This new world now revealed: Herna´n Corte´s and the presentation

Transcription

This new world now revealed: Hernán Cortés and
the presentation of Mexico to Europe
ELIZABETH HILL BOONE
Three years after Hernán Cortés affected the conquest of the
Aztec empire and the destruction of the Mexica Aztec capital of
Tenochtitlan, a visualization of that great city at its peak was
offered to the reading public of Europe. It was presented by
means of a woodcut accompanying the 1524 publication of
Cortés’s second letter to the Hapsburg emperor Charles V,
which reproduced a plan of Tenochtitlan, pictured as an
island city surrounded by its lakes and, on the left, a map of
the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico (figure 1). The plan of
Tenochtitlan is well known: it has been analyzed from several
perspectives and is often illustrated and invoked by those
interested both in Aztec Mexico and in city plans in general;
these scholars almost always ignore the map, however.1
Likewise, the map has been attended to by cartographic
historians interested in the early mapping of the Gulf of
Mexico, but they, in turn, ignore the city plan.2 The plan and
the map appear together in the woodcut, however, which
requires us to consider them thus within a single presentation
and in the specific context of Cortés’s letters to Charles that
describe his remarkable exploits in Mexico.
This article considers the plan and the map, together with the
accompanying inscription, to achieve several goals. First, I hope
to contribute to our understanding of the city plan as a document that describes Tenochtitlan before its destruction, when it
was on the cusp of being secured for Charles. Then I turn to the
coastal map to explain its special features and its origins within
the circle of Cortés. The map and the plan were based on
drawings sent from the Americas, likely separate documents
sent at different times, but they complement and take meaning
from each other through their union in the woodcut. Their
features allow me to argue that the coastal map and the city
plan are integrated components of a conscious strategy to present to Europe the vast extent and incredible riches of New
Spain. It was a strategy that served two goals. One was to
celebrate Charles V as an imperial Caesar whose realm had
been greatly expanded by the addition of a new American
empire. The accompanying inscription also articulates this position. The other goal was to aid Cortés’s own ambitions to
cement his control of central Mexico and to extend his authority
to even more of the lands newly discovered. The woodcut
advances arguments made in the text of the second letter to
legitimize Cortés’s actions by highlighting the great prize he was
bringing to his emperor.
WORD & IMAGE, VOL.
27,
NO.
1,
JANUARY-MARCH
The woodcut print was included as a foldout plate in the Latin
translation of Cortés’s second letter, Praeclara de Nova maris Oceani
Hyspania Narratio . . ., published in Nuremberg in 1524 by
Friedrich Peypus, a publisher known for his scientific and humanistic works.3 Its full title, in translation, conveys the exciting
flavor of the work: ‘The splendid narrative of Ferdinand Cortes
about the New Spain of the Ocean Sea, transmitted to the most
sacred and invincible, always august Charles, Emperor of the
Romans, King of the Spaniards, in the year of the Lord 1520;
in which is contained many things worthy of knowledge and
admiration about the excellent cities of their provinces. . . above
all about the famous city of Temixtitan and its diverse wonders,
which will wondrously please the reader.’ This second letter is
usually bound with the fourth decade of Peter Martyr
d’Anghiera and sometimes also with the Latin translation of
Cortés’s third letter to Charles, which Peypus also issued that
year.4
The five letters sent from Mexico to Charles V between 1519
and 1526 have generally been acknowledged as self-serving discourses styled by Cortés to justify and legitimize his deeds in
Mexico and to bolster his stature as a devoted servant of the
Crown.5 As Cortés’s original mission was only to explore, trade,
and rescue any survivors of previous explorations — all under
the auspices of Diego Velazquez, the governor of Cuba —
Cortés’s break with Velazquez and his reconstitution as an
independent agent of conquest and colonization freed him to
report directly to Charles, but his actions also required Charles’s
forgiveness.6 The letters are works of self-authorization, which
downplay the previous explorations by Hernando de Cordova
and Juan de Grijalva and blacken the reputation of Velazquez
while presenting Cortés as the most loyal, and successful, of
royal subjects. The second letter is particularly important in
this respect because it describes the rich empire that Cortés
acquired for Charles. It tells of the march into Tenochtitlan,
describes the features of the marvelous and famed Aztec city,
and suggests the vastness of Moctezuma’s empire; crucially, it
includes Moctezuma’s speech to Cortés by which the Aztec
emperor voluntarily surrendered his empire to Charles.7
Although this second letter must also explain the Spaniards’
expulsion by the angry citizens of Tenochtitlan, the subsequent
third letter recounts the siege and eventual conquest of the Aztec
capital. Following Moctezuma’s early speech of donation, however, all of Cortés’s subsequent actions toward victory in Mexico
2011
Word & Image ISSN 0266-6286 # 2011 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/tf/02666286.html
DOI: 10.1080/02666281003771190
31
Figure 1. Woodcut map and plan of Tenochtitlan, in Praeclara de Nova maris Oceani Hyspania Narratio (Nuremberg, F. Peypus, 1524). Courtesy of Edward E. Ayer
Collection, The Newberry Library.
are implicitly to recover the empire that was already rightfully
Charles.’
The woodcut’s responsibility was to present this empire in
visually compelling and authoritative terms. It did so by picturing the splendid capital of Tenochtitlan and by suggesting
Tenochtitlan’s control of an immense territory.
Plan of the Aztec capital
The plan of the city of Tenochtitlan poses problems of interpretation and orientation (figure 2). The identities of some
features have been contested, and its features are arranged
according to two different orientations (one for the plan as a
whole and another for the ritual precinct). There are also controversies about its authorship, for some see the plan as a
European construction, whereas Barbara Mundy has argued
for an indigenous creator. The fundamental question is how
this plan with its particular set of features came to be.
The plan represents Tenochtitlan graphically as a series of
concentric circles, with a square in the center: an island city
located in the center of a lake. The central square is the ritual
precinct, the ideological heart of the Aztec empire and the focus
32
of so much attention in Cortés’s account. The city that embraces
it extends outward as a circular concentration of buildings and
pavements that barely rise above the lake that surrounds and
intrudes between them; they are grouped into clusters by canals
and joined by bridges. The lake itself is also roughly circular;
broad causeways tie the city to the far shores. Framing the lake is
a circular strip of verdant earth, a strip punctuated with mountains and cities and having its own encircling horizon. This final
concentric strip encloses and qualifies the immediate environment of Tenochtitlan but offers no information about the territory beyond.
The plan presents the natural and built environment of the
Valley of Mexico in greatly conventionalized form. When compared with a modern map of the valley of Mexico as it is
projected to have been in 1519 (figure 3), one notices first that
the 1524 plan is oriented with the direction of west at the top.
Although this goes against the European convention of locating
east at the top, it is in accord with two indigenous maps from
sixteenth-century Mexico: the 1550 map of the Valley of Mexico
now in the Uppsala University Library (the so-called ‘Santa
Cruz map’) and the left, ‘geographic,’ side of the Mapa
Figure 2. Detail of the plan of Tenochtitlan, in Praeclara de Nova maris Oceani Hyspania Narratio. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University.
Sigüenza, both which locate west at the top.8 The orientations of
indigenous Mexican maps varied, although they usually followed an east–west axis.9 The Tenochtitlan plan offers a fairly
accurate but conceptual projection of Tenochtitlan and its surroundings, not drawn to absolute scale but with the distant
features pulled toward the center so as to be equidistant from
that point. Of the three original lakes, Lake Xaltocan to the
north and Lake Texcoco in the center have been compressed
into a single body, and Lake Xochimilco in the south has been
shrunk to a small appendage. It is a concentric projection of
features of the Valley of Mexico.
Included are the major features of the city and its environs as
well as those of interest to the Spaniards or that attested to the
character and privileges of the Aztec ruler Moctezuma. Starting
at the top (in the west) and moving counterclockwise around the
lake, one can identify the bosque of Chapultepec, depicted as a
densely forested area, with the spring that famously provided
freshwater to Tenochtitlan.10 The artist traced the route of the
stream from its source to the lake and then along the aqueduct
that carried its waters straight into the city. The western orientation of the plan means that the waters flow down the page. Next
to the left is the unnamed town of Tacubaya, with the Hapsburg
33
Within the lake the artist depicted and named a number of
features. In the upper left (southwest), just below Tacubaya, a
forest (probably a hunting preserve) and a pleasure house of
Moctezuma are named.13 Toward the bottom, on the eastern
edge of the city, is a temple of worship. Further down, below (to
the east of) the dike is an unnamed fortified island (Tepetzinco
[Peñon de los Baños]).
Tenochtitlan itself sits in the very center of the lake, dominated by its ritual precinct, where the four major roads converge. Among the monotony of conventionalized houses, the
artist depicted a number of elaborate buildings and notable
features around the precinct, but only a few that had special
meaning for the Spaniards are named: there is the palace of
Moctezuma (labeled Domus Don Muteczuma [House of Don
Moctezuma]), the zoo (labeled Domus animalium [House of
Animals]), which the Spaniards considered a great curiosity,
and the great market of Tlatelolco (labeled simply Forum
[plaza]).
It is the precinct itself that is of greatest interest, for us as for
the original audience, and the printer has chosen to focus on
those features that were most striking to the Europeans (figure 4).
