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Chimalpahin’s Conquest
A Nahua Historian’s Rewriting of
Francisco López de Gómara’s La conquista de México
@?DO@?<I?OM<ING<O@?=T
Susan Schroeder,
Anne J. Cruz, Cristián Roa-de-la-Carrera,
and David E. Tavárez
†
stanford university press
stanford, california
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
©2010 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.
This book has been published with the assistance of the Dean’s Office of
the School of Liberal Arts, Tulane University, and the Program for Cultural
Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States Universities.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission
of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
[CIP to come]
Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10 /12 Sabon
Contents
Acknowledgments, xxx
introduction
I. The History of Chimalpahin’s “Conquista” Manuscript, 3
Susan Schroeder
II. Reclaiming the Conquest: An Assessment of Chimalpahin’s
Modifications to La conquista de México, 17
David Tavárez
III. Francisco López de Gómara and La conquista de México, 35
Cristián Roa-de-la-Carrera
the conquest of mexico
Written by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón (Chimalpahin)
Quauhtlehuanitzin
1. The Birth of Hernando Cortés, 51
2. Cortés’s Age When He Sailed to the Indies, 000
3. Hernando Cortés’s Stay in Santo Domingo, 000
4. Some Things that Happened to Cortés in Cuba, 000
5. The Discovery of New Spain, and Other Things, 000
6. Juan de Grijalva’s Barter from the Islands of Yucatan
and San Juan de Ulúa, 000
II.
Reclaiming the Conquest
An Assessment of Chimalpahin’s Modifications
to La conquista de México
David Tavárez
†
Any appraisal of Chimalpahin’s work must begin by pondering the para-
doxical contrast between his abundant writings and what is known about
his life. The facts that can be stated with relative certainty are barely suf-
ficient for a brief biographical sketch. He was born in 1579 in the altepetl,
or indigenous polity, of Amaquemecan Chalco into a family occupying
the lower reaches of Nahua nobility, and was baptized with the rather
common name of Domingo Francisco. This young man, who apparently
received little formal education but in time became an accomplished au-
todidact, arrived in Mexico City circa 1593 and devoted himself to the
care of the chapel of San Antonio Abad in Xoloco, at the far edge of
the city center, even though he probably belonged to the Franciscan par-
ish of San José de los Naturales. In time, he coined the name he would
use in his writings, adding to Domingo, his birth name, “don,” a Span-
ish honorific term; “San Antón,” a reference to his chapel; “Muñón,”
the family name of two of its illustrious patrons; and the genealogically
relevant Nahua names “Chimalpahin” and “Quauhtlehuanitzin.”1 Be-
tween 1593 and 1620, he composed a record of the history of Colhuacan
and numerous collections of annals about the ancient Nahua past, main-
tained another set of annals about important events in Mexico City and
New Spain covering the period 1577–1615, copied several works by other
indigenous authors, and produced his own Spanish-language version of
Francisco López de Gómara’s La conquista de México.2
Although Chimalpahin’s abundant and richly detailed Nahuatl-
language annals place him among the most diligent and productive
Introduction
18
indigenous authors in colonial Spanish America, we know precious little
about the social networks in which he moved, and even less about the
circumstances in which he composed such a varied body of writings
about the Nahua past. This disjunction is compounded by the fact that
Chimalpahin’s intended audience would have been a rather narrow sec-
tor of colonial society. Nahua annalists began composing alphabetic,
as opposed to pictorial, historical annals in Nahuatl about their com-
munities in the mid-sixteenth century and continued to do so for at least
two more centuries.3 These manuscripts were addressed to an audience
composed primarily of elite, literate Nahuas and interested local clergy
or doctrinal authors. Thus, most of Chimalpahin’s oeuvre addressed in-
digenous concerns about the royal genealogies and sociopolitical history
of his own native Amaquemecan Chalco and other prominent Nahua
altepetl. Unlike other indigenous authors, Chimalpahin neither sought
nor expected this work to bring him recognition or a radical change
in social standing. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that his works
were not cited by his contemporaries, although he was trusted enough to
work with ancient manuscripts. His lifetime occupation, hence, was the
transferal of historical accounts about renowned Nahua altepetl in Cen-
tral Mexico from scattered pictographic, oral, and alphabetic sources
into a more coherent set of alphabetic texts for posterity.4 He probably
approached López de Gómara’s La conquista in the same spirit—as an
important chronicle about the defeat of Mexico Tenochtitlan that needed
to be copied, amended, and preserved.
au t hor s h i p a n d i n t e ll e c t ua l
col l a b o r a t io n s i n c h i m a l pa h i n ’s a g e
At some point in his career, Chimalpahin sat down with a manuscript or
printed version of Francisco López de Gómara’s La conquista de México.
