Week 3 Reading - Clendinnen

"Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty": Corts and the Conquest of Mexico Author(s): Inga Clendinnen Source: Representations, No.
33, Special Issue: The New World (Winter, 1991), pp. 65-100 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928758 . Accessed: 03/09/2013 09:20
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INGA
CLENDINNEN
"Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty": Cortes and the Conquest of Mexico
to us because it poses a painful THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO matters question: How was it that a motleybunch of Spanish adventurers,never numbering much more than four hundred or so, was able to defeat an Amerindian military power on its home ground in the space of twoyears?What was it about posSpaniards, or about Indians, thatmade so awesomelyimplausiblea victory sible?The question has notlostitspotencythroughtime,and as theconsequences continueto unfold has gained in poignancy. of the victory The Answersto thatquestion came easilyto the men of the sixteenth century. it their because and to other to Europeans provided conquest mattered Spaniards first great paradigm for European encounterswithan organized native state;' a paradigm that quicklytook on the potencyand the accommodatingflexibility of myth. In the early 1540s, a mere twentyyears after the fall of MexicoTenochtitlanbefore the forcesled by Hernando Cortes,Juan Gines Sepulveda, chaplain and chroniclerto the Spanish emperorCharles V,wrotea workthathas and uncompromising been describedas "themostvirulent argumentfortheinfeof the American Indian ever written." Sepulveda had his spokesmanrecite riority a noble, valiantCortes witha timorous,cow"the history of Mexico, contrasting ardly Moctezoma, whose people by their iniquitous desertion of their natural to the good of the commonwealth."2 leader demonstratedtheirindifference By 1585 the FranciscanFrayBernardino de Sahagun had revisedan earlieraccount of the Conquest, written verymuch fromthe nativepoint of viewand out of the recollections of nativeMexicans,to produce a versionin whichthe role of Cortes was elevated, Spanish actions justified, and the whole conquest presented as providential. The Mexican Conquest as model for European-nativerelationswas reanidramaticHistory world throughthe marvelously mated for the English-speaking in H. the a bestsellerin Mexico written W. Prescott the 1840s, by early of of Conquest those glorious days when Historystilltaughtlessons.4The lesson thatgreat historytaught was that Europeans will triumphover natives,however formidable itselfvisiblyin the apparent odds, because of cultural superiority, manifesting in and moral but much more mental powerfully qualities. residing equipment
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as flowing out of the contrastand the Prescottpresented Spanish victory directly Mexican the two leaders: the ruler between Moctezoma, despotic, relationship taint"of an irrational effete,and rendered fatallyindecisiveby the "withering resourcefuladversaryCortes. Prescottfound in the religion,and his infinitely commander the model of European man: ruthless,pragof the Spanish person and unfortunate excesses of Spanish Catholicism matic, single-minded, (the in his rational and aside) superbly manipulativeintelligence, strategic flexibility, capacityto decide a course of action and to persistin it.5 The general contours of the Prescottianfable are stillclearlydiscerniblein the mostintellectually account of the the mostrecentand certainly sophisticated The America: The Todorov's Tzvetan Question of Conquest of theOther. Conquest, Confrontedby the European challenge,Todorov's Mexicans are "other"in ways of time,omen-haunted, thatdoom them.Dominated bya cyclicalunderstanding in of face of the are unprecedented Spanish chalincapable improvization they in art of ritual "masters the discourse,"theycannot produce lenge. Although and effective messages"; Moctezoma, for example, pathetically "appropriate Todorov is undecided as to leave the country." sends gold "to convincehis visitors to Moctezoma's own view of the Spaniards, acknowledgingthe mistinessof the sources; he nonethelesspresentsthe "paralyzingbeliefthat the Spaniards were gods" as a fatalerror."The Indians' mistakedid notlastlong ... just long enough lost and America subject to Europe," whichwould for the battleto be definitely seem to be quite long enough.6 "not only conBy contrastTodorov's Cortes moves freelyand effectively, but also of and the art improvisation, being aware adaptation stantly practicing of it and claimingit as the veryprincipleof his conduct."A "specialistin human he ensures his controlover the Mexican empire (in a conquest communication," of signs."Note thatthisis Todorov characterizesas "easy") through"his mastery but a European culturalcapacitygrounded individualtalent, not an idiosyncratic where writingis considered "not as a tool, but as an index of the in "literacy," evolution of mental structures":it is that evolution which liberates the intelliand semioticsophistication throughwhichCortes and flexibility, gence, strategic his men triumph. In what followsI want to reviewthe grounds forthese kindsof claims about the nature of the contrastbetween European and Indian modes of thinking account of what and to suggesta ratherdifferent duringthe Conquest encounter, was going on between the two peoples. First,an overviewof the major events. alike agree thatthe Conquest fallsintotwophases. The and participants Analysts with the first Spanish landfallin April of 1519, and Cortes'sassumptionof began in defiance of the governorof Cuba, patron of Cortes command independent and of the expedition; the Spaniards' march inland, in the company of coastal Indians recently bybloody battlesand conquered by the Mexicans, marked first then by alliance with the independent provinceof Tlaxcala; their uncontested
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a magnificent entryinto the Mexican imperial cityof Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco, linked to the land by three great lake-bornecityof 200,000 or more inhabitants causeways; the Spaniards' seizing of the Mexican ruler Moctezoma, and their uneasy rule throughhim forsix months;the arrivalon the coast of anotherand much larger Spanish force fromCuba under the command of PanfiloNarvaez into Cortes'sown charged withthe arrestof Cortes,itsdefeat and incorporation force; a native "uprising"in Tenochtitlan,triggeredin Cortes's absence by the the expuldancing in a templefestival; Spaniards' massacre of unarmed warriors sion of the Spanish forces,withgreat losses, at the end of June 1520 on the soand Moctezoma'sdeath, probablyat Spanish hands, immecalled "Noche Triste," phase. The second phase is much diatelybefore thatexpulsion. End of the first brieferin the telling,although about the same span in the living:a littleover a Tlaxcala to recoverhealthand morale. year.The Spaniards retreatedto friendly the lesserlakeside cities, the renewed allies, attack,reducing recruiting They then and placing Tenochtitlanunder siege in May of 1521. not all of them voluntary, of Indian "allies" The cityfellto the combined forcesof Cortesand an assortment in mid August 1521. End of the second phase. phase, drawn by the Analystsof the conquest have concentratedon the first in of exoticism Moctezoma'sresponses-allowing the Spaniards promisingwhiff into his city, his docilityin captivity-and by the sense thatfinaloutcomes were somehow immanent in that response, despite Moctezoma's removal from the and stage in the midstof a Spanish rout a good year before the fall of the city, in the darkest before that miserable situation the fall, days Spaniards' despite trapped out on the causeways,bereftof shelterand support,withthe unreduced conMexicans before and their"allies" potentialwolvesbehind. This dispiriting and Indian vulnerability sensus as to Spanish invincibility springsfromthe too Spanish but also Indian, as directly eager acceptance of keydocuments,primarily ratherthan as the mythic constructs of actuality, and adequately descriptive they of the defeat and the main Indian account Both the letters of Cortes are. largely as to the devoted of theircityowe as much to the orderingimpulseof imagination while it might of as occurred. Conscious events they manipulation, inscription issue here, but ratherthe subtle,powwell be present,is not the mostinteresting a dramatically and coherentstory erful,insidioushuman desire to craft satisfying or out and ambiguous experience, (thehistorian's out of fragmentary temptation) and ambiguous "evidence" we happen to have to workwith. of the fragmentary I place Paul Veyne'sbracinglysimple test:"Historical the consensus Against to answerthequestionasked of itbythehistorian: criticism has onlyone function: 'I believe that this document teaches me this: may I trustit to do that?'"7The and so take us document maytellus mostreadilyabout story-making proclivities, into the cultural world of the storymaker. It may also tell us about actions, so holding the promise of establishingthe patternsof conduct and from them we are the conventionalassumptionsof the people whose interactions inferring "Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty" 67
seeking to understand. It may tell us about sequences of actions thatshed light less than acknowledgedby the writer, or (when he on impulses and motivations is recordingthe actionsof others)perhaps not even knownto him.The following pages willyieldexamples of all of these.The challenge is to be at once responsive of the limitations of the materialwe happen and yetrespectful to the possibilities to have. The story-making predilectionis powerfully present in the major Spanish sources. The messyseries of eventsthatbegan withthe landfall on the eastern success storylargelyout of the narcoast has been shaped into an unforgettable and Bernal who were rativesof Cortes Diaz, part of the action; the superb irrea selectionand sequence sistibleforwardmovementthat so captivatedPrescott, in narrative tradition and writing, for the men European practiced imposed by concealed knowledgeof outcomes,when outcomeswere known. all theirartfully The footsoldier Diaz, completinghis "True History"of the Conquest in old age, can make our palms sweat withhis account of yetanother Indian attack,but at he knew he was bequeathing to his grandchildren a "true and eighty-four remarkable story"about the triumphof the brave.8The commander Cortes, his reportsto the Spanish kingin the thickof the events,had repudiated writing of his patron and superior the governorof Cuba, and so was forthe authority He was therefore desperate to estabmallyin rebellionagainsttheroyalauthority. marked by politicelisions, lish his credentials. His lettersare splendid fictions, and a transparent desire to impressCharles of Spain with omissions,inventions, One of the multipledelightsin theirreading is to watch his own indispensability. an exemplarysoldier and simplethe creationof somethingof a Horatio figure, his obedient to hearted loyalistunreflectively king and the letterof the law: all denied bythe beautifulcontroland calculationof the literary attributes implicitly itself.9 construction craftis nicelyindicatedbyhis handling of a The elegance of Cortes'sliterary in late October written In of dauntingproblem presentation. his "Second Letter," he had somehow to 1520 on the eve of the second thrustagainst Tenochtitlan, at the splendor of the impeastonishment informthe kingof the Spaniards' first the inflow of gold, the rial city, the earlycoups, the period of perilous authority, riches-and the spectaculardebacle of the expulaccumulation of magnificent in the water,the panic, the loss of gold, horses,artilsion, withthe flounderings lery,reputation,and altogethertoo many Spanish lives. Cortes's solution was a narrativeunfoldingof events,so the cityis to a strict most devoted commitment wondered at; Moctezoma speaks, frowns;the marketplace throbs and hums; laden canoes glide throughthe canals; and so on to the dark denouement. And of his persona as leader: endlesslyflexthroughouthe continuestheconstruction ible, yetunthinkingly yetfastidiousin legal niceties; loyal; endlesslyresourceful, and in yetimbued witha finecaution performance, daring strategy magnificently in calculatingcosts.
