Old World Princes And New World Potentates: Images Of
Kingship In The Discovery And Conquest Of America1 B.W. Ife
I
Of all the clichés in the explorer's phrasebook, 'take me to your
leader' is the most common, and with reason. An early audience with the
Head Man can be a shrewd move in both diplomatic and strategic terms,
clearing the way for a cordial reception or a bloodless coup.
Self-esteem can also be an important consideration: dealing with the
local chieftain on equal terms is good for the ego of an adventurer of
ignoble birth and low social status. Diplomacy, conquest and
self-aggrandisement were prominent among the motives which led the early
Spanish conquistadores to seek out those in highest authority wherever
they went. But in an unfamiliar culture it can be difficult to read the
signs, and to be certain who really matters. The purpose of this article
is to examine a number of ways in which the Spanish characterised the
leaders of the cultures with which they were in contact during the first
forty years or so of discovery and conquest in the New World.
There are thirteen principal figures mentioned in the study: three
discoverers and two chroniclers; five new-world leaders; and three
old-world commentators who illustrate the extremes of a spectrum of
representations under review. The discoverers are Christopher Columbus,
Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro and their chroniclers Bernal Díaz
del Castillo and Pedro de Cieza de León. The leaders are the unnamed
cacique who came aboard Columbus's flagship the Santa María on 18
December 1492, and his near neighbour Guacanagarí; the Aztec emperor
Moctezuma II and his successor Cuauhtémoc; and the Inca ruler Atahualpa.
The commentators are John Mandeville, Marco Polo and Niccol˜
Machiavelli. How did each of the three agents of Spanish conquest
perceive the representatives of political power in the new-found lands?
How did they describe them in their dispatches? What familiar models of
kingship or despotism did they draw on in the process? These questions
will help us to understand how the discoverers conceptualised the
political structures they encountered and the roles of the individuals
who held office within them.
In recent years, and particularly during the period leading up to the
quincentennial commemoration of the first encounter, it has become
common to criticise Columbus and his successors for their lack of
openness to the cultures of the New World. Tzvetan Todorov's classic
study of 1982 encapsulated the issue of the self and the other in the
early colonial context,
2
and since then, there have been numerous
discussions of ways in which old-world images have collided with and
sometimes obliterated new-world realities. The tone of such discussions
has usually been reproachful. Santa Arias, for example, in an otherwise
even-handed article, comments as follows:
Many recent studies have stated that the explorers' first oral and
written descriptions reiterated the old themes and general attitudes of
the popular culture of the High Middle Ages and of the Renaissance. The
sixteenth-century writers' use of conceptual strategies of
representation taken from prior literature has served to confirm that
the discovery and exploration of the unknown lands did not have a great
impact on the intellectual culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries...This 'blunt impact', as Elliott has called it, may be
explained by the ideological advantages that inhere in the failure or
refusal to comprehend an unknown culture. Simply dismissing an unknown
culture as barbaric made the work of the historians easier and assisted
the state in legitimating conquest rather than peaceful coexistence. The
historians simply assimilated their experiences to the fantastic and
marvelous descriptions of the prior antiprimitivist texts. This
disavowal of difference flowed directly from the textual descriptions of
classical and medieval encyclopedists, which had not accurately
reflected actual cultural practices. (164-65)
3
The negative tone of this assessment is understandable, but, I would
argue, misplaced in some respects. As Elliott has commented on Cortés,
observation in the Humboldtian sense is an attempt to 'bring the exotic
into the range of the familiar'; nevertheless, the discoverers' general
failure to communicate the physical characteristics of the New World
'contrasts strikingly with the many precise and acute descriptions of
the native inhabitants'.
4
This article offers an analysis of some of
these descriptions, together with a preliminary account of the mental
models which underlie them. What emerges is a range of models, or
stereotypes, which evolve through time and in response to the changing
circumstances of the men who applied them.
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II
As with virtually every other issue affecting the earliest European
encounters with America, the question of leadership and authority is
raised in a particularly acute form in Columbus's Journal,
or Diario, of the 1492 voyage.
5
It hardly needs to be said that, as originally
conceived, the 1492 voyage was not a voyage of discovery at all, but a
calculated attempt to reach a known destination by a previously
untravelled route. There is ample evidence that Columbus, along with a
number of European geographers, made careful assessments of the
practicality of the Atlantic route to the far east based on a range of
navigational and geographical sources which, in the event, turned out to
be completely worthless.