In a bold and unusual intellectual move, he modified in a selective man-
ner many passages and deleted some words and phrases, although he did
copy without emendation many of the Spanish chronicler’s words. Fol-
lowing his usual procedure in the annals, he placed his name in a passage
toward the middle of the narrative.5 As noted earlier in Susan Schroeder’s
introduction, Chimalpahin’s holograph is now lost, and the earliest exist-
ing copy is the eighteenth-century copy from Lorenzo Boturini’s collec-
tion now known as the Browning Manuscript, which we have translated
in this work. This manuscript begins with a paradoxical statement: “The
Conquest of Mexico Written by d[o]n Dom[ing]o de S[a]n Antón Muñón
[Chimalpahin] Quauhtlehuanitzin,”6 a title that epitomizes the authorial
Reclaiming the Conquest 19
merging of Chimalpahin and López de Gómara. Although the title does
follow his own signing conventions, Chimalpahin probably did not write
it, for he did not routinely write his name at the beginning of his Nahuatl
works.7 Moreover, the title may be a later addition to the Browning man-
uscript. In an ironic turn, the text’s copyists, including Boturini, appar-
ently regarded Chimalpahin as the sole author; one copyist went so far as
to suggest that Chimalpahin was a witness to the conquest.8
An understanding of the multiple entanglements joining the Spanish
chronicler to his Nahua editor thus hinges on an appraisal of authorship
practices in Chimalpahin’s age. Early modern notions of authorship did
not center on the idea of an individual producing original work that no
one else could legitimately appropriate. While printed editions were pro-
tected by privilegio, a legal mechanism barring the unlicensed reprint-
ing of successful works, copyright did not emerge as a fully articulated
legal notion until the mid-eighteenth century.9 Moreover, Chimalpahin
worked at the edge of an intellectual milieu in which mendicants and
Nahua intellectuals collaborated quite closely on projects whose output
defied authorship as an individualistic notion. For instance, the most
productive doctrinal writer in late sixteenth-century New Spain was the
Franciscan Juan Bautista Viseo, who published seventeen works under
his own name, most of them Nahuatl devotional texts.10 Bautista was
the author of these works only in the narrow sense that Michel Fou-
cault called the “penal appropriation”11 of early modern authorship: he
secured permission to print the works, and could thus be punished for
their contents. Nonetheless, Bautista was not these works’ sole com-
poser: he appropriated some doctrinal materials that other Franciscans
had left in manuscript form and worked in collaboration with a net-
work of indigenous scholars who had studied at the Franciscan Cole-
gio de Santa Cruz at Tlatelolco.12 In contrast to Bautista, a prominent
Franciscan in an intellectual milieu more exalted than that at San An-
tonio Abad, Chimalpahin would not easily have been identified as an
author in his lifetime. About half a century after the printing of López
de Gómara’s La conquista had been banned, the legal status of a copy
of its contents may have been controversial. However, Chimalpahin’s
possession of La conquista would not necessarily have attracted pros-
ecution: while civil administrators and officers of the Inquisition kept a
register of printed works that were banned in the Indies, in practice the
enforcement of these directives was lax and episodic.13 Paradoxically, as
a rather obscure Nahua intellectual working on manuscripts that would
not be printed or become widely known in his lifetime, Chimalpahin
may have enjoyed a latitude greater than that afforded to better known
Nahua or Spanish figures.
Introduction
20
While we have no knowledge of the precise reasons that led Chimalpa-
hin to work on La conquista, his activities as annalist and copyist provide
a context for understanding what he might have set out to accomplish.
Chimalpahin’s scholarly interests went well beyond Nahua historical ac-
counts. The multiple and widespread references to European history, clas-
sical antiquity, and saints’ lives that figure in his Nahuatl-language works
demonstrate that Chimalpahin sought out and pondered Spanish-language
historical, ecclesiastical, and devotional texts. López de Gómara, however,
was not the only Spanish author whose work Chimalpahin appropriated.
When Chimalpahin proposed a comparison between the Mexica 260-
day divinatory calendar and the European 365-day count, he included
information about zodiac signs drawn from Enrico Martínez’s influential
1606 Reportorio de los tiempos y historia natural desta Nueva España.14
Martínez was also the source of some of Chimalpahin’s references to Eu-
ropean historical geography, which included the statement that the indig-
enous peoples of New Spain and the inhabitants of Courland, a Baltic
duchy then associated with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, re-
sembled each other in bodily shape and spiritual qualities.15 Furthermore,
Chimalpahin copied doctrinal texts, as attested by his transcription of
Exercicio quotidiano, a Nahuatl work revised by the Franciscan Bernar-
dino de Sahagún.16 Although Chimalpahin’s degree of knowledge about
and access to the vast Sahaguntine corpus is unknown, Chimalpahin was
certainly familiar with works by Sahagún other than the Exercicio.17
Indeed, Chimalpahin’s “Conquista” manuscript has some of the char-
acteristics of a copyist’s incomplete draft, as it contains a few aberrant
sections. The manuscript lacks the original’s last twenty-three chapters
and a final section about Cortés, features a few false starts in which
Chimalpahin begins glossing a sentence and then repeats the original
one verbatim,18 and, most memorably, features a half-folio section re-
peated twice in folios 54 and 54v, initially with various changes intro-
duced by Chimalpahin and then once again without any modifications.
Chimalpahin even notes that a certain ruler “also had another name,”19
perhaps as a reminder of its eventual insertion. Thus, he obviously pos-
sessed the skills and intellectual curiosity that facilitated the production
of a full manuscript copy of López de Gómara’s text, and he could have
begun this process either by commission or as an extension of his interest
in the history of the various Nahua altepetl. Whether or not Chimalpahin
had any knowledge of Sahagún’s Nahuatl-language narratives concern-
ing the conquest of Mexico Tenochtitlan now known as Book Twelve of
the Florentine Codex is open to speculation.20 Indeed, Chimalpahin’s
“Conquista” shows little trace of Book Twelve’s anti-Tlaxcalteca bias
and episodic characterizations of Spaniards as rapacious warriors.
Reclaiming the Conquest 21
c h i m a l p a h i n’s sig n a t u r e i n t e r v e n t i o ns
i n “ c o n qu i s t a”
What follows is an overview of the most significant modifications intro-
duced by Chimalpahin into López de Gómara’s work. We are as confident
as we can be without having a holograph that the additions and changes
we have highlighted in our translation were introduced by Chimalpahin.
