This new world now revealed: Hernán Cortés and the presentation of Mexico to Europe

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 – For studies of the plan of Tenochtitlan and its later renditions, see Ignacio Alcocer, Apuntes sobre la antigua México-Tenochtitlan (Tacubaya, Mexico: Publicación, Instituto Panamericano de Geografia e Historia, no. 14, 1935); Manuel Toussaint, ‘El plano atribuído a Hernán Cortés, studio histórico y analítico,’ in Planos de la ciudad de México, siglos XVI y XVII, Manuel Toussaint, Federico Gómez de Orozco, Justino Fernández (Mexico: XVI Congreso Internacional de Planificación y de la Habitación, 1938), pp. 91–105; Justino Fernández, ‘El plano atribuído a Hernán Cortés, studio urbanístico,’ in Planos de la ciudad de México, siglos XVI y XVII, Toussaint et al., pp. 107–15; Federico Gómez de Orozco, ‘El plano atribuído a Hernán Cortés, studio bibliográfico,’ in Planos de la ciudad de México, siglos XVI y XVII, Toussaint et al., pp. 117–26; Jean Michel Massing, ‘Map of Tenochtitlan and the Gulf of Mexico,’ in Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, ed. Jay Levenson (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1992), pp. 572–3; Barbara Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital: the 1524 Nuremberg map of Tenochtitlan, its sources and meanings,’ Imago Mundi, 50 (1998), pp. 11–33; Dominique Gresle-Pouligny, Un plan pour Mexico-Tenochtitlan. les représentations de la cité et l'imaginaire européen (XVIe-XVIII siècles) (Paris and Montreal: L'Harmattan, 1999); Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, ‘Reflexiones acerca del plano de Tenochtitlan publicado en Nuremberg in 1524,’ Caravelle: Cahiers du monde hispanique et luso-brésilien, 76–7 (2001), pp. 183–95; Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ is alone in considering the coastal map along with the plan. For the analyses of the plan vis-à-vis other city plans, see Juergen Schultz, La cartografia tra scienza e arte. Carte e cartografi nel rinascimento italiano (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, Modena, 1990), pp. 40–1, 62–3; Lucia Nuti, Ritratti di città. visione e memoria tra medioevo e settecento (Venice: Marsilio, 1996), pp. 114–7, figs. 44, 45, 47; Richard Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World 1493–1793 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 64–7; David Y. Kim, ‘Uneasy reflections: images of Venice and Tenochtitlan in Benedetto Bordone's Isolario,’ Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 49/50 (2006), pp. 80–91. 2 – See for example Henry Wagner, The Discovery of New Spain in 1518 by Juan de Grijalva (Berkeley: The Cortes Society, 1942), p. 3; Robert S. Weddle, Spanish Sea: The Gulf of Mexico in North American Discovery 1500–1685 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985); Paul E. Hoffman, ‘Discovery and early cartography of the northern Gulf coast,’ in Charting Louisiana: Five Hundred Years of Maps, eds Alfred E. Lemmon, John T. Magill, and Jason R. Wiese (New Orleans: Historic New Orleans Collection, 2003), pp. 7–22. 3 – Cortés's second letter, Carta de relacion embiada a su. s. majestad del emperador nuestro señor por el capital general de la Nueva Spaña: llamado Fernando Cortes, was first published in Seville in 1522 by Jacobo Cromberger. The standard English translation is Hernán Cortés, Letters from Mexico, trans. and ed. Anthony Pagden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986). For Peypus see Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Nuremberg, a Renaissance City, 1500–1618 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), p. 42. The so-called ‘first letter’ that is extant was sent to Charles by the judiciary and municipal council of Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, although it was probably drafted by Cortés. Pagden, in Letters from Mexico, pp. liii–lx, discusses the various extant and lost letters. 4 – Martyr d'Anghiera's De rebus, et Insulis noviter repertis recounts the Juan de Grijalva expedition to Mexico of 1518. Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, De orbe novo: the Eight Decades of Pater Martyr D'Anghera, ed. Francis Augustus MacNutt (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1912). Tertia Ferdina[n]di Cortesii sac. Caesar. et cath. maiesta. in nova maris oceani Hyspania generalis præfecti p[rae]clara narratio (Nuremberg: Friedrich Arthemesium [Peypus], 1524); copies in the Houghton Library at Harvard and New York Public Library have the two letters bound together. 