6
In the prologue to the Diario Columbus sets out the four major
objectives of the voyage -religious, diplomatic, economic and
scientific- with a clarity which is belied by, and which undoubtedly
contributed to, the confusion which clouded his judgment at almost every
stage of his subsequent career. Chief among the objectives was to
establish contact with a great leader thought to be amenable to an
alliance with Christendom against Islam:
...from information which I had given Your Highnesses about the lands
of India and a prince called the Great Khan,
7
which means in our
language King of Kings, and how he and his ancestors had many times sent
to Rome for learned men to instruct him in our holy faith...Your
Highnesses, as Catholic Christians and princes devoted to the holy
Christian faith and the furtherance of its cause, and enemies of the
sect of Mohammed and of all idolatry and heresy, resolved to send me,
Christopher Columbus, to the said regions of India to see the said
princes and the peoples and lands and determine the nature of them and
of all other things, and the measures to be taken to convert them to our
holy faith...
8Leaving aside the fact that Columbus's intelligence was way out of
date -Kublai Khan died in 1294 and the last Mongol emperor, Togon-temür,
was overthrown in 1368- the prominence given to the Great Khan in the
planning and execution of the voyage helps to explain why the search for
'el gran Can' comes to dominate Columbus's day-to-day management of the
expedition after the landfall.
In fact, the search has three aspects to it. At one level Columbus
has a specific model in mind. The historical figure of the Great Khan is
a guarantor of geographical and navigational achievement: if Columbus
can find the Great Khan he must be in Cathay. His initial objective is
therefore to locate an individual who corresponds as closely as possible
to a pre-existing description.
9
However, as the expedition continues and
the likelihood of this outcome recedes, the initial objective becomes
more generalised, and evolves into a search for anyone in a position of
authority, not so much because Columbus wishes to negotiate with such a
person, but because he needs evidence that a political structure exists.
The search for a structure, rather than an individual, becomes another
way of deriving meaning from an inchoate mass of geographical and
ethnographical data. And at a third level, the language of the Journal
shows Columbus struggling with related issues of terminology: how should
he describe the leader he is seeking, especially once he has shifted
from the specific to the general objective?
The linguistic difficulties associated with the search for a leader
should not be underestimated, given the close relationship between
structure and terminology. Whatever word is used to describe the
occupant of the most senior post in a political system, it will
inevitably imply a great deal about the nature of that system and the
tenure of the post. So far, this article has used nine English terms
('emperor', 'king', 'prince', 'despot', 'head of state', 'authority',
'chief', 'chieftain' and 'head man'), all of which imply different
systems and cultures, and the use of the word 'leader' is an attempt to
find something fairly neutral. Columbus does not seem to have looked for
an equivalent generic term. The word he uses most frequently is rey, but
he also uses señor, príncipe,
principal, juez and gobernador, together
with a range of adjectival phrases, before eventually settling for the
Arawak terms cacique and nitaino.
10
At the outset, however, rey ('king') was a perfectly reasonable word
to use, as Columbus was indeed looking for a person of very considerable
prominence, a 'prince' called the Great Khan or 'king of kings'.
11
For reasons which are now clear to us, though they were not then clear to
Columbus, this individual could not be located, even after Columbus had
made his way to Cuba, an island he correctly described on several
occasions as larger than England and Scotland put together. On 2
November 1492 he decided to send Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres,
who between them spoke Hebrew, Chaldean and a little Arabic, into the
interior of the island in an attempt to make contact: " He gave them instructions on how they should ask for the king [rey]
of that land and what they should tell him on behalf of the Monarchs
[Reyes] of Castile..."12
The two men returned on 6 November, having made contact with a large
village of some 50 houses and 1000 inhabitants. They had been treated
well, the most honourable men of the village had carried them on their
shoulders to the main house and given them two seats on which to sit
while they all sat on the floor around them,
13
and assurances had been
given that the cinnamon and pepper, of which they carried samples, were
to be found in quantity to the south east of the village. But, finding
no indication of any city, they had returned, bringing with them an
elder [un principal] of the village, with his son and a manservant.
