Because they could openly attack the Spanish conquistadors without disparaging the intentions of the English colonists, the fall of Tenochtitlan and its king, Moctezuma, made for an even more alluring subject for these writers. During the Mexican War in the middle of the 20th century, jingoistic propaganda began to incorporate such anti-Spanish emotions. But the reason this campaign was so simple is that, as I show in the chapter on King Philip’s War that follows, in the 1820s and 1830s, a postcolonial criticism of English imperialism in North America had already gained widespread traction.
The representation of the Aztec and Inca empires by Spanish conquerors in nineteenth-century American literature has already been much clarified by works like McWilliams, David Levin, and Eric Wertheimer. In this chapter, I focus more on the indigenous and Spanish-American literature and historiography of the events of 1519–21, both in the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries, during the first Mexican insurrection against Spanish colonial rule, than I do on the viewpoints of Anglo writers on the conquest of Mexico.
We have access to an indigenous historiography of Mexico that is not really the case for tribal history in North America. We are not restricted to textual research while studying Moctezuma and the events of 1519–1521; instead, we have access to a wealth of pictorial works created by indigenous people of Mexico’s Val Moctezuma ley. These people kept intricate historical and genealogical records that were painted or inscribed in vibrant colors on cotton rolls by a group of painters who had received specialized training. They used a semiological system known as tlacuilolli, which combines iconic and hieroglyphic symbols not found in any other language in the world. The Spanish conquerors burned almost all of these conventional books or screenfolds, which experts in the topic refer to as codices.
However, the tlacuilolli technique persisted in a hybrid form as artists produced new works of art after the conquest that frequently recounted the conquest’s history and the part played by their people. Beginning in the mid-1500s, Bernardino de Sahagun, a Franciscan friar, employed his students at the Collegio de Santa Cruz, a school for indigenous boys established by his monastic order at Tlatelolco, near Tenochtitlan, to paint hundreds of illustrations for his extensive ethnographic project on native culture, the Historia géneral de las cosas de Nueva España.
His church leaders hid this outstanding work, which wasn’t released until the eighteenth century. The thirteenth volume of Anderson and Dibble’s English translation contains the final of its twelve volumes, which describes the Spanish invasion. Little drawings scattered throughout the text create a graphical narrative that is similar to the native hieroglyphic writing system.
This story provides further context for the rivalry between Moctezuma and Cortés. The first picture in book 12’s series depicts Spanish ship offloading from the Gulf Coast, not far from present-day Veracruz. Then appear eight drawings that represent the eight conquest omens observed in the preceding years, occurrences that we will carefully examine. The Mexican commander is seen in Panel 19 (the enumeration by Anderson and Dibble) as he listens to an account of the arrivals given by two messengers who are holding tlacuilolli, a sign for crucial spoken information, “flying tongues” in front of their lips.
Moctezuma adopts the standard attitude of a monarch, perched on a throne beneath a roof adorned with decorations, evoking the reverse C-shaped enclave that was closely modeled after the Aztec year-sign house. His left arm is extending slightly downward, while his right arm is lifted with the index finger pointing.≤ Moctezuma was clean-shaven in the two previous photos, but in this one, he had a beard, as do Cortés and almost other Spaniards. This might be crucial.
The earliest clear picture of Cortés shows him receiving messengers in a stance reminiscent to the famous one adopted by Moctezuma, with the exception that Cortés is seated on his own Spanish-style curule chair rather than a throne, appears on the left side of the frame, and wears a helmet or cap. Therefore, these indigenous painters depicted Cortés’ authority using some of the same motifs that they had used to describe Moctezuma, his victim and predecessor. The condition following the conquest is depicted in an illustration from the book Lienzo de Tlascala, which was created by painters from Tlascala, a city that was vital to the Spanish army. Cortés continues to sit on a chair in the Spanish style, “which came to symbolize authority in post-conquest indigenous documents,” but he now takes a seat beneath the famous roof in the same manner as Moctezuma, holding his hands in a similar manner.
Doña Marina (Malinche), his mistress and interpreter, is positioned behind him. Seated beside him in another curule chair is Moctezuma. According to Stephanie Wood’s documentation, during the colonial era, the caciques considered it fitting to replace their own thrones with the curule chair.
However, Moctezuma and his three advisors are depicted as soaring in midair, just symbolizing homage rather than being actual men, much as the animals and birds displayed in cages below. Among the extant native Mexican manuscripts from the sixteenth century are several such tribute records. The receivers may have used them as a kind of imperial art in addition to using them as contracts to demonstrate the terms of payment.