The largest construction in the precinct is the Templo Mayor,
here rendered as a great stepped pyramid with twin towers (or
temples), each with its separate stairway, and between the temples the face of the sun. Anthony Aveni and Sharon Gibbs have
shown that this is the sun rising at the equinox,14 and an aspect of
Aztec religious and astronomical ideology that a Nuremberg
printer would not have invented. The Latin text labels this
Templum ubi Sacrificant (Temple of Sacrifice). The printer also
Figure 3. Map of the Valley of Mexico as it was in 1519.
imperial flag flying above it.11 Continuing south around the lake,
the artist located the unnamed city of Coyoacan between mountainous terrain, then the short causeway leading to the town of
Churubusco, where Lake Xochimilco (the small lake to the left)
joined Lake Texcoco. Below this are the city of Ixtapalapan,
here named, and then the mountains that border the lake in this
area. Toward the bottom of the plan, in the eastern portion of
the lake, is the dike built by the Texcocan ruler Nezahualcoyotl
in the fifteenth century to separate the sweet water of the western
and southern lakes from the brackish water in the east and
north. Beyond the edge of the southern lake shore is an
unnamed city (Chimalhuacan), and then on the horizon to the
right is the city of Texcoco, which is named. On the right (north)
side of the lake, causeways connect Tenochtitlan to the
unnamed cities of Tepeyacac and Tenayuca. Toward the top
(west), a final causeway leads toward Tacuba, which is also
named. As Mundy has noted, the only cities the printer named
outside Tenochtitlan are the two other Triple Alliance cities of
Tacuba and Texcoco, plus Ixtapalapan, the last city through
which Cortés passed as he rode into Tenochtitlan.12
34
Figure 4. Detail of the ritual precinct of Tenochtitlan, in Praeclara de Nova
maris Oceani Hyspania Narratio. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library,
Brown University.
included the little desert garden, three unnamed temples, and
the low building on the left that is surely the House of the Eagles
(dedicated to the military orders). He also included two tzompantli,
or skull racks, representing them as great tall scaffolds of severed
heads, the heads displayed with wild spiky hair. So as to leave no
doubt about their identity, he labeled them both Capita sacrificatorum (sacrificed heads).
The only sculpted image in the precinct, and an image that
has often been misunderstood or simply ignored, is the headless
human figure in the center. Seemingly unclothed, it stands on a
platform, with outstretched arms, its hands holding long serpentine strips. Its pose is slightly to one side (not fully frontal or
profile) and slightly contrapposto, with weight unequally distributed on the proper right leg; it is a pose that could almost be
considered classical. The figure is ambiguously sexed: the lines
bordering the lower stomach may refer to the stretch marks of
women who have borne children (a common Aztec convention),
and the profile outline of the upper torso may refer to a breast;
on the other hand, there may be a penis between the legs. The
figure is labeled Idol Lapideum (stone idol). Although it has been
interpreted differently by others,15 it is most likely to be either a
version of one of the monolithic Coatlicue statues (figure 5) or, as
Emily Umberger and Eduardo Matos Moctezuma have proposed, the statue of Coyolxauhqui (the defeated sister of the
principal god Huitzilopochtli) that was located at the base of
the stairs to the Huitzilopochtli temple (on the right side of the
Templo Mayor) in 1520, a successor to the Coyolxauhqui relief
found in 1978 (figure 6).16 Its standing pose, decapitated state,
and serpents grasped by the hands align it with the colossal
Coatlicue statue that now exists intact, which is also decapitated
and has blood serpents issuing from its wrists.17 But the
Coyolxauhqui is a likelier bet, for, as the quintessential defeated
foe, she is represented unclothed, and the very essence of the
Coyolxauhqui is her decapitation.18 As represented in the great
relief found at the base of the Templo Mayor stairs,
Coyolxauhqui also has stretch marks on her stomach, is displayed in a pin-wheel pose that shares something of the animation of the ‘stone idol,’ and wears around her loins a snake tied as
a man’s loincloth; in this respect she is gendered both male and
female.19 The headless state of the stone idol and the multiplicity
of devilish heads on the skull racks in the center of Tenochtitlan
are both being highlighted in the plan, for these would be aspects
that would arouse the wonder of the European audience.
Another curiosity about this rendering of the ritual precinct is
that the printer, or the original artist, inverted or flipped the
precinct, so that east, rather than west, is at the top.20 This flipping
effectively positions the buildings, and particularly the Templo
Mayor, so it can be more clearly articulated for the viewer. We
view the Templo Mayor as if we are standing in front of it.
It is generally recognized that the woodblock print of the plan is
the work of a Nuremberg woodcutter who Europeanized the
features of the plan.21 This is why many buildings are embellished
with square and circular towers topped by domes or battlemented
roofs and spires, and why Moctezuma’s palace features an arch
Figure 5. Statue of Coatlicue (Serpents her Skirt), andesite, 270 cm, Museo
Nacional de Antropologı́a, Mexico. Courtesy of the Instituto Nacional de
Antropologı́a e Historia, Mexico.
over the central entrance from its courtyard. The architecture is
rendered much like the architecture of European cities of the
time, although the roofs of Tenochtitlan’s houses are lower and
flatter than those pictured in northern European views, probably
because the originals were thatched.22 In the hand-colored print
owned by the Newberry Library, the roofs have been painted a
tile red. The dike of Nezahualcoyotl, which was constructed of
parallel stake-and-wattle walls filled in with stone and rubble, is
visualized like a woven sapling fence, common in Europe (as seen
in other German woodcuts).23 The sun behind the twin towers of
the Templo Mayor has a frontal face, and the ‘stone idol’ has the
corporeal plasticity of a classical statue. Additionally, the House of
Animals holds, in addition to various birds and other creatures,
two lions posed in passant as on heraldic shields, one facing left
above another facing right.
35
Figure 6. Relief of Coyolxauhqui (‘Painted with Bells’), andesite, 325 cm,
Museo del Templo Mayor. Drawing by Emily Umberger.
Although it is clear that the woodcut itself was produced by a
European printmaker working in a well-established medium,
Mundy has persuasively argued that the plan of Tenochtitlan is
based on a prototype sent by Cortés from Mexico, and that this
prototype was of indigenous authorship.24 Cortés probably sent
the plan with his second letter to Charles in 1520, for the conqueror refers to it in his third letter (1522) when he explains that a
dike separated the salt water from the sweet ‘as Your Majesty
may have seen from the map of Temixtitan which I sent.’25
Mundy argues that the published woodcut plan could not have
been entirely fabricated in Nuremberg because it contains specific features — such as the dike, the source of the city’s water,
and the alignment of the Templo Mayor — that could not have
been derived from Cortés’s second letter alone.26 Other features
that point to a Mexican source are the overall layout of the city,
the specific features and layout of the ritual precinct, the identity
of other places (such as Moctezuma’s pleasure house), and the
low roofs of the houses, which probably replicate thatch, rather
than the steeper pitched roofs common to northern Europe.
Although knowledge of the dike and the source of water could
have been derived from the third letter, which had been published
in Seville in 1522 and was being reissued in Latin translation in
Nuremberg in 1524, many of the other features are mentioned in
neither the second nor the third letter. This in itself still does not
prove the prototype to be indigenous, because some of these
features could well have been observed by a draftsman in the
company of Cortés. During the eight months the Spaniards were
36
residing in the city of Tenochtitlan, from 8 November 1519 to 1
July 1520, they surely saw the dike and were told about the source
of the city’s water.27 They could easily have visited Moctezuma’s
island pleasure house and island forest when they accompanied
the ruler about, and they would have gained a general sense of
Tenochtitlan’s immediate surrounds. It is also possible that they
knew about the alignment of the Templo Mayor, for they could
have been told about it or observed the sun rising between the
twin temples near the vernal equinox around 21 March 1520.
However, I agree with Mundy that an indigenous hand was at
work on the prototype for the plan.
It is highly unlikely that a Spanish draftsman would have
specified the precise alignment of the Templo Mayor; certainly
none of the conquerors mentioned the alignment. The
Spaniards largely avoided the great temple, and its alignment
would hold no significance for them. It was significant for the
Aztecs, however, so much so that as the Templo Mayor was
successively enlarged, adjustments were made to preserve this
alignment.28 Moreover, an indigenous conception of space governs the overall structure of the plan. It is an ideal that arranges
cartographic features concentrically around a central point, that
distinguishes the center from the periphery, and that adheres to
a quadripartite division of the whole.
A unique feature of this Tenochtitlan plan is its concentric, or
fish-eye, view of the city and environs. The temples in the
precinct are presented to face inward, which they probably did
in reality, but the houses and structures around the precinct are
also presented as if each quadrant were being viewed from the
center. This is a particularly indigenous orientation, as Barbara
Mundy has shown.29 To use her example (figure 7), the Lienzo
Figure 7. Siege of Tenochtitlan depicted in the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, scene
42. Alfredo Chavero, ed., Homenaje a Cristóbal Colón: Antigüedades mexicanos
(Mexico: Junta Colombina de México, 1892), Vol. 2, pl. 42.
de Tlaxcala represents the siege of Tenochtitlan by representing
a circular island (with the glyph for a pyramid designating the
ritual capital) surrounded by a circle of water and war canoes on
all sides; the canoes and attackers are presented as if seen from
the center. This circular, inwardly grounded perspective is a
feature of other indigenous representations as well, as for example with ritual dancers in the central Mexican Manuscript Tovar
and in the Mixtec Codex Selden (p. 7a).30 Although these examples are all early colonial, we need look no further for a PreColumbian example than the famous first page of the Codex
Fejérváry-Mayer (figure 8), also cited by Mundy. This quintessential representation of cosmological space presents the cardinal directions as the four arms of a Formée cross, in which are
positioned the supernatural patrons and birds of each direction,
all oriented and grounded around the center. The central cell is
the gravitational core for all that surrounds it, just as in the
Tenochtitlan plan.
