CONTACT AND DISCOVERY 23The last three maps underscore the radical disruption
that the early era of exploration brought to European
worldviews. These two maps mark the next stage of
that disruption, when Europeans began to penetrate
the continental interior and to develop sustained
encounters with the native population. In this case,
that penetration is more accurately described as
an invasion.
In June 1519 Hernán Cortés arrived on the eastern
coast of Mexico with the aim of conquest, in defiance
of the orders of the Spanish governor in Cuba. Cortés
made his way inland, subjugating villages or forging
alliances along the way. Six months after landing on
the Mexican coast, he arrived at the Aztec capital of
Tenochtitlan, the most important population center
in North America at that time.
Cortés described this as an astonishing city
of “unbelievable” complexity and sophistication.
In letters to King Charles V he characterized
Tenochtitlan as stronger than Granada, which the
Spanish had recently reconquered from the Moors.
In his view, it was as large and grand as Seville or
Cordova, situated on a salt lake and accessed by four
artificial causeways that were as “wide as two cavalry
lances.” This unique system of fortifications would
challenge Cortés as he planned his attack. Within the
city he found beautiful temples of worship built along
straight, wide streets and waterways. With large and
pleasing squares and a huge abundant daily market
that attracted 30,000 people, this was a thriving
society enmeshed in trade. It was that wealth—
particularly gold—that drove the Spanish conquest.
In November Cortés met the Aztec leader
Montezuma; their cordial relationship quickly grew
hostile when the former demanded the gold that he
believed was kept in the city. Cortés had Montezuma
put under house arrest, which further inflamed the
Aztec people. When the conquistador briefly left the
city in April 1520, violence broke out between the
Spanish and the Aztecs, and in June Montezuma was
killed. The Aztecs drove the Spanish out, but a year
THE INVASION AND DESTRUCTION OF MEXICO
later they again besieged the city and cut off its water
supply. In July 1521 the Spanish burned Tenochtitlan
to the ground and subsequently built Mexico City.
Cortés overcame fierce Aztec resistance through more
advanced weaponry and technology, but also because
the Aztecs had been devastated by diseases he and
his men had brought with them.
When the second of Cortés’ letters to the king
was published in Nuremberg in 1524, it included
these two revealing maps. To the right we see a
detailed plan of Tenochtitlan, the first published
map of any urban center in the New World. Cortés
depicted a lively city with a main temple, palaces,
smaller dwellings, and grand squares, all surrounded
by a great lake with several natives paddling canoes.
For many years, scholars believed this map to be
derived from Cortés’ second letter to the king, for it
resembled contemporary European iconography.
But Barbara Mundy has recently argued that the
map contains elements not described in the letter,
and thus was probably influenced by indigenous
sources. This map gave Europeans the first glimpse
of Tenochtitlan, though by the time it was drawn the
city had been destroyed.
To the left was an equally important map,
depicting the Gulf of Mexico. The scales of the two
maps are completely different. The gulf is depicted
with south at the top of the page, where “La Florida”
appears at lower left. The map was sketched by
Alonzo Álvarez Pineda, who was sent by the governor
of Jamaica to find a westward ocean passage to the
Pacific Ocean. Álvarez spent much of 1519 exploring
the gulf, just as Cortés was making his way toward
the Aztec capital. Though Álvarez found no water
route to the west, he used his explorations to produce
a qualitatively more accurate picture of the gulf as
an enclosed body of water. This led him to conclude
that North and South America were connected by
land, settling a question that had bedeviled explorers
and mapmakers for decades. He was also the first
to depict Florida as a peninsula rather than an
island, and the first European to come across the
Mississippi River. On the map he recorded “Rio del
spiritusancto,” naming the river for the feast date on
which he came upon its mouth.
While the gulf map documents a leap forward
in geographical knowledge, the city plan profiles
a civilization that was brutally destroyed through
warfare and disease. That paradox aptly characterizes
the Spanish legacy in North America throughout the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Hernán Cortés, map of the Gulf of
Mexico and plan of Tenochtitlan,
in Praeclara Ferdinãdi Cortesii de
Noua Maris Oceani Hyspania narratio
sacratissimo, 1524