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of Cortes'sweb of J. H. Elliottand AnthonyPagden have tracedthe filaments back to particularstrandsof Spanish politicalculture,and to his particular fictions inheritors and acute predicamentwithinit,explainingthe theme of "legitimate in Cortes's its functional strategy, necessity legalistic bydemonstrating returning" which in turn pivoted on Moctezoma's voluntarycession of his empire and his to Charles of Spain-a splendidlyimplausiblenotion,save thatso many authority it is to demonstratehis own indispensability, have believed it. Given the necessity and "the art of should claim that the Cortes adaptation way along unsurprising as "the veryprincipleof his conduct,"and thatwe, like his royal improvisation" audience, should be impressedby his command of men and events:dominating and duping Moctezoma; neutralizing law, byappeals to duty, Spanish disaffection and faith;managing Indians withkind words, sternjustice, and displaysof the of the Spanish god. of Spanish arms and the priority superiority reinforcedby Sahagun's The "returninggod-ruler"theorywas powerfully of native life before contactcompiled account an Florentine Codex, encyclopedic Book 12 deals with the from the recollectionsof survivingnative informants. first a Moctezoma It introduces terror, byomens and then paralyzed by Conquest. Precious-Feather the that Cortes was conviction the Quetzalcoatl, Serpent, god by tremureturned.10 We are given vivid descriptionsof Moctezoma's vacillations, and of then lous decisions,collapses of will,as he awaitsthe Spaniards' coming, his supine acquiescence in their depredations,while his lords abandon him in disgust. Sahaguin'swas a very late-dawningstory,making its firstappearance and more years afterthe Conquest, and bythe Veynetestit conspicuously thirty where age and rank gave fails. In the closed politicsof traditionalTenochtitlan, had access to Moctezoma's would have few men status, person, much less his young and inconsequentialmen in 1520, thoughts,and Sahagun's informants, would not have been among those few.In the first phase theycan reporton certhe massacre of the warrior tain events (the entryof the Spaniards into the city, and to which that were dancers) theywere perhaps witness, public knowledge, will it is worth their remembering, be framedin accordance although reporting, and precisionon withMexican notionsof significance. They speak withauthority the fighting, especiallyof the second phase, in whichsome at least seem to have of Moctezoma, been involved.But the dramaticdescriptionof the disintegration "official" bears the hallmarks of a postas it is with Spanish accounts, compatible of a who had indeed admitted the leader Conquest scapegoating Spaniards to his cityin life,and so was made to bear theweightof theunforeseeableconsequences in death. What the informants offerfor most of the firstphase is unabashed of what a history, telling mythic "ought"to have happened (along witha littleof mix of collapsed time,elided episodes, and dramatized what did) in a satisfying encountersas theycame to be understood in the bitter yearsafterthe Conquest. With the fine economy of mythMoctezoma is representedas being made the to be theirhelpless toy, Spaniards' prisonerat theirinitialmeeting,thenceforth "Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty" 69
leading them to his treasures,"each holding him, each grasping him," as they looted and pillaged at will.1 In the Dominican Diego Duran's account,completed sixtyyears afterthe Conquest, and built in part frompainted native chronicles thisprocessof distillation unknownto us, in partfromconquistadorrecollections, withMoctezoma picturedin a native is carried even further, to essential "truth" account as being carried byhis lords fromhis first meetingwithCortes already a prisoner,his feetshackled.'2It is likelythatDuran made a literalinterpretation nativeunderstandingMoctezoma of a symbolicrepresentation:in retrospective was indeed captiveto the Spaniards, a shackled icon, fromthe first moments. of the we the first "read" Cortes's phase Conquest confidently Throughout and so assuming his effectiveness. The intentions,assuming his perspective Spanish commander brisklypromises his king "to take [Moctezoma] alive in chains or make him subjectto Your Majesty'sRoyal Crown."He continues:"With thatpurpose I set out fromthe townof Cempoalla, whichI renamed Sevilla,on horsemen and threehundred foot soldiers, the sixteenthof August withfifteen me to make them."'3 There as well equipped forwar as the conditionspermitted we have it: warlikeintentions clear,nativecitiesrenamed as possessionsin a new we an armyon the move. Inured to the duplicitouslanguage of diplomacy, polity, of and the innocence of his intentions take Cortes'spersistent swearing friendship to Moctezoma's emissariesas transparent deceptions,and blame Moctezoma for not so recognizingthem or, recognizingthem, for failingto act.'4 But Cortes declared he came as an ambassador, and as an ambassador he appears to have been received. Even had Moctezoma somehow divined the Spaniards' hostile to attackwithoutformalwarningwas not an option fora rulerof his magintent, but here our confidence We read Moctezoma's conduct confidently, nificence.'5 (like Cortes's) derives from ignorance. Cortes interpreted Moctezoma's first at bribery. But Moctezoma,like as gesturesof submissionor naive attempts "gifts" other Amerindian leaders, communicatedat least as much by the splendor and as by the nuances statusof his emissaries,theirgesturesand above all theirgifts, of nonverbal those of theirmostconventionalizedspeech. None messages could Dofia Marina, a Cortes read, nor is it clear that his chief Nahuatl interpreter, woman and a slave, would or could informhim of the protocolsin which they of men. Moctezoma's gifts were framed: these were the high and public affairs made the of dominance,superb gesturesof wealthand liberality were statements of theirgiving:statements to which the more glorious by the arroganthumility and the means to the next flourishof both the wit lacked (To reply. Spaniards and "cartthan a hundred the famous more carried by porters including gifts, Cortes'sripostewas a cup of Florentineglass and three wheels"of gold and silver, holland shirts.)16The verbal exchanges for all of the first phase were not much less scrambled. And despite those reassuringinvertedcommas of directreporspeeches passed througha daisychain of interpreters, tage, all of those so-fluent a struggleforsome witheach step an abduction intoa different meaning system,
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approximationof unfamiliarconcepts. We cannot know at what point the shift fromthe Indian notionof "he who paystribute," usuallyunder duress so carrying no sense of obligation,to the Spanish one of "vassal,"with its connotationsof to be momentous.The identifiable conwas made, but we know the shift loyalty, a of the both whichmustbe only fraction ran whole,unsurprisingly fusions, ways. on conveying innocentcuriosity, and flattery, For example, Cortes,intent honesty, repeatedlyinformedthe Mexican ambassadorsthathe wishedto come to Tenochaddressed to a man titlan"to look upon Moctezoma's face." That determination whose mana was such thatnone could look upon his face save selectedblood kin and verypossiblysinister. musthave seemed marvelously mysterious, In thistangleof missedcues So the examples of miscommunication multiply. seems to have evaded both and mistakenmessages,"controlof communications" of sides equally. There is also another casualty.Our mostearnest interrogations the as to our curiosity thesurviving documentscannotmake themsatisfy meaning of the imperialists: as of Moctezoma's conduct. Historiansare the camp followers of the kind in of our is this history, part problem European-and-native always by the breach throughwhich we have disruptionof "normal" practiceeffected entered. For Cortes,the acute deferenceshown Moctezoma's person established him as the supreme authorityof cityand empire, and he shaped his strategy accordingly.In fact we know neither the nature and extent of Moctezoma's authoritywithinand beyond Tenochtitlan,nor even (given the exuberant discrepancies between the Cortes and Diaz accounts) the actual degree of coercion From the fugitive and physical control imposed on him during his captivity. glimpses we have of the attitudesof some of the other valleyrulers,and of his of thecomplicatedpolitics of themetropolis own advisers,we can infersomething but we see too little to be able to decode the range and the surroundingcity-states, under the much less itsparticularfluctuations of Moctezoma's normal authority, uncertain we this cannot stressof foreignintrusion. hope to catch Against ground We may guess, as we indicatorsof possible individualidiosyncrasy. the flickering watch the pragmaticresponses of other Indian groups to the Spanish presence, or "Great Speaker" of the dominantpower in Mexico Moctezoma thatas tlatoani and counteringthe newcomers.From forclassifying bore a special responsibility we thinkwe glimpsethe disaffection of lesser and allied the timeof his captivity We see him deposed lords, and inferthat disaffection sprang fromhis docility. while he stilllived, and denigratedin death: as Cortes probed into Tenochtitlan in hiscampaign to reduce thecity, thedefenderswould ironically pretendto open a wayforhim,"saying, 'Come in,come in and enjoyyourselves!' or,at othertimes, 'Do you thinkthere is now another Moctezoma to do what you wish?""7 But I thinkwe must resign ourselves to a heroic act of renunciation,acknowledging thatmuch of Moctezoma'sconduct mustremainenigmatic.We cannot knowhow or whathe intendedbyhisapparently he categorizedthe newcomers, determined with hiscaptors:whether and certainly to save his empire, unpopular cooperation "Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty" 71
his position,or merelyhis own skin.'8It mightbe possible,withpatience his city, veilsof myth and mistakethatenvelop the and time,to clear some of the drifting or at to chart our least areas of ignorance more encounters of the first phase, the of But conventional story returninggods and unmanned autonarrowly.'9 world exotic crats,of an paralyzedbyitsencounterwithEurope, forall itscoheris in viewof theevidencelikeEliza's progression ence and itsjust-so inevitabilities, across the ice floes: a matterof momentary sinkingbalances linked bydesperate forwardleaps. Of Cortes we know much more. He was unremarkableas a combat leader: personallybrave, an indispensablequalityin one who would lead Spaniards, he and coolness of Sanlacked the panache of his captain Alvarado and the solidity talk to force with or doval. He preferred Indians, a preference no Spaniards doubt designed to preservenumbers,but also indicativeof a personal style.He whom in gold, and the men he bought usually knew whom to pay in flattery, how to eventformaximumeffect, as in He knew stage a theatrical stayedbought. Moctezoma's envoys-a stallion, snorting and the plays concocted to terrify plunging as he scented a mare in estrus;a cannon firedto blasta tree. When he the effect: did use forcehe had a flairfordoing so theatrically, cutting amplifying or more Tlaxcalan emissaries freelyadmitted into the off the hands of fifty Spanish camp, then mutilatedas "spies"; a mass killingat Cholula; the shackling of Moctezoma while"rebellious"chiefswere burned beforehis palace in Tenochtitlan.He was carefulto count everySpanish life,yetcapable of conceivingheroic of thirteen cityrequiringthe prefabrication strategies-to lay siege to a lake-girt to of thousand carriers far side the on the mountains, eight transport brigantines in Texcoco, the diggingof a canal and the deepening the pieces, theirreassembly of the lake for their successfullaunching. And he was capable not only of the and maintenanceof the precariousalliances, grand design but of theconstruction and promised rewardsnecessaryto implementit. In thatextraorintimidations, dinary capacity to sustain a complex vision throughthe constantscanning and as in his passion and talentforcontrolof selfand assessmentof unstablefactors, was Cortes others, incomparable. (That concern for control mightexplain his of battle,he inadequacies in combat: in the radicallyuncontrolledenvironment had a tendencyto lose his head.) in his faith.We knowthe He was also distinguished bya peculiar recklessness of their faith even in the wilderness maintain the trouble to took signs Spaniards with the marked the that bells of Mexico; days obligatory prayersas theydid in the villagesof Spain; thatthe smallsupplies of wine and wafersforthe Mass were cherished; that through the long nightsin timesof battle men stood patiently, whilethe unofficial healer "Juan waitingforthe prieststo hear theirconfessions, the and his cross Catalan" moved softly about, signing muttering prayersover
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the idols and the dismembered wounds. We knowtheirfaithidentified stiffening workof a familiar Devil. We know bodies theyfound in the templesas the pitiless and of individual in the worst circumstances comfort drew group disaster they from the ample space for misfortunein Christiancosmology: while God sits securelyin His heaven, all mannerof thingscan be wrongwithHis world. Those in Texcoco afterthe Spanish expulsion who left miserablemen held forsacrifice theirforlornmessages scratchedon a whitewall ("Here the unhappyJuan Yuste be elevated to martyrdom.20 was held prisoner")would throughtheirmisery Even against thatground Cortes'sfaithwas notablyardent,especiallyin his of the enemyreligion.In Cempoalla, aggressivereactionto public manifestations withthe nativescowed, he destroyedthe existingidols,whitewashedthe existing shrine,washed the existingattendantsand cut theirhair,dressed them in white, and candles before and taught these hastilyrefurbishedprieststo offerflowers elision of signs here.While the an image of the Virgin. There is an intriguing in long black robes like clerically, pagan attendantsmighthave been clad suitably soutanes, with some hooded "like Dominicans," they also had waist-longhair clottedwith human blood, and stankof decayinghuman flesh.Nonetheless he assessed them as "priests,"and thereforefitto be entrustedwith the Virgin's in Diaz's shrine.21 Then havingpreached thedoctrine"as wellas any priesttoday," loyal opinion (filteredthough it was throughthe haltingtongues of two interpreters),he leftdailysupervisionof the prieststo an old crippledsoldierassigned as hermitto the new shrineand Cortes moved on.22 The Cempoallan assault was less than politic,being achieved at the sword's of Vera Cruz would coastal fort pointagainstthe townon whose goodwillthelittle be mostdependent. Cortes was not to be so recklessagain, being restrainedfrom too aggressiveactionbyhis chaplain and his captains,but throughouthe appears moved by a concern for the defense of the "honor" of to have been powerfully the Christian god. It is worth rememberingthat for the entire process of the Conquest Cortes had no notion of the Spanish king's response to any of his actions.Only in Septemberof 1523, more thantwoyearsafterthe fallof Tenochlearn titlan,and four and a half years afterthe Spanish landfall,did he finally to imagine thathe had been appointed captain generalof New Spain. It is difficult and (especially for a man of the effectof that prolonged visceral uncertainty, of men far Cortes'stemperament)of his crucialdependence on the machinations away in Spain, quite beyond his control.Throughout the desperate vicissitudes of the campaign, as in the heroic isolationof his equivocal leadership, God was perhaps his least equivocal ally. That alliance required at best the removal of pagan idols and their replacementby Mary and the Cross, and at the least the of the Spaniards' public worshipof theirChristianimages, the public statement and the public denunciationof human sacrifice, principlesof the Christianfaith, and denunciationspreferably these statements being made in the Indians' most to let well alone in mattersreligious appears to sacred places. Cortes's inability and Unnatural "Fierce Cruelty" 73