A second indigenous cartographic ideal in the Tenochtitlan
plan is the representation of polity and territory by emphasizing
a centrally located place that is ringed by its surroundings but is
distinct from them. This is a feature of indigenous lienzos and
some cartographic histories, in which the borders of a territory
form a delineated frame that defines the lands that belong to the
centrally located city or town.31 The measurable distance
between the bordering features and the center is of little concern; instead the bordering features are pulled together as an
irregular circle or a ‘cartographic rectangle’ around the center.32
This is the organizational principle underlying the FejérváryMayer projection, which is not a geographically accurate map in
Figure 8. Cosmogram of the Aztec world meshed with a divinatory
almanac, Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (M12014), p. 1. # National Museums
Liverpool.
the Cartesian sense, but a conceptual diagram of the world and
its properties. The cosmos is governed by symmetry and balance
rather than by measurable distance; the ends of the earth are
pulled together toward the center. This is also the principle that
shapes the plan of Tenochtitlan, in which the cities, lakes, and
other geographic features of the Valley of Mexico are brought
forward as an equidistant ring that frames the capital.
The third indigenous ideal is the quadripartite arrangement
of space. The Tenochtitlan plan emphasizes the broad avenues
that extend outward from the mid-points of the four sides of the
ritual precinct, effectively dividing the city into quarters. These
quarters visually echo the real division of the city into the four
major districts. The Lienzo de Tlaxcala image and the FejérváryMayer cosmogram likewise emphasize the quadripartite nature of
the world and of Tenochtitlan. Like the Tenochtitlan plan, they
show the territory in question as being divided into four quarters
oriented to a center. In the Tenochtitlan plan the orientation also
preserves the dominating east–west axis that is seen in most
indigenous maps.
The direct source of the woodcut plan, however, could not
have been an unadulterated and unmediated indigenous map. A
Nuremberg draftsman or printmaker would not have been able
to read and interpret correctly all the relevant features and
signifying symbols of a purely indigenous pictographic document. However, Cortés and his men could, with the help of their
indigenous allies and hosts. In his letters Cortés speaks comprehendingly about indigenous maps, and his lieutenant Bernal
Dı́az del Castillo gained insights into indigenous warfare by
looking at native paintings of battles their Tlaxcalan allies had
previously fought.33 If the map that Cortés sent to Charles V was
an indigenous one, he or his men would certainly have glossed
and annotated it for the monarch, explaining the name and
nature of specific features. The features they were likely to
label are those that are labeled in the woodcut plan: the ones
that attested to Moctezuma’s power and civility (the two other
Triple Alliance cities, his palaces and pleasure gardens, the zoo,
and the great marketplace) or to the barbarism of Aztec religious
practice (the features inside the ritual precinct).
Writing from Seville, the chronicler Peter Martyr tells in his
fifth decade of seeing numerous maps that Cortés’s secretary,
Juan de Rivera, had brought from Mexico along with other
treasures for Charles V. One was ‘a native painting representing
the town of Temistitlan, with its temples, bridges, and lakes.’34
This painting of Tenochtitlan may be the very one Cortés sent
for Charles, or a variant. Rivera, who Martyr said spoke the
language of Tenochtitlan (Nahuatl) and participated in all the
important events in Mexico, would have been able to annotate it
or a copy. Mundy has reasonably speculated that a copy of this
painting could have been sent to Charles, who was then in
Germany, and that this copy may well have been the source
for the woodcut made in Nuremberg.35
The woodcut plan, then, belongs to two worlds and two
spatial understandings. It is a view of Tenochtitlan founded
on indigenous knowledge but reworked to suit a European
37
audience. It presents Tenochtitlan as the cosmic center of a
world that stretches from the distant horizons and is focused
inward toward its ritual heart. Here Tenochtitlan has been
Europeanized to fit the visual codes that were accepted and
understood by Europeans. This is why the dike is like a sapling
fence, the large buildings like the structures of Europe, and the
Aztec temples like medieval towers. The enlarged ‘temple of
sacrifice,’ the headless ‘stone idol,’ and the great racks of human
skulls, all of which are clearly labeled, cater to the sensationalist
desires of the publisher and audience. They visually support
Cortés’s description of the city as a marvelous and well-ordered
urban construction, but one centered on diabolical religious
practices.
The plan also presents Tenochtitlan as belonging to two
temporalities. It displays Tenochtitlan before the conquest,
when the ritual center and the surrounding palaces and houses
were all intact, when Moctezuma still had his palace and island
pleasure house, when boatmen still peacefully plied the waters of
the lake, and when the island city was at its greatest. There are
signs in the woodcut plan that the Preconquest world of
Moctezuma had already ended, however. The Hapsburg flag
flying above Tacubaya announces the presence of Spanish
forces, most specifically Cortés as Charles’s agent. In this respect
the banner may simply foretell the conquest to come, about
which the viewer of the plan has already heard. But because
the woodcut illustrates Cortés’s second letter, which includes
Moctezuma’s speech of donation that transferred his empire to
Charles, the banner may well signify that the indigenous capital
was already a Hapsburg domain.
There is also a sign that Christianity had been introduced in
Tenochtitlan. At the top of the main pyramid, just to the left of
the leftmost temple (the Tlaloc shrine), is a cross. It is very small
in comparison with the overall plan, and to my knowledge
Matthew Robb is the first scholar to notice it.36 It surely is a
direct reference to the installation of Christian imagery at the
Templo Mayor. Cortés tells of cleaning the temples and installing statues of the Virgin and other saints, and Dı́az del Castillo
explains that they installed a cross as well.37 The cross on the
woodcut could have been added to the indigenous plan by one
of the conquerors while the prototype was still in Mexico or it
could have been added back in Europe. It and the Hapsburg flag
signal that the essentials of conquest and Christianity have
already come to Tenochtitlan and that the old order has, in
fact, already passed.
It is useful to remember that this woodcut was prepared for a
volume that celebrates the discovery of Cortés in his own words
and that describes in stunning terms the Aztec capital city at the
height of its glory, before its destruction. Cortés’s second letter,
written on 30 October 1520, from Segura de la Frontera near
Tepeaca in the Puebla valley, describes his initial march inland
from Cempoala on the gulf coast, his negotiations and battles
with the indigenous lords and armies along the way, his first
entry into Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and the 8-month residence
there, including his imprisonment of Moctezuma. Importantly,
38
the letter emphasizes Moctezuma’s acceptance of Charles V as his
monarch, and it tells of the installation of the faith at the Templo
Mayor. It closes by chronicling the uprising by the citizens of
Tenochtitlan against the Spaniards and their allies and their expulsion from the city on the Noche Triste. This second letter thus
addresses the glories of the city but leaves its fate in doubt. The
third letter, written on 15 May 1522, from Coyoacan, after the
conquest had been effected, offers needed closure and assures the
audience of the city’s fate: it describes the siege and the actual
conquest of Tenochtitlan, as well as subsequent events.
Coastal map
The map that accompanies the plan also presents problems of
interpretation as well as origin: as with the plan, my goal is to
identify its features and to determine its authorship (figure 9).
The map’s orientation is also an issue, for it has neither east nor
Figure 9. Detail of the woodcut map of the gulf coast, in Praeclara de Nova
maris Oceani Hyspania Narratio. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library,
Brown University.
Figure 10. Map of the Gulf of Mexico.
west at the top, but south. If the map is flipped, one easily
recognizes that it charts the coast of the Gulf of Mexico from
the Yucatan Peninsula to Florida (figure 10). The map has
figured importantly in studies of the exploration and mapping
of the Gulf of Mexico, for it is the earliest published map that
reflects the features of the full coastline of the gulf with relative
accuracy.38 The place names identify rivers and notable features
along the coast that were significant to the Spanish, and they
represent the discoveries of three different expeditions: those of
Juan de Grijalva (1518), Hernán Cortés (1519), and Francisco de
Garay (1519). Surprisingly, there has been no systematic attempt
to assign them to known locations; I do so in the appendix.39
Beginning with the point of Cuba, on the left, and moving
clockwise, one sees the Yucatan Peninsula (here as an island
named Yucatan) and the series of rivers and points along the
Campeche, Tabasco, and Veracruz coast. For example, there is
the Rı́o de Grijalva (formerly known as the Tabasco River but
renamed by the Grijalva expedition), the broad Rı́o de
Coatzacoalcos (of the same name), which is traced inland
some ways, and the rivers Banderas (formerly and now known
as the Jamapa) and Alvarado (formerly and now known as the
Papaloapan), with the two rivers here reversed. Porto de Sant
Juan is San Juan de Ulúa, now the port city near Veracruz;
Sevilla is the name Cortés gave to Cempoala; and Almeria is the
name Grijalva gave to the town of Nautla. The northernmost
name in this tight series, ‘Sant Pedro,’ identifies the Rı́o San
Pedro y San Pablo (now the Tecolutla), which was the southernmost point claimed by the Garay expedition. Just south of the
Rı́o Pánuco we see the barrier island or peninsula (now called
Cabo Rojo) that protects the Laguna de Tamiahua; the adjacent
label, Archidona, probably refers to this section of the coastline.
Inland, the designation ‘Provincia Annchel’ [or Amichel] refers
to the land claimed by the Garay expedition. The label ‘Rı́o
panu co laoton’ identifies both the Rı́o Pánuco and the Otomı́
territory inland (‘la Oton’).
Continuing northward toward Texas and the gulf states of the
USA, the locations marked are scarcer and less securely identified. ‘Tamacho [or Tamahox] provincia’ is the Huastec region
of Tamiahua, but the three subsequent locations have descriptive rather than identifying names. The largest of the rivers emptying into the gulf is usually identified as the great Mississippi
River. Here it is named Rı́o del Espiritu Santo, by which the
Mississippi was known throughout the sixteenth century. Florida,
shown here to be connected to the mainland, is clearly identified.