As a group, these changes consistently reflect Chimalpahin’s sociopolitical
orientation, as well as his intimate knowledge of Nahua communities in
central Mexico. An alternative hypothesis would be that another author
became Chimalpahin’s doppelgänger by replicating his procedures and
appropriating his name. However, no extant evidence provides support
for such an elaborate possibility.21 The extent of changes introduced by
Chimalpahin is both massive and heterogeneous, thus this discussion is
but a brief introduction focusing on four issues: changes that characterize
Chimalpahin’s major concerns as an annalist, his additions about Nahua
history and culture, his perspective on the Spanish conquerors, and his
linguistic and orthographic usage as a native speaker of Nahuatl.
The only instance in which Chimalpahin refers to himself by name
in this manuscript is nothing short of momentous. As discussed above,
he inserts his name in the middle of a description of the retinue of
Moteuczoma Xocoyotzin (Moteuczoma hereinafter), during the pivotal
first encounter with Cortés on November 8, 1519. Here, he notes that,
“although the author Francisco Rodríguez [sic] de Gómara” believed
Cuitlahuac, lord of Iztacpalapan, to be Moteuczoma’s nephew, “he was
not his nephew but a blood brother by his father or mother. I say this, don
Domingo de San Antón Muñón [Chimalpahin] Quauhtlehuanitzin.”22
This is the only occasion when Chimalpahin directly refers to a discrep-
ancy in views between himself and his source. Chimalpahin’s adoption
of the spurious “Rodríguez” does suggest that he did not have access to
a copy of the La conquista containing its author’s full name. Like many
of his contemporaries, Chimalpahin may have referred to the Spanish
chronicler simply as “Gómara.” The rest of Chimalpahin’s addition also
establishes a distinction between Nahua and Spanish views of the same
event. While the Spanish chronicler mentions only two of Moteuczoma’s
companions by name, his Nahua counterpart lists the names and titles
of nine other “powerful princes and lords of great estates,” among which
one finds the rulers of Tlacopan and Tlatelolco, two of the sons of former
Mexica emperors Ahuitzotl and Tizoc, and the son of the chief architect
of Mexica expansion in the 1430s, “Chief Judge Tlacaelel Cihuacoatl,
founder of the Mexica empire.”23
Such an emphasis on names and titles is very familiar to any reader
Introduction
22
of Chimalpahin’s annals, which feature systematic and painstaking ren-
ditions of Nahua titles. Similarly, in his “Conquista,” Moteuczoma is
almost always “King Moteuczoma,” and Cortés is “Captain Cortés.”
However, Chimalpahin follows López de Gómara’s usage by omitting
the honorific doña before the name of Marina, or “Malinche,” Cortés’s
main indigenous interpreter, although such usage becomes more preva-
lent later. Moreover, Chimalpahin introduces many names not mentioned
by López de Gómara and adds the Nahua titles of indigenous protago-
nists. One finds insertions such as “don Fernando Tecocoltzin,”24 “don
Pedro de Moteuczoma Tlacahuepan,”25 and the addition of the honorific
Nahuatl suffix -tzin to many names, which extends to Phurépecha names
such as that of the ruler Cazonzi.26
As one would expect of an annalist who extolled the history of his
hometown, Chimalpahin adds substantial commentary to two sections
in the original that refer to Amaquemecan Chalco. As a complement
to a terse narrative about Cortés’s first approach to this altepetl, Chi-
malpahin notes that there were seven cities in the district and that a
leading town was the Mexica subject town called Amaquemecan, with
Cacamatzin Teohuateuctli as its ruler. He also adds 5,000 people to
López de Gómara’s population estimate of 20,000. Furthermore, Chi-
malpahin asserts that it was none other than Cortés who erected the
first cross in the region atop the summit now known as Sacromonte.27 In
another section depicting the visit of Cortés and his indigenous allies to
Tlalmanalco, “the principal town of Chalco,” Chimalpahin duly reports
both the precontact Nahua names and the Christian baptismal names of
the three lords of the province who greeted Cortés.28 This latter addition
highlights a concern with foundational moments—the coming of Chris-
tianity and the friendly reception that many indigenous rulers were said
to extend to arriving Spaniards—frequently echoed in a heterogeneous
array of indigenous petitions, wills, primordial titles, and land docu-
ments in central Mexico.29
c h i m a l p a h i n’s c o m m e n t a r i e s o n na h ua
h i s t ory a n d g e n e a l o g y
Chimalpahin’s most systematic preoccupation as editor seems to be the
description of the titles and genealogy of indigenous figures whom López
de Gómara mentions only in passing. An important example is found at
the end of a paragraph regarding Cortés’s decision to return to Spain to
negotiate his political standing, after having been exiled from Mexico
City by Alonso de Estrada. López de Gómara places little emphasis on
Reclaiming the Conquest 23
the identity of Cortés’s noble companions, and identifies only three of
them. In contrast, Chimalpahin provides a detailed account of some of the
first Nahua rulers ever to journey to Spain: fifteen lords listed by altepetl
and rank. Thus, we learn that the Mexica contingent included Moteuc-
zoma’s sons, don Pedro de Moteuczoma Tlacahuepan and don Martín
Cortés Nezahualtecolotl; his nephew don Francisco de Alvarado Matlac-
cohuatzin; a member of his “Imperial Council,” Damián Tlacochcalcatl;
and don Gaspar Toltequitzin. The latter’s inclusion establishes a link be-
tween this narrative and Chimalpahin’s Mexico City home in San Antón
Abad, as Toltequitzin turns out to be the lord of Xoloco Acatlan, the barrio
where Chimalpahin’s church is located.30 In another important addition,
he notes the names of three native lords who died while accompanying
Cortés in his expedition against the rebel conqueror, Cristóbal de Olid.