14
Columbus was evidently unimpressed by this catch. The elder proved timid
and fled, and the whole episode was dismissed by Columbus in his later
report to the Catholic Monarchs: "They found many settlements and countless people but no sign of any
authority [regimiento]."
15
By December, Columbus had left Cuba for the neighbouring island of
Española (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and desperation was
beginning to set in. From this point the Journal contains more and more
rhapsodic accounts of the landscape, but there is no sign of a power
structure or a head of state. On 16 December, however, things began to
improve. With Columbus anchored in the Tortuga Channel, 500 indians
gathered on the beach, together with a man he calls their 'king' (rey).
He is a young man, about twenty-one years old, and is accompanied by an
elderly man described as a 'tutor' (ayo) and other 'counsellors who
advised him and answered for him' since he himself speaks little.
16
The
king is reported to have offered the Spaniards anything they needed, and
Columbus comments on their nakedness and physical beauty. Later the king
went aboard the Santa María and was given some food which he tasted and
passed on to his companions.
Two days later, on Tuesday 18 December, the cacique again visited the
Admiral on board the Santa María, and this time Columbus records the
episode at greater length and in finer detail:
They said that the king was on his way with more than 200 men, and
that four men were carrying him on a litter and that he was a young man,
as was said earlier. Today, while the Admiral was eating beneath the
forecastle, he came to the ship with all his men. And the Admiral says
to the Monarchs: Your Highnesses would no doubt approve of the ceremony
and respect with which they all treat him, although they all go naked.
As soon as he came aboard the ship he found that I was eating at the
table beneath the forecastle and he strode right up and sat down beside
me and did not wish to give me the chance to go out to meet him nor rise
from the table, but bade me continue my meal. I thought that he would be
pleased to eat some of our food. I then ordered him to be brought
something to eat. When he entered below the forecastle he gestured with
his hand that his men should remain outside and so they did with the
greatest readiness and respect in the world and they all sat on the deck
except two men of mature age, whom I took to be his counsellors and
tutor, who came and sat at his feet. And of the dishes which I put
before him he took just enough from each to sample them and then sent
the rest to his men and they all ate it, and he did the same with the
drink, which he merely raised to his lips and then gave to the others,
and all with an amazing gravity and with few words, and those he did
speak, as far as I could understand, were very wise and considered and
those two men watched his mouth and spoke for him and with him and with
great respect. After he had eaten, a page brought a belt just like those
from Castile in manufacture although the workmanship is different, which
he took and gave to me, and two pieces of worked gold which were very
thin, because I believe that they get very little of it here, although I
hold that they are very close to its source and there is a great deal of
it. I saw that he liked a tapestry which I had over my bed. I gave it to
him with some very good amber beads which I had around my neck, and some
red slippers, and a flask of orange-flower water with which he was so
pleased that it was amazing. He and his tutor and counsellors are very
sad because they could not understand me nor I them. Nevertheless, I
understood him to say that if I wanted anything from there, the whole
island was at my disposal...
17
This description builds on many of the characteristics which were
first mentioned in the narrative of 16 December. The nakedness, the
man's comparative youth, his quiet bearing and spare habits are
reiterated, but they are woven into an altogether richer tapestry which
emphasises a number of traditional regal attributes. Essentially, what
has changed is that Columbus has invested the man's visit with ceremony,
the feature of kings which, for Shakespeare, most clearly marked them
off, 'creating awe and fear in other men' (Henry V, iv, i). Ritual and
pomp are an important part of the way in which power is formalised and
made visible within society.
18
At this remove we cannot be certain to
what extent Columbus correctly observed and interpreted within their
original context the details of the cacique's visit: the bearing on a
litter, the size of the entourage, the tasting of the food, the
elaborate display of good manners, and so on. But it is clear that
Columbus read these details as ceremonial in nature, and therefore as
evidence of the existence of the kind of power structure or political
system [regimiento] he was searching for.
Unlike many other discoverers of the time, Columbus had first-hand
experience of regal ceremonies, having spent many years in negotiations
with both the Portuguese and the Spanish monarchy. Even so, he would
have been familiar with the way in which medieval writers like
Mandeville and Marco Polo tended to describe the role and person of the
king. Monarchy was, after all, the predominant form of leadership for
the vast majority of Europeans, and although no single pattern
prevailed, the model was in all cases Christian, and based on a common
fund of images and symbols from the Old Testament.