In fact this woodcut is the first published map to identify both the
Yucatan and Florida.40
Although the direct source for the woodcut map is unknown, I
think it is unlikely to have been an indigenous map.41 Cortés and
Martyr both describe native maps, but neither seems to include
all the features of the woodcut map. Cortés describes a map that
Moctezuma had painted for him of ‘all the coast . . . with all its
rivers and coves . . . . [ It was a] cloth with all the coast painted on
it, and there appeared a river which ran to the sea, and according to the representation was wider than all the others. This river
seemed to pass through the mountains which we call Sanmin
[San Martı́n mountains], and are so high they form a bay
which the pilots believed divided a province called Mazamalco
[Coatzacoalcos].’42 Cortés’s men used this map to explore ‘up
all the coast’ from San Juan de Ulúa to Coatzacoalcos looking
for a suitable port, and indeed the Coatzacoalcos River in the
woodcut is appropriately represented as being wider and more
prominent than the other rivers adjacent to it. However, this
native map seems to have been restricted to the southern gulf
coast, and it is not likely that an indigenous map would represent
the Yucatan Peninsula as an island, as does the woodcut. The
map that Martyr saw in Seville, which was brought from Mexico
by Cortés’s secretary, was less a coastal map than a territorial
map. Painted on cloth, it measured about 30 by 30 feet and
showed ‘all the plains and the provinces, whether vassal or
hostile to Muteczuma . . . as well as the lofty mountains which
completely surround the plain. The map also shows the southern coast ranges, whose inhabitants stated that off the coast lie
the islands we have . . . described as producing an abundance of
spices, gold, and precious stones.’43
The geographic reach of the woodcut map also argues against
an indigenous prototype because it extends all the way from the
Bay of Honduras to Florida and includes the point of Cuba.
Although the indigenous lords of Xicalanco could and did provide maps by which Cortés marched overland to Honduras,44 the
northern part of the woodcut map seems a great stretch for Aztec
cartographers, especially as distant Florida had nothing to offer
the Aztec empire economically or politically; there would have
been little reason for Aztec vessels to sail and chart that coast.
Aztec vessels are not known to have reached Cuba either.
39
Additionally, the woodcut map focuses, as do European portolan
charts, on rivers and coastal features, and the names it employs
reflect Spanish nomenclature. Therefore, I think we must look to
Europeans for the map’s sources.
The southern part of the map, from the Rı́o Pánuco south to
the Bay of Honduras, very likely derives from one or more maps
prepared by or for Anton de Alaminos. Alaminos is considered
to have been the most experienced pilot in the Indies of his
time. He sailed on Columbus’s fourth voyage, which explored
the coasts of Central America from Honduras to Panama in
1502–1504, and had been the chief pilot on Juan Ponce de León’s
expedition that discovered Florida in 1513. His navigational
expertise then recommended him as the chief pilot for Francisco
Hernández de Córdoba’s 1517 expedition from Cuba to the
Yucatan, and afterwards he directed the Grijalva and Cortés
voyages.45 Grijalva’s 1518 expedition sailed from Cuba to the
eastern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula (from the Bay of
Ascension), up and over the northern coast of the peninsula,
and then along the southern gulf coast as far as Cabo Rojo
(south of Rı́o Pánuco); there Dı́az del Castillo reports that strong
currents and anxiety over weather forced it to turn back and
return to Cuba.46 Shortly after Grijalva returned to Cuba, three
of his captains and Alaminos joined the newly formed Cortés
expedition, which set off for Mexico a few weeks later; again
Alaminos was chief pilot. Cortés’s enterprise landed first at
Cozumel and then traced Grijalva’s route, eventually sailing as
far northward as the Rı́o Pánuco. With Alaminos leading both
efforts, we should consider the Grijalva and Cortés expeditions
as a common repository of knowledge about the coastline.
Alaminos was convinced that the Yucatan was an island, separated from the mainland by the intersection of the Bay of
Ascension (Chetumal) on the east and the Laguna de
Terminos on the west47; the geography is represented thusly in
the map. The names Grijalva and Cortés assigned to the rivers
and points they passed are those that were used in the woodcut.
The source of the southern part of the woodcut map is therefore
a product of the Alaminos-led expeditions of Grijalva and
Cortés.
The northern half of the woodcut map, however, comes from
a different source. It derives from a map prepared by Alonso
Álvarez de Pineda, who explored the northern gulf coast in 1519
for Francisco de Garay, the governor of Jamaica. Under Garay’s
sponsorship, Álvarez de Pineda was to search for a water passage to the Pacific Ocean and Asia. He sailed from Jamaica
through the channel between Cuba and Yucatan to reach the
western tip of Florida, whence he attempted to sail eastward, but
contrary winds and a strong current forced him to turn back to
the west. He was the first to sail along the entire gulf coast from
the Florida keys to Veracruz, where he encountered Cortés at
Villa Rica.48
The one existing map that traces Álvarez de Pineda’s expedition is usually called the ‘Pineda map,’ although it is surely a
later version and one that encompasses much more territory
than Álvarez de Pineda’s voyage (figure 11).49 The map is
40
Figure 11. The so-called ‘Pineda map,’ 1519, that defines the territories
explored under the auspices of Juan Ponce de León, Francisco de Garay,
Diego de Velázquez, and others. Gobierno de España. Ministerio de Cultura.
Archivo General de las Indias, ES.41091.AGI/1.16418.17//MP-MEXICO.5.
attached to a royal cedula of 1521 granting Garay the patent to
settle the lands of the ‘Provincia de Amichel,’ which lie between
the discoveries of Ponce de León (Florida) and those made under
Velázquez (Veracruz, as discovered by the Grijalva and Cortés
expeditions).50 The ‘Pineda map’ achieves a very accurate rendering of the gulf coastline, although the features are only
sparsely named.51 Florida is identified by a gloss that also notes
its discovery by Ponce de León. The Rı́o del Espiritu Santo is
identified (here for the first time); on the left the Rı́o Pánuco is
marked, and below it ‘Tamahox Provincia’ (Tamiahua). Glosses
near the present Florida–Alabama border define the respective
limits of Garay’s and Ponce de León’s separate claims. A long
gloss at Villa Rica claims ‘To this point, Francisco de Garay
discovered toward the west and Diego Velázquez toward the
east as far as Cabo de las Higueras (at the Bay of Honduras),
which was discovered by the Pinzones and has been settled by
them.’52 Aside from establishing firmly the boundaries of different explorers’ claims, the map is notable for showing Florida as
connected to the mainland (Ponce de León thought it was an
island), for recognizing that Yucatan is a peninsula, and for
rendering the coastline of lower Central America from
Honduras to El Nombre de Dı́os in Panama.
Since this map was attached to the cedula of 1521, it could not
physically itself be the direct source for the northern part of the
woodcut map. Additionally, its rendering of the Rı́o del Espiritu
Santo is less developed than in the woodcut map, and it lacks the
indications of shoals and barrier islands, as well as some of the
named features, along the northern coastline that appear in the
woodcut. It represents an official disposition of newly found
lands to Garay, Velázquez, and the Pinzon brothers and is a
compilation from multiple sources.
In Seville, the chronicler Martyr said he saw another map
reporting the discoveries of Garay, which seems very similar to
the northern half of the woodcut map. Martyr describes this as a
painted map that ‘represents a bow; starting from Temistitan
the line is traced toward the north as far as the bend of the arch;
then inclining slightly towards the south in such wise that if it
were prolonged to the extreme point of the land north of the
island of Fernandina [Cuba], first explored by Juan Ponce [this
would be Florida], it would correspond to the string of the
bow.’53 This description matches the top half of the extant
‘Pineda map’ well.
The woodcut map could not have been derived solely from a
variant of the ‘Pineda map,’ such as described by Martyr, or
from a map by Cortés’s Alaminos. Álvarez de Pineda did not
travel south of Vera Cruz, and Alaminos did not journey along
the coast north of Rı́o Pánuco, so neither had knowledge of all
the coastline rendered in the woodcut. Instead the woodcut
represents a merging of information from these two sources.
This merger could have taken place in Mexico or in Spain; in
either case, the woodcut map conclusively reflects Cortés’s interests against his Spanish competitors.
Despite the blending of cartographic information from their
two expeditions, Garay and Cortés were intense rivals for the
right to colonize along the Gulf of Mexico.54 Garay, like Cortés,
had heard the reports from the Hernández de Cordoba and
Grijalva expeditions about well-populated lands rich in gold.
Both were anxious to explore and colonize. Garay sought permission to explore from the Crown’s West Indies administrators
in Santo Domingo, and Cortés sailed under the authorization of
the governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, an authorization he
soon shed, however. Garay’s captain, Álvarez de Pineda, left
Jamaica only a few weeks after Cortés left Cuba; when the two
finally met in Vera Cruz, Álvarez de Pineda attempted to settle
or established a boundary between the lands he explored for
Garay and those claimed by Cortés, but he was rebuffed by the
latter.
After Álvarez de Pineda returned to Jamaica, Garay petitioned the Crown for a royal license to settle the lands his
captain had discovered, and his petition included a map that
would have looked something like the northern portion of the
‘Pineda map’ and much like the one Martyr saw in Seville. Not
waiting for permission, Garay sent Álvarez de Pineda to settle in
Pánuco, where the latter died in a Huastec uprising. The few
survivors of this failed Pánuco settlement eventually joined
Cortés in the south. It is at this point that a map of Álvarez de
Pineda’s gulf explorations could have come into the hands of the
Cortés contingent.55 Although Garay finally received his license
via the cedula of 1521, he waited until 1523 to journey personally
to Pánuco to reestablish the settlement. He waited too long. By
this time, Tenochtitlan was conquered, Cortés had been named
governor and captain-general of New Spain (1522), and Cortés
had already established a colony at Pánuco. Garay’s license to
settle had also been countermanded by a 1523 directive from the
Crown not to ‘intrude . . . in the jurisdiction of Hernán Cortés.’56
Outmaneuvered and defeated, Garay visited Cortés outside
Tenochtitlan to negotiate another place for his settlement of
Amichel. They reached an agreement and then dined together;
shortly thereafter Garay became violently ill and died within
three days. This threat to Cortés’s territorial control had effectively been neutralized and eliminated.57
The map shows nothing of this rivalry or potential threat to
Cortés’s plans. Instead it draws upon the knowledge of Garay’s
skilled captain but silences Garay’s claim. The woodcut reduces
Amichel — the territory that Álvarez de Pineda explored
between Florida and Veracruz and that had been assigned to
Garay for settlement — to the small area south of the Rı́o
Pánuco and north of Rı́o de San Pedro y San Pablo, an area
that Cortés already controlled. The woodcut also includes the
label ‘Archidona’ beside and parallel to the coast here; because
this was the name Cortés’s men gave to the region of the first
settlement of Villa Rica, the label effectively claims this land for
Cortés rather than Garay. The map effectively denies Garay any
territory.
