Aztec Conquest the Conquest of

Aztec Conquest The Conquest of the Aztecs The traditional perspective on the peoples who populated the land today known as Mexico and anthropologically described as Mesoamerica is that they were the members of a warlike society that, on account of its primitive view of the world, was bound for extinction at the hands of European conquerors. This is a version of the explanation for the total annihilation of the Aztec people and culture as it occurred in the 16th century.

However, this is a story whose primary sources are those produced by the Europeans to witness, commit and prosper from the genocide of a once mighty culture. Therefore, it is with a certain concession to uncertainty that the collection of historians evaluated for this discussion inform the ideas expressed here above the people labeled with the catch-all term of Aztecs.

The Nahuati speaking peoples of Mesoamerica, of a multitude of ethnicities and coming from their own distinct family-based political systems, would come together to form an alliance to the dominance of the area known today as Mexico. And in the years prior to the arrival of Spanish conquerors, the Aztecs would employ a political system, a warfare strategy and a system of agriculture which would all figure significantly into the success of the civilization and its contribution to the evolution of human civilization.

The discussion here considers the degree to which the practices and customs evident in the history available to our interpretation could be credited for the imperial dominance of the Aztecs in their time. Tying together the religious, political and economic characteristics of the Aztecs, we can begin to see both the reasons for the culture's success and, possibly, for its failure.

To this end, it is interesting to note that powerful nature of the Aztec political system was significantly rooted in the relationship between ritual, religion, divine right and public office. Though it is true that the Aztec civilization oriented itself according to a sophisticated system within which members of the society held hierarchically officiated positions of importance to social functioning, this system would also be deeply inlaid with powerful demonstrations of spiritual authority.

The capacity of the Aztecs to extend their political system through Mesoamerica would be facilitated by claims of divine right. Accordingly to Elzay (1991), this would be one of the more effective elements of its political indoctrination. Elzay tells that "the rise of the Aztecs to dominance in central Mexico during the fifteenth century was accompanied by a rapid expansion of the imperial state cult.

The state cult, focused on the Great Temple complex in Tenochtitlan, magnified the grandeur and authority of the ruler by means of great public ceremonies and large-scale sacrifices, and also through the rewriting of Aztec history." (Elzey, 106) It is without connotation that we consider the religiosity of the Aztecs Kings, but as historical accounts accumulate, it becomes increasingly evident that this has prefigured into the peoples' eventual demise.

As illustrated by Leon-Portillo's (1959) accounting of the battle between Cortes' Spanish forces and the Aztecs as led by King Montezuma, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, the conflict's outcome was actually determined by a set of cultural divergences that predisposed the Aztec's to implement very little resistance to Spanish interests.

A consideration of the sequence of events leading up to, concurring with and following the destruction of the Aztec people as offered from the perspective of the defeated pre-South American culture indicates that though they derived their capabilities from a civilization equally as sophisticated and advanced as that of the Spanish, their leadership was driven to approach the incoming Europeans with a stance that was softened by religious and geographical characteristics. Leon-Portillo's work is most revealing of the disposition that greeted the Spanish upon their first arrival in 1519.

He begins his discourse on the Aztec experience roughly ten years prior to this point, when the pagan native culture's record illustrates the portent of some coming threat. The pretenses which he draws for the initial Aztec perspective that the ornately attired and towering horseback Spaniards were actually gods provide a new conception for why a force of men perhaps no larger than 600 in strength was capable of reducing a centuries old culture to nothing more than historiographical record.

Broken Spears reveals that before the Spanish breached South American shores, Aztec religious literature spoke of a series of harbingers to their inevitable destruction. The most chillingly accurate of these bad omens was the so-called 7th bad omen which concerned the discovery of a strange and ominously colored crane on the Aztec fishing waters. A mirror which adorned the bird's head reflected the threatening venture of a foreign looking people. When the spiritual leader Motecuhzoma looked at the mirror, "he saw a distant plain.

People were moving across it, spread out in ranks and coming forward in great haste. They made war against each other and rode on the backs of animals resembling deer." (Leon-Portilla, 6) This is to denote that the Aztec demonstrations of divine right were not simply for the purposes of political dominance. The Aztecs were consistent in their deference to the various elements of their belief system which historical account would come to describe as mythology.