19
Jacques le Goff has
characterised the medieval model of the king in terms of three features:
monarchy, christianity and nobility. The medieval king rules alone,
defends the faith and inherits his or her position through a blood line.
20
It was these necessary conditions of kingship that Columbus was
responding to when he wrote his account of the cacique's visit.
The man's youth was an encouraging sign, since, taken together with
the fact that he was in the company of older men who clearly respected
him, it suggested an inherited entitlement to office. The strong hint of
noble origins is picked up in some of the more obvious aspects of his
appearance and behaviour. His nakedness is belied by his grace and
natural authority. He is held in respect and is borne aloft on a litter.
He shows good manners in not allowing Columbus to get up from the table.
His modesty and gravitas are evident in the way he eats sparingly,
21
showing consideration for his entourage,
22
and in the fact that he is a
man of very few words. And he demonstrates one of the key qualities of
the monarch -largitas, generosity- in putting the whole of the island at
Columbus's disposal.
23
The other two characteristics of royalty were less easy to be certain
of. As far as the man's Christianity is concerned, Columbus had long
since concluded that the islanders had no religion of their own, and so
could easily be converted to Christianity.
24
But this in itself was not
an obstacle to the cacique's being a king, because not only was he
potentially a Christian, but he had protected the Spaniards and shown
them hospitality. And Marco Polo had made the same point in his account
of Kublai Khan: although not a Christian himself, the Khan had protected
Christian interests, for example, in preventing Saracens and Jews from
insulting the sign of the cross.
25
And as to the cacique's being a true
monarch, one that rules alone, Columbus had already concluded that this
man was the king of the whole island.
26
Taken as a whole, it seems clear from the description of the
cacique's visit that Columbus is not just describing, but is
constructing an image of a 'noble savage' in which the naked reality is
clothed in a rhetoric of expectation. In spite of the admitted lack of
communication (as far as Columbus could tell his words were wise and
considered; Columbus could not understand anything, although he did
understand him to say that they could take anything they wanted),
Columbus paints in words a replica of the regal image he is expecting to
encounter from his reading of John Mandeville and Marco Polo. Both these
writers describe at length the ceremony and protocol with which the
Great Khan was surrounded at court; the way he sat on a dais surrounded
by thousands of courtiers; how his food was served at great banquets in
elaborate and silent ritual; and the extent of his power and nobility
such that 'there is no lord so great nor so rich and powerful...truly,
it is a great pity he is not Christian.'
27
The propensity to describe not what we see but what we expect to see
is a common human failing which Columbus often exhibited to a very
marked degree. It is what Todorov calls a 'stratégie finaliste de
l'interprétation': Columbus knows in advance what he is going to find;
experience is there to illustrate the truth, not to be interrogated, and
his interpretation of the signs is determined by the result he wishes to
achieve.
28
To some extent this is perfectly reasonable: he is, after all,
only checking progress against objectives. The question is how did he
know what he was looking for, where did he get his guidance from? As
Todorov points out, having learned the word cacique Columbus was less
interested in finding out what it meant within the relative hierarchy of
the Indies than in deciding what Spanish word it corresponded to.
29
Put
another way, he was measuring reality against a mental model which
clearly came from his reading, and from the associated literary
topoi.
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III
In spite of the prominence given to the unnamed cacique in the
Journal entries for 16-18 December, this man does not merit a mention in
either of the two letters, to Ferdinand and Isabel or to Luis de
Santángel, dated March 1493. That is because this cacique was quickly
superseded in Columbus's estimation by another 'king' later that month.
The new cacique was in fact an altogether more prominent figure, a man
named in the Journal as Guacanagarí, chief of the Marien district, one
of the 24 districts of Bainoa province, itself one of the five original
provinces into which Española was divided at the time of Columbus's
arrival.
30
Columbus came into contact with Guacanagarí on 22 December
1492, just before one of the major turning points of the first voyage,
the sinking of the Santa María and the founding of Navidad. The first
contact was fairly routine, the cacique sending a large canoe to the
Admiral with an invitation to visit and a present of a gold belt, but
there grew up between the two men a close relationship founded on
sympathy and even affection.