have effectedthe finalalienation of the Mexican priests,and theirdemand for the Spaniards' death or expulsion from their uneasy perch in Tenochtitlan.23 of Mexican reliCortes's claim of his early,total,and unresistedtransformation of their idols was a lie. the destruction life almost major certainly through gious (He had to suppress any mentionof Alvarado's massacre of the warriordancers factorin the Mexican "revolt"as in the main temple precinctas the precipitating for the Mexican celebrantswould have been dancing too damaging to his story, under the serene gaze of the Virgin.)But the lie, like his accommodationto the borne. cannibalism of his Tlaxcalan allies, was a strategicnecessityimpatiently all obligationswould be discharged,and God's honor vindicated.24 With victory That high sense of duty to his divine Lord and his courage in its pursuit must have impressedand comfortedhis men even as theystroveto restrainhim. None of this undoubted flairmakes Cortes the model of calculation,ratioand controlhe is so oftentaken to be. There can be some doubt as to the nality, of his acts of terror.It is true thatafterthe "mutilatedspies" episode the efficacy Tlaxcalans sued for peace and alliance,but as I willargue, routineacts of war in of Indian confidenceof the European stylewere probablyat least as destructive The to predictSpanish behavioras themostdeliberateshocktactics.25 theirability Spaniards' attackon the people of Cholula, the so-called"Cholula massacre,"is a of a good massacre knewthe therapeuticeffects Cortes certainly muddier affair. men who have lived too long with fear,their sense of invincibility on fighting already badly dented by the Tlaxcalan clashes, and withthe legendarywarriors of Tenochtitlan,grown huge in imagination,stillin prospect. As other leaders have discovered in other times,confidencereturnswhen the invisibleenemy is But here Cortes was revealed as a screaming, bleeding,fleeingmass of humanity. Tlaxcalan interests. of the Throughout the first phase unwitting agent probably honors in mutual manipulationbetweenSpaniard and Indian would seem to be about even. The Cempoallan chief Cortes hoaxed into seizing Moctezoma's tax gatherersremained notablymore afraid of Moctezoma in his far palace than of the hairySpaniards at his elbow. Tricked into defianceof Moctezoma, he immediatelytrickedCortes into leading four hundred Spaniards on a hot and futile in his own pursuit milesin pursuitof phantomMexican warriors marchof fifteen remarked on.26There are been rather less has that of a privatefeud, a deception otherindicationsthathintat extensivenativemanipulations, guile being admired and it was as much as Indians Spanish dependence on among Spaniards, among was total.But theyare indicationsonly,given and translators Indian informants the relativeopacityand ignorance of the Spanish sources as to what the Indians the nativesto have been as were up to. Here I am not concerned to demonstrate to we have no serious but as deceivers the simply suggest Spaniards, great were not. for claimingthey grounds was paradoxicallymade easier byhis statusas rebel. Cortes'spoliticalsituation
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courses of action: That saved him from the agonizing assessmentof different he could not turnback, save once gone fromCuba, in defianceof the governor, to certaindishonor and probable death. So we have the gambler'sadvance, with the shipsdelibno secured linesback to thecoast,no supplies,no reinforcements, the sailors on the beach to release for disabled soldieringserviceand to erately faint-hearted retreat. the beach lay Cuba, and an the Beyond against persuade implacable enemy.The relentlessmarchon Mexico impresses,untilone asksjust the what Cortes intended once he had got there. We have the drive to the city, Moctezoma-and then the wait this Micawber for of by unlikely agonizing seizing the tolerated sat in the to turn as guests, up, Spaniards, uncertainly something city,clutchingthe diminishingresource of Moctezoma's prestige as their only weapon. That "something" proved to be the Spanish punitive expedition, a and gunpowder and a fewreinforcements, couple of providentialships carrying so a perilous way out of the impasse. PossiblyCortes had in mind a giant confidence trick:a slow processof securingand fortifying postsalong the road to Vera in HispanCruz and, then,withenough gold amassed, sendingto the authorities iola (bypassingVelazquez and Cuba) for ships, horses, and arms, which is the It is nonetheless he in factfollowedaftertheretreatfromTenochtitlan.27 strategy of in to read the Cortes's difficult (save performanceas magisterialtelling it) rational.28 It is alwaystemptingto creditpeople of the past withunnaturally clear and we the in the like Clifford Geertz's see bullet holes peasant, purposeful policies: around them.The temptation fence and proceed to draw the bull's-eyes is maximized witha Cortes,a man of singularenergyand decision,intenton projecting a self-imageof formidablecontrolof selfand circumstance. Yet thatcontrolhad in its abrupt limits.His tense self-mastery, sustained face of damaging action by others,could collapse into tearsor sullen rage when any part of his own controlling analysiswas exposed as flawed,as withhis furyagainst Moctezoma for his "refusal"to quell the uprisingin the cityafterAlvarado's attackon the unarmed He had banked all on Moctezomabeing theabsoluterulerhe had taken dancers.29 him to be. He had seized him, threatened him, shackled him to establish his personal dominationover him. But whateveritsnormal grounds and span, Moctezoma's capacity to command, which was his capacityto command deference, had begun to bleed away from his firstencounter with Spaniards and their It bled faster unmannerliness,as theygazed and gabbled at the sacred leader.30 as theyseized his person. Duran's accountof Moctezomapicturedin nativechronicles as emerging shackled from his firstmeeting with Cortes is "objectively" wrong,but fromthe Indian perspectiveright:the Great Speaker in the power of outsiders, casually and brutallyhandled, was the Great Speaker no longer.31 Forced to attemptto calm his inflamedpeople, Moctezoma knewhe could effect and unwittingly nothing;thathis desacralizationhad been accomplished,first by
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Cortes, then, presumably, by a ritual action concealed fromus; and that a new Great Speaker had been chosen whilethe old stilllived: a step unprecedented to my knowledgein Mexican history. he Cortes could not acknowledge Moctezoma's impotence. Retrospectively was insistentthat his policy had been sound and had been brought down only Certainlyhis perthroughthe accident of the Mexican ruler'sfinalunreliability. sistencein itsdefense afteritscollapse in debacle pointsto a high personal investNonethelesstheremusthave been ment: intelligenceis no bar to self-deception. where experience some reliefat the explosiveend to a deeply uncannysituation, had offeredno guide to action in a looking-glassworld of yieldingkings and arrogant underlings; of riddling speech, unreadable glances, opaque silences. The sudden collapse of the waitinggame liberated him back into the world of of war-the heady ficdecisions,calculated violence, the energeticpracticalities tion of a world malleable beforeindividualwill. and in his capacityto His essential genius lay in the depth of his conviction, bring others to share it: to coax, bully,and bribe his men, dream-led, dreamin his own desperate perfed,intomakinghis own gambler'sthrow;to participate low sonal destiny.Bernal Diaz recorded one of Cortes'sspeeches at a singularly numbers to the With the first march on alreadydangerouslydepleted, city. point the nativesferocious,Cortes is the remaining men wounded, cold, frightened, reported as promisinghis men not wealth,not salvation,but deathless historical fame.32 Again and again we see Cortes dare to cheat his followersin the distribution of loot and of "good-lookingIndian women,"but he neverdiscountedthe gloryof theirendeavors. Not the least factorin Cortes'shold over his men was sonohis notary'sgiftforlocatingtheirsituationand aspirationsin reassuringly to the at terms: terms rous and legalistic necessary please lawyers home, who would finally judge theirleader's case, but also essentialfor theirown construction of an acceptable narrativeout of problematicalactionsand equivocal experience. But he also lured them to acknowledge their most extreme fantasies; then he persuaded them,by his own enactmentof them,thatthe fantasieswere realizable.33 So Cortes, his men regrouped, his strategiesevolved, stood ready for the second phase of the attack.What he was to experience in the struggleto come was to challenge his view of himselfand his capacities,of the Mexican Indian, and of his special relationshipwithhis God.
II concenhistorians,have overwhelmingly Analysts,save for military the consummation of of the tratedon the first Conquest, Spanish phase assuming
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horsemen to be merelya matterof applyinga technologicalsuperiority: victory against pedestrian warriors,steel swords against wooden clubs, muskets and crossbowsagainstbows and arrowsand lances,cannon againstferociouscourage. solid I would argue thatit is only for the second phase thatwe have sufficiently evidence to allow a close analysisof how Spaniards and Indians made sense of forthe each other,and so to trackdown issues thatmustremainwill-o'-the-wisps first phase. I would also argue thatthe finalconquest was a veryclose-runthing: a view in which the combatantson both sides, as it happens, would agree. After the Spanish ejection fromTenochtitlanthe Mexicans remained heavilyfavored in thingsmaterial,most particularly manpower,whichmore than redressed any imbalance in equipment. Spanish technologyhad its problems: the miseriesof or cold-crampedor founderinghorses,wet powder,the brutalweight slithering of thecannon, and alwaysthedesperatequestionof supply.Smallpox,introduced into Mexico by one of Narvaez's men, had sweptthroughthe nativepopulation, but its ravages had presumablyaffectedSpanish "allies" equally withthe Mexicans.34The sides were approximatelymatched in knowledge: if Cortes was to of the lake city, and functioning withthe fortifications fromhis familiarity profit the Mexicans at last knewthe Spaniards as enemies,and were under the direction of a ruler liberated from the ambiguitiesthat appear to have bedeviled them earlier. We tend to have a Lord oftheFliesview of battle: that in deadly combat the veils of "culture" are ripped away,and natural man confrontshimself.But if combat is not quite as cultural as cricket,its brutalitiesare nonetheless rulebound. Like cricket,it requires a sustained act of cooperation, with each side the conditionsin whichbothwilloperate,and so, wherethe struggle constructing of culture"of the shotgun is between strangers, obliginga mutual "transmission it to expose how one's own of its intensities And because promises variety. high and otherwaysof actingand meaningare understoodand responded to in crisis conditions,and whatlessons about the otherand about oneselfcan be learned in and mostconsequentialcommunication. thatintimate, involuntary, solid. Given it is cultural The sources for the second phase are sufficiently in are recollection and we after, assumptions equivocation recordingmatterlittle. Cortes edits a debacle on the Tacuba causeway,where more than fifty Spaniards into a triumphof leadership in were taken alive through his own impetuosity, crisis; Diaz marvelsat Spanish braveryunder the tirelessonslaughtsof savages; both are agreed as to the vocabularythroughwhichtheyunderstand,assess, and able to reportonly bitterhearsay record battlebehavior. Sahagun's informants, and received mython the obscure politicalstrugglesof the first phase, move to in which at least confidentdetail in their accounts of the strugglefor the city, some of them appear to have fought,naming precise locations and particular and the descriptionsof the warriorfeats; revealingthroughboth the structure
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accounts their principlesof battle.Those glimpses can be matched against adchroniclesto yield the general contours of Indian battle mittedly fragmentary behavior. Here the usual caveatsof overidealization apply.If all social rules are fictions, made "real" through being contested, denied, evaded, and recast as well as obeyed, "rules of war,"war being what it is, are honored most earnestlyin the held breach. But in the warriorsocietiesof CentralMexico, where the battlefield a centralplace in the imagination, withitsprotocolsrehearsed and trainedforin the ordinaryroutinesof life,the gap betweenprincipleand practicewas narrow. War,at least war as foughtamong the dominantpeoples of Mexico, and at least ideally,was a sacred contest,the outcome unknownbut preordained, revealing would rightfully dominateanother.35 whichcity, whichlocal deity, Somethinglike therefore to terms were mere numbers or by some required: equal prevail by of the contest.So important would vitiatethe significance was piece of treachery thisnotion of fairtestingthatfood and weapons were sent to the selected target city as part of the challenge, there being no virtue in defeating a weakened enemy.36 The warriors typicallymet outside the cityof the defenders. Should the side prevail,the defendersabandoned thefieldand fled,and thevictors attacking intothe city to firethe templewherethelocal deityhad itsplace. unresisted swept in occurrence and record; the formalsign for conThat action marked victory quest in the painted historieswas a burningtemple. Free pillage continued until frantic the increasingly pleas of the spokesmenforthe defeated were heard, and to theirhome city set. Then the victors withdrew withtheirbooty termsof tribute and theircaptives,includingnot onlythe warriorstaken in the formalbattlebut "civilians" seized duringthe period of plunder.Their mostsignificant captivewas in of the to the defeated be held the image of the tutelary city, deity "god captive because itwas a statement and judgment Defeat was bitter house" in Tenochtitlan. who had brokenand run; a judgment the of inferiority of the defeated warriors, were onlytoo readyto reinforce and which victorious warriors bysavage mockery, of tribute.37 the was institutionalized imposition by The duration of the decision remained problematic.Defeated towns paid but remained indetheirtributeas a regular decision against further hostilities, the conviction and disaffected, usually despite conquering city's notably pendent, of theirsupremacy.Many townsin the valley, whetherallied or of the legitimacy defeated or intimidated by the Mexicans,paid theirtoken tribute, foughtalongin Mexican campaigns, and shared in the spoils, but they side the Mexicans remained mindfulof theirhumiliationand unreconciledto theirsubordination. Beyond the valley the benefitsof empire were commonly smaller, the costs chronic.The monolithic"Aztecempire" is a European greater,and disaffection the unitswere held togetherbythe tension hallucination:in thisatomistic polity,
