Primary source analysis and interpretation methods

Primary Source Analysis

The Aztec chronicler who wrote the account of the Spanish conquest notes that, from the start, the Spaniards had come to make war, but does not give much account of Motecuhzoma's psychological motivations for approaching them. He describes in great detail how Motecuhzoma greeted the Spanish while adorned in all his finery, and presented them with gifts both lavish and delicate: necklaces of gold and garlands of flowers (Graebner 24). It is possible that this was a diplomatic attempt to forestall bloodshed, but more likely that Aztec warfare involved a ritualized and formal gesture before it commenced. Certainly the description here sounds more like the ritual described later, in which two captives are "painted with chalk" and then have their hearts ripped out ritually while Motecuhzoma watches, and then their blood is sprinkled on the messengers who have brought Motecuhzoma and account of the Spanish armaments and cavalry. The Aztec description of the Spanish overall is focused on the absolute weirdness of their appearance by Mesoamerican standards: their hair and beards were shaggy and blond, their dogs were larger and spotted, their clothes and hats were made of iron. The horses are thought to be deer: the cannon is mostly described with the fearful evidence of what it does, but there is no description of gunpowder, or how the cannon operates. The 1505 engraved illustration (reprinted by Brinkey on page 1) depicts the natives as naked savages feasting on human flesh. (Indeed, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English word "cannibal" finds its original etymology in a corruption of "Carib," the same tribe which gave its name to the Caribbean.) In terms of the Spaniards' initial impressions of them, it is possible that they saw them largely in religious terms -- the cannibal feasting of the Aztecs seemed to the Spanish like a grotesque (or demonic) parody of the Christian Eucharist. But the Spanish were less interested in the natives than in their wealth.

The description of the Spanish atrocities in the Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico might sound overstated, as though it were part of their ritual accounting of warfare. Long before the Spanish arrived the Aztecs, or Mexica, had already built a society in which warfare was the central engine: their society was built on enslaving, and in many cases eating, neighboring Mesoamerican tribes that they first subdued by warfare. In such societies, warfare can take on a highly ritualized character -- such as garlanding your enemy before you meet him in combat, or else recording his wickedness in such a way that accounts for the defeat (i.e., the conquered Aztecs complaining the fight was not fair -- which in many ways it was not). But the main shock of reading the Aztec account of the Spanish conquest is the absolute anticlimax of the ending: after besieging and taking Tenochtitlan, all the Spaniards are interested in is the gold in Motecuhzoma's treasure-house. The account mentions the rich adornments of quetzal feathers and other rarities, to note that the Spaniards simply burnt anything that wasn't gold when melting the gold down into ingots (Graebner 26). The Aztec seems to indicate that he cannot understand their worship of gold.