Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico Essay (Critical Writing)

Introduction

The story of the Conquest of Mexico, as narrated by Stuart, has captured the imagination of readers since the sixteenth century. This arises partly because it presents the struggle of the indigenous Indians on the coast of Mexico in America and their struggle against the invading Spanish sailors. It is a clash of two great cultures-the European (Spanish) and Native American- Indian culture. This great indigenous civilization on the coast of Mexica is destroyed by the tyrant and ruthless band of Hernan Cortes and his Spanish conquistadors.

In 1519 Cortes and a small contingent of Spanish adventurers arrived on the Mexican coast. They had dreamt of fame, riches, lucrative trade routes, and other ways of making profits. As such a lot of sponsorship and commanding authority was given to Cortes by the King. He was charged with conquering and bringing new lands under the rule of King Charles v.

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When they docked, they encountered a militant community in Mexico, the Mexica. This group was a powerful militant one and staged remarkable resistance against the Spanish. However, there were many other warring groups in this land, including the Aztecs, the Tenochtitlan among others. These groups rebelled against one another and Tenochtitlan even befriended the Spanish. This coalition weakened their abilities and led to their defeat.

Within three years Cortes destroyed the empire and toppled the foundations of its cultural traditions. Many of the people died from war, famine, or disease. The remnants of the indigenous Indian community struggled to survive and adapt to the Spanish colonial regime and the new religion- Catholicism. In many ways, Cortes’s conquest represented the death of a political state(s) together with much of their way of life and the birth of a new colonial regime in its place.

To some extent, Cortes’s expansions and attitude of supremacy led him to seek new colonies. His conquests against the Americas were motivated by religious visions and opinions, personal interests, class, and ethnic biases, and political considerations of the King. Alongside the need to access new sources, produced by the indigenous peoples, he wanted to spread Roman Catholicism as a world religion. Specifically, the sailors wanted to entrench Catholicism and bring all natives and citizens of conquered lands under the papacy and the king. This is depicted in Stuart’s account about letters Cortes sent to their king, Charles V. A Part of one of them read like this way.

Your Majesties may therefore perceive whether it is not our duty to prevent such loss and evil. certainly, it will be pleasing to God if by means of and under the protection of your royal Majesties these peoples are exposed to the instruction of the holy catholic faith so that the dedication trust, and hope they show to their idols is reverted to seeking the divine power of the true God; for it is certain that if they should serve God with that same faith, fervor and diligence they would work many miracles. And we believe that not without cause has God been pleased to allow this land to be discovered in the name of your royal Majesties, that your Majesties may reap great merit and reward from Him in sending the Gospel to these barbarian people who thus by your Majesties’ hands will be received into the true faith….¹

He thought the indigenous Indians were too barbaric in their cultural practices and that it was God who had intervened and made them discover this land. He wanted the King to believe that Catholicism was the only way that the people of Mexico would receive help and salvation. He also told the king of the immense benefits he would get from the new land. Stuart also says that the Spanish conquistadors thought that Mexico was part of the “new world” they were seeking. Spurred by the views presented above the Spaniards set out to conquer and convert, not really envisioning threats or resistance. Where there was resistance they unleashed the full force of their artillery.

In Mexico and Central America, the natives too were divided along with their religious beliefs and practices and each had the distinctive culture that they spread through conquests and trade. They had a pantheon of gods and goddesses who were worshipped on different occasions. There was Huitzilopochtli, patron of the Mexica; the cult of the Feathered Serpent; Quetzalcoatl, the ancient god of the Toltecs, among others. They also had a number of separate political units and different ethnicities because they believed in divergent religious practices.

Because of this, there was widespread clashes and show of supremacy about which deity was superior. For example; although the people of Tenochtitlan and Tlaxcala spoke Nahuatl and shared many cultural attributes, they were bitter enemies. Another group that the great capital city Tenochtitlan, and of its neighboring island community of Tlatelolco, referred to themselves not as “Aztecs” but as “Mexica,” Some of the rulers for instance Topiltzin-Quetzalcoatl even left their positions after he was forced out in a power struggle with the followers of another deity. This brought a Toltec presence and the cult of the Feathered Serpent which were widely found in Yucatan.