Columbus had reason to be grateful for his prior acquaintance with
Guacanagarí once the Santa María ran aground in the early hours of
Christmas Day. The Admiral sent two men ashore to alert the cacique, who
responded quickly and effectively to the crisis. He roused the people
and sent several large canoes to off-load the ship, and personally
supervised the safe storage of the goods once they had been brought
ashore. Nor did he neglect to comfort the Admiral on his loss:
From time to time he sent one of his relatives weeping to the Admiral
to console him, saying that they should not be upset or distressed
because he would give him everything he had. The Admiral assures the
Monarchs that nowhere in Castile would such good care have been taken
about everything that not a lace was missing ... they are (says the
Admiral) so loving a people and so lacking in cupidity and so willing to
do anything, that I assure Your Highnesses that I believe that there are
no better people in the world, and no better land. They love their
neighbours as themselves, and have the softest speech in the world, and
are docile and always laughing. They go naked, men and women, as their
mothers bore them. But Your Highnesses may believe that their dealings
with each other are very good, and the king has a most marvellous
bearing and such a sober manner that it is a pleasure to see it all...
31
Here we recognise many of the features that Columbus has already
commended in the earlier case. The king's readiness to help is matched
by an ability to command an immediate and effective response; like his
people, he demonstrates a truly Christian love of his neighbour, while
his bearing and sobriety do not prevent him from working alongside his
people in person.
32
What is new, or at least, given greater emphasis, is the fellow-feeling
which the king demonstrates on a number of occasions. Columbus had
enjoyed the exchange of gifts with the earlier
cacique because it gave them equal status. But the
personal friendship which appears to grow up between Guacanagarí and
Columbus is of a different order. Several times the king and his people
weep for the Admiral's loss, and several times Guacanagarí puts a
consoling arm around the stricken representative of the greatest nation
on earth.
On the following morning, the offers of help and consolation are
renewed, and the two men engage in an exchange of hospitality:
'the king of that land ... came to the caravel Niña where the Admiral
was and almost in tears told him not to be upset because he would give
him everything he had ... The king ate on board the caravel with the
Admiral, and afterwards went ashore with him, where he did the Admiral
great honour, and gave him a meal of two or three types of ajes and
shrimps and game and other kinds of food which they had, and some of
their bread which they call cassava. Then he took him to see some groves
of trees near the houses, and a good thousand people, all naked, went
with him. The chief now wore the tunic and gloves which the Admiral had
given him, and was more excited by the gloves than by anything else he
had given him. From his eating habits, his decency and delightful
cleanliness, he showed clearly that he was of good birth. After eating,
for they remained at table for a fair while, they brought certain herbs
which he thoroughly rubbed into his hands; the Admiral thought that he
did so to soften them, and they gave him water for his hands.
33
Although, once again, many of the details in this description are
familiar from the earlier example, we may see numerous examples of
Columbus's characteristic rhetoric of escalation. This man's entourage
is twice that of the other's; this man reciprocates by offering
hospitality himself; this man covers his nakedness with the gloves and
the tunic, and thereby associates himself more closely with the
civilized values of the Spaniards; this time there is no mention of
language difficulties as the two men engage in a companionable
sobremesa; and the meal concludes with an appropriate
toilet, through which display of cleanliness the
cacique aligns himself with godliness and good
breeding.
Taken as a whole, the period which Columbus spent at Navidad until
his departure on 4 January 1493, and his account of these difficult and
at some times harrowing days, is marked by a strong note of
companionship. Like many of his successors, especially Cortés and
Pizarro, Columbus appears to enjoy the thought that he is able to deal
on equal terms with men whom he represents as very significant leaders
in their own right. As his estimation of their eminence increases, so
does the satisfaction he appears to derive from the friendship and
familiarity he establishes with them. The two aspects of his
representation of native caciques are closely linked with his own
self-esteem: on the one hand these men are made to display the majesty
of the Christian monarch; on the other they are portrayed as warm and
human in their dealings at the personal level. Such mingling of the
awesome and the homely is as much a feature of other representations of
new-world leaders as it is of the images of European royalty found
nowadays in glossy magazines.