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of mutual repulsion. (Therefore the ease withwhichCortescould recruit"allies," the deep confusion to his silvertongue,and therefore too oftentaken as a tribute to describe the vassal word use of that his constant meaning-drenched attending and later to the to of towns first Tenochtitlan, Spanish crown.) relationship subject If war was a sacred duel between peoples, and so between the "tribal"gods of those peoples, battle was ideally a sacred duel between matched warriors:a to one's own deity contestin whichthe takingof a fitting captiveforpresentation was a precise measure of one's own valor,and one's own fate.One prepared for thisindividualcombatbysong, paint,and adornmentwiththe sacred war regalia. a man was unintelligible: (To go "alwaysprepared forbattle"in the Spanish style a warrior.) The greatwarrior, armswas onlypotentially scarred,painted, carrying in his of his victories the record regalia, erupting from conplumed, wearing cealment or looming suddenly throughthe risingdust, then screaminghis war could make lesser men fleebythe pure terrorof his presence: warriorswere cry, destinedopponent was he who could His rightful, practicedin projectingferocity. master panic to stand and fight.There were maneuveringsto "surprise" the enemy,and a fascinationwith ambush, but only as a device to confrontmore At theoutsetof battleIndian fromhidingwas unthinkable. to strike dramatically; but to weaken and draw blood, not to pierce arrows and darts flew thickly, The obsidian-studdedwar club signaled warriorcombat aims: the subfatally.38 before of duing prestigiousindividualcaptivesin singlecombat forpresentation the home deity. the MexIn the desperation of the last stages of the battleforTenochtitlan, ican inhibition against battleground killing was somewhat reduced: Indian "allies" died, and Spaniards who could not be quicklysubdued were killed,most and for reasons thatwill become often,as the Mexicans were careful to specify, on the capture clear,byhavingthe backs of theirheads beaten in. But the priority In other the Mexicans remained. of significant regards responded antagonists to the challenges of siege warfare.They "read" Spanish tactics with flexibility aqueduct at Chapulreasonablyaccurately:a Spanish assault on the freshwater iffruitlessly, resisted.The brigantines, irresisttepec was foreseen,and furiously, ible for their firstappearance of the lake, were later lured into a carefully conceived ambush in which two were trapped. The horses' vulnerabilityto were all uneven ground, to attackfrombelow,theirpanic under hails of missiles, The Mexicans borrowedSpanish weapons: Spanish swords exploited effectively. lashed to poles or Spanish lances to disable the horses; even Spanish crossbows, after captive crossbowmenhad been forced to show them how the machines thatforcedCortes to the desperate It was theirinventionand tenacity worked.39 along the causewaysand intothe cityto providethe remedyof levelingstructures And theywere Spaniards with the secure ground theyneeded to be effective. of psychologicalwarfare,capitalizingon the Spaniards' alert to the possibilities
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and of the cannibalizingof the corpse.40On peculiar dread of death by sacrifice much theycould be innovative.But on the most basic measure of man's worth, the takingalive of prestigiouscaptives,theycould not compromise. That passion forcaptivesmeantthatthe momentwhen the opponent's nerve broke was helplessly an irresistible lure. This purcompelling,an enemyin flight suitreflexwas sometimesexploitedbynativeopponents as a slightly shabbytrick. It provided Cortes witha standard tacticfora quick and sure crop of kills.Incurious as to the reason, he nonethelessnoted and exploited Mexican unteachaand theypursued us so eagerly, bility:"Sometimes,as we were thuswithdrawing the horsemen would pretend to be fleeing,and then suddenly would turn on them; we always took a dozen or so of the boldest. By these means and by the ambushes which we set for them,theywere alwaysmuch hurt; and certainly it was a remarkablesightforeven when theywellknewtheharmtheywould receive fromus as we withdrew, That theystillpursued us untilwe had leftthe city."41 bore heavilyon outcomes.Had Indians been as uninhibited commitment as Spanthe small Spanish group, withno secured source of repleniards in theirkilling, would soon have been whittled ishment, away.In battleafterbattlethe Spaniards the of with theirown men suffering not fatalities deaths Indians, many report wounds at that:thoseflint but wounds,and fast-healing and obsidianblades sliced clean. It preservedthelifeof Cortes: timeand again theSpanish leader struggled in Indian hands, the prize in a disorderly tugof war,withmen dyingon each side in the furious strugglefor possession,and each time the Spaniards prevailing. Were Cortes in our hands, we would knifehim. Mexican warriorscould not kill the enemy leader so casually: were he to die, it would be in the temple of Huitzilopochtli,and before his shrine.42 If the measurable consequences of that insistencewere obvious and damWe have aging, there were others less obvious, but perhaps more significant. already noted the Spanish predilectionforambush as partof a wider preference for killingat least risk.Spaniards valued theircrossbowsand musketsfor their capacityto pick offselected enemies well behind the line of engagement: as snidemoralizationattendingthose sudden, pers, as we would say.The psychological deaths of great men painted forwar,but not yetengaged in combat, trivializing must have been formidable. (Were the victimactivelyengaged in battle, the Then he died nobly; although pierced by a bolt or a ball matterwas different. froma distance,his blood flowedforthto feed the earth as a warrior'sshould.) But more than Indian deaths and demoralizationwere effectedthrough these To inflict such deaths-at a distance,withoutputtingone's own life transactions. in play-developed a Mexican reading of the characterof the Spanish warrior.43 Consider this episode, told by a one-timeconquistador.Two Indian champions, stepping out from the mass of warriors,offeredtheir formalchallenge before a Spanish force. Cortes responded by orderingtwo horsemen to charge, their lances poised. One of the warriors,against all odds, contrivedto sever a
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horse's hooves, and then, as it crashed to the ground, slashed its neck. Cortes, seeing the riskto the unhorsed rider,had a cannon firedso that"all the Indians in the front ranks were killed and the others scattered."The two Spaniards under the coveringfireof musrecoveredthemselvesand scuttledback to safety kets,crossbows,and the cannon.44 flourFor Cortes the individual challenge had been a histrionic preliminary ish: he then proceeded to the serious work of using firepowerto kill warriors, whichwas whathe tookwar to be about. Throughand to controlmore territory, controlled, out, Spaniards measured success in termsof body counts, territory and evidence of decay in the morale of the "enemy,"which included all warriors, activelyengaged in battle or not, and all "civilians"too. Cortes casually informedthe king of his dawn raids into sleeping villages and the slaughterof the inhabitants,men, women, and children,as theystumbled into the streets: these were necessary and conventionalsteps in the progressivecontrol of terrain, and the progressivedemoralizationof opposition. To an Indian warrior, Cortes'sriposte to the Indian champions' challenge was shameful,withonly the horses, puttingthemselveswithinreach of the opponents' weapons, emerging withany credit. Cortes'sdescents on villages are reported in tones of breathless incredulity.45 an exquisitely Codex There is in the Florentine painful,detailed descriptionof the the Spaniards' attackon the unarmed warriordancers at the temple festival, was first victim of The Mexican the "uprising" May 1520. slaughterthattriggered a drummer: his hands were severed,then his neck. The account continues: "Of some theyslashed open theirbacks: thentheirentrailsgushed out. Of some they cut theirheads to pieces.... Some theystruckon the shoulder; theysplitopenings. They broke openings in theirbodies."46And so it goes on. How ought we or onlyas a horror recorded as a horrorstory, this?It was not, I think, interpret detail and as to careful The account is sufficiently sequence to sugprecise story. the pattern, close afterthe event,in an attemptto identify gest its construction and so to discoverthe sense, in the Spaniards' cuttingsand slashings.(This was the first view the Mexicans had of Spanish swords at work.) The Mexicans had veryprecise rules about violentassaults on the body,as the range of theirsacrificialritualsmakes clear,but the notion of a "preemptivemassacre" of warriors was not in theirvocabulary. Such bafflingactions, much more than any deliberatelyriddling policy, worked to keep Indians offbalance. To returnto an earlycelebratedmomentof by Cortes,the displayof the cannon to impressthe Mexican envoys mystification on the coast withthe killingpower of Spanish weapons: the men who carried the tale back reported the thunderous sound, the smoke, the fire,the foul smelland that the shot had "dissolved" a mountain, and "pulverised" a tree.47It is highlydoubtfulthatthe nativewatcherstook the intended point of the display, thatthiswas a weapon of war foruse againsthuman flesh.It was nota conceivable and Unnatural "Fierce Cruelty" 81
weapon for warriors.So it must have appeared (as it is in fact reported) as a gratuitousassault upon nature: a scrambled lesson indeed. Mexican warriors learned, with experience, not to leap and shout and display when faced with cannon fireand crossbows,but to weave and duck, as the shield canoes learned so that with time the to zigzag to avoid the cannon shot fromthe brigantines, for men who were prepared also learned But was less.48 contempt they carnage combatantsand noncombatants to killindiscriminately, alike,and at a secure distance,withoutputtingtheirown livesin play. What of Spanish horses,thatotherkeyelementin Cortes'smystification proto these of swift and effective warrior evidence have We response early gram? their nature. A small exotics, and of a fine experimentalattitudeto verifying sightof horsesand horsemenmangroup of Tlaxcalan warriorshavingtheirfirst aged to kill two horses and to wound three othersbefore the Spaniards got the upper hand.49In the nextengagementa squad of Indians made a concertedand clearlydeliberateattackon a horse,allowingthe rider,althoughbadly wounded, to escape, while theykilledhis mountand carted the body fromthe field.Bernal Diaz later recorded thatthe carcass was cut into pieces and distributed through the towns of Tlaxcala, presumablyto demonstratethe horse's carnal nature. to theiridols, along (They reservedthe horseshoes,as he sourlyrecalled,to offer with"the Flemish hat, and the two letterswe had sent them offering peace.")50 of the pieces of the horse'sfleshpossiblyheld further The distribution implications. Indians were in no doubt that horses were animals. But that did not serreduce them,as it did for Spaniards, to brute beasts,unwitting, unthinking vantsof the lords of creation.Indians had a different understandingof how animals signified.It was no vague aestheticinclinationthatled the greatestwarrior orders to mimicthe eagle and thejaguar in theirdress and conduct: those were creatures of power, exemplary of the purest warrior spirit.The eagle, slowly turning close to the sun; then the scream, the stoop, the strike; the jaguar, announcing its presence with the coughing rumble of thunder,erupting from the dappled darkness to make its kill: these provided unmatchable models for human emulation. That horses should appear ready to killmen was unremarkand courage of these creatures,who raced into the close zone able. The ferocity of combat,facingthe clubs and swords;who plunged and screamed,whose eyes rolled,whose saliva flew(forthe Mexicans saliva signified anger) marked themas of the two horses had the as in the battle action, againsttheirIndian charge agents challengers. In the Mexican lexicon of battle,the horses excelled theirmasters. They were not equal in value as offerings-captured Spanish swords lashed to used against horses to disembowelor hamstring them, long poles were typically to so valuable too but not against theirriders, damage deeply-but their judged won a major victoryover Mexicans valor was recognized. When the besieged Cortes'smen on the Tacuba causeway,theydisplayed the heads of the sacrificed
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Spaniards on the skull rack in the usual way,and below themtheyskeweredthe heads of the fourhorses taken in the same melee.51 There is one small momentin whichwe see these contrary understandings held in counterpoise. During a skirmishin the city some Spanish horsemen emergingfroman unsprung ambush collided, a Spaniard fallingfromhis mare. Panicky,the riderless horse "rushed straightat the enemy,who shot at and wounded her witharrows;whereupon, seeing how badly she was being treated, she returnedto us," Cortes reported,but "so badly wounded thatshe died that night."He continued: "Althoughwe were much grievedbyher loss, forour lives were dependent on the horses,we were pleased she had not perishedat the hands of the enemy,fortheir joy at havingcaptured her would have exceeded the grief caused by the death of theircompanions."52 For Cortes the mare was an animal, responding as an animal: disoriented, thenfleeingfrompain. Her fatehad symbolic importanceonlythroughher associationwiththe Spaniards. For the Indians the mare breakingout fromthe knot of Spaniards, rushing directlyand alone toward enemy warriors-white-eyed, incarnate-was accorded the warrior'sreception of a flightof arrows. ferocity back to her friendsprobablysignaled a small Indian vicHer reversal,her flight death among enemies would have signaled to the Spanand as her tory, capture iards,at a more remotelevel,a smallSpanish defeat.That doomed mare wheeling armiesand different and turningin the desperate marginbetweendifferent systemsof understandingprovidesa sufficiently poignantmetaphorforthe themes I have been pursuing. for found its clearestexpression in theirfinalstrategy Spanish "difference" Cortes had hoped to intimidate the Mexicans the reductionof the imperialcity. sufficiently byhis steadyreductionof the townsaround the lake, byhis histrionic withwhichresistance was punished, actsof violence,and bytheexemplarycruelty in thatmosaic of rivalcitiescould to bringthemto treat.53 Example-at-a-distance have no relevanceforthe Mexicans-if all othersquailed, theywould not-so the Siege was thequintSpaniards resorted,as Diaz put it,to "a new kindof warfare." an economical design to exert maximum pressure essential European strategy: on whole populationswithoutactiveengagement,delivering controlover people and place at least cost. If Cortes'sown precariouspositionled him to increase that sorties,his crucialweapon was want. pressureby military of war. They knew of encircling For the Mexicans, siege was the antithesis cities to persuade unwillingwarriorsto come out, and of destroying them too, when insultrequired it.They had soughtto burn the Spaniards out of theirquarters in Tenochtitlan,to force them to fightaftertheir massacre of the warrior dancers.54But the deliberate and systematic weakening of opposition before and of in thecontest,had the deliberate noncombatants implication engagement, no part in theirexperience.
