As Durán’s introduction suggests, most Aztecs did not want to renounce their own religion in favor of Catholicism. Fray Durán was quite correct when he argued that the eradication of the old ways would be an enormously difficult and complicated task. Still, most Spanish missionaries believed that it was self-evident that theirs was the one true faith, something the Aztecs would come to accept if only it was presented to them properly. With this in mind, twelve Franciscan friars organized a series of meetings with Aztec political and religious leaders in 1524. In the 1560s, another friar collected the notes from these meetings and published them in narrative form. In the course of these meetings, the Aztec leaders offered the following defense of their beliefs and practices. As you read it, think about what it tells you about the importance the Aztecs attached to their history and traditions. Why did the Aztec leaders find it inconceivable that they would ever be convinced to abandon their traditional beliefs?

You say that we do not recognize the being that is everywhere, lord of heaven and earth. You say our gods are not true gods. The new words that you utter are what confuse us; due to them we feel foreboding. Our makers [our ancestors] who came to live on earth never uttered such words. They gave us their laws, their ways of doing things. They believed in the gods, served them and honored them. They are the ones who taught us everything, the gods’ being served and respected. Before them we eat earth [kiss the ground]; we bleed; we pay our debts to the gods, offer incense, make sacrifice. . . . Indeed, we live by the grace of those gods. They rightly made us out of the time, the place where it was still dark. . . . They give us what we go to sleep with, what we get up with [our daily sustenance], all that we drunk, all that is eaten, the produce, corn, beans, green maize, chia. We beg them for water, the rain, so that things grow upon the earth.

The gods are happy in their prosperity, in what they have, always and forever. Everything sprouts and turns green in their home. What kind of place is the land of Tlaloc [the god of rain]? Never is there any famine there, nor illness, nor suffering. And they [the gods] give people virility, bravery, success in the hunt, [bejeweled] lip rings, blankets, breeches, cloaks, flowers, tobacco, jade, feathers and gold.

Since time immemorial they have been addressed, prayed to, taken as gods. It has been a very long time that they have been revered, since once upon a time in Tula, in Huapalcalco, Xochitlapan, Tlmohuanchan, in Teotihucan, the home of the night. These gods are the ones who established the mats and thrones [that is, the inherited chieftainships], who gave people nobility, and kingship, renown and respect.

Will we be the ones to destroy the ancient traditions of the Chichioeca, the Tolteca, the Colhuaca? [No!] It is our opinion that there is life, that people are born, people are nurtured, people grow up, [only] by the gods’ being called upon, prayed to. Alas, o our lords, beware lest you make the common people do something bad. How will the poor old men, the poor old women, forget or erase their upbringing, their education? May the gods not be angry with us. Let us not move toward their anger. And let us not agitate the commoners, raise a riot, lest they rebel for this reason, because of our saying to them: address the gods no longer, pray to them no longer.

Source: Camilla Townsend, ed. and trans., American Indian History: A Documentary Reader (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 29–30.

Questions to Consider