The personification of gods through idolatry would be one of the consistent markings of a political culture which otherwise is demonstrated to have actually imposed its authority on conquered lands with a surprising modesty. In spite of the descriptions which are recurrent of its sometimes brutal military excellence, once lands were conquered, local leadership and customs were generally allowed to persist. But the indulgence in religious presentation would be correlated to a true assumption of entitlement conquest.

To this point, Elzay denotes that "proof that authority exercised by a city was legitimate often involved an appeal to prophecy.

Some of the prophecies took the form of verbal promises or predictions of future conquests and were delivered by a supernatural being in the place and time of origins and reiterated during periods of crisis or ritual celebration." (Elzey, 107) As most of the sources consulted indicate, the population of Mesoamerica during the 13th and 14th centuries was ethnically diverse, with cultural or practical differences pertaining to region and genetic inbreeding.

Here within though, there did exist an evidently broad consent to a shared religious system through which political powers would be vested. This would be a large girding for the eventual unification of city-states which precipitated the period often identified as the period of the Aztec Empire. Smith & Berden (1992) indicate that "in the year 1430 three powerful city-states in the Basin of Mexico joined in an alliance designed for military, political, and economic control of their neighbors.

By 1519, when Hernando Cortes set foot on the Mexican coast, that control had swept beyond their immediate neighbors into the highlands and lowlands of central and southern Mexico. Also by that time, the Mexica of Tenochtitlan had emerged as the military leaders, supported by their allies, the Acolhua of Texcoco and the Tepaneca of Tlacopan." (Smith & Berdan, 354) This provides us with something of a portrait of the conditions which coalesced to provide for an empire of this nature.

As Smith & Berdan indicate, the very brief but ideal moment at which these forces of varying virtue had come to compensate for one another's strategic shortcomings to create a real cultural expansion for the Aztecs. As empires are concerned though, the Aztec one may not qualify technically. (Barlow, 345) The alliance described above would begin to establish a connectivity across different city-states in Mesoamerica, with major alliances allowing for conquest of smaller city states.

However, most archaeological record indicates that the Aztecs practiced a tribute system where, once conquered, such city-states were expected only to make regular tributary payments. Beyond that, the value of expansion was in its opening of trade routes betwixt such city-states, establishing a powerful economic foundation inclining the support of those conquered. As most city-states which remained current in their tribute payment were entitled to retain local leadership and customs, it would be within the social hierarchy would play a significant role in government.

As a matter of cultural tendency, "the social order was strongly hierarchical, with power and privileges the prerogative of a largely hereditary nobility." (Smith & Berdan, 354) Thus, the economic benefits of its imperial era suggest would by design serve to enrich those born into luxury and comfort, reinforcing a clearly defined socioeconomic class system. Indeed, this would be true even within conquered city-states, where local leaders would be expected to play a direct role in ensuring that tribute payments were paid.

This would bring its own benefits to both parties, with local leaders typically rewarded handsomely for their commitment and with the Aztec Empire gaining another source of resource and income. The system is described in the text by Rounds (1970), who would report that "as a strategem for centralizing power, the dynasty adopted measures encouraging the traditional local leaders to develop a new self-identity as members of a ruling elite.

This new identity provided them with both the symbolic and material means to distinguish themselves from the masses." (Rounds, 74) This strategy would prove ingenious. The result was such a greater fluidity of trade and transport of goods that though a class system did persist, the connectivity would improve the opportunity for personal acquisition in all classes. Of course, this would not alter the essential nature of society which, in the details pertaining to its sophistication, is shown to have had a clearly structured and enforced inheritance system.

To the point, archaeologically consulted "wills reveal a functioning, coherent inheritance system in which the sex of the testator was probably the single most relevant factor in understanding how rights to property were divided." (Kellogg, 314) In a clear ownership and material-based society, the relevance of economic realities under the rule of the Aztec Empire would be significant.