5 – For the rhetorical strategies of Cortés's letters, see John Elliott, ‘Cortés, Velázquez and Charles V,’ in Cortés, Letters from Mexico, pp. xi–xxxvi; John Elliott, Spain and Its World 1500–1700 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 4; Victor Frankl, ‘Imperio particular e imperio universal en las cartas de relación de Hernán Cortés,’ Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 165 (1963), pp. 443–82; Glen Carman, Rhetorical Conquests: Cortés, Gómara, and Renaissance Imperialism (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2006). 6 – Cortés was able to achieve this by the founding of the town of Villa Rica de la Veracruz, whose citizens (all Cortés's men) then elected Cortés chief justice and alcalde mayor and received him as captain of the royal armies; Cortés, Letters from Mexico, pp. 26–8. For the legal principles on which this finesse rested, see Victor Frankl, ‘Hernán Cortés y la tradición de las Siete Partidas,’ Revista de Historia de América, 53–4 (1962), pp. 9–74. 7 – This speech, written a year after its supposed occurrence, was undoubtedly invented by Cortés. Elliott, ‘Cortés, Velázquez and Charles V,’ pp. xxvii–xxviii; Pagden in Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. xliii; Carman, Rhetorical Conquests, pp. 146–9. 8 – Although the 1550 map bears the name of the royal cosmographer, Alonso de Santa Cruz, it is the work of an indigenous draftsman; Miguel León-Portilla and Carmen Aguilera, Mapa de México Tenochtitlán y sus contornos hacia 1550 (Mexico: Celanese Mexicana, 1986), pp. 29–34. For the Mapa Sigüenza see María Castañeda de la Paz, Pintura de la peregrinación de los Culhuaque-Mexitin (Mapa de Sigüenza): análisis de un documento de origen tenochca (Mexico: El Colegio Mexiquense and Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2006). 9 – Barbara Mundy, ‘Mesoamerican cartography,’ in The History of Cartography, Volume 2, Book 3, Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Artic, Australian, and Pacific Societies, eds David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 183–256, esp. 201–3; Mary Elizabeth Smith, Picture Writing from Ancient Southern Mexico: Mixtec Place Signs and Maps (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), p. 169. 10 – The identification of the features follows Toussaint, ‘El plano atribuído a Hernán Cortés,’ pp. 97, 102–4. 11 – Toussaint, ‘El plano atribuído a Hernán Cortés,’ pp. 93–105, identified this town near Chapultepec as Tacubaya, but his schematic diagram relocates the flag to fly above Coyoacan in the south, which was where Cortés based his activities after the conquest and where he penned his third letter to Charles. Matos Moctezuma, ‘Reflexiones acerca del plano de Tenochtitlan,’ pp. 187–9, pointed out that the banner is actually flying above Tacubaya, which suggested to him that Cortés launched his final attack on Tenochtitlan from there (although Cortés's third letter supports Tacuba as the attack point). Both authors assumed that the flag marks Cortés's headquarters and the ‘royal seat.’ However, the banner may well have been added to the plan later in Europe and may have nothing to do with Cortés's location during the last days of the conquest, especially if Cortés sent the prototype for the woodcut plan to Charles with his second letter, before the siege had actually begun. The flag's placement at Tacubaya has the virtue of locating it at the top center of the printed sheet. 12 – Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ pp. 22–3. 13 – Alcocer, Apuntes sobre la antigua México-Tenochtitlan, p. 10, transcribes the descriptive Latin labels on the plan. Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ p. 32, lists and translates them into English. 14 – Anthony F. Aveni and Sharon L. Gibbs, ‘On the orientation of Precolumbian buildings in Central Mexico,’ American Antiquity, 41 (1976), pp. 510–7, were building on Motolinia [Toribio de Benavente], Memoriales o libro de las cosas de la Nueva España y de los naturales de ella, ed. Edmundo O'Gorman (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1971), p. 51, who mentioned that the feast of Tlacaxipehualiztli was scheduled when the sun was over the temple of Huitzilopochtli at the equinox. See also Anthony F. Aveni, Edward E. Calnek, and Horst Hartung, ‘Myth, environment, and the orientation of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan,’ American Antiquity, 53 (1988), pp. 287–309. 