Furthermore, Chimalpahin informs us that an election held to replace
one of them as lord of Mexico Tenochtitlan resulted in the appointment
of Don Andrés Motelchiuhtzin, Moteuczoma’s steward and a warrior of
commoner descent who was mentioned in multiple additions.31
Throughout the text, Chimalpahin inserts many evocative descrip-
tions regarding Nahua customs and cultural practices. He stresses that
Moteuczoma’s “commanding presence” was instrumental in mak-
ing himself obeyed,32 and fixates on the details of his crown, “high in
the front like a bishop’s miter, all inset with pearls and fastened at the
back.”33 In an almost intimate aside, Chimalpahin indicates that, while
Moteuczoma had a preference for eating the feet and heels of sacrificed
men because he regarded it as “the most flavorful flesh,” he engaged
in cannibalism “only a few times,” in contrast with his predecessors.34
Chimalpahin’s portrayal of Malintzin departs from the original, since
he often refers to her as “Tenepal.”35 As to the ritual exchange of insults
in the battlefield, he renders them even more pointed and graphic by
indicating that the Mexica shouted at the Spaniards, “Wait, sons of the
sun, for you will soon die by our hand, and we will eat you alive, grilled
on a barbecue and cooked, in morsels, as your flesh is tasty!”36 More-
over, when discussing xochiyaoyotl, the Mexica “flowery wars” that
provided a steady supply of sacrificial victims for state ritual practices,
Chimalpahin writes that the youths in these wars would journey south
to Tehuantepec to obtain cacao, and stresses the victorious return of war
captains laden with gold, precious stones, feathers, and slaves.37
Moreover, Chimalpahin places particular care in the characteriza-
tion of non-Mexica indigenous groups. Chimalpahin’s early seventeenth-
century vantage point is in evidence when discussing the importance of
the production of cochineal, a dye derived from cactus-dwelling insects.
He asserts that the cochineal trade had caused a rise in the wealth of the
Introduction
24
Tlaxcalteca38 and allowed the Otomi to supplement their meager forms
of subsistence.39 He also stresses the rustic character of the Otomi by de-
picting them as untamed nomadic peoples of the highlands, “courageous
like the Arabs in Africa, who fight naked with bow and arrow.”40 More-
over, in a section describing Cortés’s triumph at Cholola, Chimalpahin
inserts the names of two local lords41 and points out that he had person-
ally been astonished by the generosity shown to beggars in this city.42 He
also refers to the possibility that Christianity had been preached to na-
tives in Mexico prior to Cortés by noting the “mystery” of the red crosses
displayed on the garments of Quetzalcoatl, Cholola’s tutelary deity.43
c h i m a l p a h i n’s v i e w s a b o u t t h e
con q u e r o r s i n “ c o n qu i s t a”
One of the most remarkable characteristics of “Conquista” is that Chi-
malpahin’s modifications do not occur at a regular pace in the text;
sometimes, he simply copies numerous uninterrupted pages of López
de Gómara’s account. It is striking to find that Chimalpahin chose to
appropriate a substantial amount of the Spanish chronicler’s narrative
verbatim, while the exacting character of his interventions suggests that
he was exercising his judgment as annalist rather than merely discharg-
ing his duties as copyist. In “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,”
a well-known short story by Jorge Luis Borges, the title character at-
tempts to write the novel Don Quixote de La Mancha, and succeeds in
producing a few sections that are, word for word, identical to those of
the original.44 According to Borges, Menard recreates Cervantes’s world
as his own self, Menard, rather than by becoming Cervantes through in-
trospection. In doing so, Menard’s words acquire a meaning that departs
from that of Cervantes’s words, as each of these works was written in a
different historical context. We could bear Borges’s thought experiment
in mind as we ponder Chimalpahin’s motivations for copying many of
Gómara’s passages verbatim. In doing so, like Menard, Chimalpahin
changed the way we might interpret López de Gómara’s text. Perhaps
the most astounding result of this procedure is that Chimalpahin chose
to inhabit the Spanish “we” and “us” that López de Gómara utilizes to
separate the Spanish army from all indigenous peoples, including those
receiving the deliberately vague designation of amigos, “friends.”45 Thus,
every time Cortés’s army trounces Mexica or indigenous enemies in bat-
tle, Chimalpahin’s identity as an author is indexed by the Spanish chroni-
cler’s “we.” Rather than remaining a mere indigenous ally, for a fleeting
moment Chimalpahin becomes, retrospectively, a conqueror.
Reclaiming the Conquest 25
Even if his work as a historian reveals an impressive knowledge of
Nahua history, Chimalpahin typically addressed this subject from the per-
spective of a sincere Nahua Christian; for instance, when he wrote about
the 1539 execution of Nahua nobleman don Carlos Chichimecateuctli,
who had been convicted of heresy by Bishop fray Juan de Zumárraga,
he noted that “idolatry was burned along with him.”46 Such a vantage
point, which emphasizes the role of Cortés as both conqueror and divine
instrument, is in ample evidence throughout his additions. Chimalpahin
ends his description of the first meeting between Cortés and Moteuc-
zoma by specifying that it took place on the “day of the Four Crowned
Saints,” inserting “our Lord” after the original text’s clause “in the year
of Christ.” As he discusses the various arguments Moteuczoma’s ambas-
sadors presented to Cortés in order to dissuade him from journeying to
Mexico Tenochtitlan, Chimalpahin remarks that “such frightful admo-
nitions were of no use because Almighty God inspired them with great
hope.”47 This providential tone is used once more when Chimalpahin
observes that, were the Mexica to have had “greater understanding, they
could well have destroyed the Spaniards with many ruses,” given their
knowledge of the terrain; he attributes this failure to act to “the divine
will of God’s Providence.”48 He also comments on the futility of Mexica
attempts to mislead Cortés by stating that the Spanish triumph was pre-
dicted by “an oracle [revealing] that their monarchy was coming to an
end and that strangers would come from the direction where the sun rises
to conquer them.”49 Chimalpahin seems to share with López de Gómara
the belief that indigenous peoples regarded the Spaniards as demiurgic.