The cult of war and human sacrifice became part of the way of life as society became more militarized. Many prisoners of war were taken and sacrificed in celebrations of victory. They also took children and adults and while still alive, they tore out their hearts and bowels, burning them in the presence of those idols, and offering the smoke of such burning as a pleasant sacrifice. This was done in order to seek intervention or acceptance of their petition. For instance; the following is an excerpt about a Spanish officer who encounters a scene of human sacrifice:

…bodies of men and boys who had been sacrificed, and the walls and altars stained with blood and the hearts placed as offerings before the Idols. He also found the stones on which the sacrifices were made and the stone knives with which to open the chest so as to take out the heart. He and his soldiers were astounded at such great cruelty.²

The Spaniards felt that this was a punishable, horrible, and abominable custom. Their resolve to give light to these barbarians was intensified. When there was resistance from the militant groups there broke warfare that led to easy conquests over the indigenous people. Because the primitive weapons and sticks that the natives used in war could not match the sophisticated artillery that Cortes had and their warships, the natives could not mount credible resistance to stem off invasion by the Spaniards. Therefore when Mexica, the formidable territory succumbed to the Spaniards all the others were conquered subsequently leaving an opening to the invasion of Mexico.

Stuart says that the Spaniards and the Mexica had divergent ways in how they viewed each other. The approach of the Nahua, the native people, was ambivalent, oscillating from a view that the Spaniards were suspect strangers strange but who provided an alternative vision of supernatural beings to them. They also equated the Spaniards with a returning deity who had come to reclaim his kingdom “in some accounts Huitzilopoctli, patron of the Mexica, himself, in others, Quetzalcoatl, the ancient god of the Toltecs—became a standard aspect of the indigenous accounts.” ³ this revealed the compromise and later acceptance that the Spanish showed the Natives.

Initially, when the conquerors landed they considered the indigenous people without rights or civilization. The Spaniards looked to their earlier encounters with other Native Americans and to their older traditions of diplomacy and contact with other non-Europeans to judge the natives. From an already biased position, they believed that the indigenous people were tyrannical and violent competitors in their “new world”. They saw them as “Noble savages” who were inferior to them as demonstrated by the widespread practice of human sacrifice. They concentrated on the practice of human sacrifice as a singularly reprehensible custom and one which helped to further justify the spreading of Catholicism and by the extension of the king’s control region. Cortes exaggerated these findings in his letters to the King and was given more authority and rule over the Natives.

There are a few common issues that could be noted between these two cultures- the European and native. A later version of reports translated from Native languages reveals that like the European, pre-conquest t native societies were urbanized, literate, and successful farmers. They also had military tendencies. When invading a place they were all violent and undermined the opponent and their religious practices. The natives also occasionally clashed and struggled for regional dominance and control of the agricultural lands around the margins of the lake. Children were killed as a perceived escape from a terrible life to come. They all massacred their opponents. the Spaniards made efforts to forcefully convert the natives to Catholicism.

Comparably the native religious traditions and the European culture had basic issues of human existence in the center of their religious issues. Little difference was recognized between the natural and the supernatural world. The Spanish had their God and natives had their deities. They knew and honored the ancient Mesoamerican gods: the deities of the sky, the earth, the corn, and the sun. Although there was recognition of a unifying life-giving force, there were a vast number of gods and goddesses. There were extensive yearly religious and complex ritual ceremonies of feasting, fasting, dancing, penance, and sacrifice in honor of their divine beings.

The difference lies with the reaction of the conquerors to the cultural developments they encountered. Stuart records that Cortes destroyed all traces of records for the native culture and so that he rewrote their stories, he ordered all records to be burnt and destroyed. With that disruption and exploitation that followed this encounter, a big change occurred not only in what they chose to record and remember about these events but also in the form of how they recorded them.