The woodcut also suavely wards off any claim Velázquez
might have to this land, for it renders Yucatan as an island.
Although Alaminos did believe that Yucatan was an island, by
1524, when the woodcut was produced, other cartographers
knew otherwise (e.g. the ‘Pineda map’). The woodcut may therefore represent a conscious attempt to keep Yucatan separate. If
so, the reason was probably that Velázquez had a license to
explore Yucatan but not a license to explore the coast of
Tabasco and Veracruz. By maintaining Yucatan as an island,
the woodcut locates what had since become New Spain (the land
Cortés was bringing to Charles V) outside Velázquez’s
jurisdiction.58
The orientation of the coastal map also contributes to this
strategy of swelling Cortés’s gift to Charles. The map’s uncommon orientation, with south at the top, has the effect of situating
Tenochtitlan almost due west of San Juan de Ulúa and Villa
Rica de la Veracruz, where Cortés landed and settled, and
Cempoala, where he began his inland march, an orientation
that corresponds to geographic reality.59 It also puts the Atlantic
Ocean and Europe on the left side of the sheet, with Mexico and
all the new lands on the right.
The woodcut
The fact of this orientation and the special features of the coastal
map indicate that careful consideration went into the joining of
the coastal map and the plan of Tenochtitlan. The woodcut
presents all the lands to the south, west, and north of the Gulf of
Mexico as a single great expanse, an expanse in which
Tenochtitlan was its greatest feature. It implies that — despite
the explorations of Ponce de León and Álvarez de Pineda — all
this land belonged to the island city and was, therefore, Cortés’s
to conquer. Conscious too was the inclusion of a scale that fairly
accurately indicates the distances relevant to the coastal map
and that suggests the vastness of the territory that is implicated
here.60 The coastal map was therefore not a mere addendum to
the plan of Tenochtitlan, although the title of the publication
highlights the Aztec capital. It was purposefully joined to the city
41
plan to situate Tenochtitlan within the larger land mass of what
is now Mexico and the southeastern USA, to proclaim in visual
terms the conquest of all this by Cortés, and to aggrandize
Cortés’s presentation to Charles.
This is made explicit by the dedication at the top left of the
woodcut. Printed in type, rather than carved as part of the
woodblock, and worded in florid and formal Latin, it characterizes Charles V as an imperial Caesar, who now rules two
empires. It proclaims: ‘This world, once outstanding and most
glorious, has been subjected to Caesar’s rule. He, under whose
rule the Eastern World, and the New, which is the other, are
now revealed, is most outstanding.’61 This juxtaposition of the
‘Eastern World’ of Charles’s empire in Europe and the New,
other, world of Aztec Mexico echoes and reaffirms Cortés’s own
equation of the two. In the opening paragraph of his second
letter, Cortés alludes to Charles as ‘the emperor of this kingdom
[Mexico] with no less glory than of Germany, which by the
Grace of God, your Sacred Majesty already possesses.’62 Cortés
was the first to refer to the American realm as a second empire
and to introduce the notion of an equivalence with Europe. In
this he was contributing, in what was surely a conscious way, to
Spanish ambitions toward a universal empire.63 It was a strategy
designed to please Charles.
The coastal map and the city plan work together in the woodcut to bolster Cortés’s textual description of this great new empire,
which Moctezuma voluntarily gave over to Charles and Cortés
then secured by force. The plan shows Tenochtitlan in its magnificence as a well-ordered, rich, and complex city, the capital of a
realm ‘outstanding and most glorious.’ The map indicates the vast
extent of the territory under consideration, an expanse as impressive as Charles’s European holdings. Their union in the woodcut
compellingly argues for the imperial character of Aztec Mexico.
The woodcut also gives Cortés sole credit for bringing this new
world, here revealed, to Charles V. All earlier explorers are
silenced, and all rivals are denied. This publication of the Latin
translation of Cortés’s second letter to Charles, with its astonishing woodcut, was a conscious effort to praise and glorify Cortés
and his accomplishments and to present to Europe the New
World he brought into the Hapsburg empire. The greatest
prize, of course, was Tenochtitlan, the shining capital of the
Aztec empire, which Cortés described as the most noble and
populous city in the world.
Although the woodcut purports to present Aztec Mexico
before its final conquest, both the city plan and the coastal
map are securely situated in a colonial temporality. They look
back on a Preconquest world that has already ended. The city
plan is grounded in indigenous conceptions of space and organizational structure, and it reflects the kinds of local, intimate
knowledge of Tenochtitlan that would not have been easily
available to the Spaniards. Yet the plan in the woodcut is far
from an indigenous document. The blades of a Nuremberg
woodcutter have translated Aztec temples and palaces, skull
42
racks and sculptures, and even zoo animals into forms that
might tantalize but be understandable to a European audience.
Latin labels objectify the most important or shocking of the royal
and sacred features of the city. The Hapsburg banner proclaims
that Hapsburg rule has already come, and the small cross on the
Templo Mayor signals nascent Christianity. Likewise, the
coastal map is less an unmediated rendering of the geography
of the coastline, or a reflection of locations that were economically and politically important to the Aztecs, than it is a European
portolan chart, one that lists the rivers and features the
Spaniards had explored; most of these now bear Spanish
names. The added dedication speaks of this new world in imperial terms. As the first published image to represent Tenochtitlan
and new discoveries along the Gulf of Mexico with any verisimilitude, the woodcut is fully a colonial document that, like
Cortés’s letters to Charles, shaped the discourse about Aztec
Mexico and Cortés’s role in its conquest.
NOTES
1 – For studies of the plan of Tenochtitlan and its later renditions, see Ignacio
Alcocer, Apuntes sobre la antigua México-Tenochtitlan (Tacubaya, Mexico:
Publicación, Instituto Panamericano de Geografia e Historia, no. 14, 1935);
Manuel Toussaint, ‘El plano atribuı́do a Hernán Cortés, studio histórico y
analı́tico,’ in Planos de la ciudad de México, siglos XVI y XVII, Manuel Toussaint,
Federico Gómez de Orozco, Justino Fernández (Mexico: XVI Congreso
Internacional de Planificación y de la Habitación, 1938), pp. 91–105; Justino
Fernández, ‘El plano atribuı́do a Hernán Cortés, studio urbanı́stico,’ in Planos
de la ciudad de México, siglos XVI y XVII, Toussaint et al., pp. 107–15; Federico
Gómez de Orozco, ‘El plano atribuı́do a Hernán Cortés, studio bibliográfico,’
in Planos de la ciudad de México, siglos XVI y XVII, Toussaint et al., pp. 117–26;
Jean Michel Massing, ‘Map of Tenochtitlan and the Gulf of Mexico,’ in Circa
1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, ed. Jay Levenson (Washington, D.C.: National
Gallery of Art, 1992), pp. 572–3; Barbara Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital:
the 1524 Nuremberg map of Tenochtitlan, its sources and meanings,’ Imago
Mundi, 50 (1998), pp. 11–33; Dominique Gresle-Pouligny, Un plan pour MexicoTenochtitlan. les représentations de la cité et l’imaginaire européen (XVIe-XVIII siècles)
(Paris and Montreal: L’Harmattan, 1999); Eduardo Matos Moctezuma,
‘Reflexiones acerca del plano de Tenochtitlan publicado en Nuremberg in
1524,’ Caravelle: Cahiers du monde hispanique et luso-brésilien, 76–7 (2001), pp. 183–95;
Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ is alone in considering the coastal map
along with the plan. For the analyses of the plan vis-à-vis other city plans, see
Juergen Schultz, La cartografia tra scienza e arte. Carte e cartografi nel rinascimento
italiano (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, Modena, 1990), pp. 40–1, 62–3;
Lucia Nuti, Ritratti di città. visione e memoria tra medioevo e settecento (Venice:
Marsilio, 1996), pp. 114–7, figs. 44, 45, 47; Richard Kagan, Urban Images of the
Hispanic World 1493–1793 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), pp.
64–7; David Y. Kim, ‘Uneasy reflections: images of Venice and Tenochtitlan
in Benedetto Bordone’s Isolario,’ Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 49/50 (2006), pp.
80–91.
2 – See for example Henry Wagner, The Discovery of New Spain in 1518 by Juan
de Grijalva (Berkeley: The Cortes Society, 1942), p. 3; Robert S. Weddle,
Spanish Sea: The Gulf of Mexico in North American Discovery 1500–1685 (College
Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985); Paul E. Hoffman, ‘Discovery
and early cartography of the northern Gulf coast,’ in Charting Louisiana: Five
Hundred Years of Maps, eds Alfred E. Lemmon, John T. Magill, and Jason R.
Wiese (New Orleans: Historic New Orleans Collection, 2003), pp. 7–22.
3 – Cortés’s second letter, Carta de relacion embiada a su. s. majestad del emperador
nuestro señor por el capital general de la Nueva Spaña: llamado Fernando Cortes, was first
published in Seville in 1522 by Jacobo Cromberger. The standard English
translation is Hernán Cortés, Letters from Mexico, trans. and ed. Anthony
Pagden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986). For Peypus see Jeffrey
Chipps Smith, Nuremberg, a Renaissance City, 1500–1618 (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1983), p. 42. The so-called ‘first letter’ that is extant was sent to
Charles by the judiciary and municipal council of Villa Rica de la Vera
Cruz, although it was probably drafted by Cortés. Pagden, in Letters from
Mexico, pp. liii–lx, discusses the various extant and lost letters.