In an aside about the wondrous admiration with which the Mexica be-
held the Spaniards’ beards and long hair, he records their fright before
men on horseback, whom they believed to be gods, while other observers
“said they were sons of the sun, believing them immortal.”50 Moreover,
Chimalpahin’s knowledge of classical antiquity is on display when he
exalts Cortés’s generosity by remarking that he was “another Alexander
the Great in his munificence,”51 or lauds the conqueror by saying “he
showed greater resolve than Caesar”;52 both comparisons bring to mind
Sahagún’s evocative contention that the Mexica tutelary deity Huitzilo-
pochtli was “another Hercules.”53
Chimalpahin’s moral stance toward the treatment of women in the
conquest suggests a concern with the honor of indigenous women and
with the Spaniards’ reputation. He takes pains to indicate that the people
of Cholola had given the Spaniards several women “as hostages”54 and
not as concubines, and that the women whom the Mexica gave the Span-
iards after lodging them were indeed “servants.”55 Moreover, Chimalpa-
hin depicts Cortés’s policy toward the capture of women during warfare
Introduction
26
as a principle that must be taught to cavalier native allies. When the
Tlaxcalteca pillaged a section of Mexico Tenochtitlan, Cortés allegedly
tells the native lords “they should not take women as slaves, for their
plunder sufficed. He had come not to offend the natives but to deliver all
these nations from their servitude.”56 Later, when Cortés learned that his
men had captured women and young men in Xomiltepec, Chimalpahin
asserts that he ordered his soldiers not to do so again “under penalty
of death.”57 It seems, however, that concern for female chastity was not
the exclusive province of Europeans. In an addition to a chapter that
discusses Moteuczoma’s concubines, Chimalpahin states that no com-
moner could cast a glance in their direction, “or they would pay with
their lives. Their virtue was so great that, despite their idolatry, they
obeyed their laws.”58
c h i m a l p a h i n a s a
na h ua t l - s p e a k i ng e d i t o r
It is likely that Boturini and various anonymous copyists modified the
original Spanish and Nahuatl orthography that Chimalpahin employed
in his holograph. These modifications apparently proceeded along two
diverging lines. On the one hand, the Browning Manuscript’s Spanish
orthographic usage is relatively orthodox for the midcolonial period,
and in fact diverges from the earlier stylistic conventions applied in
López de Gómara’s 1552 edition. Since some of the Spanish loanwords
Chimalpahin inserts in his Nahuatl writings reflect the pronunciation
of a non-native speaker of Spanish, it is possible that the manuscript’s
fairly standardized Spanish spelling was due to a copyist. On the other
hand, this manuscript exhibits an unusual range of variation for Nahuatl
proper names that one would expect Chimalpahin to systematize, as he
does in his annals; for instance, there are thirteen variations for Moteuc-
zoma, four for Quauhtemoc, and three for Quetzalcoatl.59 These varia-
tions may have been introduced by a copyist, even if the manuscript did
retain Chimalpahin’s signature spelling of the term for “lord” as teuhctli,
rather than teuctli or tecutli.60
Chimalpahin’s additions throughout the text display a superior com-
mand of literary Spanish, with a few exceptions. A few examples point
in the direction of a Nahuatl speaker: on folio 129, we find suple, “to
substitute,” instead of sufre, “to suffer,” which exemplifies two typical
phonemic substitutions of /p/ for /f/ and /l/ for /r/ employed by Nahuatl
native speakers when writing in Spanish; as a further example of the lat-
ter, on folio 125v, Chimalpahin writes “Elvilla” instead of the canonical
Reclaiming the Conquest 27
“Elvira.”61 On folio 76, we find an intrusive /t/ in the phrase en tentien-
dolos hechos, a minor change from en teniéndoles hechos, “as soon as
they are built.” Other minor inaccuracies appear elsewhere.62
Only in a few instances do we find that Chimalpahin misunderstood
Spanish terms. The most glaring example is his interpretation of the noun
phrase ojos de la calzada, “the causeway’s archways,” which López de
Gómara uses several times to refer to the space underneath the causeways
that connected Mexico Tenochtitlan, the Mexica altepetl occupying an
island in a lake, with the mainland. Chimalpahin transforms this phrase
into ojos de agua, “water sources,” which fits the semantic context bet-
ter from a native perspective, since, unlike their European counterparts,
Mexica causeways had no archways. This substitution results in describ-
ing drawbridges and brigantines as going over water springs rather than
across causeway spans.63 A final example occurs after the famous scene
in which former Mexica king Quauhtemoc refuses to reveal the location
of his treasure even after being tortured. The original text (f. 120) states
that Cortés ordered an end to the ordeal porque dijo como lo echara en
la laguna, “because Quauhtemoc [said] he had thrown [the treasure]
into the lake”; Chimalpahin changes the clause into porque dijo que lo
hechara en la laguna—literally, “because Quauhtemoc told [ Cortés] to
throw [him] into the lake.” This modification, which we discuss in a
footnote to our translation, shifts the referent for the direct object “lo”
from the treasure to Quauhtemoc himself, and turning Quauhtemoc’s
explanation into a defiant stance.
Surprisingly, Chimalpahin’s corrections of inaccurate or improperly
glossed Nahuatl terms do not seem to be a highly systematic endeavor.
