The Aztecs would never recognize themselves in the picture of their world that exists in the books and movies that we have made. They thought of themselves as humble people who had made the best of a bad situation and who had shown bravery and thus reaped its rewards. They believed that the universe had imploded four times previously, and that they were living under the fifth sun, thanks to the extraordinary courage of an ordinary man. Elders told the story to their grandchildren: “When all was in darkness, when the sun had not yet shone and the dawn had not yet broken, the gods gathered and spoke among themselves.” The divinities asked for a volunteer from the few humans and animals creeping about in the darkness. They needed someone to immolate himself and thus bring forth a new dawn.
Fifth Sun attempts a “revisionist history” of the Aztec peoples; one based primarily on their own writings. And while author Camilla Townsend (Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University) has put together a comprehensive and multi-sourced timeline (there are fifty-four pages of endnotes, eighteen pages of bibliographical references, and the lengthy descriptions of nearly thirty original “annals”, “libros”, and “codices”), this book is more thorough than interesting. I ultimately learned quite a bit about the Aztec (including the fact that “Aztec” is a pretty meaningless name that no Mesoamerican peoples would have used for themselves) but it was a bit of a slog with repetitions, the intrusion of authorial bias, and no clear through-line to the narrative. I am glad to have read this for what I learned but it was more work than pleasure.
For generations, those who have wanted to know about the lives of ancient Native Americans have studied the objects uncovered in archeological digs, and they have read the words of Europeans who began to write about Indians almost as soon as they met them. From these sources more than any others, scholars have drawn their conclusions and deemed them justified. But it was a dangerous endeavor that inevitably led to distortions. To make a comparison, it would never have been considered acceptable to claim to understand medieval France with access to only a few dozen archeological digs and a hundred texts in English — with nothing written in French or Latin. Yet different standards have been applied to Indians.
It’s a truism that history is written by the victors, but when the victorious Conquistadors established their Spanish culture in Mesoamerica and encouraged indigenous young males to be baptised and educated (in order to read the Bible), they were unwittingly giving the conquered the means to record their history, too. Some of these newly literate young men — grasping that their history could literally be erased — began to record the oral histories of their elders and to transliterate their culture’s pictographical records; and based on her translations and intertextual understandings of these, Townsend believes she has been able to put together the most accurate picture of Aztec society (from about two hundred years before Cortés to eighty years or so after the death of Moctezuma). What I learned of the precontact society: the central valley of what we know as Mexico was settled by successive waves of indigenous people from elsewhere (“Aztec” means “people from Aztlan”; a mythical place in the north, which several tribes claimed as their origin), and when the people who called themselves the Mexica moved in, the only land they were allowed was an unwanted reedy, inarable island in the middle of Lake Texcoco. Over the years, the Mexica people built the impressive city of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), and through warfare and intermarriages, they would eventually share ruling power over the valley with the Tlacopan and Tetzcohco peoples. Townsend is very thorough in her recounting of this “prehistoric” time, and while I confess to finding much of it confusing, she does make it very clear that by the time Cortés arrived, Tenochtitlan was rich and powerful, first among equals, and rival (not to mention subservient) cities were only too eager to aid in its downfall.
It would become accepted fact that the indigenous people of Mexico believed Hernando Cortés to be a god, arriving in their land in the year 1519 to satisfy an ancient prophecy. It was understood that Moctezuma, at heart a coward, trembled in his sandals and quickly despaired of victory. He immediately asked to turn his kingdom over to the divine newcomers, and naturally, the Spaniards happily acquiesced. Eventually, this story was repeated so many times, in so many reputable sources, that the whole world came to believe it. Moctezuma was not known for his cheerful disposition. Even he, however, had he known what people would one day say, would certainly have laughed, albeit with some bitterness, for the story was, in fact, preposterous.
Townsend busts the myth that Moctezuma bowed down to Cortés as the return of the god Quetzalcoatl (as a seasoned diplomat and compassionate ruler, Moctezuma sued for peace on behalf of his people and was betrayed and murdered by Cortés), and with a detailed recounting of the story of Cortés’ interpreter La Malinche, Townsend goes to great pains to bust the idea that she was a traitor to her people (as an “Aztec” woman from a rival tribe, Malinche was sold into slavery as a child and would have had no loyalty to Moctezuma or the Mexica people of Tenochtitlan). I appreciate that Townsend gave so much space to the story of Malinche (I appreciate any effort to put women’s stories into the historical record), but as she never wrote down her own thoughts and experiences, she is essentially unknowable. I thought it was a reach for Townsend to make references to Pocahontas and Sacagawea, and while again, I do appreciate efforts to bring in women’s stories, the few references that she found to various princesses, daughters, and wives in her source materials were repeated too many times. I also found it odd how many times (at least three?) that Townsend brings up the fact that Europeans had been farming for millennia longer than the Mesoamericans and that that fact alone would explain their dominance at first contact:
The Mexica knew that they were losing. They had no way to explain the discrepancy between their power and that of their enemies; they had no way of knowing that the Europeans were heirs to a ten-thousand-year-old tradition of sedentary living, and they themselves the heirs of barely three thousand. Remarkably, through it all, they seem to have maintained a practical sense of the situation: they knew what needed to be explained. They did not assume greater merit or superior intelligence on the part of their enemies. Rather, in the descriptions they left, they focused on two elements: the Spaniards’ use of metal, and their extraordinary communications apparatus. The old men talking about their experiences used the word tepoztli (metal, iron) more than any other in reference to the Spaniards: “Their war gear was all iron. They clothed their bodies in iron. They put iron on their heads, their swords were iron, their bows were iron, and their shields and lances were iron.” They grew ever more specific: “Their iron lances and halberds seemed to sparkle, and their iron swords were curved like a stream of water. Their cuirasses and iron helmets seemed to make a clattering sound.” When the elderly speakers paused to wonder at the events, it was to ask how the word had gone out so efficiently to so many people across the sea about their marvelous kingdom. The warriors had seen the ships — but not the compasses, the navigation equipment, the technical maps, and the printing presses that made the conquest possible. What is striking is how quickly they realized that these issues were at the heart of the matter.
Does anyone “assume greater merit or superior intelligence on the part of” the Spaniards? That feels like an argument that doesn’t need to be made...repeatedly. The final sections of the book — recounting the first eighty years of colonialism — felt like a familiar story: the decimation of indigenous people by small pox and other diseases; the greed for gold and power by settlers; the importation of slaves from Africa; the rise of Catholicism and use of Inquisition-like torture to stem insurrection. I did find the Appendix (How Scholars Study the Aztecs) to be very interesting — I wouldn’t have thought that a person would need to argue for the importance of letting a group of people speak for themselves — and ultimately, I am very grateful that Townsend gave them this forum. I just wish it felt less of a slog.