4 – Martyr d’Anghiera’s De rebus, et Insulis noviter repertis recounts the Juan de
Grijalva expedition to Mexico of 1518. Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, De orbe novo:
the Eight Decades of Pater Martyr D’Anghera, ed. Francis Augustus MacNutt (New
York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912). Tertia Ferdina[n]di Cortesii sac. Caesar. et cath.
maiesta. in nova maris oceani Hyspania generalis præfecti p[rae]clara narratio
(Nuremberg: Friedrich Arthemesium [Peypus], 1524); copies in the
Houghton Library at Harvard and New York Public Library have the two
letters bound together.
5 – For the rhetorical strategies of Cortés’s letters, see John Elliott, ‘Cortés,
Velázquez and Charles V,’ in Cortés, Letters from Mexico, pp. xi–xxxvi; John
Elliott, Spain and Its World 1500–1700 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989), p. 4; Victor Frankl, ‘Imperio particular e imperio universal en las
cartas de relación de Hernán Cortés,’ Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 165 (1963),
pp. 443–82; Glen Carman, Rhetorical Conquests: Cortés, Gómara, and Renaissance
Imperialism (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2006).
6 – Cortés was able to achieve this by the founding of the town of Villa Rica
de la Veracruz, whose citizens (all Cortés’s men) then elected Cortés chief
justice and alcalde mayor and received him as captain of the royal armies;
Cortés, Letters from Mexico, pp. 26–8. For the legal principles on which this
finesse rested, see Victor Frankl, ‘Hernán Cortés y la tradición de las Siete
Partidas,’ Revista de Historia de América, 53–4 (1962), pp. 9–74.
7 – This speech, written a year after its supposed occurrence, was undoubtedly invented by Cortés. Elliott, ‘Cortés, Velázquez and Charles V,’
pp. xxvii–xxviii; Pagden in Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. xliii; Carman,
Rhetorical Conquests, pp. 146–9.
8 – Although the 1550 map bears the name of the royal cosmographer,
Alonso de Santa Cruz, it is the work of an indigenous draftsman; Miguel
León-Portilla and Carmen Aguilera, Mapa de México Tenochtitlán y sus contornos
hacia 1550 (Mexico: Celanese Mexicana, 1986), pp. 29–34. For the Mapa
Sigüenza see Marı́a Castañeda de la Paz, Pintura de la peregrinación de los
Culhuaque-Mexitin (Mapa de Sigüenza): análisis de un documento de origen tenochca
(Mexico: El Colegio Mexiquense and Instituto Nacional de Antropologı́a e
Historia, 2006).
9 – Barbara Mundy, ‘Mesoamerican cartography,’ in The History of
Cartography, Volume 2, Book 3, Cartography in the Traditional African, American,
Artic, Australian, and Pacific Societies, eds David Woodward and G. Malcolm
Lewis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 183–256, esp. 201–3;
Mary Elizabeth Smith, Picture Writing from Ancient Southern Mexico: Mixtec Place
Signs and Maps (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), p. 169.
10 – The identification of the features follows Toussaint, ‘El plano atribuı́do
a Hernán Cortés,’ pp. 97, 102–4.
11 – Toussaint, ‘El plano atribuı́do a Hernán Cortés,’ pp. 93–105, identified
this town near Chapultepec as Tacubaya, but his schematic diagram relocates the flag to fly above Coyoacan in the south, which was where Cortés
based his activities after the conquest and where he penned his third letter to
Charles. Matos Moctezuma, ‘Reflexiones acerca del plano de Tenochtitlan,’
pp. 187–9, pointed out that the banner is actually flying above Tacubaya,
which suggested to him that Cortés launched his final attack on Tenochtitlan
from there (although Cortés’s third letter supports Tacuba as the attack
point). Both authors assumed that the flag marks Cortés’s headquarters and
the ‘royal seat.’ However, the banner may well have been added to the plan
later in Europe and may have nothing to do with Cortés’s location during the
last days of the conquest, especially if Cortés sent the prototype for the
woodcut plan to Charles with his second letter, before the siege had actually
begun. The flag’s placement at Tacubaya has the virtue of locating it at the
top center of the printed sheet.
12 – Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ pp. 22–3.
13 – Alcocer, Apuntes sobre la antigua México-Tenochtitlan, p. 10, transcribes the
descriptive Latin labels on the plan. Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’
p. 32, lists and translates them into English.
14 – Anthony F. Aveni and Sharon L. Gibbs, ‘On the orientation of
Precolumbian buildings in Central Mexico,’ American Antiquity, 41 (1976),
pp. 510–7, were building on Motolinia [Toribio de Benavente], Memoriales o
libro de las cosas de la Nueva España y de los naturales de ella, ed. Edmundo
O’Gorman (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1971),
p. 51, who mentioned that the feast of Tlacaxipehualiztli was scheduled
when the sun was over the temple of Huitzilopochtli at the equinox. See also
Anthony F. Aveni, Edward E. Calnek, and Horst Hartung, ‘Myth, environment, and the orientation of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan,’ American
Antiquity, 53 (1988), pp. 287–309.
15 – Alcocer, Apuntes sobre la antigua México-Tenochtitlan, p. 11, and Jean Michel
Massing, ‘Map of Tenochtitlan and the Gulf of Mexico,’ in Circa 1492: Art in
the Age of Exploration, pp. 572–3, suggested it refers to the stone cult statues that
Cortés threw from the Templo Mayor. Toussaint, ‘El plano atribuı́do a
Hernán Cortés,’ p. 100, described it as a decapitated atlantid. Mundy,
‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ pp. 20–1, explained it as a generalized reference
to the human sacrifices that occurred there, although she raised the possibility of it being as sculpture of Coatlicue or Coyolxauhqui. Gresle-Pouligny,
Un plan pour Mexico-Tenochtitlan, pp. 241–3, offered several suggestions: that it
is a generalized reference to destroyed stone statues and human sacrifices, an
image of the Coyolxauhqui, or an image of a victim defeated in gladiatorial
combat.
16 – Emily Umberger, ‘Art and imperial strategy in Tenochtitlan,’ in Aztec
Imperial Strategies, eds Frances F. Berdan, Richard Blanton, Elizabeth Boone,
Mary Hodge, Michael Smith, and Emily Umberger (Washington, D.C.:
Dumbarton Oaks, 1996), pp. 85–106, esp. 95; Matos Moctezuma,
‘Reflexiones acerca del plano de Tenochtitlan,’ pp. 183–95.
17 – Fragments of other similar statues indicate that there were at least three such
statues of the type now called Coatlicue; see Elizabeth Hill Boone, ‘The
‘‘Coatlicues’’ at the Templo Mayor,’ Ancient Mesoamerica, 10 (1999), pp. 189–206;
Cecelia F. Klein, ‘The Devil and the skirt: an iconographic inquiry into the preHispanic nature of the Tzitzimime,’ Ancient Mesoamerica, 11 (2000), pp. 1–26.
18 – See Cecelia F. Klein, ‘Rethinking Cihuacoatl: Aztec political imagery of
the conquered woman,’ in Smoke and Mist: Mesoamerican Studies in Memory of
Thelma D. Sullivan, eds J. Kathryn Josserand and Karen Dakin (Oxford: BAR
International Series 402, 1988), pp. 237–77, for the nakedness of defeated
enemies.
19 – For this argument, see Klein, ‘Rethinking Cihuacoatl,’ p. 242;
Umberger, ‘Art and imperial strategy in Tenochtitlan,’ p. 95.
20 – Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ p. 30 note 23; Gresle-Pouligny, Un
plan pour Mexico-Tenochtitlan, p. 195, and Matos Moctezuma, ‘Reflexiones
acerca del plano de Tenochtitlan,’ pp. 184–7. Matos Moctezuma, pp. 185–6,
suggested that the precinct might have been drawn and cut onto a separate
woodblock, different from the block that recorded its surroundings, and that
this or the outer block was flipped in Nuremberg.
21 – Olga Apenas, Mapas antiguos del valle de México (Mexico: Universidad
National Autónoma de México, 1947), p. 20, reported a proposal by Federico
Gómez de Orozco that the creator of the woodcut was an engraver named
Martin Plinius, who (according to an investigation conducted by the
German Legation in Mexico, at Gomez de Orozco’s request) was working in
Nuremberg between 1510 and 1536 and whose signed works were executed
in a style identical to that of the Tenochtitlan plan. I have not been able to
find other information about this engraver.
22 – Cf. view of Nuremberg in Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum
(Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493), pp. 99v–100r.
23 – For the dike’s construction, see Perla Valle, Ordenanza del Señor
Cuauhtémoc (Mexico: Gobierno del Distrito Federal, 2000), p. 79. See Max
Geisberg, The German Single-leaf Woodcut, ed. Walter L. Strauss (New York:
Hacker Art Books, 1974), 1312, for a German sapling fence.
24 – Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital.’
43
25 – Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. 174.
26 – Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ p. 29.
27 – The dike ended at Iztapalapa, where Cortés had paused before he first
entered the city, and would have been visible from that town and from the
top of the principal temples in Tenochtitlan. Later during the eight-month
stay, the Spaniards built two sloops and sailed Moctezuma to the rocky
island of Tepepolco (Peñon del Marqués), beyond the dike in the east, for a
hunting expedition, and they would have had to pass through one of the
moveable sluices in the dike that controlled water flow and traffic; Bernal
Dı́az del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517–1521, ed. Genaro
Garcı́a, trans. and notes Alfred P. Maudslay (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Cudahy, 1956), pp. 237–9. During his stay in the city, Cortés sent long-range
reconnaissance missions to identify good harbors along the gulf goast and
sources of gold throughout the land, and his men escorted Moctezuma often
on trips beyond the city; Cortés, Letters from Mexico, pp. 94–6, 99–100, 91;
Dı́az del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, p. 246. Thus, I think it likely
that Cortés understood early on the source of the city’s water.