He modifies the glosses of some Nahuatl place names; for instance, he
specifies that Texcallan means “Place of the Crag” rather than “House
of the Crag” and gives the correct gloss for Tepeticpac as “Hilltop.”64 On
the other hand, he provides a doubtful etymology for Xaltocan, which
he glosses as “Place of Spiders” rather than “Place of Sand.”65 Occa-
sionally, he uses Nahuatl terms as mots justes—such as nochiztli for
“cochineal,”66 nezahualiztli for “ritual fasting,”67 quetzalli for “feath-
ers,” and tolli for “reeds”68—but he also employs Hispanicized Nahuatl
words that were probably prevalent at the time—such as amillote rather
than amilotl, or xouille for xouilin when describing two types of fish.69
However, for reasons not understood, Chimalpahin does not amend
some glaring Nahuatl errors in the text, such as tlamacaztli in lieu of
tlamacazqui, “priest,”70 or sharpen the imprecise translations of the
Nahua place names Cuetlaxcoapan and Huitzilapan as “Snake in Water”
and “Bird in Water,” which literally mean “Tanned-Leather Snake in
Water” and “Hummingbird in Water,” respectively.71
Introduction
28
Since Chimalpahin had little specialized knowledge about Mexica
calendrical systems, he refers to Nahua calendrical signs in an unsys-
tematic manner in “Conquista.”72 When López de Gómara discusses the
Nahua God of Drunkenness, Ome Tochtli (2-Rabbit), for example, Chi-
malpahin compares him to the Roman god Bacchus and glosses the name
as “Two Rabbits” [sic],73 without indicating that this is a calendrical
name. In another section that discusses the emblems Moteuczoma placed
in his treasure houses, Chimalpahin copies the phrase “with a rabbit for
[Moteuczoma’s] coat of arms,”74 but he does not indicate that this sign
refers to Moteuczoma’s year of accession, 10 -Rabbit (circa 1502), which
he does report in his Nahuatl annals. A final example shows that the
Nahua annalist defers to the Spanish chronicler in matters of Mexica
chronology, for he does not amend López de Gómara’s statement that the
age of the current Mexica sun, counted backwards from 1552, is 858 Eu-
ropean years.75 This calculation would place that era’s beginning at circa
a.d. 694, which does not quite match a.d. 670, Chimalpahin’s starting
date for his Nahuatl-language annals corresponding to that period.
con c l usion
What motivated Chimalpahin to produce this work? It is impossible to
extrapolate a specific motivation from the manuscript, but Chimalpahin’s
own place of residence may provide an indirect clue. As Susan Schroeder
suggested,76 Chimalpahin’s residence in San Antonio Abad in Xoloco
was located at the site of Moteuczoma’s momentous first encounter with
Cortés,77 and a commemoration of this event in the late sixteenth century
would certainly have captured the attention of such a perceptive annalist.
In composing this work, Chimalpahin manages to turn the tables on the
frequent appropriation of indigenous annals and narratives by Spanish
chroniclers and doctrinal authors: just as they borrowed from a variety
of anonymous or poorly documented indigenous sources, Chimalpahin
adopts and reworks what he and other early seventeenth-century readers
of history held to be a definitive treatment of the conquest of Mexico.
Moreover, this Nahua intellectual appropriates López de Gómara’s “we”
without comment, allowing the pronoun to index both Spanish historical
actors and his own presence in the text as copyist and editor.
Chimalpahin’s hybrid “Conquista” is the sole extant attempt by a
colonial American indigenous author to appropriate and modify a his-
torical narrative by a Spanish chronicler about the Americas. The very
fact of its existence adds a layer of complexity to our understanding of
the ways in which indigenous intellectuals wrote and understood his-
Reclaiming the Conquest 29
torical narratives. Of necessity, Chimalpahin fused a set of assumptions
about historical narratives meant for consumption by a heterogeneous
Spanish audience with those he held dear as a compiler and copyist of
altepetl annals. This procedure resulted in a revised narrative flow that
stops at certain intervals to emphasize elements that were overlooked
or minimized by López de Gómara: foundational encounters between
native rulers and Cortés, the lineage and deeds of Cortés’s indigenous
allies and travel companions, and the titles and eventual fate of deceased
native rulers.
There is a single metadiscursive moment in which Chimalpahin sig-
nals his authority as an annalist to the manuscript’s intended audience:
in the one correction made to López de Gómara’s assertion regarding
the kinship link between Cuitlahuac and Moteuczoma. Elsewhere, Chi-
malpahin’s claim to historiographical knowledge is exercised through
many changes and elisions that may be fully discerned only through a
sustained comparison between López de Gómara’s original and Chi-
malpahin’s version. Chimalpahin does not correct Nahuatl terms in La
conquista with a heavy hand or offer radically different interpretations
of the reasons for the defeat of the Mexica or Cortés’s multiple victo-
ries; indeed, he accepts and even stresses the preordained and provi-
dential nature of Cortés’s triumph. Nevertheless, the profusion of vivid
and visually compelling descriptions that he inserts throughout the text
serves as a systematic reminder of memorable details that were ignored
by López de Gómara, ranging from the appearance of Moteuczoma’s
crown to the manufacture of Mexica weapons. Furthermore, Chimalpa-
hin uses a number of compelling comparisons—Ome Tochtli as Bac-
chus, for example, or the Otomi as Arabs—to render indigenous cultural
practices in terms that would have been familiar to educated audiences
in New Spain.
The multiplicity of Chimalpahin’s objectives, his heterodox approach
to text composition, and the complexity of his authorial voice present
three important challenges to his twenty-first-century readers. Instead of
upholding a contrast between indigenous peoples and Spaniards, Mexica
foes and Cortés’s allies, or the victors and the vanquished, he emerges
as a highly original native author. Chimalpahin surveys the broad pan-
orama afforded by López de Gómara’s text and reclaims this narrative
from the vantage point of a colonial Christian native intellectual who
was also an expert on traditional Nahua rulership. In the end, Chi-
malpahin does become, within the confines of his work as an indigenous
historian, the equal of a legendary Spanish chronicler in intellectual and
discursive terms.