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As the siege continued the signs of Mexican contemptmultiplied.Mexican warriorscontinued to seek face-to-face combat with these most unsatisfactory opponents, who skulked and refused battle,who clung togetherin tightbands behind theircannon, who fled withoutshame. When elite warriors, swept in by had to at last the chance the the canoe, engage Spaniards closely, Spaniards "turned theirbacks, theyfled,"withthe Mexicans in pursuit.They abandoned a cannon in one of theirpell-mellflights, positionedwithunconsciousironyon the stone on which the gladiatorial greatestenemywarriorshad giventheirfinaldisof the Mexicans worriedand dragged it along to the canal play fighting prowess; and dropped it into the water.55 Indian warriorswere careful,when theyhad to killratherthan capture Spaniards in battle,to deny theman honorable warrior's death, dispatchingthembybeatingin theback of theirheads, the death reserved forcriminalsin Tenochtitlan.56 And the Spaniards captured afterthe debacle on the Tacuba causeway were stripped of all theirbattle equipment, their armor, theirclothing:onlythen,when theywere naked, and reduced to "slaves,"did the Mexicans killthem.57 in the long run,thatMexican warriorsadmired Spanish What does it matter, To discoverhow itbore on eventswe need horses and despised Spanish warriors? at Indian notionsof "fate"and time.We can compare the structure to look briefly to discovertheexplanatory of the Indian and Spanish accountsof thefinalbattles, The Spanish versionspresentthe struggles strategies implied in thatstructuring. the coups, the strokesof luck,the acts along the causeways,the narrowvictories, of daring on each side. Through the tracingof an intricate sequence of actionwe one way,thenthe other.God is at the followthe movementof the advantage,first Spaniards' shoulders, but only to lend power to theirstrongarms, or to tip an balance. Through selectionand sequence of significant eventswe already tilting cumulativeexplanationthroughthe narrativeform. have the familiar, powerful, similar.There are episodes, and they The Indian accounts look superficially are offeredserially:descriptionsof group or individual feats,of contemptible Spanish actions.But these are discreteevents,momentsto be memorialized,with time no more than the thread on whichtheyare strung:there is no cumulative in sequence. Nor is there any implicationthatthe human no significance effect, declares it actionsdescribed bore on outcomes.The factthatdefeatwas suffered to have been inevitable. The Mexicans, like Mesoamericans generally, conceptualized time as multiand men attempted to comprehenditscomdimensionaland eternally recurrent, of the use time which completed movement counts, through intermeshing plex a or "Bundle of their complex permutationsover fifty-two years, Xiumolpilli to mere adjacency.) Years." (Note how that word bundledenies any significance Under such a system,each "day" was not the outcome of the days preceding it: it had its own character,indicated by its complex name derived from the time counts,and was unique withinits Bundle of Years. It also was more closely
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named days that had occurred in everypreceding connected with the similarly Bundle of Years than withthose clusteredabout it in its own bundle. Thus the eventwas to be understoodas unfoldingin a dynamicproparticularcontingent cess modeled bysome past situation.Butjust as those anomalous eventspresumably noted before the Spanish advent could be categorizedas "omens" and their the identification of the recurrentin the portentidentifiedonly retrospectively, after-the-event much an was diagnosis,not an antevery apparentlycontingent of time manirior paralyzingcertitude.The essentialcharacter the controlling festeditselfin subtle ways,largelymasked fromhuman eyes. Events remained neither and desperate effort withinnovation problematicalin theirexperiencing, In human outcomes remained inhibited. nor contingent experience precluded untilmanifested.58 Nonetheless,some feweventswere accorded special status,being recognized as signs of the foretold.At a place called Otumba the Spaniards, limping away fromTenochtitlanafterthe expulsion of the Noche Triste,were confrontedby a sea of Mexican warriors:a sea that evaporated when Cortes and his horsemen down thebattleleader,and to seize his fallenbanner.The drove throughto strike "battleof Otumba" mattered, being the bestchance fromour perspectiveforthe Mexicans to finishoff the Spaniards at their most vulnerable. The Spanish down of the commander as decisive,but while the the striking accounts identify ominous of a leader was fall (and an attackon a leader not activelyengaged in combat disreputable) it was the takingof the banner that signified.Our initial temptationis to elide this with the familiaremotional attachmentof a body of men to its colors: to recall the desperate strugglesover shreds of silk at fighting Waterloo; the dour passion of a Roman legion in pursuit of its lost Eagle and honor.59 There mighthave been some of thisin the Indian case. But the taking a sign of a banner was to Indians less a blow to collectivepride than a statement: thatthe battlewas to go, indeed had gone, againstthem. Cortes reported his determined attackon "the great cue," the pyramid of in Tenochtitlan, duringthefirst struggle claimingthatafterthree Huitzilopochtli, hours of strugglehe cleared the templeof Indians and put itto the torch.He also noted that the capture of the pyramid"so much damaged theirconfidencethat on all sides": thesignnoted.60 Had thecapturebeen theybegan to weaken greatly as decisiveas Cortesclaims,we could expectmore than"weakening," butjust how in it was remains Diaz's account the complete problematical: Spaniards, having firedthe shrine,were then tumbledback down the steps. The eventclearlymathow oftenhe had seen thatparticularbattle tered to the Indians, Diaz remarking in Indian He later accounts. thoughtthiswas because the Indians took pictured the Spanish assault as a very heroic thing,as theywere represented as "much wounded and runningwithblood withmanydead in the picturestheymade of the setting afireof the temple,withthe manywarriorsguardingit."61 My thought is thatwhat the representations sought to make clear was thatdespite the firing "Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty" 85
of the shrine the Spaniards had not achieved the uncontestedmasterywhich and marked"victory." The vigorof theattackmust would indeed have constituted have made even more urgentthe puttingof the templeto rightsafterthe Spaniards' expulsion-that period when we, withour notionsof strategy, waitin vain for the Mexicans to pursue the weakened Spaniards and finishthem off,while theyprepared instead for the set-piecebattleat Otumba, "read" the message of the takingof the banner,and yielded the day. Deep into the second phase of the conquest, Spanish banner carriers remained special targets, being subjected to such ferociousattackthat"a new one But the Mexicans had come to pay less heed to signs, was needed everyday."62 because theyhad discovered thatSpaniards ignored them. In the course of the a major Spanish banner had actuallybeen taken: "The warriors causewayvictory fromTlatelolco captured it in the place knowntoday as San Martin."But while the warriorwho had seized the banner was carefully memorialized,"They were it of little and considered of their scornful importance."Sahaguin'sinforprize record thatthe Spaniards "justkepton fighting."63 mantsflatly Ignoringsignsof When a Spanish defeat, the Spaniards were equally careless of signs of victory. of the Mexicans had the where Tlatelolco, marketplace contingentpenetrated taken their last refuge,theymanaged to fighttheirway to the top of the main pyramid,to set the shrines on fire and plant their banners before they were forced to withdraw.("The common people began to wail, expectingthe looting to begin,"but the warriors,seasoned in Spanish ways,had no such expectation. would go on: these enemies were as blind to signsas they They knewthe fighting were deaf to decency.)Next day fromhis own encampmentCortes was puzzled to see the firesstillburningunquenched, the banners stillin place. The Mexicans would respect the signs and leave them to stand,even if the barbariansdid not, even ifthe rules of war were in abeyance. even if the signshad lost efficacy, battle as "essentiallya moral conflict[rehas characterized John Keegan act of willbetweentwocontendingparties,and, and sustained mutual a quiring] if it is to resultin a decision,the moral collapse of one of them."64 Paradoxically, to is mostessentialat the pointof disengagement.To "surrender," thatmutuality a at once redefiis a in concede defeat and business, victory, complex acquiesce of one's relanitionof selfand one's range of effective action,and a redefinition to be have somehow Those redefinitions the erstwhile with enemy. tionship acknowledged by the opponent. Where the indicatorsthat mark defeat and so nor defeat allow "moral collapse" to occur are not acknowledged,neithervictory zone in whichtherecan be no resolution is possible, and we approach a sinister save death.65 That, I think,came to be the case in Mexico. "Signs" are equivocal things, submissionof uncertainduration, especiallywhen theypoint not to a temporary but to the end of a people's imperial domination. The precarious edifice of of the wild card of the Spaniards"empire" had not survivedthe introduction
86 REPRESENTATIONS
and so outside the centralplaysof power and punishment.Its men withouta city, had been proclaimed by Quauhtemoc, "He Who Falls Like an Eagle," collapse who had replaced the dead Cuitlahuac as Great Speaker,when he offereda general "remission"of tributefor a year in return for aid against the Spaniards: tribute is a productof the power to exact it. In the finalbattlesthe Mexicans were as so manyothershad foughtbefore.They of theircity, forthe integrity fighting knewthe settledhatredof the Tlaxcalans and the envyof otherpeoples. Perhaps even against indigenous enemies theymighthave foughton, in face of the signs who of defeat. Againstthe Spaniards, cowardlyopportunists impossibleto trust, MexThe and defeat,theylacked any alternative.66 disdained the signsof victory icans continued to resist. The chronicles record the stories of heroic deeds: of warriors scattering over Cortes'stroop,withterrified the Spaniards beforethem,of the greatvictory taken for sacrifice.67 and "like drunken men," fifty-three Spaniards reeling that had given so many captives to the Spanish accounts tell us that the victory Mexican war god was taken at the timeto indicatethe likelihoodof a finalMexas comingwithin ican victory, eightdays. (The prophesiedbythepriests hopefully Indian records do not waste time on false inferences,misunderstoodomens.) removedthemselvesforthe duraof signs,accordingly Cortes'sallies, respectful did not come, and the macabre tion. But the days passed, the decisive victory dance continued.68 the city And all the while,as individualwarriorsfound theirindividualglory, slow own dead. This on its was dying: starving, stranglingis choking thirsting, it presumas in the mind Mexican referredto as ifquite separate fromthe battle, ably was. Another brief gloryoccurred, when Eagle and Ocelot warriors,men fromthe two highestmilitary orders, were silently poled in disguised canoes to where theycould leap among lootingnativeallies,spreading lethal panic among them.But stillthe remorselesspressurewenton: "They indeed wound all around us, theywere wrapped around us, no one could go anywhere.... Indeed many The Mexicans made theirendgame play.Here theaugurycomponent,always presentin combat,is manifest.Quauhtemoc and his leading advisers selected a great warrior,clad him in the array of Quetzal Owl, the combat regalia of the great Ahuitzotl,who had ruled beforethe despised Moctezoma,and armed him darts of Huitzilopochtli;thus he became, as theysaid, "one withthe flint-tipped to cast his dartsagainst of the numberof the Mexicans'rulers."He was sentforth the enemy: should the dartstwicestriketheirmark,the Mexicans would prevail. in his spreading quetzal plumes, withhis four attendants,Quetzal Magnificent Owl entered the battle. For a time theycould followhis movementsamong the enemy: reclaimingstolen gold and quetzal plumes, takingthree captives,or so theythought.Then he dropped froma terrace,and out of sight.The Spaniards record nothingof thisexemplarycombat. "Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty" 87
died in the press."69
After that ambiguous sign another day passed with no action: the Spaniards, disreputable to the end, "only lay still; theylay looking at the common On the next evening a great "bloodstone,"a blazing coal of light,flared folk."70 then to vanish in the throughthe heavens, to whirlaround the devastatedcity, middle of the lake. No Spaniard saw the comet of firethat marked the end of imperial Tenochtitlan. Perhaps no Indian saw it either. But they knew great events must be attended by signs,and that there must have been a sign. In the morningQuauhtemoc, having taken counsel withhis lords, abandoned the city. He was captured in the course of his escape, to be broughtbefore Cortes. Only then did his people leave theirruined city.71 A cerSo the Mexicans submittedto theirfate,when thatfatewas manifest. of been declared terminated: the of Mexican had tainarrangement things period was over. dominationand the primacyof Tenochtitlan A particularsectionof the Anales de Tlatelolco is oftencited to demonstrate of a wayof lifeand a wayof thought.It runs: the completenessof the obliteration Broken spearslie in theroads; ourhairin ourgrief. wehavetorn and their walls The housesare roofless now, blood. are redwith in thestreets and plazas, are swarming Worms with and thewallsare splattered gore. The water hasturned red,as ifitweredyed, and whenwe drink it, ofbrine. ithas thetaste Wehavepoundedourhandsin despair theadobewalls, against ourcity, is lostand dead. our for inheritance, wereitsdefense, ofourwarriors The shields
but theycould not save it.72
And so itcontinues.But whatis notablehere (apart fromthe poetic power) is that the "lament" was a traditionalform,maintainingitselfafterthe defeat, and so by assayingit in the traditional locating that defeat and renderingit intelligible the people, and theirsense mode. If the Mexican visionof empire was finished, as a people, were not. The greatidols in the templeshad been of distinctiveness smuggled out of the cityby theirtraditionalcustodiansbefore its fall,and sent toward Tula, a retracingof theirearlier migrationroute. A cyclicalview of time has its comforts.And if the "Quetzalcoatl returned" storyas presented in the and if indeed it does Codexis a post-Conquestimposition,as is likely, Florentine for human action in the of native traditional move away from ways accounting world,withMoctezoma'sconduct describednot merelyto memorializehis shame but in order to explain the outcome of defeat,as I believe it does-then its fab88 REPRESENTATIONS
of a viable and satisfying ricationpointsto a concern forthe construction public forthe conquered, an emollientmyth, generatedin part fromwithinthe history European epistemological system to encompass the catastrophe of Mexican defeat.
