Cortés and his men were housed in
Moctezuma’s palace, where they soon set to
work seizing whatever gold objects they
found and melting them into transportable
bars. Although he was treated as an honored
guest during the first week of looting, Cortés
sought additional protection for his outnum-
bered force by forbidding Moctezuma to
leave the palace, essentially placing the
emperor under house arrest. Moctezuma,
who was in the custody of the armed Spanish
party and still wracked with confusion over
how to respond to the mysterious strangers,
did not resist.
Cortés also began to compose a descrip-
tion of Tenochtitlán for his king, Charles V:The city itself is as big as Seville or Córdoba.
There is also one square twice as big as that
of Salamanca, with arcades all around,
where more than sixty thousand people
come each day to buy and sell, and where
every kind of merchandise produced in these
lands is found; provisions as well as orna-
ments of gold and silver, lead, brass, copper,
tin, stones, shells, bones, and feathers. They
also sell lime, hewn and unhewn stone,
adobe bricks, tiles, and cut and uncut woods
of various kinds. There is a street where they
sell game and birds of every species found in
this land.... They sell honey, wax, and a
syrup made from maize canes, which is as
sweet and syrupy as that made from sugar
cane. They also make syrup from a plant
which in the islands is called maguey, which
is much better than most syrups, and from
this plant they also make sugar and wine,
which they likewise sell.While established in Tenochtitlán, Cortés sent
out several exploratory expeditions to seek
gold. Only one of these parties had success—
finding gold at Tutupec, near the Pacific
coast—but at least they learned something of
the features of the Mexican terrain. He sent
another expedition to the coast southeast of
Veracruz with the goal of finding a better port;
again, although they did not succeed in their
primary goal, they surveyed the land and the
Río Coatzacoalcos.
The isolation of the outnumbered con-
quistadores, meanwhile, made their position
increasingly precarious, as Aztec nobles grew
irritated with unceasing Spanish demands for
more gold. After six months in the capital,Cortés the Explorer B 59
After entering Tenochtitlán, the Aztec empire’s
capital city, unopposed in November 1819, Hernán
Cortés eventually conquered the empire in 1521.
His victory was partly a result of the introduction
of European diseases in the New World.(Library
of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
[LC-USZ62-99515])