Introduction
30
n o t e s
1. Susan Schroeder, Chimalpahin and the Kingdoms of Chalco (Tucson: Uni-
versity of Arizona Press, 1991), 7–26. Chimalpahin identified Diego de Muñón
as a patron of San Antón in 1591, and also emphasized the patronage of don
Sancho Sánchez de Muñón, a member of Mexico City’s cathedral council.
2. Some selections of Chimalpahin’s writings have been edited or translated
by Jacqueline de Durand-Forest, Walter Lehmann, and Silvia Rendón, among
other authors. More recently, three volumes containing authoritative transcrip-
tions and English translations of Chimalpahin’s writings have appeared as
Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco,
Texcoco, Culhuacan, and other Nahua Altepetl in Central Mexico, 2 vols., ed.
and trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1997); and Annals of His Time: Don Domingo de San
Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, ed. and trans. James Lockhart,
Susan Schroeder, and Doris Namala (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006).
Rafael Tena edited and translated Chimalpahin’s writings into Spanish as Las
ocho relaciones y El memorial de Colhuacan, 2 vols. (México: Consejo Nacio-
nal para la Cultura y las Artes, 1998) and Diario (México: Consejo Nacional
para la Cultura y las Artes, 20 01).
3. See James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest (Stanford, CA: Stan-
ford University Press, 1992), 376–92.
4. For an exhaustive discussion of Chimalpahin’s historical writings, see
Schroeder, Chimalpahin.
5. In this insertion, discussed in detail below, he calls himself “don Domingo
de San Antón Muñón Quauhtlehuanitzin,” for he occasionally omitted “Chi-
malpahin” from his signed name; see Chimalpahin, Codex Chimalpahin, 1:90–
91, 180–81.
6. Newberry Library, Vault folio Case Ms 5011, “La Conquista de Mexico
compuesta por D[o]n Dom[in]go de S[a]n Anton Muñon Quauhtlehuanitzin”
(CH hereinafter).
7. Chimalpahin used Spanish phrases as titles, but these phrases are never
accompanied by his name. See Chimalpahin, Codex Chimalpahin, 1:26–27,
64–65, 178–79; 1:62–63, 130–31.
8. Hispanic Society of America, Manuscript 411 / 768, “La Conquista de
Mexico Escripta por D[o]n Domingo de S[a]n Anton Muñon Chimalpahin
Quauhtlehuanitzin,” f. 1: “who appears to have written this History while in
Spain. However, since he was a mestizo native to New Spain, he denotes through
some of his statements that he was present in many of the events he relates. It
cannot be doubted that he met the first conquerors.”
9. See Roger Chartier, The Order of Books: Readers, Authors and Libraries
in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Cambridge, UK:
Polity Press, 1992).
10. Chimalpahin himself appropriated some passages from the works of Bau-
tista and other Franciscan and Dominican authors. See Chimalpahin, Codex
Chimalpahin, 1:6. For a summary of Bautista’s authorial practices, see David
Reclaiming the Conquest 31
Tavárez, “Naming the Trinity: From Ideologies of Translation to Dialectics of
Reception in Colonial Nahua Texts, 1547–1771,” Colonial Latin American Re-
view 91 (2000), 21–47.
11. Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul
Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 108.
12. Bautista names eight of them in his 1606 Sermonario en lengua mexi-
cana. See Louise Burkhart, Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Drama from Early Co-
lonial Mexico (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996).
13. See Irving Leonard, Books of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and
of Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century New
World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949; Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992).
14. This work by Enrico Martínez was reprinted as Reportorio de los tiempos
e historia natural de Nueva España (México: Secretaría de Educación Pública,
1948).
15. Chimalpahin cites Martínez as the source of this statement. See Chimalpa-
hin, Las ocho relaciones, 1:308–11. Also, for additional information about Chi-
malpahin’s understanding of the origin of North America’s first inhabitants,
see Susan Schroeder, “Chimalpahin Rewrites the Conquest: Yet Another Epic
History?” in The Conquest All Over Again: Nahuas and Zapotecs Thinking,
Painting, and Writing the Conquest of Mexico (Sussex: Sussex Academic Press,
2010).
16. Chimalpahin, Codex Chimalpahin, 1:8–10.
17. There was no contact between this missionary and the Nahua author,
since Chimalpahin worked on La conquista decades after Sahagún’s death. See
Miguel León-Portilla, “Chimalpahin’s Use of a Testimony by Sahagún: The
Olmecs in Chalco-Amaquemecan,” in The Work of Bernardino de Sahagún:
Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-Century Aztec Mexico, ed. J. Jorge Klor de
Alva, H. B. Nicholson, and Eloise Quiñones Keber (Albany, NY: Institute for
Mesoamerican Studies, State University at Albany, 1988), 179–98.
18. See, for instance, the sentence about Cortés’s summoning of native gover-
nors at the end of CH, f. 47.
19. This was Cucuzca, Cacama’s younger brother; CH, f. 73v.
20. See James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest
of Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
21. There have been no historical controversies regarding Chimalpahin’s au-
thorship. However, the authorship of Guamán Poma de Ayala’s Nueva corónica
y buen gobierno has recently been debated by Andeanists after the alleged dis-
covery of documents subsequently characterized as forgeries. See Kenneth An-
drien, “The Virtual and the Real: The Case of the Mysterious Documents from
Naples,” History Compass 6:5 (2008), 1304–24,.
22. CH, f. 53v.
23. CH, f. 54.
24. CH, f. 96.
25. CH, f. 163.
26. CH, f. 154. The application of this ending to a Phurépecha name is an
Introduction
32
aberrant use of the Nahuatl honorific, which was employed only for Nahua
names.