15 – Alcocer, Apuntes sobre la antigua México-Tenochtitlan, p. 11, and Jean Michel Massing, ‘Map of Tenochtitlan and the Gulf of Mexico,’ in Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, pp. 572–3, suggested it refers to the stone cult statues that Cortés threw from the Templo Mayor. Toussaint, ‘El plano atribuído a Hernán Cortés,’ p. 100, described it as a decapitated atlantid. Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ pp. 20–1, explained it as a generalized reference to the human sacrifices that occurred there, although she raised the possibility of it being as sculpture of Coatlicue or Coyolxauhqui. Gresle-Pouligny, Un plan pour Mexico-Tenochtitlan, pp. 241–3, offered several suggestions: that it is a generalized reference to destroyed stone statues and human sacrifices, an image of the Coyolxauhqui, or an image of a victim defeated in gladiatorial combat. 16 – Emily Umberger, ‘Art and imperial strategy in Tenochtitlan,’ in Aztec Imperial Strategies, eds Frances F. Berdan, Richard Blanton, Elizabeth Boone, Mary Hodge, Michael Smith, and Emily Umberger (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1996), pp. 85–106, esp. 95; Matos Moctezuma, ‘Reflexiones acerca del plano de Tenochtitlan,’ pp. 183–95. 17 – Fragments of other similar statues indicate that there were at least three such statues of the type now called Coatlicue; see Elizabeth Hill Boone, ‘The “Coatlicues” at the Templo Mayor,’ Ancient Mesoamerica, 10 (1999), pp. 189–206; Cecelia F. Klein, ‘The Devil and the skirt: an iconographic inquiry into the pre-Hispanic nature of the Tzitzimime,’ Ancient Mesoamerica, 11 (2000), pp. 1–26. 18 – See Cecelia F. Klein, ‘Rethinking Cihuacoatl: Aztec political imagery of the conquered woman,’ in Smoke and Mist: Mesoamerican Studies in Memory of Thelma D. Sullivan, eds J. Kathryn Josserand and Karen Dakin (Oxford: BAR International Series 402, 1988), pp. 237–77, for the nakedness of defeated enemies. 19 – For this argument, see Klein, ‘Rethinking Cihuacoatl,’ p. 242; Umberger, ‘Art and imperial strategy in Tenochtitlan,’ p. 95. 20 – Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ p. 30 note 23; Gresle-Pouligny, Un plan pour Mexico-Tenochtitlan, p. 195, and Matos Moctezuma, ‘Reflexiones acerca del plano de Tenochtitlan,’ pp. 184–7. Matos Moctezuma, pp. 185–6, suggested that the precinct might have been drawn and cut onto a separate woodblock, different from the block that recorded its surroundings, and that this or the outer block was flipped in Nuremberg. 21 – Olga Apenas, Mapas antiguos del valle de México (Mexico: Universidad National Autónoma de México, 1947), p. 20, reported a proposal by Federico Gómez de Orozco that the creator of the woodcut was an engraver named Martin Plinius, who (according to an investigation conducted by the German Legation in Mexico, at Gomez de Orozco's request) was working in Nuremberg between 1510 and 1536 and whose signed works were executed in a style identical to that of the Tenochtitlan plan. I have not been able to find other information about this engraver. 22 – Cf. view of Nuremberg in Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493), pp. 99v–100r. 23 – For the dike's construction, see Perla Valle, Ordenanza del Señor Cuauhtémoc (Mexico: Gobierno del Distrito Federal, 2000), p. 79. See Max Geisberg, The German Single-leaf Woodcut, ed. Walter L. Strauss (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1974), 1312, for a German sapling fence. 24 – Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital.’ 25 – Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. 174. 26 – Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ p. 29. 27 – The dike ended at Iztapalapa, where Cortés had paused before he first entered the city, and would have been visible from that town and from the top of the principal temples in Tenochtitlan. Later during the eight-month stay, the Spaniards built two sloops and sailed Moctezuma to the rocky island of Tepepolco (Peñon del Marqués), beyond the dike in the east, for a hunting expedition, and they would have had to pass through one of the moveable sluices in the dike that controlled water flow and traffic; Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517–1521, ed. Genaro García, trans. and notes Alfred P. Maudslay (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1956), pp. 237–9. During his stay in the city, Cortés sent long-range reconnaissance missions to identify good harbors along the gulf goast and sources of gold throughout the land, and his men escorted Moctezuma often on trips beyond the city; Cortés, Letters from Mexico, pp. 94–6, 99–100, 91; Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, p. 246. Thus, I think it likely that Cortés understood early on the source of the city's water. 