The 1519 Project: How Early Spanish Explorers Took Down A Mass-Murdering Indigenous Cult

The Federalist ^ | 08/22/2019 | Adam Mill

[SeekAndFind]

The New York Times officially announced its new 1619 Project to “to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.” Constantly now, Americans are called upon to reflect on European villains and indigenous victims. However, the story of European civilization reaching the North American continent did not begin with the first arrival of slave ships at Jamestown in 1619.

Let’s take a brief recess from the 1619 Project to explore another project. Call it the “1519 Project.” A full century before The New York Times’ proposed re-dating of the American founding and 2,200 miles southwest of Jamestown, European contact sparked a native uprising against a gruesome cult of cannibalism and mass murder.

Graphically described in the 1855 book, “Makers of History: Hernando Cortez,” John S.C. Abbott paints a picture of desperation for a tiny band of Spanish soldiers and their native allies. Next year marks the 500th anniversary of the Battle of the Dismal Night, where an initially successful Cortez was nearly crushed by superior Aztec forces.

After being driven out of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, Cortez led a frantic, fighting retreat through the mountain passes. Cortez lost all his gunpowder and cannons while fleeing through the water surrounding the capital. Only 12 horses remained of his entire cavalry. Cortez told his historian, “of the twenty-four horses that remained to us, there was not one that could move briskly, nor a horseman able to raise his arm, nor a foot-soldier unhurt who could make any effort.”

As Cortez retreated, he left intact the Aztec system of ritualistic mass murder. In his book, Abbott details the horrific acts of the Aztecs:

At times, in the case of prisoners taken in war, the most horrid tortures were practiced before the bloody rite was terminated. When the gods seemed to frown, in dearth, or pestilence, or famine, large numbers of children were frequently offered in sacrifice. Thus the temples of Mexico were ever clotted with blood. Still more revolting is the well-authenticated fact that the body of the wretched victim thus sacrificed was often served up as a banquet, and was eaten with every accompaniment of festive rejoicing. It is estimated that from thirty to fifty thousand thus perished every year upon the altars of ancient Mexico.

The Aztecs brutal system depended on a steady supply of prisoners of war and human children collected from the empire’s subjects as “taxes.” The scale of the murder one could find in just a single outlying Aztec city was astounding. Abbot relays, “they witnessed the most appalling indications of the horrid atrocities of pagan idolatry. They found, piled in order, as they judged, one hundred thousand skulls of human victims who had been offered in sacrifice to their gods.”

Fear kept the blood running down the steps of the Aztec temples until, in 1519, Cortez landed and challenged the evil that had until then been unchallengeable. Before long, tens of thousands of natives flocked to join Cortez’s unwitting liberation movement. For a short while, he captured the fortified Aztec capital until being driven out by far superior forces.

As he desperately tried to lead his men to safety, Cortez’s interpreter translated the taunts of the harassing Aztec forces: “Hurry along, robbers, hurry along; you will soon meet with the vengeance due to your crimes.” Then “the significance of this threat was soon made manifest. As the Spaniards were emerging from a narrow pass among the cliffs … they came suddenly upon an extended plain. Here to their amazement, they found an enormous army” arrayed against the few hundred Spaniards who had just limped into a final ambush. Abbot describes the Aztec forces as “a living ocean of armed men,” numbering 200,000 strong.

Cornered, and out of options, Cortez decided to lead his men into a final, suicidal charge against the overwhelming odds. Cortez led his rag-tag forces in a frontal assault, mustering all the speed he could out of his wounded, exhausted, and starving forces.

Before the Aztecs could drown them with superior numbers, Cortez’s forces reached the Aztec’s blood-red banner and he seized it. Cortez had fought enough battles with the Aztecs to recognize the banner was a sacred symbol of Aztec authority. With their banner gone, the Aztecs lost morale and panicked, breaking into disorganized chaos. With the chain of command destroyed, Cortez seized one of the most audacious military victories in human history.

Cortez later recaptured the capital city. While Abbott acknowledges that human rights among the Spaniards of the 16th century “were but feebly discerned,” in contrast to the Aztecs, Cortez “treated all the prisoners he took very kindly, and liberated them with presents.” Cortez ended the grotesque practice of human sacrifice and, according to Abbott, “treated the vanquished natives with great courtesy and kindness.”

Cortez was no saint. He lusted after women, gold, and adventure—so much he missed his first chance at battle due to injuries sustained after falling from a great height trying to sneak into the bedroom of a villager’s daughter. As Abbott concedes, his “love of plunder was a latent motive omnipotent in his soul, and he saw undreamed of wealth lavishly spread before him.”

Cortez will never satisfy a 21st century standard of human rights, and many not even be an exemplary leader. Nor did he set out to liberate anyone. Yet, regardless of his motives in Mexico, the outcome must be conceded: Cortez toppled a mass-murdering cult with the assistance of the oppressed.

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Adam Mill is a pen name. He works in Kansas City, Missouri as an attorney specializing in labor and employment and public administration law. Adam has contributed to The Federalist, American Greatness, and The Daily Caller.

[yesthatjallen]

Marxist Deconstruction of history.

