american-holocaust

76 AMERICAN HOLOCAUSTdian allies-at one point Cortes refers to 150,000 warriors who accompaniedhis band of less than a thousand Spanish soldiers-that the conquistadorsmarched on Tenochtitlan. 66Rather than meeting resistance when he approached the great city, Corteswas greeted in friendship and was welcomed by Montezuma. In retrospectthis behavior of the Aztec leader has usually seemed foolish or cowardlyor naive to Western historians. But Mesoamerican political traditions hadalways dictated that war was to be announced before it was launched, andthe reasons for war were always made dear well beforehand. War was asacred endeavor, and it was sacrilegious to engage in it with treachery orfraud. In fact, as Inga Clendinnen recently has noted: "So important wasthis notion of fair testing that food and weapons were sent to the selectedtarget city as part of the challenge, there being no virtue in defeating aweakened enemy." 67 In this case, therefore, not only was there no reasonfor Montezuma to suppose Cortes intended to launch an invasion (theTlaxcaltec troops who accompanied him could have been part of an effortto seek political alliance), but Cortes had plainly announced in advancethat his purposes were not warlike, that he came as an ambassador ofpeace.Once the Spanish were inside the city's gates, however, it soon becameapparent that this was a far from conciliatory mission. In the midst of agreat public celebration of the feast of the god Huitzilopochtli, the Spanish,led by Cortes's ruthless lieutenant Pedro de Alvarado, entered andsurrounded the ceremonial arena. It was filled, recalled the sixteenth-centurySpanish historian Bernardino de Sahagun, with "nobles, priests, and soldiers,and throngs of other people." Still unaware of the conquistadors'intentions, says Sahagun, "the Indians thought that [the Spanish] were justadmiring the style of their dancing and playing and singing, and so continuedwith their celebration and songs." Then the assault began:The first Spaniards to start fighting suddenly attacked those who were playingthe music for the singers and dancers. They chopped off their hands andtheir heads so that they fell down dead. Then all the other Spaniards beganto cut off heads, arms, and legs and to disembowel the Indians. Some hadtheir heads cut off, others were cut in half, and others had their bellies slitopen, immediately to fall dead. Others dragged their entrails along until theycollapsed. Those who reached the exits were slain by the Spaniards guardingthem; and others jumped over the walls of the courtyard; while yet othersclimbed up the temple; and still others, seeing no escape, threw themselvesdown among the slaughtered and escaped by feigning death. So great wasthe bloodshed that rivulets [of blood] ran through the courtyard like waterin a heavy rain. So great was the slime of blood and entrails in the courtyardand so great was the stench that it was both terrifying and heartrending.Now that nearly all were fallen and dead, the Spaniards went searching for