III Now, at last,forthe consequences. There is somethingappealing to our sense of ironyin the notion that the Spaniards' heroic deeds, as theysaw them,werejudged shamefulbythe Mexican resonance. Attitudesof vicwarriors.But attitudesof losers have littlehistorical tors do. Here I want to pursue an impression.Anyone who has worked on the of Mexico-I suspectthe case is the same formuch of Latin America,but history of I cannot speak forthat-is painfully impressedbythe apparent incorrigibility the division between the aboriginal inhabitantsand the incomers,despite the the form of theirlives,and bythechronicdurability, whatever domesticproximity of systemic social injusticegrounded of government, whateveritspublic rhetoric, between in thatdivision.In Mexico I am persuaded the termsof the relationship A were set line of the incomingand the indigenous peoples veryearly. reforming missionariesand upright sixteenth-century judges were baffledas much as outof Indians: raged by what theysaw as the wantonnessof Spanish maltreatment had been cruelties indulged in the face of self-interest. Spaniards notoriously brutalin the Caribbean islands,where the indigeneswere at too simple a level of social organizationto surviveSpanish endeavors to exploitthem.Yet in theirfirst encounters with the peoples of Mexico the Spaniards had declared themselves profoundlyimpressed. Cortes's co-venturewith the Tlaxcalans seems to have involved genuine cooperation,a reasonablydeveloped notion of mutuality, and some affection individuals.73 to be between sentimental) (not It is alwaysdifficult Then somethinghappened, a crucialbreak of sympathy. to argue thatthingscould have been otherthan theyturnout to be, especiallyin the political maelstromof post-Conquest Mexico.74But despite the continuing of the Conquest, I have a deftnessof his politicalmaneuveringsin the aftermath bothhis controlover the shapingof Spanish-Indian sense of Cortes relinquishing based in relationsand his naturallyconservationist policies-a conservationism but effective for all that-earlier and more pragmatismrather than humanity, us conduct would have his than expect. His removalto Honduras easily previous in October 1524 was an extraordinary abdicationof the official he had authority for a and marked of and had worn the end his effective so only year, sought long role in "New Spain." We tend to like our heroes, whethervillainsor saints or Machiavels, to be all of a piece: unchanging,untincturedemblemsof whatever qualities we assign them,imperviousto experience. But there are indicatorsin and Unnatural "Fierce Cruelty" 89
as in his actionsthatCorteswas changed byhis experience in Mexico, his writings the and to Spanish eyes profoundly and that change had to do withtheobstinate, of the Mexicans to submit. refusalor incapacity "irrational," Cortes was sensitiveto the physicalbeautyand social complexity of the great It was the dream of the of Tenochtitlan. that had fired his ambition,and city city for all his actions. We must the focus remember that Tenochtitlan was provided a marvel,eclipsingall othercitiesin Mesoamerica (and Europe) in size, elegance, of spectacle.Cortes had contrivedthe complex,difficult order,and magnificence of the and pursued the mammothtaskof implementing blockade, it,in strategy the futility of resistance.Then he order to preserve the cityby demonstrating watched the slow struggleback and forth along the causeways,as the defenders, careless of theirown lives,took back by nightwhat had been so painfully won by into his men onto the and constant He moved causeways, physicalmisery day. destruction of the strucdanger,and thenwas forcedto undertakethe systematic tures along the causewaysto secure the yardswon, a perilous prolongationof a taskalready long enough. was gained, and the noose of faminetightSo, withpatience,access to thecity was in Spanish (and our) termsinevitable.Yet still ened. From thatpoint victory the resistancecontinued, takingadvantage of everycorner and rooftop.So the workof demolitionwenton. At last,fromthetop of a greatpyramidCortescould of whathad once been thecity, with see thatthe Spaniards had won seven-eighths the remainingpeople crammed into a corner where the houses were built out over the water. Starvationwas so extreme that even roots and bark had been shadows,but shadows who stillresisted.75 tottering gnawed, withthe survivors thecity in being forcedto destroy he had so much wanted Cortes'sfrustration his as is bewilderment at the tenacity of so futilea to capture intactis manifest, fromour camp twoor threedays in succesresistance:"As we had enteredthecity sion, besides the three or four previousattacks,and had alwaysbeen victorious, numberof the enemy, killingwithcrossbow,harquebus and fieldgun an infinite for which as much as our to sue we desired them we each day expected peace, own salvation;but nothingwe could do could induce them to it."Afteranother "We could not but be saddened by their largelyunresistedthrustinto the city, to die."76 determination He had no stomach to attackagain. Instead he made a finalresortto terror. He conNot to the terrorof mass killings:thatweapon had long lost itsefficacy. structeda war-engine,an intimidatory piece of European technologythat had the advantage of not requiring gunpowder: the marvelous catapult. It was a matterof some labor over threeor four days,of lime and stone and wood, then the greatcords,and the stonesbig as demijohns.It was aimed, as a nativeaccount bleaklyrecorded, to "stone the common folk."It failed to work,the stone dribsurrenderremained.77 bling feeblyfromthe sling,so stillthe labor of forcing and the SpanFour days patientwaiting,four days furtherinto starvation, 90
REPRESENTATIONS
of women iards entered the cityagain. Again theyencountered ghostly figures, but silent stillstationedon therooftops, and gaunt children,and saw the warriors now,and unarmed, close-wrappedin theircloaks. And stillthe fruitless pretense at negotiation,the dumb, obdurate resistance. Cortes attacked, killing "more than twelve thousand," as he estimated. Another meetingwithsome of the lords, and again theyrefused any termssave a swiftdeath. Cortes exhausted his famous eloquence: "I said many thingsto persuade them to surrenderbut all to no avail, althoughwe showed them more signs of peace than have ever been shown to a vanquished people for we, by He released a captured noble, the grace of our Lord, were now the victors."78 charging him to urge surrender: the only response was a sudden, desperate set up in the marketsquare of attack,and more Indians dead. He had a platform Tlatelolco, ready for the ceremonyof submission,with food prepared for the of feastthat should mark such a moment: stillhe clung to the European fiction of an empire. two rulers meetingin shared understandingfor the transference There was no response. Two days more, and Cortes unleashed the allies. There followeda massacre, of men who no longer had arrows,javelins, or stones; of women and children thouand fallingon thebodies of theirown dead. Cortesthoughtforty stumbling sand mighthave died or been takenon thatday.The nextday he had threeheavy As he explained to his distantking,theenemy, being now guns takenintothe city. "so massed togetherthattheyhad no room to turnaround, mightcrush us as we I wished, therefore, to do them some harm attacked,withoutactuallyfighting. withthe guns, and so induce themto come out to meet us."79He had also posted the brigantinesto penetratebetween the houses to the interiorlake where the of the guns the final last of the Mexican canoes were clustered.With the firing action began. The city was now a stinkingdesolation of heaped and rotting men,women,and childrencrawling bodies, of starving among themor struggling in the water. Quauhtemoc was taken in his canoe, and at last brought before Cortes, to make his request for death, and the survivors began to fileout, these thatit was pitifulto once immaculate people "so thin,sallow,dirtyand stinking see them."80 Cortes had invoked one pragmaticreason forholding his hand in the taking of Tenochtitlan:ifthe Spaniards attemptedto stormthe citythe Mexicans would throwall theirrichesinto the water,or would be plundered bythe allies,so some of the profit would be lost. His perturbation went,I think, verymuch deeper. His earlierbattlenarratives those Caesarian identified exemplify splendid simplicities of charbyJohn Keegan: disjunctivemovement, uniformity behavior,simplified motivation.81 of of and That acterization, simplified style highcontrol, magisterial when he mustjustifyhis own defeaton the causeway,whichcost so grasp, falters to fracture, and permamany Spanish lives. It then recoversitself briefly, finally for the of his of for last account the battle Tenochtitlan. The solstages nently, and Unnatural "Fierce Cruelty" 91
dierlynarrativeloses itsfineonward driveas he deploysmore and more detail to demonstratethe purposefulnessof his own action,and frets more and more over nativemood and intentions.82 in the world had been to treatall men, Indians and SpanCortes's strategy iards alike, as manipulable. That sturdy denial of the problemof otherness,usuhad here been proved bankrupt.He had also been forcedinto ally so profitable, His use of European equipparodyinghis earlier and once successfulstrategies. mentto terrify had produced the elaboratethreatof thecatapult,thenitsfarcical failure."Standard"battleprocedures-terror-raiding of villages,exemplarymassacres-took on an unfamiliaraspect when the end those means were designed to effectproved phantasmal,when killingdid not lead to panic and pleas for a cannon must terms,but a silentpressingon to death. Even the matterof firing to use cannon to clear a contended streetor have taken on a new significance: causeway or to disperse massed warriorswas one thing:to use cannon to break up a huddled mass of exhausted human miserywas very much another. It is in those last possible that as he ran throughhis degraded routineof stratagems of the was to Indian view of the nature Cortes brought glimpse something days and qualityof the Spanish warrior. His privilegeas victorwas to surveythe surreal devastationof the citythat for his insubordinahad been the glittering justification prize and magnificent over two long years, now tion, and for the desperate strugglesand sufferings to befouled rubble,itsonce magnificent reduced byperverse,obdurate resistance to undifferentiated human wreckage. That lords, its whole splendid hierarchy, deliberate. resistancehad been at once "irrational," yetchillingly of the "allies,"mostespeciallythe TlaxHe had seen, too, the phobic cruelty fromit. But calans. He had knownthatcruelty before,and had used and profited on thatlast day of killingtheyhad killedand killedamid a wailingof women and "thattherewas not one man amongstus whose heart did not childrenso terrible bleed at the sound."83 Those luxurious killingsare at odds withwhat I have claimed to be the protocols of Indian combat. Tlaxcalan warrior-to-warrior performancehad been and duelingwithMexconventionalenough: we glimpsethemexchanginginsults of while thebrigantines over the ican warriors;quarreling escorting place danger over the mountains. It is possible that theycame to judge the inadequacies of Spanish battleperformancewiththe leniencyof increased knowledge,or (more plausibly) that theythoughtSpanish delicts none of theirconcern. During the withthe Spaniards, associates conquest process theyperformedas co-venturers in no way subordinate and, given their greater investment, probably defining It is in their attitudeto themselvesas the senior partnersin the association.84 Tenochtitlanand its inhabitantsthat theirbehavior appears anomalous. Cortes a dauntrecalled thatwhen he took the decision to raze the buildingsof the city, All non-Mexicans would inglylaborious project, the Tlaxcalans were jubilant. 92
REPRESENTATIONS
had theydared, and all had scores to settle have longed to plunder Tenochtitlan, would have leftthe cityintact,built as it No victor Mexican arrogance. against Mexican the of was as the testament rightto rule. Nonethelessthe Tlaxcalan taste for destructionwas extravagant.Only the Tlaxcalans were relentlessin their hatred of the Mexicans: other cities waited and watched through the long strugglefor the causeways,"reading the signs" in the ebb and flowof what we would call the fortunesof battle,moving,deftas dancers,in and out of alliance. Only the Tlaxcalans soughtneitherloot nor captivesas theysurged intoTenochthe passion forpersonal but to kill.Where is theexemptionof nonwarriors, titlan, in those aims of tribute limited for the exaction, killings?Is thisa libcaptures, and violenceaftera painfully erationintoecstatic struggle? frustrating protracted Licensed massacresare unhappilyunremarkable,but thereare more particular explanations.The Tlaxcalans had signaled theirpeculiar hatredof the Mexicans early: on the Spaniards' first departureforthe Mexican citythe Tlaxcalans, offered chillinglyexplicit advice: "In Mexican chronic of treachery, warning killall we could, leavingno one alive: should we the fighting Mexicans,theysaid, neitherthe young, lest theyshould bear arms again, nor the old, lest theygive Their long-term exclusion fromthe play of Mexican alliance politics, counsel."85 the massive with power of the Mexicans, liberated them as underdogs coupled While other formidableNahua-speaking cities and from "normal" constraints. into the empire, the Tlaxcalans were kept out. I have provinceswere recruited come to see theirexclusion,theirrole as outsiders,not as an unfortunate quirk it was. of the kind of a but a structural necessary corollary, empire requirement, Asked whetherhe could defeattheTlaxcalans ifhe so chose, Moctezoma was said to have replied thathe could, but preferredto have an enemy against whom to I believehim.86 How else, with victims. testhis warriorsand to secure high-quality to make real the rhetoric,the high campaigns increasinglyfought far afield, of risk of warriordom?The overridingmetaphor of glamor, the authenticity Mexican life was contest, and the political fantasy of destined dominance That essentialrole had devolved onto the required a plausible antagonist/victim. Tlaxcalans. They made absolutelyno obeisance to the Mexican view of themselves,and theywere proximateenemies,penned likegamecocksin a coop-until the Spaniards came. Those wanderingmen withouta citycould not be pursued, subdued, or incorporated: theycould only be destroyed,and that Cortes's contalentsand the Mexican cultural predilectionfor capturingsignifiservationist cant enemies alive combined to preclude. The house of cards structureof the wider empire had been rendered unstable by their mere presence. Then they challenged the mutualityof interestbonding the valley citystates,so opening Tenochtitlanto assault, and the Tlaxcalans took theirchance to destroypeople and citytogether.87 and what he saw his Indian "friends"do later of thatday of killing, Writing there,Cortes was broughtto make one of his veryrare general statements:"No "Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty" 93
as the race, howeversavage, has ever practicedsuch fierceand unnaturalcruelty nativesof these parts."88 "Unnatural"cruelty. A nature. Against heavilyfreighted term in early sixteenth-century Spain. He had described Moctezoma as a "barbut he had done so in the course of an elaborate barian lord" in his earlier letter, descriptionof the Mexican cityand itscomplex workingsthatdemonstratedthe Mexican rulerwas a "barbarian"of a mostrare and civilizedkind. I thinkhis view was changed by the experience of the siege. There he saw "fierceand unnatural to suffering, an unnatural indifference an unnatural indifference to cruelty," death: a terrifying, terminaldemonstrationof "otherness," and of its practical Todorov has called Cortes a master in human and cognitiveunmanageability. communication.Here the masterhad found his limits.89 In the aftermathof the fall of the citythe Spaniards expressed their own cruelties.There was a phobic edge in some of the thingsdone, especiallyagainst those men mostobviouslythe custodiansof the indigenous culture.There was a and special death forpriestslike the Keeper of the Black House in Tenochtitlan, other wise men who came from Texcoco of their own free will, bearing their painted books. They were tornapart bydogs.90 I do not suggest thatany special explanationis required for Spanish or any All I would claim at the end is thatin the long and other conquerors' brutalities. of move terribleconversationof war,despite the apparent mutual intelligibility and counter-move, as in the trapand ambush game builtaround thebrigantines, that final nontranslatability of the vocabularyof battle and its modes of termination divided Spaniard from Indian in new and decisive ways. If for Indian warriorsthe lesson that theiropponents were barbarianswas learned early,for Spaniards, and for Cortes, thatlesson was learned mostdeeply only in the final stages, where the Mexicans revealed themselvesas unamenable to "natural" reason, and so unamenable to the routinesof managementof one's fellowmen. Once thatsense of unassuageable othernesshas been established,the outlook is bleak indeed.