* Search and Destroy *

[dp0622]

Yeah they were so altruistic :)

Listen I don’t give a sh.t. really. that they slaughtered the South Americans.

But to present them as saviors is REALLY a stretch.

They went for $$ and killed anyone that didn’t help them find it. And a whole lot of other people too.

[Telepathic Intruder]

Mel Gibson said that his movie “Apocalypto” was mild by comparison to the reality. No one was skinned alive in it, no children murdered, etc.

[Louis Foxwell]

To the KNISH ping list. Well worth reading.

[Yo-Yo]

"When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships. As a result his men were well motivated."

[Louis Foxwell]

The Aztec cult of human sacrifice lives on in the glitterati of today.

[DIRTYSECRET]

From what I understand Cortez was a butcher.

[Eagles6]

Never heard the story of that final battle.

Pucker factor meter was no doubt pegged for the Spaniards

[KierkegaardMAN]

Another beautiful and harmonious way of life, an unequaled culture, prestigious and enterprising. And the horrible Catholic Church sends its minions over there to wipe it from the face of the Earth!

[Vigilanteman]

Cortez was a piker compared to Pizzaro.

[marktwain]

The best history about these events is the first person account of one of Cortez' foot soldier, Bernal Diaz.

The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico by Bernal Diaz, a review. From the review:

The Diaz account is the best history book that I have read. It has all the advantage of a first person account and reads like a well written adventure novel.

The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico by Bernal Diaz del Castillo is the only extant first person account of the campaign under the command of Hernando Cortez from 1519 to 1520. The campaign resulted in the discovery and conquest of the Aztec civilization in Mexico.

Cortez himself wrote five long letters to Carlos V in Spain. Parts of them are included in this edition to help explain the narrative. But Cortez' letters were essentially reports of a Conquistador commander seeking favor, and explaining his actions, which were mostly extralegal.

The entire Conquest was a massive verification of the adage that “It is easier to obtain forgiveness than permission.”

Bernal Diaz' account is a first person narrative of the entire campaign, with the amazing detail of a foot soldier who is vitally interested in food, women, weapons, and gold. He includes accounts of two separate expeditions before Cortez.

Bernal Diaz made extensive remarks on the use of firearms in his narrative. The initial numbers were tiny, but contributed significantly to the success of the conquest.  Of the initial 400 to 500 men under the command of Cortez, there were 16 with horses, 13 with individual guns, four small cannon, “some brass guns” (more cannon), and 32 crossbowmen. The 13 personal guns were almost certainly arquebuses, the first really practical personal gun, with early matchlocks. Diaz mentions “much powder and ball”.

[Simon Foxx]

In the end. Cortez’ invasion, unwittingly, brought a far worse fate. For what ultimately defeated the Aztecs (and allowed Cortez to finally capture Tenochtitlan), was the plague of European diseases that the Spaniards unknowingly brought. And it spared no one among his allies. It is estimated that, in the end, 90% of the American Indian population of the New World (NINETY - you read that right) was wiped out by these diseases.

This is why, incidentally, when the English colonists arrived in numbers on the East Coast, they found comparatively few Indian tribes where stories of a few earlier expeditions talked of thriving cultures - the plagues brought by those initial explorers had, within a couple of decades, wiped them out.

[Skooz]

BFL

[farming pharmer]

Cortez was no saint. He lusted after women, gold, and adventure

A regular guy to be sure. Better than today's snowflakes, incels, soy boys and twinkies.

Today's kids could learn a few things from Cortez...

[Alas Babylon!]

Good one, and despite not being politically correct--TRUE.

Painting by Spanaird who was on-the-scene .

Painting by Aztecs on side of Temple, early 1500s.

[JonPreston]

From what I understand Cortez was a butcher.

American academia says the same about Columbus. I think they're full of crap myself.

[farming pharmer]

In the end. Cortez’ invasion, unwittingly, brought a far worse fate. For what ultimately defeated the Aztecs (and allowed Cortez to finally capture Tenochtitlan), was the plague of European diseases that the Spaniards unknowingly brought. And it spared no one among his allies. It is estimated that, in the end, 90% of the American Indian population of the New World (NINETY - you read that right) was wiped out by these diseases.

This is why, incidentally, when the English colonists arrived in numbers on the East Coast, they found comparatively few Indian tribes where stories of a few earlier expeditions talked of thriving cultures - the plagues brought by those initial explorers had, within a couple of decades, wiped them out.

All part of God's plan to wipe these savages out before mass European arrival.

[livius]

Ah, a little Leyenda Negra for breakfast. Curiously enough, the major take-over activity of the Spanish seems to have been marrying the Indians after they had been Christianized, as you can see from the large mixed race population of Latin America. This was not true of the English population or their heirs, who managed to either kill or drive out almost all of the indigenous population from the areas where they settled. In the 18th century British colonists from Georgia and South Carolina wiped out the peaceful Franciscan Indian missions of Florida and Georgia, killing or enslaving thousands of Indians. The British settlers were angry at the Spanish because escaped slaves could gain their freedom if they crossed the border into Spanish Florida.

[bitt]

p