28 – Motolinia, Memoriales o libro de las cosas de la Nueva España, p. 51; Aveni,
Calnek, and Hartung, ‘Myth, environment, and the orientation of the
Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan,’ pp. 287–309.
29 – Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital.’
30 – Manuscrit Tovar: Origines et croyances des indiens du Mexique, ed. Jacques
Lafaye (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1972), pl. 18. Códice
Selden/Codex Selden, ed. Alfonso Caso (Mexico: Sociedad Mexicana de
Antropologı́a, 1964), facs. p. 7a, where the priests, advisors, and family
members dance at the wedding of the Mixtec Lady 6 Monkey, even though
the rest of the codex is organized in registers.
31 – Mundy, ‘Mesoamerican cartography,’ pp. 183–256, see pp. 200–3;
M. E. Smith, Picture Writing from Ancient Southern Mexico, p. 166.
32 – M. E. Smith, Picture Writing from Ancient Southern Mexico, p. 166, believed,
however, that the format of a perfect circle (e.g., Teozacualco map) was a
European import.
33 – Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. 94; Dı́az del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of
Mexico, p. 157.
34 – Martyr d’Anghiera, De orbe novo, Vol. 2, pp. 198, 201, 191.
35 – Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ p. 26.
36 – Personal communication April 2009. Robb asked about the cross in the
discussion after I presented a draft of this article at the symposium ‘Journey
to Mexico,’ 24–25 April 2008, University of North Carolina, Charlotte,
organized by Angela Marie Herren. A detail of the ritual precinct in the plan
had been displayed on the screen for some minutes, and the cross was clearly
visible; its presence surprised us all.
37 – Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. 106; Dı́az del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest
of Mexico, pp. 252, 297.
38 – E.g., Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, p. 3.
39 – Manuel Toussaint, La conquista de Pánuco (Mexico: El Colegio Nacional,
1948), p. 79, lists them and assigns a few. The 1524 Italian edition of the
second letter, published in Venice, reproduces the woodcut but with mistranscriptions of some of the place names.
40 – Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 159.
41 – Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec capital,’ pp. 25–6, 31, has proposed that
this woodcut map, as with the plan of Tenochtitlan, was based on an
indigenous map that Cortés sent to Europe.
43 – Martyr d’Anghiera, De orbe novo, Vol. 2, p. 198–9.
44 – Francisco López de Gómara, Cortés, the Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary,
ed. and trans. Lesley Byrd Simpson (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1964), p. 345.
45 – For Alaminos, see Weddle, Spanish Sea, pp. 41, 57, 67, 417.
46 – Dı́az del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, p. 27.
48 – Weddle, Spanish Sea, pp. 99–105.
49 – Woodbury Lowrey, The Lowrey Collection: A Descriptive List of Maps of the Spanish
Possessions within the Present Limits of the United States, 1502–1820, ed. Philip Lee
44
Phillips (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington,
1912), pp. 18–19. Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 101, but see p. 104, identifies the ‘Pineda
map’ as the drawing made by the pilots, which Garay included in his petition for
a license to settle; however, the existing map shows locations in Panama
(Veragua and El Nombre de Dı́os) that, even if known to the pilots, would have
been extraneous to their purpose of charting their voyage.
50 – The cedula is published in Manuel Toussaint, Pánuco, pp. 195–210.
51 – The glosses on the map are (beginning with Cuba and continuing
counterclockwise): Cuba; La Florida que dezian Bimini que descubrio Juan
Ponce; Hasta aqui descubrio Juan Ponce; Desde aqui comenzo a descubrir
Francisco de Garay; Rio del Espiritu Santo; Rio Panuco; Tamahox provincia;
Hasta aqui descubrio Francisco de Garay hazia/el oeste y Diego Velazques
hazia de este/hasta el Cabo de las Higueras que descubrieron los Pinzones y se
les ha dado la poblaron; Sevilla Veracruz; Almeria; Cozomel [the island]; C y
Puerta de las Higueras; Pinzones; Terra Firme; Veragua; El Nombre de Dios.
53 – Martyr d’Anghiera, De orbe novo, Vol. 2, pp. 63–4.
54 – For the rivalry between Garay and Cortés to explore new lands, see
Weddle, Spanish Sea, pp. 97–108; David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North
America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 23–7.
55 – Kenneth Nebenzahl, Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries (Chicago:
Rand McNally, 1990), p. 76. The Pánuco survivors joined the Cortés group
before he entered Tenochtitlan, so it is possible that if cartographic knowledge
from Álvarez de Pineda was then absorbed by Cortés’s cartographer/s, a map
reflecting the two expeditions could have been sent with Cortés’s second letter.
57 – For Garay’s first, failed Pánuco settlement, see Donald E. Chipman,
Nuno de Guzman and the Province of Panuco in New Spain (Glendale, CA: A. H.
Clark, 1966), pp. 50–2; Weddle, Spanish Sea, pp. 102–3, 105, 108; for the
competition between Gary and Cortés over Pánuco, see Toussaint, Pánuco,
pp. 83–102; Chipman, Nuno de Guzman and the Province of Panuco in New Spain,
pp. 46–59, 65–73; Weddle, Spanish Sea, pp. 130–46.
58 – John H. Parry, ‘The Navigators of the conquista,’ Terrae Incognitae, 10
(1978), pp. 61–70, noted this.
59 – I thank Anthony Aveni for making this observation.
60 – The text reads: ‘Every large point contains twelve and a half leagues, so that
two large points contain twenty-five leagues. Each league also contains four
Italian miles, so that all points that can be seen here [the full measurement within
the brackets] contain one hundred leagues.’ At about 4.2 km to a league, the scale
measures out about 420 km. I am grateful to Eva Struhal for this translation.
61 – ‘Res fuerat quondam prestans, & Gloria summa/Orbis subiectus Cesaris
Imperio,/Hic longe prestat, cuius nunc Orbis Eous,/Et Novus, atque alter
panditur Auspitiis.’ I thank Eva Struhal and Stanko Kokole for this translation.
A variant is in Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, p. 212 note 65.
63 – Elliott, ‘Cortés, Velázquez and Charles V,’ p. xxvi; Elliott, Spain and Its
World, pp. 8–9; Frankl, ‘Imperio particular;’ Frances A. Yates, Astraea: The
Imperial Theme in Sixteenth Century (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1975), pp. 22–7.
64 – Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, pp. 30, 108, 113.
65 – Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, p. 194 note 5; Toussaint, Pánuco, p. 79.
66 – See Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 79.
68 – Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, pp. 34, 145, 186 note 26, p. 196 note 31;
France V. Scholes and Ralph L. Roys, The Maya Chontal Indians of AcalanTixchel: A Contribution to the History and Ethnohistory of the Yucatan Peninsula
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), op. 108.
69 – Dı́az del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, p. 47; Cortés, Letters from
Mexico, pp. 95, 561; Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, pp. 24, 112, 145, 172;
Toussaint, Pánuco, p. 72.
70 – Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, pp. 74, 200 note 27; Dı́az del Castillo,
Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, p. 47.
71 – Scholes and Roys, Maya Chontal Indians of Acalan-Tixchel, pp. 24, 31, 97;
Pagden in Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. 515 note 19.
72 – Dı́az del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. 27, 66; Weddle,
Spanish Sea, p. 74.
73 – Dı́az del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. 23, 66; Toussaint,
Pánuco, p. 72.
74 – Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, p. 200; Dı́az del Castillo, Discovery and
Conquest of Mexico, p. 66.
75 – Toussaint, Pánuco, p. 72; Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 72.
76 – Dı́az del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. 23, 66; Wagner,
Discovery of New Spain, p. 37
77 – Dı́az del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. 23, 66; Wagner, Discovery
of New Spain, pp. 36, 50, Toussaint, Pánuco, p. 72; Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 71.
78 – Dı́az del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. 26, 66; Wagner,
Discovery of New Spain, p. 36.
79 – Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, pp. 38–40, 149.
80 – Cortés, Letters from Mexico, p. 50; Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 73.
81 – Wagner, Discovery of New Spain, pp. 41, 66, 79, 189; Cortés, Letters from
Mexico, p. 53; Chipman, Nuno de Guzman and the Province of Panuco in New Spain,
p. 43; Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 73.
82 – Dı́az del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. 111–2; José Garcı́a
Payón, ed., Descripción del pueblo de Gueytlalpan (Zacatlan, Juxupango, Matlaltan y
Chila, Papantla) 30 de mayo de 1581 (Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 1965),
p. 66 note 53; Weddle, Spanish Sea, pp. 96, 106.
83 – Dı́az del Castillo, Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, pp. xxvi, 27; Wagner,
Discovery of New Spain, p. 41, Chipman, Nuno de Guzman and the Province of Panuco
in New Spain, pp. 43, 73–4.
84 – Toussaint, Pánuco, p. 79.
85 – Hernán Cortés, Cartas y documentos, ed. Mario Hernández SánchezBarba (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1963), Vol. 2, p. 333; José Luis
Melgarejo Vivanco, Historia de Veracruz (Jalapa: Enriquez, 1949), Vol. 2,
p. 37.
86 – Jesús Galindo y Villa, ed., Las ruinas de Cempoala y del Templo del Tajı́n
(Estado de Veracruz): exploradas por el director del Museo Nacional de Arqueologı́a,
Historia y Ethnologı́a, en mission en Europa, Francisco del Paso y Troncoso (Mexico: El
Museo, 1912), p. cv.
