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Travellers’ tales: how would the 5 Spaniards describe the Aztecs to their friends back in Europe? After that first meeting between the Spanish and the Aztecs, Moctezuma invited the Spanish to live in the royal palace in Tenochtitlan for a while. Perhaps he hoped these strange foreigners would be so overwhelmed they would go away and leave him alone. The Spaniards were amazed – and horrified – as they found out more about Moctezuma’s empire. What stories would you tell about the Aztecs to your friends back home – if you were a sixteenth-century Spaniard – and how do these stories help to explain why the Spanish built up their empire? ACTIVITY Over the next five pages you are going to write or record a description of the Aztecs. Part of this description will explain why the Spanish wanted to conquer the Aztecs. You are going to try to see the Aztecs not with your 21st-century eyes, but as one of Cortes’ men saw them. You are going to look through a conquistador-window. Conquistador is the Spanish for conqueror. The conquistadors were mostly interested in three things. This was their window. The conquistador says: 6 My country is, Spain, is the most powerful country in Europe and now we want an empire in America. We can build ships that can sail across oceans. We have swords that are light but lethal: long, sharp, pointed and made of Toledo steel, the best in Europe. We have portable handguns. We know how to fight! →SOURCE 1 Aztec warriors. Cortes and Moctezuma got on well and had many long discussions. Cortes learned that the Aztecs were almost continuously at war with neighbouring peoples, and were always victorious, which was why their empire was so large. The Aztec soldiers carried spears made of sharp stones set in a wooden frame. They wore cotton armour, so thick it could stop an arrow. They ran into a battle screaming and whistling, wearing fierce warpaint and eagle headdresses. The elite squad dressed as jaguars. They danced and chanted as they fought. This was all designed to terrify the enemy. ACTIVITY What are you going to tell people at home about Aztec fighting? How does ↑SOURCE 2 - Aztec account book, showing goods to be traded. what you see encourage you to try to conquer the Aztecs? For example: I think these Aztec swords might wound us but they won’t kill us. We have the best swords in Europe. The Aztecs try to be frightening but… The conquistador says… 7 ACTIVITY My family is poor, but I want to get rich, go home and live the life of a nobleman! I want gold! What are you going to tell people at home about Aztec daily life and their possessions? How does what you can see encourage you to try to conquer the Aztecs? The conquistadors marvelled at Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital city on the lake. One of them wrote: ‘Towers, temples, stone and limestone buildings, all built on the water. Our soldiers thought they were dreaming. We were seeing then what we had never seen or heard or dreamt of.’ It is thought that the city was at least 8km square and housed at least 200,000 people. It was divided into different areas for each trade – woodworkers, fishermen, mosaic makers and so on. Each area had its leader, its own temple, priests and school. Everyone paid taxes, collected by government officials. Poorer people paid by working – for example, the streets of the city were cleaned each day by 1000 sweepers. ↑SOURCE 4 – Map of Tenochtitlan. Everyone had their place in society, from ↑SOURCE 3 – Aztec marriage ceremony: the knotted cloak symbolises the bond of marriage. nobles at the top, then priests, warriors, merchants, farmers and craftsmen, to slaves at the bottom. You could tell instantly what layer of Aztec society someone belonged to from the colour, quality or pattern of their clothing. →SOURCE 5 – Aztec child being punished by being held over a fire of smoke from burning chilli peppers. One of the conquistadors wrote: ‘We saw on the lake a multitude of ships, some of which were loaded with There was no democracy and the law was enforced with harsh punishments, such as strangling or burning. However the city was quiet and orderly and people were respectful. goods…And when we had looked at it all, we turned to the great market square and the large crowd buying and selling there. The noise and the sound of the voices could be heard more than a mile away. Among us there were soldiers who had been in many parts of the world, in Constantinople, in the whole of Italy, in Rome, but they said they had never seen a market so well organised and so orderly, so large and so crowded.’ ↑SOURCE 6 – Aztec market. At the market many things on sale were new to sixteenth century Europeans: tomatoes, squashes, chilli peppers, sweet potatoes, avocados, peanuts, popcorn, chewing gum, chocolate, tobacco, turkeys. Then there were exotic goods sent as tributes from all over the Aztec conquests: jaguar skins, ←SOURCE 7 – This gold lip ornament was worn through a hole in the wearer’s lip as a sign of nobility. hummingbird feathers, shells, precious stones – and lots of gold objects of all kinds. All these goods were carried on boats on canals into the city and then on the backs of porters: the Aztecs had no pack-animals. The conquistador says… The Christian religion is the truth, the only truth! There were temples everywhere in Tenochtitlan, with the two largest in the central square. They were stepped pyramids with flat tops. The pyramids were stained white with lime and were dazzling in the sun. On the top of the pyramids Aztec priests carried out human sacrifices. Prisoners of war – men, women and children – were brought to the temple and led in procession up to the top. Each one was held down on the altar, then a priest cut out the victim’s heart and raised it, still beating and hot, to the sun. The heart was then placed in a holy cup, while the priests coated the walls and statues, and themselves, with blood. The body was thrown back down the steps. The skull was removed and placed on a skull-rack, while the soldier who had captured the prisoner ate the rest of the body. →SOURCE 6 – Aztec picture of the bodies of sacrificial victims being thrown down the steps. 9 10 The Aztecs believed that without this gift of human blood, the sun would not rise the next day and the world would end. Cortes calculated that 20,000 human sacrifices had taken place that year. The smell of blood was everywhere and the priests’ hair was so caked with blood that it could not be combed. This religion was nothing like the conquistadors’ Christianity. They were used to Christian services with prayers, hymns and the story of Christ dying to save other people. The idea of human sacrifices to the gods was not part of their religion at all. As Christians, the conquistadors also believed that Christianity was the one true religion and all other religions were wrong. People worshipping other gods should be taught about the Christian god. →SOURCE 9 – Aztec skull with stone knives at nose and mouth. These were the knives used to cut out the victim’s heart at the top of the temple. ←SOURCE 10 – This is a flint sacrificial knife with a carved wooden handle. ACTIVITY What are you going to tell people at home about Aztec religion? How does what you can see encourage you to try to conquer the Aztecs?