Interpret the Evidence and Put It in Context

Document Links:

Document 1.5 Hernán Cortés, Letter to King Charles I, 1520

Document 1.6 Aztec Priests Respond to the Spanish, 1524

Document 1.7 Hernán Cortés and Malintzin Meet Montezuma at Tenochtitlán, 1519

Document 1.8 Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, La Relación, c. 1528

Interpret the Evidence

  1. How does Hernán Cortés treat his Indian adversaries (Document 1.5)? How does he justify this treatment? How does Cortés’s description of these events reveal conflicts among the Indians themselves?

  2. How do the Aztec priests respond to Spanish criticisms of their religion? Why do they refuse to abandon their gods (Document 1.6)?

  3. What does the mural image, created by Tlaxcalan Indians, suggest about the relative power of Montezuma and Cortés at this meeting (Document 1.7)? What images of cooperation or conflict does it depict? Given the information in Documents 1.5 and 1.6, what concerns might Malintzin, as the translator, have about conveying information to each leader?

  4. What does Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca find surprising about Indian culture, and how might that reflect differences between the Spanish and Indians (Document 1.8)? How does his story differ from the information provided in Documents 1.5, 1.6, and 1.7?

Put It in Context

How would you describe the various encourters between Spaniards and Indians in the early years of contact? How did these encounters shape Spanish debates over the conquest in the 1550s?

What roles did religion, military power, and economic interests play in the differing perspectives among the Indians, among Spaniards, and between the Indians and the Spanish?