87 – Toussaint, Pánuco, p. 79
88 – Weddle, Spanish Sea, pp. 95–108; Toussaint, Pánuco, pp. 83–8. The
cedula is published in Toussaint, Pánuco, pp. 195–201.
89 – Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex, General History of the Things of New
Spain, Book 10 - the People, eds Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles Dibble (Santa
Fe: School of American Research and University of Utah, 1961), pp. 175–7, 181.
90 – Melgarejo Vivanco, Historia de Veracruz, Vol. 1, pp. 69–70, op. 76.
91 – Toussaint, Pánuco, p. 29.
92 – Ibid.; Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 103; Gabriel Cruz Reyes, Salvador
Hernández Garcı́a, and Nina Salguero, Tamiahua: una historia compartida
(Veracruz: Gobierno del Estado, 1997), p. 51.
93 – Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Obras históricas, ed. Edmundo
O’Gorman (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1985),
Vol. 1, p. 400.
94 – Juan Manuel Pérez Zevallos, ed., La visita de Gómez Nieto a la Huasteca,
1532–1533 (Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en
Antropologı́a Social, Archivo General de la Nación, Centro Francés de
Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos Sierra Leona, and El Colegio de
San Luis [Potosı́], 2001), pp. 168–70; Cruz Reyes, Hernández Garcı́a, and
Salguero, Tamiahua: una historia compartida, pp. 51, 54.
95 – Chipman, Nuno de Guzman and the Province of Panuco in New Spain, p. 49;
Weddle, Spanish Sea, p. 132.
96 – Jean Delanglez, El Rio del Espiritu Santo: An Essay on the Cartography of the
Gulf Coast and the Adjacent Territory During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed.
Thomas J. McMahon (New York: United States Catholic Historical Society,
Monograph Series 21, 1945); see discussion in Paul E. Hoffman, ‘Discovery
and early cartography of the northern Gulf coast,’ in Charting Louisiana: Five
Hundred Years of Maps, eds Alfred E. Lemmon, John T. Magill, and Jason R.
Wiese (New Orleans: Historic New Orleans Collection, 2003), pp. 7–22.
Appendix
Rio de Grijalva: Formerly the Tabasco River, it was
renamed the Grijalva.69
Rio de la palma: This was so named by the Grijalva expedition because of the many palms, according to Francisco
Cervantes de Salazar; Bernal Dı́az del Castillo mentions a
Cape of the Palms about half a league (2.1 km) from the town
of Tabasco. Wagner identifies it as the Barria de Tupilco,
located 45 miles (72.4 km) west of the Tabasco River.70
Rio de dos bocas: This has been identified as the present
Rı́o Seco of Comacoalco.71
Caribes: The identity of this place name is unknown. It is
unlikely to be the modern town of Caribes, whose location on
the Rı́o San Pedro y San Pablo (at +18.387 92.275) does not
fit the location of Caribes on the Cortés map.
Santo Andres: This is surely a mistake for the Rı́o San
Antón, now known as the Tonalá River. It was entered
during the Grijalva expedition and sighted by Cortés.72
Rio de cocuqualauo [Coatzacoalcos]: This great river
has retained its name today. It was sighted by both the
Grijalva and Cortés expeditions.73
Roca partida: The point with the dramatically split rock is
still called the Punta Roca Partida today. The chroniclers of
Puncta de Cuba: This marks the westernmost point of
Cuba.
yncatan [Yucatan]: The peninsula is here depicted as an
island, separated from the mainland by what was believed to
be an extension of the Laguna de Terminos and the Bay of
Chetumal. Anton de Alaminos, the pilot for the Juan de
Grijalva and Hernán Cortés expeditions, thought Yucatan
was an island.64
Punta de las higueras: Literally, ‘point of the figs,’ this is
probably a misspelling of Hibueras, as Honduras was then
called,65 and thus names the point where the coastline breaks
into the Bay of Honduras. Its ambiguous location near the
supposed strait separating Yucatan from the mainland, however, suggests that it could be the southern point of Chetumal
Bay.66
Santo Anton: Cortés refers to a Rı́o San Antón ‘which is
next to the Grijalba’ River.67 This may be the Rı́o San Pedro
y San Pablo, which lies between the Laguna de Terminos
and the Grijalva River and retains its name today; it is a
stream of the Usumacinta.68
45
the Grijalva expedition refer to what is probably this location
but do not mention it by name. Dı́az del Castillo described it
well when reporting on the Cortés expedition.74
Rio de vanderas [Banderas]: This was formerly and is
once again known as the Jamapa River.75 The Grijalva
expedition renamed it the Banderas because of the great
cloth banners that the local men attached to their lances
and waved about; it was also sighted by Cortés.76 Its location
on the map is reversed with the Rı́o de Alvarado (below).
Rio de Alvarado: This was formerly and is once again
known as the Papaloapan River. The Grijalva expedition
renamed it the Alvarado because Pedro de Alvarado was the
first of the group to enter it.77 Its location is reversed with Rı́o
de Banderas (above).
Isla del sacreficio [Sacrificio]: This is the island that is
today named Isla de Sacrificios, located just to the east of
Veracruz (old San Juan Ulúa). It was named by the Grijalva
expedition because of the remains of recent human sacrifices
found on the altars.78
Porto de Sant Juan: The port is San Juan de Ulúa, now the
port city of Veracruz. Grijalva landed there opposite Isla de
Sacrificios and named it San Juan after San Juan Bautista,
according to Oviedo and Las Casas. Wagner argues that the
name Ulúa was added later by Cortés.79
Sevilla: This city was formerly and is now known as
Cempoala. Cortés renamed it Sevilla.80
Almeria: This community was formerly and is now known
as Nautla. Grijalva renamed it Almeria after an Andalusian
town along the Mediterranean.81
Sant Pedro: This must be the Rı́o San Pedro y San Pablo that
Dı́az del Castillo reported to be the southern boundary of the
territory assigned to Francisco de Garay for exploration. A Rı́o
San Pedro y San Pablo is rendered in the 1581 Relación geográfica map of Gueytlalpan. It can be identified with the Tecolutla
River, just north of Almeria and south of the Rı́o Cazones.82
Archidona: The name is printed parallel to the coast, and it is
unclear to what it actually refers. It is very near an island
represented just off the coast, which is probably Cabo Rojo,
the barrier island/peninsula that protects the Laguna de
Tamiahua, south of the Pánuco River. The Grijalva expedition
sailed to this point before strong currents, anxiety over the
weather, and other considerations caused it to turn back and
return to Cuba.83 Although Toussaint suggested that Archidona
was the small island of Lobos just to the east of Cabo Rojo, that
island is too small to have figured on the map so largely.84
It is more likely that Archidona refers to the extension of the
Sierra Madre Oriental mountain chain as it meets the coast at
Quiahuiztlan, despite the fact that Quiahuiztlan (located
between Sevilla/Cempoala and Almeria/Nautla) would be
to the south of the label on the map. The first settlement of
the Cortés expedition was established on the coast at the base
of the Quiahuiztlan heights, and its governing body named this
46
first settlement ‘Villa Rica de la Veracruz del Puerto de
Archidona.’85 Paso y Troncoso suggested that it was given
the name Archidona because it was at the foot of a steep
slope, as is the city of Archidona in the Spanish province of
Málaga.86
Provincia Annchel: A variant of the name — ‘Amichel,’
which may be a paleographic error for Annchel87 — is found
in a royal cedula of 1521 that granted Garay the patent to
discover and settle the Province of Amichel, a territory
extending from the lands in Florida discovered by Juan
Ponce de León to the lands in Mexico being explored by
Cortés. The territory, whose coast had been explored by
Alonso Álvarez de Pineda in 1519, extended from the Rı́o
de San Pedro y San Paulo in Mexico to the western part of
Florida. Anticipating the cedula, Garay sent Álvarez de
Pineda in 1520 to settle Pánuco, which is probably why the
name of the province is located here on the map.88
Rio Panuco: The Rı́o Pánuco, the major river at Tampico,
retains its name.
laoton [la Oton]: Not a part of the label for the Rı́o
Pánuco, this label must refer to the Otomı́ territory located
inland to the west. According to Bernardino de Sahagún the
Otomı́ took their name from their first leader, Oton, who was
an incarnation of their god Otontecuhtli; the temple to
another of their gods was the ‘temple of Oton.’ The
Otonchichimeca were Chichimeca who spoke Otomı́.89
The Sierra de Otontepec is located just west of Tamiahua.90
Tamacho provincia: This is a Huastec place name (the
‘tam’ being a locative).91 It is probably a variant spelling of
‘Tamahox Provincia,’ which is located on the ‘Pineda map’
as being south of the Rı́o Pánuco (rather than north, as here).
Tamahox (or Tamaox) has been identified as Tamiahua,92 a
major polity located at the southern point of the Laguna de
Tamiahua. One of the Chichimec ruler Xolotl’s wives was
described as a lady of the province of Pánuco, Tampico, and
Tomiyauh.93 Although less likely, the name may instead
refer to the polity of Tamancho, which was a cabecera of the
Province of Pánuco in the 1530s, or to Tamoch, which was a
major Huastec city according to Cruz Reyes et al.94
Rio la Palma: This is the Rı́o Soto la Marina.95
Rio de Arboledas: (‘River of Groves’) This has not been
identified.
Puerto de Arrecifos [Arrecifes]: (‘Point of Reefs’) This
has not been identified.
Rio del spiritu sancto [Espiritu Santo]: The largest
river on the map, this has generally been identified as the
Mississippi, and later maps reflect this correspondence.
However, other identities have also been proposed, with
reason, including Mobile Bay, Galveston Bay, and the
Sabine River that separates Texas and Louisiana.96
La Florida: The name Florida appears here for the first
time on a printed map.97

This new world now revealed: Herna´n Corte´s and the presentation

Transcription

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