Notes
An earlierversionof thispaper, "Cortes,Signsand the Conquest of Mexico,"has been in EarlyModern and Communication Europe published in AnthonyGrafton,ed., Culture Davis Center for the before Cullom It was first presented Shelby (Philadelphia, 1990). HistoricalResearch, PrincetonUniversity. to his emperor in 1. AnthonyPadgen notes severaleditionsof Hernando Cort6s'sletters Man (Cambridge, 1982), 58. fivelanguages between 1522 and 1525; TheFall ofNatural toJuan Gin6sde Sepulveda's "Democratessecundus sivedejustis 2. Ibid., 117, referring causis belli apud Indos."
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3. S. L. Cline, "Revisionist Conquest History:Sahagfin'sRevised Book XII," in J.Jorge Klor de Alva, H. B. Nicholson,and Eloise Quinones Keber,eds., TheWork ofBernardino Aztec Mexico(Albany,N.Y., 1988). de Sahagun,PioneerEthnographer ofSixteenth-Century indeed miraculouscharacterof the Spanish achieveThe claim as to the providential, ment was not novel, having been made earlier by Fray Toribio de Motolinia in his History of theIndians ofNew Spain (1541), trans.Elizabeth Andros Foster (New York, It 1950). infusesFranciscanattitudesas described byJohn Leddy Phelan, TheMillenin the NewWorld, Franciscans nial Kingdom 2nd ed. (Berkeley,1970). ofthe and the 4. W. H. Prescott, ofMexico History ofthe Conquest ofPeru(New History ofthe Conquest York,n.d.). as Romantic Art(Harbinger,N.Y., 5. For Prescottsee the finestudybyDavid Levin,History in his "Historyas RomanticArt: Structure, Characteriza1963); and more succinctly Historical Review39, no. 1 tion,and Stylein TheConquest ofMexico," HispanicAmerican (February 1959): 20-45. trans. Richard 6. Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of theOther, ofAmerica:The Question Howard (New York, 1984), part 2, passim but esp. 63-67, 80-81, 86-89. For Todosee the Spanish victory, notionof the defeatenclosed within rov'srathermetaphysical 97. p. 7. Veyne continues: "Other than the techniquesof handling and checkingdocuments, than one of ethnographyor of the art of travthere is no more a method of history elling,"which mightjust possiblybe true if the notion of "checking"is sufficiently (Middletown, Conn., Essay on Epistemology History: expanded; Paul Veyne, Writing 1984), 12. de la Conquista de la Nueva Espaia, introducverdadera 8. Bernal Diaz del Castillo,Historia tion and notes byJoaquin Ramirez Cabafias (Mexico City,1966), 40, 45. For inforsee RobertWauchope, ed., mationon Spanish and nativeConquest-relatedmaterials, HandbookofMiddleAmerican Indians,(Austin, Tex., 1964-76), vols. 12-15, Guide to Ethnohistorical ed. Howard F. Cline. Sources, Letters trans.and ed. AnthonyPagden, withan introduction Cortes: 9. Herndn Mexico, from byJ. H. Elliott (New Haven, 1986), "Second Letter,"88. See also J. H. Elliott,"The 5th ser., 17 Mental Worldof Hernmn Cort6s,"Transactions ofthe RoyalHistorical Society, 41-58. (1967): Codex:General 10. FrayBernardino de Sahagun, Florentine Things ofNewSpain, History ofthe trans.Charles E. Dibble and ArthurJ.O. Anderson (Salt Lake City,Utah, 1950-82); hereafter cited as Florentine Codex,with book, chapter, and page. Quetzalcoatlruler the of or Tula, the previous greatimperial power in "Tollan," mythic Topiltzin, the valley, before he withdrew to the east in some shadowyformertime,was ambiguously associated with Quetzalcoatl-Ehecatl,the Wind God. For the confusionsclusteringaround the storiesto do withthe self-exiled Quetzalcoatl-Topiltzin, legendary ruler of Tollan, see H. B. Nicholson,"TopiltzinQuetzalcoatl of Tollan: A Problem in Mesoamerican Ethnohistory" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1957). 11. Florentine Codex,12.16.17-18, 45, 48-49. 12. "This I saw in a paintingthatbelonged to an ancient chieftainfromthe provinceof Texcoco. Moctezoma was depicted in irons,wrapped in a mantleand carried on the de las indiasde Nueva Espana y shoulders of his chieftains"; FrayDiego Duran, Historia islas de TierraFirma,ed. Jose F. Ramirez, 2 vols. plus atlas (Mexico City,1967), chap. 74, pp. 541-42. 13. Cort6s,"Second Letter," 50.
95
14. Cort6s's own confusion deepens our confidencein our reading, as he aggressively withno demur fromMoctezoma. seeks to collectwhathe called "vassals"along theway, and freely offeredto supplycertainSpanFor example, the lord "Panuco" sent gifts, iards in his region whom he took to be membersof Cort6s'spartywithfood; "Second 54. See also the receptionoffered ibid. These were almost Letter," by"Sienchimalen," certainlynot gesturesof politicalsubordinationbut the normal courtesies-the provision of supplies, and if necessaryfuel and shelter-extended to officialtravelers withinthe more effectively subdued Mexican territories. Where Cort6smade the conditionof "vassal"more explicitbyrequestingnot food or carriersbut gold, the request was denied. 15. The lodging of the Spaniards in a royal palace is not especiallyremarkable,visiting rulersand rankingambassadors being routinely housed and feted,in the luxuriously not unfamiliar determination to impress potentiallytroublesome visitors while Codex,12.15.41. Despite chap. 43; Florentine keeping an eye on them; Duran, Historia, the intense traditional hostilitybetween Tlaxcala and the Mexicans, a Mexican embassynumberingmore than twohundred people soughtout Cort6sduringhis first stay in Tlaxcala, its members being permittedto come and go withouthindrance; Codex 69. The phrasingof theFlorentine on the Spanish assaulton the "Second Letter," warrior dancers affordsa dizzying perspectiveon Spanish-Mexican relations, the Spaniards being described as "friends"to that point, and then as having "risen up against us [the Mexicans]" to become "enemies"; 12.29.81. 16. Diaz, Historia, chap. 39. 17. Cort6s,"Third Letter,"188. few commentatorsare prepared to be so austere. For an attractive 18. Unsurprisingly and theHawk (Columbus, of display indulgence, see R. C. Padden, TheHummingbird Ohio), 1967. 19. Possible,but difficult: divisionson the meaningsof a pleasantly e.g., forart historians' the "Hamburg Box," a superb lidded substantialand certainlypre-contactartifact, greenstone box carved on both inner and outer surfaces,compare Esther Pasztory, Art(New York, 1983), 255-56; and her "El arte Mexica y la Conquista Espafiola," Aztec Nahuatl 17 (1983): 101-24; with H. B. Nicholson and Eloise QuiEstudiosde cultura Mexico: Treasures fones Keber, The Art of Ancient of Tenochtitlan (Washington,D.C., 1983), 64-66. 20. Cort6s,"Third Letter,"184. 21. Diaz, Historia, chap. 52. For a discussion see Richard C. Trexler,"Aztec Priestsfor ChristianAltars:The Theory and Practiceof Reverencein New Spain," in Paola Zamdi cultura livelli credenze occulte belli,ed., Scienze (Florence, 1982), 175-96. 52. 23. 22. Diaz, Historia, Ibid., chap. 107. chaps. 51, 24. In the ordinances he proclaimed in Tlaxcala in December 1520, preparatoryto the greatcampaign against the lake cities,Cort6semphasized the necessarydisciplinesof war (no privatebooty,no gamblingof weapons, no breakawayattacks,no insultsor brawlingin the ranks). But he prefaced it withthe declarationthatjustifiedall: that and to bringthe nativesto the the Spaniards' principalmotivewas to destroyidolatry justification, knowledgeof God and of the Holy Catholic Faith.Withoutthatprimary taken in it liable to restitution; the war to come would be unjust, and everything "Ordenanzas militaresdadas por Hernando Cort6s in Tlaxcallan," in Mario HerCartasy documentos nandez Sanchez Barba, ed., HerndnCortes: (Mexico City, 1963), 336-41. 60-62. 25. Cort6s,"Second Letter,"
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REPRESENTATIONS
27. Ibid., chap. 95. 26. Diaz, Historia, chaps. 46, 47, 51. 28. As John Elliottputs it: "It would be hard to thinkof a crazier strategy"; J. H. Elliott, NewYork ReviewofBooks,19 July1984. 29. Diaz, Historia, chap. 126. 30. Sahagun's informants emphasize physical contact far beyond Spanish reports, "recalling"Moctezoma as being prodded and pawed byany and all of the newcomers, with the disgrace of the unabashed glance marked equally keenly: "They caressed Moctezoma with their hands"; they"looked at him; theyeach looked at him thoroughly. They were continuallyactive on their feet; theycontinuallydismounted in order to look at him"; Florentine Codex,12.16.43-46; Diaz, Historia, chap. 88. 31. See note 30 above. 32. "Recorded" is puttingit rathertoo high: here we have to take the "captain'sspeech" conventionit is. But it is, at best,close to what Cortes claims he said: for the literary at worst,the gistof what Diaz thoughta man like Cortes ought to have said on such an occasion; Diaz, Historia, throughGod, chap. 61, e.g., "Now and fromhenceforth, done in the past.... books willmake much more of thisthan of anything the history The most famous Roman captain has not achieved such greatthingsas we have." Cf. 63. "Second Letter," 33. For a contrary viewof the whole conquest phenomenon as verymuch more pragmatic and routinized,see James Lockhart,TheMen ofCajamarca(Austin,Tex., 1972). On the importanceof the model of the Mexican Conquest forlaterconquerors: "[The Conquest of] Mexico had no major impact on Peru merelyby virtueof some years' precedence.... Pizarro was certainlynot thinkingof Cort6s and Moctezoma when he seized Atahualpa; he had been capturingcaciques [chiefs]in Tierra Firmelong before Mexico was heard of"; James Lockhart and Stuart B. Schwartz,EarlyLatin America (Cambridge, 1983), 84. were commonlyunderstoodas comingfromTezcatlipoca,the Mexican 34. Skin afflictions but we do not knowifthe Mexicans identified interventionist smallpoxpustules deity, withmore familiar lesions. As always,theynoted the monthof the epidemic'scoming and of itsdiminishing (a span of sixty day signs),but smallpoxdoes not appear in the Codexlistof Spanish-relatedevents(12.27-29.81-83). Florentine matter. 35. Wars of conquest waged against distant"barbarians"were a ratherdifferent For an exhaustive description from a steadfastly pragmatic perspective,see Ross Control (Norman, Okla., 1988). Imperial Expansionand Political Hassig, AztecWarfare: Aztec [warrior] were shaped bypolitical Dr. Hassig is persuaded that"in fact, practices realitiesand practical necessities"(10). The question is to discover what the Aztec/ to be. Mexican understood those "realitiesand practicalnecessities" 34. 36. Duran, Historia, chap. 37. Cf. the deliberate humiliationof the Tlatelolcan warriors,discovered hiding in the rushes afterthe Mexican victory, and ordered to quack. "Even today,"Duran noted, decades afterthe debacle, "the Tlatelolca are called 'quackers' and imitators of water fowl.They are much offendedby thisname and when theyfight the name is always recalled"; Historia, chap. 34, p. 264. 38. Contrastthe fate of Spaniards when faced withthe arrowsprojected fromthe short powerfulbows of the Chichimeca,the Indians of the northern steppeswhose territory athwart the road to the silver Indiansand Silver mines; Powell, Soldiers, lay PhilipWayne (Tempe, Ariz., 1975). 39. Diaz, Historia, chap. 153; Duran, Historia, chap. 77. 40. Indian cannibalismis a vexed question. In verybrief,insultdisplayspivoted on the
97
41. 42. 43.
