The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico

The passages in Chapter 7 are sourced from a new text: the Codex Ramirez. This pre-1580 manuscript preserves Spanish translations of older Nahuatl accounts that have since been lost. It is the only account set in another Mexican city-state to the northeast of Tenochtitlan, Tezcoco, where one of the Spaniards’ primary motivations is revealed: conversion of the New World to Christianity.

In “The March to Tezcoco,” the Spanish meet Tezcoco’s prince Ixtlilxochitl and his brothers. The meeting is relatively harmonious. Both sides marvel at the other—the Spanish are particularly stricken that Ixtlilxochitl’s brother is so fair-skinned that he appears to be white.

In “The Arrival at the City,” the Spaniards proselytize. They have been sent, they claim, by the emperor of the Christians to convert Indigenous Peoples and save their souls. In the next section, “Ixtlilxochitl Becomes a Christian,” the Tezcoco prince is wholly won over by their description of the mysteries of Catholicism and wishes to be baptized. Though a few Spaniards object—Ixtlilxochitl does not yet know enough about the tenets of the faith to convert—Cortés himself overrides them. He sees to it that Ixtlilxochitl and many other inhabitants of Tezcoco are baptized that very day.