Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

Sixteenth-century Spanish accounts of the Conquest falsely describe large numbers of Indigenous peoples overwhelming the exceptional and heroic conquistadors who triumph anyway. While the Spanish were always outnumbered by their foes, their Indigenous and African auxiliaries played significant roles in the Conquest—an aspect of Conquest history that is often overlooked.

The Song of the Aztecs, composed in Nahuatl during the 16th century, provides evidence of the significance of Indigenous allies in the Conquest of the Mexica (or Aztec) Empire. The epic portrays the defeated Mexica as nevertheless victorious because of their status compared to rival Mesoamerican groups. The war that caused the empire’s collapse is thus depicted as a “civil” and “local” one with the Spanish on the periphery (46) as one deciding factor among many.

The people of the Mexica tributary city, Tlaxcala, allied with the Spanish because they believed that such a strategy would cause the Mexica’s downfall. Cortés, however, “claimed that the Tlaxcalan role resulted from a strategy of his own devising” (48), a claim that numerous scholars accept. According to Restall, such views ignore two significant historical contexts: the aforementioned complex Indigenous political situation, and the established Spanish procedures that included building alliances with Indigenous populations.