44. 45.
46. 47. 49. 50. 51. 52. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.
threatof eating and being eaten. While the eatingof the fleshof a warrior'ssacrificed captive was hedged by ritual,more casual referencessuggestits debasing function, behavior was more relaxed. For ritual cannibalism, and it is possible thatbattlefield see Florentine Codex, 2.25.49-54; and Inga Clendinnen,"The Cost of Courage in Aztec 107 (May 1985): 44-89, esp. 56-60 and 69; forthe debasing Pastand Present Society," see Duran, Historia, function, chap. 9. 230. Cortes, "Third Letter," E.g., the attackon Cortes in the Xochimilcobattle,and the desperate rescue, Cortes chap. 145. sustaininga "bad wound in the head"; Diaz, Historia, muskets with a valued musketeerbeing allocated the crossbows, Spaniards equally same share of the spoils as a crossbowman,yetoddly musketsare mentioned infrequentlyin Indian accounts,perhaps because the ball could not be followedin flight, while crossbowboltswhirredand sang as theycame; Florentine Codex,12.22.62. For a succinct and accessible account of sixteenth-century cannon, in their enormous 507-8. Most of the small guns used in America could fire see Pagden, Cortes, variety, a ball of twentypounds over some four hundred meters (ibid., n. 59). For a more extended account, see Alberto Mario Salas, Las armasde la Conquista (Buenos Aires, 1950). Duran, Historia, chap. 72, pp. 529-30. E.g., on the Spanish retreatfromTenochtitlanthey"quicklyslew the people of Calanoticewere theyslain. [The Spaniards] coaya ... [they]did not provokethem;without vented theirwrathupon them,theytook theirpleasure withthem";Florentine Codex, 12:25:73. ritesaccorded the fragmented Florentine 2.20.55. It appears fromthe funerary Codex, corpses of the warriordancers that the Mexicans somehow decided thatthe victims had found death in a mode appropriate to warriors. 48. Ibid., 12.30.86. Ibid., 12.7.19. 58. Cort6s,"Second Letter," Diaz, Historia, chap. 63. of the entireskinsof fivehorses,"sewn up and as well tanned Note also the offering as anywherein the world,"in Texcoco. These captiveshad been taken in a situation where theywere riderlessat the timeof engagement.Cort6s,"Third Letter,"184. 53. Ibid., 192. Ibid., 252. and calling the Spaniards "rogues and cowards Diaz recalls them yelling,whistling, who did not dare to meet them througha day's battle,and retreatedbefore them"; Historia, chap. 126. Florentine Codex,12.31.89. For an account of those exemplarybattles,see Clendinnen, "Cost of Courage." Codex,12.35.87. E.g., Florentine a secular slave performing Ibid., 12.33.96; 12.34.99 (tlacotli, lowlytasks,not tlaaltilli, be to those selected captivesritually purified especiallyacceptable to the gods). Rather too much has been made of the Mexican concern for "day signs,"the deterovertheindividual's of theauguries associatedwithone's day ofbirth miningauthority Codex-the only tonalli,or destiny.It is true that in some passages of the Florentine source withthe kind of "spread" to make this sort of concept mapping viable-the individual is presented as quite mastered by his or her "fate."That clarityblurs on movementof broader acquaintance, emerging as part of the characteristic stylistic of the ideal and the temperingqualificamuch of the codex betweenfirmstatements tionsnecessaryto catchthe messinessof actuality. Day signshad about as much deter-
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REPRESENTATIONS
59. 60. 61. 63. 64. 65. 66.
67. 68.
69. 72.
73.
74. 75. 77. 78. 80. 81.
82.
mining power as horoscopes hold today for the moderate believer.They mattered, or as post-hocdiagnoses (and even then,one suspects,most but more as intimations readilyinvoked by others,not the individualsconcerned) than as iron determinants of fate. Cf. Todorov: "To know someone's birthdayis to know his fate"; Conquest of 64. America, John Keegan, TheFace ofBattle(New York, 1977), 184-86. Cort6s,"Second Letter,"134-35. 62. Ibid., chap. 151. Diaz, Historia, chap. 126. Miguel Leon-Portilla,TheBroken Spears(Boston, 1962), 107. The captor was the TlaCodex,12.35.103, n. 2. For an earlier exploit of the panecatlHecatzin-see Florentine Otomi warrior, see Florentine Codex,101. Face 296. Battle, Keegan, of As in the interspeciesmayhemdescribed by Konrad Z. Lorenz, where signs of submissionare not "understood"in the battlebetweenthe turkey and the peacock; King 194-95. Solomon's Ring (London, 1961), Cortes was desperate to treatwithQuauhtemoc in the last days of the siege, but Diaz reports that the ruler would not show himself,despite all reassurances,because he feared he would be killed by guns or crossbows,Cortes having behaved too dishonchap. 155. orablyto be trusted;Historia, Florentine Codex,12.35.104. 242. Cortes for his part deletes any Diaz, Historia, chap. 153; Cort6s,"Third Letter," of his Indian "vassals,"theadmissionof such a withdrawal referenceto the withdrawal to the Spanish castingaltogethertoo much lighton the nature of theircommitment cause. 71. Ibid., 12.40.123. 70. Ibid., 12.38.118. Florentine Codex,12.38.117. I offerMiguel Leon-Portilla'stranslationas the version most likelyto be familiar; Pre-Columbian Broken Literatures ofMexico(Norman, Spears,137-38. Cf. Leon-Portilla, and Ed Dorn, ImageoftheNew World Okla., 1969), 150-51; and Gordon Brotherston (London, 1979), 34-35. For other songs in traditionalformto do withthe Conquest, Mexicanos see John Bierhorst,Cantares (Stanford,Calif., 1985), esp. no. 13, pp. 15153; no. 60, p. 279 (obscurely); no. 66, pp. 319-23; no. 68, for its early stanzas, pp. 327-41; no. 91, pp. 419-25. noted the courage of thechiefChichimecatecle, For example, Cort6sapprovingly who in the vanguard,"tookitas an affront when put "havingalwaysgone withhis warriors to the rear in the transportfor the brigantines:"When he finally agreed to this,he asked that no Spaniards should remain accompanyinghim, for he is a most valiant man and wished to keep all the gloryforhimself";"Third Letter,"185. For the multiple demands on Cortes in this period see J.H. Elliott,"The Spanish of America,"in Leslie Bethell,ed., TheCambridge Conquest and the Settlement History 1 Latin vol. America, of (Cambridge, 1984), 149-206. 76. Ibid., 232-33. 256. Cort6s,"Third Letter," Ibid., 257; Diaz, Historia, Codex,12.38.113. chap. 155; Florentine 79. Ibid., 262. 258. Cort6s,"Third Letter," Diaz, Historia, chap. 156. Keegan, Face ofBattle,65-66. This is not to claim any directclassical influence; see "MentalWorldof Cort6s,"forCortes'sslightacquainxlvii;and Elliott, Pagden, Cortes, tance withclassical authors. Caesar's Commentaries had been published in Spanish by 1498, and it is possible thatCortes had read them,although perhaps unlikely. was at Matalcingo,the people of [TenochFor the control:"While the alguacil-mayor
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And so to more worriedguesses and second guesses; ibid., 259-60. 83. Ibid., 261. 84. The Tlaxcalans refused to participatein any expedition (like the sortieagainst Narvaez) not in theirdirectinterest;theywithdrewat will,takingtheirloot withthem; theyrequired paymentforaid giventhe Spaniards afterthe expulsion fromTenochof killing them;Diaz, Historia, titlan, chap. 98. Their selfhavingconsidered the utility servants to the faithful friends and as willing Spaniards, as picturedin representation the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, came a generationor more afterthe Conquest as part of a campaign forprivileges. 85. Ibid., chap. 79. 86. Andres de Tapia, "Relaci6n hecha por el sefiorAndres de Tapia sobre la Conquista de documentos de Mexico," in Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, ed., Colecci6n para la historia deMexico,2 vols. (Mexico City,1858-66), 2:343-438. 87. It was possiblyin the decimationof nativeleaders who had learned how to deal with each other thatthe smallpox epidemic had itsmostimmediatepoliticaleffect. 262. 88. Cort6s,"Third Letter," 89. Those limitswere to be drawn more narrowly throughthe shakingexperience of the Honduran expedition.The Cort6swho earlyin the Mexican campaign could dismiss "omens" in the confidencethat"God is more powerfulthan Nature" learned in Honduras how helpless men are when Nature, not men, opposes them,and where God and that he, seems far away.There he discoveredthat God is bound by no contract, like all men, must wait upon His will.The "FifthLetter"reads like a mournfulantiphon to the sanguine assurance of Cort6s'searlyConquest accounts. de la Naci6nMexicana,prepared by Heinrich Unosanales historicos 90. Analesde Tlatelolco: Berlin (Mexico City,1948), 371-89, 74-76.
before dawn. titlan]decided to attackAlvarado's camp by night,and struckshortly When the sentrieson foot and on horseback heard them they shouted, 'to arms!' Those who were in that place flungthemselvesupon the enemy,who leapt into the water as soon as theysaw the horsemen .... Fearing our men mightbe defeated I ordered my own company to arm themselvesand march into the cityto weaken the offensive against Alvarado"-and so on; Cort6s, "Third Letter," 247. For the dislocation: When we came withinsightof the enemy we did not attackbut marched thatat any momenttheywould come out to meet throughthe citythinking us [to surrender].And to induce it I galloped up to a verystrongbarricade who were behind which theyhad set up and called out to certainchieftains and whom I knew,thatas theysaw how lost theywere and knew thatif I so desired withinan hour not one of them would remain alive why did not Guatimucin[Quauhtemoc], theirlord, come and speak withme.... I then used otherargumentswhichmoved themto tears,and weeping theyreplied theywell knew theirerror and theirfate,and would go and speak to their lord.... They went,and returnedaftera while and told me theirlord had not come because it was late,but thathe would come on the following day at noon to the marketplace;and so we returnedto our camp.... On the followingday we went to the cityand I warned my men to be on the alert lest the enemybetrayus and we be takenunawares.
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"Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty": Corts and the Conquest of Mexico Author(s): Inga Clendinnen Source: Representations, No.

"Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty": Cortes and the Conquest of Mexico

and Unnatural "Fierce Cruelty"

and Unnatural "Fierce Cruelty"

"Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty"

"Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty"

but theycould not save it.72

"Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty"

"Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty"

41. 42. 43.

59. 60. 61. 63. 64. 65. 66.

74. 75. 77. 78. 80. 81.

"Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty"

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