28 – Motolinia, Memoriales o libro de las cosas de la Nueva España, p. 51; Aveni, Calnek, and Hartung, ‘Myth, environment, and the orientation of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan,’ pp. 287–309. 29 – Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital.’ 30 – Manuscrit Tovar: Origines et croyances des indiens du Mexique, ed. Jacques Lafaye (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1972), pl. 18. Códice Selden/Codex Selden, ed. Alfonso Caso (Mexico: Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología, 1964), facs. p. 7a, where the priests, advisors, and family members dance at the wedding of the Mixtec Lady 6 Monkey, even though the rest of the codex is organized in registers. 31 – Mundy, ‘Mesoamerican cartography,’ pp. 183–256, see pp. 200–3; M. E. Smith, Picture Writing from Ancient Southern Mexico, p. 166. 32 – M. E. Smith, Picture Writing from Ancient Southern Mexico, p. 166, believed, however, that the format of a perfect circle (e.g., Teozacualco map) was a European import. 33 – Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. 94; Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, p. 157. 34 – Martyr d'Anghiera, De orbe novo, Vol. 2, pp. 198, 201, 191. 35 – Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ p. 26. 36 – Personal communication April 2009. Robb asked about the cross in the discussion after I presented a draft of this article at the symposium ‘Journey to Mexico,’ 24–25 April 2008, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, organized by Angela Marie Herren. A detail of the ritual precinct in the plan had been displayed on the screen for some minutes, and the cross was clearly visible; its presence surprised us all. 37 – Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. 106; Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. 252, 297. 38 – E.g., Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, p. 3. 39 – Manuel Toussaint, La conquista de Pánuco (Mexico: El Colegio Nacional, 1948), p. 79, lists them and assigns a few. The 1524 Italian edition of the second letter, published in Venice, reproduces the woodcut but with mistranscriptions of some of the place names. 40 – Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 159. 41 – Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ pp. 25–6, 31, has proposed that this woodcut map, as with the plan of Tenochtitlan, was based on an indigenous map that Cortés sent to Europe. 42 – Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. 94. 43 – Martyr d'Anghiera, De orbe novo, Vol. 2, p. 198–9. 44 – Francisco López de Gómara, Cortés, the Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary, ed. and trans. Lesley Byrd Simpson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), p. 345. 45 – For Alaminos, see Weddle, Spanish Sea, pp. 41, 57, 67, 417. 46 – Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, p. 27. 47 – Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 417. 48 – Weddle, Spanish Sea, pp. 99–105. 49 – Woodbury Lowrey, The Lowrey Collection: A Descriptive List of Maps of the Spanish Possessions within the Present Limits of the United States, 1502–1820, ed. Philip Lee Phillips (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1912), pp. 18–19. Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 101, but see p. 104, identifies the ‘Pineda map’ as the drawing made by the pilots, which Garay included in his petition for a license to settle; however, the existing map shows locations in Panama (Veragua and El Nombre de Díos) that, even if known to the pilots, would have been extraneous to their purpose of charting their voyage. 50 – The cedula is published in Manuel Toussaint, Pánuco, pp. 195–210. 51 – The glosses on the map are (beginning with Cuba and continuing counterclockwise): Cuba; La Florida que dezian Bimini que descubrio Juan Ponce; Hasta aqui descubrio Juan Ponce; Desde aqui comenzo a descubrir Francisco de Garay; Rio del Espiritu Santo; Rio Panuco; Tamahox provincia; Hasta aqui descubrio Francisco de Garay hazia/el oeste y Diego Velazques hazia de este/hasta el Cabo de las Higueras que descubrieron los Pinzones y se les ha dado la poblaron; Sevilla Veracruz; Almeria; Cozomel [the island]; C y Puerta de las Higueras; Pinzones; Terra Firme; Veragua; El Nombre de Dios. 52 – Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 104. 