The way they presented their stories differed considerably. It has been suggested that Cortes sometimes “invented” facts to fit his purposes. For the Nihau, myth, history, and propaganda were not discrete categories and none was more “true” than the others. Hernan Cortes Letter to Charles V The letters of Cortes really reported that mixed self-explanations and justifications with more general information of the kind to interest a king

The desire of rulers for wealth and power financed conquest, and the desire of the Roman Catholic Church for converts provided religious motivation for the subjection of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The catholic practices and the indigenous religious practices differed greatly. Hence after being victorious the Spaniards spared little tolerance for the natives hence the different approaches. After the conquest, the natives in Mexico accepted this new form of tyranny and lavished the rulers with imperial tribute imposed on them on the households of the commoners. They had to increase their work for the elite rulers and pay tribute to them.

The Spanish had developed a superior education system and had people like Cortes who was sharp and educated. The growth in learning modes resulted in advanced technological development in terms of weapons and strategy. Coupled with the support given by the king and the need to make Europe a world economy, they successfully staged conquests on the less sophisticated indigenous tribes. The indigenous tribes though civilized in their own way could not match the Spaniards and as a result the various attitudes between them

The Spanish cherish themselves to have brought about the civilization and particular cultural and architectural patterns peculiar to the Mexicans during the post-classic period in Mesoamerica. After the establishment of their religion, the invaders considered Mexico as “the foundation of heaven,” the political, symbolic, and ritual center of their universe. They went further to build it as a core comprising a central complex of palaces and temples surrounded by an enclosing wall.

Its causeways represented the four cardinal directions. Neighborhoods were organized in pairs of twenty communal corporate groups or calpulli and in temple-maintenance groups, each with its own temple and school to look after. They knew and honored the ancient Mesoamerican gods: the deities of the sky, the earth, the corn, and the sun. Chief among these was the Mexica’s main patron, a form of the sun god, the Hummingbird of the South, Huitzilopochtli. The great deities of the imperial cult were also recognized by the Europeans.

It was also after the conquest that natives learned to write both in Spanish and their own language, Nahuatl, using the Roman alphabet. The Spanish had developed a superior education system. Through missionary instruction and schools, a generation of indigenous youth learned to write their native languages, Nahuatl, Mixtec, Maya, Purepecha (Tarascan), and others, in the Roman alphabet. The two traditions were combined sometimes as in the case of the Florentine Codex or the Codex Mendoza to pro¬ duce a new “colonial” kind of writing.⁴ The old forms of symbolic representation and glyphs continued to be used but the artists were now influenced by images and techniques introduced by European art.

A large number of these post-conquest texts exist, reflecting various degrees of indigenous and European elements and presenting a variety of viewpoints. Commerce and barter trade thrived in the empire. Jewelry and goods made from bronze or obsidian were accessible even to the commoners. Among the disadvantages to the natives is that they worked extra hard to pay their tributes. The nobles derived pleasure, luxury, and lavish lifestyles from the tribute.

Conclusion

This tribute was also used to support the development of the city-states. The natives who were specialists in a particular field like sculpting, jewelry, or any craft that resulted in the production of a luxury item were employed by the nobles. On the whole, the Spanish and Nahua views on the conquest of Mexico are a mixture of resentfulness and admirations, resentfulness in barbaric practices committed by either side, and admiration for the various developments within each culture. The Spaniards admired the recording or presentation style of the natives while the natives cherished them as near deities. This encounter between the two cultures has both negative and positives.

1. Stuart B. Schwartz, ed., Victors and Vanquished: Spanish Views of the Conquest of Mexico Pg. 84.
2. Stuart B. Schwartz, ed., Victors and Vanquished: Spanish Views of the Conquest of Mexico, pg. 76.
3. Stuart B. S, ed., Victors and Vanquished: Spanish Views of the Conquest of Mexico, pg. 20.
4. Stuart B. S, ed., Victors and Vanquished: Spanish Views of the Conquest of Mexico, pg. 183.

Works cited

Stuart B. Schwartz, ed., (2000) Victors and Vanquished: Spanish Views of the Conquest of Mexico Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.