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IV
Whatever stature Columbus may have invested in the local chieftains
of Española, it was clear to the Spaniards that, once they made contact
with mainland Mexico, they were dealing with cultures, political systems
and individual leaders of an altogether different stature. After the
episode at Navidad, Columbus never again pretended that the individuals
he encountered, whether in the Caribbean or on tierra firme, were cast
in the mould of Mongol emperor or Christian monarch. But from the moment
of Cortés's first contact with the Mexica empire in March 1519, the size
and extent of Moctezuma's possessions and influence made recourse to the
familiar commonplaces of kingship inevitable.
Cortés's account of Moctezuma is both more diffuse and more
impressive than the brief sketches of the two caciques left by Columbus.
For one thing, Cortés and Moctezuma were adversaries over a much longer
period, from the initial third-party sparring on Easter Saturday 1519 to
the Emperor's imperfectly explained death in custody on 30 June 1520.
The long period during which Moctezuma's emissaries desperately tried to
buy off the newcomers while Cortés continued to insist, politely but
surely, that he had been sent to visit Moctezuma and was not leaving
until he had done so,
34
caused a build-up of expectation which was not
disappointed. When the Spaniards eventually entered the lake city of
Tenochtitlan on 8 November 1519, Cortés's account gives full reign to
the grandeur of the occasion:
Mutezuma came to greet us and with him some two hundred lords, all
barefoot and dressed in a different costume, but also very rich in their
way and more so than the others. They came in two columns, pressed very
close to the walls of the street, which is very wide and beautiful and
so straight that you can see from one end to the other. It is two-thirds
of a league long and has on both sides very good and big houses, both
dwellings and temples. Mutezuma came down the middle of this street with
two chiefs, one on his right hand and the other on his left ... and they
were all dressed alike except that Mutezuma wore sandals whereas the
others went barefoot; and they held his arm on either side. When we met
I dismounted and stepped forward to embrace him, but the two lords who
were with him stopped me with their hands so that I should not touch him
... [there is an exchange of gifts] ... we reached a very large and
beautiful house which had been very well prepared to accommodate us.
There he took me by the hand and led me to a great room facing the
courtyard through which we entered. And he bade me sit on a very rich
throne, which he had had built for him and then left saying I should
wait for him. After a short while, when all those of my company had been
quartered, he returned with many and various treasures of gold and
silver and featherwork, and as many as five or six thousand cotton
garments, all very rich and woven and embroidered in various ways. And
after he had given me these things he sat on another throne which they
placed there next to the one on which I was sitting... (84-5)
35
For all its emphasis on ceremony, however, Cortés's description leads
seamlessly into an account of Moctezuma as first equal, then subject.
Even at this early stage of their relationship, Cortés appears to have
positioned Moctezuma both as god-like ruler and personal friend. This
appearance is deceptive to an extent, because the text of the second
carta relación was not composed until the end of October 1520, that is,
until after Cortés had gained control of the city and had lost it again
during the noche triste.
36
What we now read as vivid reportage was in fact
written in relatively tranquil hindsight from a safe refuge of Segura de
la Frontera, as Cortés planned the recapture of Tenochtitlan which he
would successfully undertake during the following spring.