To be sure, the wealthy landowners remained those most proportionally benefited by the system, but commoners in these city-states would also gain greater access to work, to goods and to a personal mobility that, we may suggest, was as great a reason as any for the success experienced by the Aztecs at their height of power. Of course, this power could have scarcely been possible were the Aztecs not also equipped with an uncommon military prowess.

Well-documented in some regards but also often overlooked in the face of overwhelming evidence that Spanish colonization was quite easily won, its military reputation was actually one not just of greatness on the battlefield. In many ways, its success as a military empire would also pertain to its perceptiveness with respect to strategy. Its expansionist premise, which casts a far different light on indigenous American culture than does the nomadic tribalism seen in North America, would be executed with a clear look to military defense.

In its targets of conquest, for instance, it complemented the connectivity of its capital city-states with "a frontier strategy. City-states in strategic provinces were incorporated into the Aztec imperial realm, but on a different basis than the tributary provinces.

Their geographic location seems especially significant: for the most part they lay along hostile borderlands and had military value; they dominate routes which served as major arteries for trade or extended military action; or they were situated handily for commerce and served as trading entrepots." (Smith & Berdan, 356) It is thus that we can begin to see the clear connection between military and trade routes as they facilitated the Aztec strategy of growth.

That said, the Aztec military tendencies are those which most distinguish the culture to history, both correctly and with some prejudice. Indeed, the Aztecs are seen at their best and worst as brilliant but savagely skilled warriors with no fear for the drawing of blood. The expansion and maintenance of its empire would tie directly into the political and religious precepts which have already been here discussed, with conquest pairing with its own ceremonial conceits.

These ceremonial conceits, for obvious reason, would be the practices which gained the most notoriety and which have retained the longest shelf-life in the image of the Aztecs.

To the point, Isaac (1983) reports that "virtually everything written in this century on Aztec warfare has stressed its ritual component and, whether intentionally or not, has fostered the impression that the main aim of most or all Aztec warfare was the capture of enemy soldiers for sacrifice to the Huitzilopochtli." (Isaac, 121) As noted in the introduction to this discussion, there is a conflict in our understanding of this area of Aztec life, particularly because so many of our anthropological sources are originated at the hands of European sources, with their inherent biases.

Therefore, the routine characterization of the Aztecs as bloodthirsty and savage may be limited in its reliability. What cannot be denied though is that the Aztecs had built for themselves and extremely formidable fighting force. This was recorded as "killing and wounding without pity whatsoever." (Isaac, 122) Drawn from a description of the coup which led to the triple alliance of ruling city states, this denotes that without too much attention to the implications of their alleged mercilessness, we can conclude that the Aztecs attained their dominance through military campaigning.

Such is demonstrable if we are to consider the pattern by which the Aztecs expanded their empire, using the accumulation of resources and of tributary soldiers in order to grow at an exponential pace.

As the Brunfiel (1983) source tells us, "through the conquest and incorporation of the northern polities, the sizes of the mid-latitude domains increased to the point where they were able to defeat the larger southern communities (Anales de Cuauhtitlan 1945:66; Anales de Tlatelolco 1948:52; Historia de los Mexicanos 1965:54; Ixtlilxochitl 1975-77:I, 318-319)." (Brumfiel, 271) It is compelling to see how the nature of its tribute system would actually facilitate an ever-growing ability to expand its hegemonic sphere of influence through an initial groundswell of sheer military force.

The connection between strategic ascension and conquest by force would shape the power structure in the region for all the years until the arrival of Spanish conquerors. Often, another cause cited for the brief but monumentally importance success enjoyed by the Aztecs would be their evolutionary push of agricultural techniques relating to irrigation, planting and land usage. The settlement of city-states in the Mexican Valley as a primary characteristic of the empire suggests a stationary lifestyle relating to the ability to achieve sustenance without resorting to nomadic measures.

Still, "despite the automatic assumption by some ecologists that agricultural hydraulic works were the reason for this increased centralization of authority, the military hypothesis seems more tenable. During this period the Aztecs were short of land and of pure water suitable for irrigation, and so practiced very little agriculture." (Rounds, 75) This is to indicate that the Aztecs would achieve.