APPENDIX B 



THE MEXICAN CONQUESTS 



The account below is a summary of the con- 

 quests made by the ancient Mexicans, with spe- 

 cial reference to Totonacapan and adjacent areas. 

 There is a great wealth of source material con- 

 cerning the military history of the Mexica, but 

 it has been little exploited. BarloAv (1947 a) re- 

 cently has published a very useful summary, but 

 with so little detail that, for our purpose, it was 

 advisable to consult the original sources. This 

 has resulted in a protracted and time-consuming 

 study, and in the hope that other investigators 

 may be spared the necessity of repeating the or- 

 deal, we include herewith a general account of the 

 Mexican conquests. Naturally, emphasis has been 

 placed on the Gulf coast, which is of most inter- 

 est to us. However, the maps indicate the full 

 range of the conquests during the reign of each 

 Mexican ruler; and authorities have been cited 

 extensively, so that anyone who is interested may 

 be able to locate the pertinent material without 

 having to struggle with the entire body of raw 

 data. 



Our summary is based on the following sources : 



a. Three key lists of the pueblos conquered by each 

 Mexican ruler, to be found in the Codice Chirnalpopoca, 

 the Anales de Tlatelolco, and the Coleccion de Mendoza. 

 Nazareo has a similar list, apparently taken directly 

 from the C6dice Chirnalpopoca, but his variant spellings 

 occasionally assist in the identification of towns. 



These lists give no internal chronology, other than that 

 which possibly is implied by the order in which the towns 

 appear. However, in other passages, both the Codice 

 Chirnalpopoca and the Anales de Tlatelolco have specific 

 dates for a limited number of conquests, and these make 

 it evident that the lists seldom are in chronological 

 order. Generally, however, the pueblos are grouped 

 roughly by province. 



6. Additional listing of towns by districts is found 

 in the so-called Matricula de tributes, of the Colecci6n 

 de Mendoza. This enumerates the towns subject to 

 Moctezuina II ; there is, however, no clue to the chro- 

 nology of conquests, and the pueblos subjugated by him 

 and his predecessors are lumped. However, the group- 

 ing is geographical and therefore is of very considerable 

 assistance in identifying conquered pueblos. The 

 Matricula manifestly is incomplete. To cite only one 



264 



case, we know from Spanish sources that Mocte- 

 zuma was extracting tribute from the Totonac pueblo 

 of "Cempoala" in the early sixteenth century ; yet the 

 only town of that name in the Matricula obviously is the 

 Zempoala of modern Hidalgo. 



c. Two authorities, the Codex Telleriano-Remensis and 

 the Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas, give a 

 limited number of conquests, with specific dates, but no 

 full list of the vanquished pueblos. 



d. Moreover, Tezozomoc (as well as Duran and the 

 Codice Ramirez) and Torquemada provide running de- 

 scriptions of the conquests, presumably in chronological 

 order. With one exception, Tezozomoc cannot be inter- 

 preted in terms of precise years; but from time to time, 

 Torquemada indicates during which year of the reign a 

 certain event took place, and from these key points, a 

 chronology of sorts can be extracted. Veytia we have 

 not used extensively ; in large part, his data on conquests 

 seem to be drawn from Torquemada. 



e. Collateral evidence concerning Mexican conquests 

 comes from two Texcocan sources, the C6diee en Cruz and 

 Ixtlilxochitl, which give dates for some of the more 

 important events in the history of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. 



We have used only the more obvious records 

 which are available in Spanish. But a person who 

 controls Nahuatl and who has unlimited time at 

 his disposition undoubtedly could draw on a much 

 larger series of source material. 



Before we turn to a discussion of the conquests, 

 we may say that the more we work with these 

 ancient records, the more impressed we are with 

 their apparent reliability. By and large, there is 

 a very gratifying agreement between the several 

 accounts — an agreement which undoubtedly is 

 owing in part to the fact that some of the sources 

 are drawn from the same older picture codices. 

 That is to say, we cannot asume that our several 

 sources are entirely independent of one another. 

 But as partial compensation, our records are not 

 all from Mexico-Tenochtitlan. The sister city of 

 Mexico-Tlatelolco is represented ; the Codice 

 Chirnalpopoca is from the once important town of 

 Cuautitlan, north of Mexico City ; and two Texco- 

 can sources are included. In any case, the major 

 outlines seem pretty clear, and often there is sur- 

 prising accordance even in detail. Some accounts 



