Page 506 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

the enemy states of Tlaxcallan and Huexotzinco sacred enclosure). The ritual was perhaps most N O T E S
was glorified as the "flowery war/' poignant in the case of the handsome young -L. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New
The usual proximate cause of a declaration war prisoner who was selected to impersonate Spain, trans, and ed. Alfred P. Maudslay, 6 vols.
of war was an attack by a foreign state on the Tezcatlipoca. Presented with four lovely young 2. (London, 1908-1916), 2:37. Mexico, trans, and ed.
Hernan
from
Letters
Cortes,
long-distance merchants (pochteca). There were women as his mistresses, he was revered as the Anthony Pagden (New Haven and London, 1986).
military orders similar to those into which god himself for one year, at the close of which 3. Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, Florentine Codex,
European knights were organized in the age of he was taken to his own temple. There he bade General History of the Things of New Spain, 12
chivalry, with eagle warriors (cat. 385) and farewell to his paramours and climbed the steps books (Salt Lake City, 1950-1969).
jaguar warriors the most prominent. Each man- to the summit, where he was seized by four 4. See Eduardo Matos Moctezuma and Felipe Ehren-
at-arms carried a round feather-covered shield priests and stretched over the sacrificial stone. 5. burg, Coyolxauhqui, 2d ed. (Mexico City, 1980), 1-8.
102.
1986,
Cortes
of wood or reeds and either a macuauhuitl (a His heart was torn out and thrown in the 6. Discussed in George C. Vaillant, Aztecs of Mexico
sword of wood edged with razor-sharp obsidian cuauhxicalli ("eagle bowl"), in honor of the (New York, 1941), 134.
blades) or an atlatl (spearthrower, cat. 384) and deity in whose place he had stood. 7. For an overview of Aztec society, see Jacques
handful of darts. Aztec armies were accompa- To the Aztecs, death by the obsidian or flint Soustelle, The Daily Life of the Aztecs (London,
nied by semibarbarian Otomi bowmen, but no knife was perceived as a form of life, for it was 1961), 36-94.
Diaz 1908-1916, 2:78.
Aztec used this weapon. Attacks were signaled the hearts and blood of brave humans that 8. A succinct but very complete treatment of Aztec
9.
by war cries and accompanied by the din of ensured that the universe would not end, that religion is Henry B. Nicholson, "Religion in Pre-
blown conch shells and whistles; in the ensuing our own era —4 Motion —would continue for a Hispanic Central Mexico/ in Handbook of Middle
melee, high-ranking officers could be distin- while more, that Huitzilopochtli as the sun god American Indians, ed. Robert Wauchope (Austin,
1971), 10:395—446. A more popular treatment
guished (as the Spaniards were quick to note) by would blaze forth on the eastern horizon each Alfonso Caso, The Aztecs: People of the Sun is
their magnificent ensigns of reeds, feathers, and dawn to bring happiness and survival to his (Norman, 1953).
other materials that towered above the shoul- people. 10. The best treatment of Aztec philosophy and cosmol-
ders. Hand-to-hand combat was the rule, the But for the empire created by the lords of ogy is Miguel Leon-Portilla, Aztec Thought and
goal of each warrior being to take and bind a Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the universe did indeed Culture (Norman, 1963).
captive for transport to the rear. 17 end in destruction: on 13 August 1521, after 11. On Mesoamerican calendar systems and on the
While the actual number of captives (and seventy-five days of siege, the great city, bleed- Aztec calendar in particular, see Alfonso Caso, 1967).
(Mexico City,
Los Calendarios Prehispdnicos
slaves bought for the purpose) sacrificed each ing and torn, capitulated to Hernan Cortes. 12. Soustelle 1961, 101.
year in Tenochtitlan was surely far less than Of all of its marvels and glories, as the veteran 13. Leon Portilla 1963 has many references to the
the Spaniards claimed, this was indeed the fate Bernal Diaz lamented in his old age, "today all tlamatinime.
of all those taken in war; their heads ended up is overthrown and lost, nothing left standing." 18 14. Many books and studies have emanated from the
on the tzompantli (the great skull rack in the sensational excavations in the Great Temple, among
which are Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, The Great
Temple of the Aztecs (London, 1988); Elizabeth Hill
Boone, ed., The Aztec Templo Mayor (Washington,
1983); and Johanna Broda, David Carrasco, and
Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, The Great Temple of
Tenochtitlan (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987).
15. Thelma Sullivan, 'A Prayer to Tlaloc," Estudios de
Cultura Nahuatl 5 (1965), 42-55.
16. Sahagun 1950-1969, bk. 6:41.
17. Ross Hassig, Aztec Warfare (Norman, 1988), is the
only comprehensive treatment of the subject.
18. Diaz 1908-1916, 2:38.

fig. 8. The First Meeting between Cortes and Motecuhzoma. Page from a map and historical record of the
people of Tlaxcallan that was painted in early colonial times. Standing at the right is Cortes' interpreter-mistress,
Dona Marina. From Lienzo de Tlaxcala, Antiguedades Mexicanas (1892)

THE AMERICAS 505