary on Daniel, Volume12. "Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible: Matthew: Matthew Chapter 24" (http://www.sacred-text

s.com/bib/cmt/wesley/mat024.htm). www.sacred-texts.com.13. All Roads Lead to Rome, by Michael de Semlyen. Dorchestor House Publications, p. 205.

199114. Gregg, Steven (1997). Revelation: Four Views. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson

Publishing. p. 34. ISBN 978-0840721280.15. Elliott, Edward Bishop (1862). Horae Apocalypticae. Vol. IV (5th ed.). London: Seely, Jackson

and Halliday. pp. 562–563.16. BBC. "Shiva" (https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/deities/shiva.shtml). bbc.co.ke.

BBC. Retrieved 23 March 2021.17. Begley, Wayne E. The Garden of the Taj Mahal: A Case Study of Mughal Architectural Planning

and Symbolism, in: Wescoat, James L.; Wolschke-Bulmahn, Joachim (1996). Mughal Gardens:Sources, Places, Representations, and Prospects (https://books.google.com/books?id=96ec98LieGsC) Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D.C., ISBN 0884022358. pp. 229-231.

References

Craig C. Hill, In God's Time: The Bible and the Future, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2002. ISBN 0-8028-6090-7Dave Hunt, A Cup of Trembling, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, (Oregon) 1995 ISBN 1-56507-334-7.Jonathan Menn, Biblical Eschatology, Eugene, Oregon, Wipf & Stock 2013. ISBN 978-1-62032-579-7.Joseph Ratzinger., Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, Washington D.C.: Catholic Universityof America Press 1985. ISBN 978-0-8132-1516-7.Robert Sungenis, Scott Temple, David Allen Lewis, Shock Wave 2000! subtitled The HaroldCamping 1994 Debacle, New Leaf Press, Inc. 2004 ISBN 0-89221-269-1Stephen Travis, Christ Will Come Again: Hope for the Second Coming of Jesus, Toronto:Clements Publishing 2004. ISBN 1-894667-33-6Jerry L. Walls (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology, New York: Oxford University Press2008. ISBN 978-0-19-973588-4

18. AL-HAJAJ, MUSLIM BEN (1 Jan 2011). SAHIH MOSLIM (THE AUTHENTIC HADITHS OFMUSLIM) 1-4 VOL 4: 4صحيح مسلم 1/4 [عربي/إنكليزي] ج (https://books.google.com/books?id=C8NtDwAAQBAJ&q=%22If+you+survive+for+a+time+you+would+certainly+see+people+who+would+have+whips+in+their+hands+like+the+tail+of+an+ox.+They+would+get+up+in+the+morning+under+the+wrath+of+God+and+they+would+go+into+the+evening+with+the+anger+of+God.%22&pg=PA666). Dar Al Kotob Al Ilmiyah. p. 332. Retrieved 23 March 2021.

19. Redmond, Jeffery (2012). Introduction to Eschatology (http://psulibrary.palawan.edu.ph/wtbooks/resources/pdf/9781283499194.pdf) (PDF). University Publications. ISBN 978-1-283-49919-4.Retrieved 1 April 2021.

20. Shabazz, Hassan (30 Mar 2020). Al Islaam, a Mercy to all the Systems of Knowledge in theBoundless Universe (https://books.google.com/books?id=gR7dDwAAQBAJ&q=%22When+the+most+wicked+member+of+a+tribe+becomes+its+ruler%2C+and+the+most+worthless+member+of+a+community+becomes+its+leader%2C+and+a+man+is+respected+through+fear+of+the+evil+he+may+do%2C+and+leadership+is+given+to+people+who+are+unworthy+of+it%2C+expect+the+Day+of+Judgment.%22&pg=PA74). Lulu.com, Amazon.com: Lulu.com, 2020.p. 74. ISBN 9781716139130. Retrieved 23 March 2021.

21. Virani, Shafique. "The Days of Creation in the Thought of Nasir Khusraw" (https://www.academia.edu/37219457). Nasir Khusraw: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow.

22. Boyce, Mary (1979), Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (https://books.google.com/books?id=a6gbxVfjtUEC), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 27–29, ISBN 978-0-415-23902-8.

23. Sandberg, Anders. An overview of models of technological singularity (http://agi-conf.org/2010/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/agi10singmodels2.pdf)

24. "h+ Magazine | Covering technological, scientific, and cultural trends that are changing humanbeings in fundamental ways" (https://web.archive.org/web/20101223170126/http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/nano/singularity-nanotech-or-ai). Hplusmagazine.com. Archived from theoriginal (http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/nano/singularity-nanotech-or-ai) on 2010-12-23. Retrieved 2011-09-09.

25. Ćirković, Milan M. "Resource letter: PEs-1: physical eschatology." American Journal of Physics71.2 (2003): 122–133.

26. Baum, Seth D. "Is humanity doomed? Insights from astrobiology." Sustainability 2.2 (2010):591–603.

27. Zeilik, M.A.; Gregory, S.A. (1998). Introductory Astronomy & Astrophysics (4th ed.). SaundersCollege Publishing. p. 322. ISBN 0-03-006228-4.

Further reading

Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1909). "Eschatology". Catholic Encyclopedia. 5. New York:Robert Appleton Company.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore;et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Eschatology" (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5849-eschatology). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.

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