In 1519, inspired by rumors of gold and the existence of large, sophisticated cities in the Mexican interior, Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) was appointed to head an expedition of eleven ships and five hundred men to Mexico. At that time the great empire of the Mexica—now known as the Aztecs—dominated much of Mesoamerica. Their capital, Tenochtitlán, had become such a splendid city that, according to records, it dazzled the Spaniards, exceeding anything they had seen before. Two years after the arrival of Cortés and his conquistadors, constant war and diseases new to the Americas had destroyed Tenochtitlán, and the Aztec Empire was no more.
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (1478–1557).
La historia general de las Indias [The general history of the Indies].
Seville: Cromberger, 1535.
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (67)
Gonzolo Oviedo sailed in 1514 on the first of his many journeys to America, where he compiled detailed descriptions and woodcut illustrations of products and goods found in the New World. The Spaniard introduced Europe to an enormous variety of previously unheard of “exotica,” including the pineapple, the canoe, smoking tobacco, the manatee, and hammocks. Along with Perro Mártir de Angleria and Bartolomé de las Casas, Oviedo was one of the first European chroniclers of New World goods.
Hernán Cortés. Praeclara Ferdina[n]di Cortesii de noua maris oceani.… [Enlightenment of Ferdinand Cortés concerning new facts about the new sea and the ocean.…].
Nuremberg: Peypus, 1524.
Jay I. Kislak Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (60)
This volume contains the second and third letters sent by Hernán Cortés to Emperor Charles V. Cortés’s letters are reports and represent some of the earliest European accounts of Mexican people, culture, religion, and history. The accompanying map is the first European image in print of Tenochtitlán (Mexico City) and the Gulf Coast of Mexico. The plan shows a large and complex city with the main temple precinct and plaza, houses, principal thoroughfares, causeways, lakes, suburbs, and towns along the shore. The map draws on both European and indigenous sources.
Hernán Cortés.
Dowry agreement for Montezuma’s daughter, June 27, 1526.
Copied from a Spanish manuscript, [Valladolid], ca. 1750.
Jay I. Kislak Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (61)
Hernán Cortés believed that a marriage between the eldest daughter of Moctezuma, called “Doña Isabel,” and Spaniard Alonso Grado would benefit New Spain by bringing conqueror and conquered together as a new people. In this document, Cortés uses Moctezuma’s support during the conquest of Mexico to justify a substantial dowry containing lands, several ranches, and the labor of the Indians who lived there. Unhappily, Grado died the next year. Cortés then married Doña Isabel to another conquistador, with whom she had two children. Following her second husband’s death, she married again and gave birth to five more children, continuing the Moctezuma line for many centuries.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1496–1584).
Historia verdadera de la conqvista de la Nueva-España [True history of the conquest of New Spain].
Madrid: Imprenta del Reyno, 1632.
Jay I. Kislak Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (63)
In part as a response to Francisco López de Gómara’s published account of the heroics of Hernán Cortés in Mexico, one of Cortés’s infantry men, Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1496–1584), dictated to his grandson “the story of myself and my comrades, all true conquerors, who served His Majesty in the discovery, conquest, pacification, and settlement. . . . of New Spain.” Full of telling anecdotes, Díaz’s version has become a classic in many languages.
Diego Muñoz Camargo (ca. 1529–1599).
Fragmentos de la Historia de Tlaxcala.
1852 manuscript copy of original ca. 1560–1592.
Jay I. Kislak Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (64)
The son of a Spanish conquistador and an Indian woman, Diego Muñoz Camargo was educated as a Spaniard, but was also steeped in indigenous culture through his Indian family connections. An historian and interpreter, he was also a government official and landholder in the Tlaxcala region of Mexico. In this manuscript, written in the late sixteenth century, Muñoz Camargo covers the history of Tlaxcala, the events of the conquest (and the Tlaxcalan support of Cortés), as well as the natural and geographical background of the area.