53 – Martyr d'Anghiera, De orbe novo, Vol. 2, pp. 63–4. 54 – For the rivalry between Garay and Cortés to explore new lands, see Weddle, Spanish Sea, pp. 97–108; David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 23–7. 55 – Kenneth Nebenzahl, Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1990), p. 76. The Pánuco survivors joined the Cortés group before he entered Tenochtitlan, so it is possible that if cartographic knowledge from Álvarez de Pineda was then by Cortés's a map the two have been sent with Cortés's second – Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. – For Pánuco see E. de and the of in New Spain pp. Weddle, Spanish Sea, pp. for the between and Cortés over Pánuco, see Toussaint, Pánuco, pp. de and the of in New Spain, pp. Weddle, Spanish Sea, pp. – John ‘The of the 10 pp. – I Anthony Aveni for this – The and a so that two also Italian so that that [the within the one about to a the out about I to for this – I and for this A is in Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic p. note – Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. – Elliott, ‘Cortés, Velázquez and Charles V,’ p. Elliott, Spain and Its pp. Frankl, ‘Imperio Frances The Imperial in and pp. – Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, pp. – Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, p. note Toussaint, Pánuco, p. 79. – See Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 79. – Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. 95. – Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, pp. note p. note and L. The of A to the History and of the (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, – Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, p. 47; Cortés, Letters from Mexico, pp. Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, pp. Toussaint, Pánuco, p. – Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, pp. note Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, p. – and of pp. 31, Pagden in Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. note – Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. – Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. Toussaint, Pánuco, p. – Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, p. Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, p. – Toussaint, Pánuco, p. Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. – Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, p. 37 – Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, pp. Toussaint, Pánuco, p. Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. – Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, p. – Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, pp. – Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. – Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, pp. 41, 79, Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. de and the of in New Spain, p. Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. – Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. del de y 30 de de Universidad p. note Weddle, Spanish Sea, pp. – Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, p. 41, de and the of in New Spain, pp. – Toussaint, Pánuco, p. 79. – Hernán Cortés, y ed. (Mexico: Vol. 2, p. Historia de Vol. 2, p. – y de y del Templo del de por el del Nacional de Historia y en en Francisco del y (Mexico: El 1912), p. – Toussaint, Pánuco, p. – Weddle, Spanish Sea, pp. Toussaint, Pánuco, pp. The cedula is published in Toussaint, Pánuco, pp. – de History of the of New Spain, Book 10 the eds J. and Charles of American and University of pp. – Historia de Veracruz, Vol. pp. 76. – Toussaint, Pánuco, p. 29. – Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. García, and Gobierno del p. – Fernando de ed. Edmundo O'Gorman (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Vol. p. – Juan Manuel La de Gómez a la (Mexico: de y en Antropología de la de y and El Colegio de pp. García, and pp. 51, – de and the of in New Spain, p. Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. – Jean El Rio del Espiritu on the Cartography of the Gulf and the During the and ed. J. (New York: United Society, Series see discussion in Paul E. Hoffman, ‘Discovery and early cartography of the northern Gulf coast,’ in Charting Louisiana: Five Hundred Years of Maps, eds Alfred E. Lemmon, John T. Magill, and Jason R. Wiese (New Orleans: Historic New Orleans Collection, 2003), pp. 7–22. – Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 159.

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