27. CH, f. 52.
28. CH, f. 102v. The lords in question were Omacatzin Teohuateuhctli, later
don Hernando de Guzmán, lord of the quarter of Opochhuacan Tlacochcalco;
Tequanxayacatzin Teohuateuhctli, later don Juan de Sandoval, principal of
the quarter of Tlailotlacan in Amaquemecan; and Tequanxayacatzin’s brother
Quetzal maçatzin Chichimecateuhctli, later don Tomás de San Martín, lord of
the Itztlacoçauhcan quarter in Amaquemecan.
29. See Stephanie Wood, Transcending Conquest: Nahua Views of Spanish
Colonial Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003).
30. CH, f. 153. Chimalpahin also indicates that this group included represen-
tatives from Tlacopan, Colhuacan, Cuitlahuac, Tlalmanalco, Cempoala, and
Tlaxcala.
31. For more information on Motelchiuhtzin, see Charles Gibson, The Aztecs
Under Spanish Rule (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964), 168, 172.
32. CH, f. 56.
33. CH, f. 54.
34. CH, ff. 56v–57.
35. Chimalpahin specifies that Tenepal was part of Malintzin’s proper name
in ff. 21v, 22, 22v, 104, and 137v. James Lockhart notes that Chimalpahin may
not have recognized “Marina” as a Spanish variant of “Malintzin,” and also
suggests that “Tenepal” is a corruption of the Nahuatl tenenepil, “somebody’s
tongue,” a likely calque of the Spanish term lengua, “translator.”
36. CH, f. 105.
37. CH, f. 44v.
38. CH, f. 42v.
39. CH, f. 43.
40. CH, f. 42v.
41. CH, f. 46.
42. CH, f. 48v.
43. CH, f. 49. For further discussion of signs interpreted by colonial observ-
ers as potential proofs of pre-Hispanic evangelization in Mexico, see Jacques
Lafaye, Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe: The Formation of Mexican National
Consciousness, 1531–1813 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), and
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World (Stan-
ford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001).
44. See Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (New
York: Penguin, 1999), 88–95.
45. Kevin Terraciano, personal communication, 2008.
46. Chimalpahin, Codex Chimalpahin, 1, 40.
47. CH, f. 50v.
48. CH, f. 52.
49. CH, f. 50.
50. CH, f. 52v.
51. CH, f. 106.
Reclaiming the Conquest 33
52. CH, f. 79v.
53. For a discussion of the use of parallels from classical antiquity to describe
and interpret Nahua culture, see Serge Gruzinski, The Mestizo Mind (New
York: Routledge, 2002).
54. CH, f. 45.
55. CH, f. 51v.
56. CH, f. 99.
57. CH, f. 104.
58. CH, f. 59.
59. Respectively, they are as follows: (1) Moctezuma, Moteçuma, Moteççuma,
Moteucçoma, Motecçumatzin, Motecçuma, Moteczumatzin, Moteccuma,
Motec zumazin, Motezu ma, Moteczumacin, Moteczuma, Moteczumaçin;
(2) Quahutimoctzin, Quahutimoc, Quautimoc, Quautimocin; and (3) Queçal-
cohuatl, Queçalcohuatl, Quezalcoauatl.
60. See Chimalpahin, Codex Chimalpahin, 1:9. Chimalpahin’s native-speaker
awareness of distinctive sounds found in Nahuatl but not in Spanish may ac-
count for his spelling of teuhctli with an h. According to Norman McQuown’s
reconstruction of the phonological inventory of Nahuatl (personal communica-
tion, 1997), the /k/ in teuhctli was labialized, yielding [kw], and the h may reflect
Chimalpahin’s awareness of prelabialization.
61. The phonemic inventory of precontact Nahuatl did not include /f/ and
/r/ as separate phonemes. See Lockhart, Nahuas, 296. The reference to doña
Elvira suggests that Chimalpahin had access to previously unknown materials
by Nahua author Hernando Alvarado Tezozómoc.
62. For instance, guarnición, “garrison,” instead of governación, “gover-
nance”; and reprobó, “condemned him,” instead of probó, “corroborated.”
63. CH, ff. 53v and 109.
64. CH, f. 42v.
65. CH., f. 99. Lockhart analyzes Xaltocan as xal-to-can, where -to- is either
an auxiliary ligature or the auxiliary of the verb onoc, “to lie.” At this point
in the text, Chimalpahin is not merely discussing an etymology, but arguing
against the possibility that Xaltocan’s emblem contained a frog rather than a
spider. Since reference to either emblem is not found in López de Gómara, Chi-
malpahin may have been referring to an unknown source here.
66. CH, f. 43.
67. CH, f. 49.
68. CH, f. 54v.
69. CH, f. 53.
70. CH, f. 67.
71. CH, f. 154v.
72. For instance, Chimalpahin merged the Mexica 260-day count with the
Mexica 365-day vague solar year, and stated, erroneously, that the 365-day
count included 100 days “with no fortune.” See Chimalpahin, Codex Chimalpa-
hin, 1:118–29.
73. CH, f. 43.
74. CH, f. 61.
Introduction
34
75. CH, f. 159v.
76. Susan Schroeder, “Chimalpahin, don Carlos María de Bustamante, and
The Conquest of Mexico as Cause for Mexican Nationalism,” Estudios de Cul-
tura Náhuatl 39 (2008), 287–309.
77. Chimalpahin refers to San Antón Abad twice in his text. He first asserts
that it was located where Moteuczoma met Cortés (CH, f. 108v), and then states
that the lord of the barrio where the church was founded accompanied Cortés
on a return trip to Spain (CH, f. 153).
