More dramatic information about Moctezuma’s response to the signs of his impending loss may be found in Diego Durán’s History of the Indies of New Spain than in any other sixteenth-century source. Because it was not published until the late nineteenth century, Durán’s monumental work—which consists of the History and two other volumes on the Aztec pantheon, festivals, and calendar—is still undervalued. It is a masterwork of colonial ethnohistory.
Even though Durán wrote in the late 1570s, when Sahagun’s work was almost finished, he also spoke with locals who had either witnessed part of the events of 1519–1521 or had been retained by their ancestors as a local memory of the disaster. It is possible that he worked along with Sahagun and the Colegio pupils in Tlatelolco.
Durán was born in Seville, but he spent his early years in Texcoco, where he resided until he was around six years old. At nineteen, he joined the Dominican order, and he was proficient in Nahuatl. He has been bestowed with the honorific appellation of “mestizo” by Mexican academics. Most importantly, though, is that Durán based a large portion of his History on a now-lost record, which he repeatedly refers to as the “Crónica” (though Doris Heyden interprets this as “Historia” instead of “Chronicle”).
Native Texcoco historian Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc and Jesuit Juan de Tovar both utilized this story, which may have been written in part in Nahuatl and supplemented by pictographs, as a source. Experts now refer to it as the Cronica X. A document translated and preserved by the French cosmographer André Thevet, previously quoted, is attributed to Father Andrés de Olmos, a Franciscan who conducted ethnographic research akin to Sahagun’s in the 1530s, and to whom Ignacio Bernal believes it may have been the work.
Durán transforms into an Aztec historian from their own viewpoint by drawing on the Crónica X, without diminishing them to the level of Spanish victims. Furthermore, even if Bernal Díaz or Sahagun had confirmed some aspects, he shows sarcastic doubt about them in order to establish a triumphalist, pro-Spanish version of the conquest. “I have heard, but I cannot find it in [the Crónica X], that Cortés was offered a great deal of wealth by Moctezuma and the other rulers in exchange for his return to his own country.”
The next section of this chapter comments on the poetic justice meted out to the conquistadors, many of whom Durán argues are now impoverished and constantly begging on the streets. Because of this source, Durán’s history has credibility that modern readers may otherwise be tempted to doubt due to its dramatic and literary elements, particularly the way Moctezuma is portrayed. Because Moctezuma is a completely tragic hero in Durán.
Symbolic omens of the approaching conflict indicate that the native leader would lose in several of the nineteenth-century Indian tragedies, including the most popular one, Metamora. Logan, the Last of the Race of Shickellemus by Joseph Doddridge depicts how the colonial troops and Indians responded to the same celestial phenomenon. This also marks the dramatic beginning of Durán’s narrative of Moctezuma’s conquest. Hundreds of pages later, Durán wraps up his epic account of the mythical beginnings of the Mexica in Aztlan, their migration into the Mexican valley, the founding of the Aztec empire, and the line of rulers that led up to Moctezuma II (Moctezuma Xocoyoltzin), who became the ninth ruler in 1502 and went on to conquer neighboring states.
The story changes in chapter 61 when Nezahualpilli, the Texcoco leader and an elder statesman who had backed Moctezuma’s election, warns the people, saying, “You must be on your guard, you must be warned, because I have discovered that in a very few years our cities will be ravaged and destroyed.” Nezahualpilli is the son of the renowned lawgiver Nezahualcoyotl. Our subjects will be humiliated and we and our children will be slaughtered. You can’t have any doubts about any of these. You will see that every time you declare war against Huexotzinco, Tlaxcala, or Cholula, you will lose, demonstrating to you that I am telling the truth. The adversary will always triumph against you, and you will suffer significant casualties in terms of officers and men. I will also add that, before many days have gone, you will see omens of what I am saying appear in the skies.
These misfortunes and afflictions will not befall me, for my days are limited. I wanted to warn you before I passed away because of this. A comparable section may be found in Hubbard’s account of King Philip’s War. Just before his death in 1660, Passaconaway, a Niantic “bashaba” on the Merrimack River (which Hubbard defines as a sachem of sachems or chief of chiefs), warned his people, “Take heed how you quarrel with the English, for though you may do them much mischief, yet assuredly you will all be destroyed.” Just as Durán claims that Nezahualpilli “possessed the faculty of divining, which was a divine gift and a natural quality, to explain the meaning of this mysterious new thing,” Hubbard adds that “this Passaconaway was the most noted Pawaw and Sorcerer of all the Country.”
These two colonial conflicts took place 150 years and thousands of miles apart, yet their histories followed similar plots. However, Durán added dramatic moments featuring the native leaders, which Anglo-American writers would not create until the 1820s. According to Durán’s account, the Indian tragic hero cried out to the gods, pleading for his days to end quickly so he would not have to witness the disasters that had been prophesied—all the tragedies that were to occur in his time.
This response to the ominous signs is so nuanced that it might be compared to Oedipus or Lear. Nevertheless, Moctezuma attacks Tlaxcala in an attempt to test Nezahualpilli’s prophesy, and sure enough, the latter is decisively routed. However, a second attempt the following year proves more fruitful, leading Moctezuma to doubt the accuracy of the prophesies.
Durán reiterates the most of Sahagun’s eight omens, but in a different order and only in relation to Moctezuma’s answers. Nezahualpilli issues a warning long in advance of the comet’s appearance, and the Tezcoco chieftain repeats that the sign “comes out of the east and is directed toward Mexico-Tenochtitlán and this whole region” when it does. It portends poorly for our kingdoms. Moctezuma bemoans his destiny:
Unfortunately, I would much prefer convert into stone, wood, or any other earthly substance than succumb to what I so greatly fear! But all I can do, mighty king, is wait for what you have foretold? I thank you and give you a kiss for this reason. Unfortunately, I am unable to transform into a bird at this time so that I can fly into the woods and hide there! According to our chronicle, the two kings bid each other a very sorrowful departure with these remarks.