The apparently decorative detail of the foregoing description is
therefore subtly strategic. The entourage and the ritual of the greeting
are already familiar, and the details of dress (Moctezuma wears sandals
while the others go barefoot) and gesture (Moctezuma's arms are held,
and Cortés is not allowed to approach him) are designed to impress on us
his god-like status. But the first exchange of gifts (Cortés gives a
necklace of pearls and cut glass, and Moctezuma responds with two
necklaces, one of red snails' shells and another of eight golden
shrimps) establishes first an equivalence between the two men, and then
hints at a possible reversal of status (two necklaces for one). Then
Cortés is invited to sit on Moctezuma's own 'very rich' throne while
Moctezuma brings him more presents and sits beside him on another
throne, one brought for the purpose and perhaps by implication secondary
or auxiliary in nature. And then begins the process by which the Emperor
turns his understanding of Aztec scripture, and perhaps his own personal
fatalism, into a formal act of military surrender. The earlier quotation
continues:
... and addressed me in the following way: "For a long time we have
known from the writings of our ancestors that neither I, nor any of
those who dwell in this land, are natives of it, but foreigners who came
from very distant parts ... So because of the place from which you claim
to come, namely, from where the sun rises, and the things you tell us of
the great lord or king who sent you here, we believe and are certain
that he is our natural lord, especially as you say that he has known of
us for some time. So be assured that we shall obey you and hold you as
our lord ..." (85-6)
37
Whether or not it happened that way, whether or not Moctezuma uttered
anything remotely resembling those sentiments, Cortés has skilfully
created in words a ceremony which simultaneously impresses us with a
display of majesty and legitimises the transfer of title from the host
to the guest. The twin thrones which are set up in Cortés's quarters
suggest a fraternity which will soon give way to a puppet regime, and
Moctezuma rounds off his speech of welcome with a gesture through which,
for all its biblical resonance,
38
humility is turned into humiliation:
"I know that they have told you the walls of my houses are made of
gold, and that the floor mats in my rooms and other things in my
household are likewise of gold, and that I was, and claimed to be, a
god; and many other things besides. The houses as you see are of stone
and lime and clay." Then he raised his clothes and showed me his body,
saying, as he grasped his arms and trunk with his hands, "See that I am
of flesh and blood like you and all other men, and I am mortal and
substantial." (86)
39
In a couple of hundred words, a god has been made man. This
ambivalence in Cortés's account of his first meeting with Moctezuma runs
like a thread throughout the narrative of the ensuing months. Again, the
purpose may be strategic. Cortés kept Moctezuma nominally in power
because it suited them both. Cortés wanted business as usual, while
Moctezuma knew that his own position was weak, and that if he cooperated
with the Spaniards they would shore him up. Cortés was also engaged on a
systematic survey of the Aztec empire and an audit of Moctezuma's
possessions. It therefore suited Cortés to portray Moctezuma as both a
personable ally and an immensely wealthy man.
The interplay between the personal and the political is evident
throughout Cortés's subsequent account of Moctezuma and his territories,
and survives into a number of later texts which derive from Cortés,
particularly Bernal Díaz's Historia verdadera de la conquista de la
Nueva España,
40
written in a revisionist spirit at some time in the
1560s. Indeed, the more he distanced himself from Cortés, the more he
identified with the Aztec emperor, and there are many vignettes of the
kindnesses which the emperor did to the Spaniards and the affection in
which they held him. Cortés's priorities were more pragmatic, and are
evident from the extensive and detailed geographical and geological
survey of the empire which immediately follows Moctezuma's admission of
mortality cited above. Only later, after Moctezuma has made another
public act of submission to the Spanish crown and communicated his
supposed fatalism to his people with such emotion that none of the
Spaniards who heard it remained unmoved,
41
does Cortés turn his attention
to the grandeurs of the city, the marketplace, the temples and the
rituals of Moctezuma's daily life.
Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a good deal of common ground
between Cortés and Bernal Díaz, who gives over a whole chapter (91) to a
voyeuristic tour of Moctezuma's private apartments, and between both of
them and the classic accounts of the court of the Great Khan given by
Mandeville and Marco Polo. For Cortés, the theme throughout is one of
civilization and barbarity. The greatest marvel is not the rich cotton
garments and bed linen, nor the models of everything Moctezuma owns,
made of gold, silver, precious stones and feathers, but the fact that a
barbarian should have such things.
42
The zoos, the collections of pets,
the aviaries and fishponds, the pleasure houses, and the house of
oddities, in which teams of curators looked after numerous specimens of
deformed and monstrous men and women, dwarves and hunchbacks, clearly
called to mind the conspicuous consumption and the cabinets de
curiosités beloved of Renaissance princes. That Moctezuma should compile
and enjoy such collections was clearly confusing for Cortés: they were
encouraging signs of extreme wealth, but at the same time tokens of
civility which challenged the value systems underlying his attempt to
relieve Moctezuma of that wealth.
Bernal Díaz is very critical of this gold rush and the harm it did to
the moral fibre of the Spaniards (chapter 105), but he and Cortés are as
one in their fascination with the minutiae of Moctezuma's personal
habits and court rituals, and it is perhaps in these aspects that we
find the heaviest recourse to the formulaic descriptions which informed
Columbus's attempts to categorise the leaders he met. As before, we are
invited to note the handsome bearing and taciturn nature of the emperor,
the size of his retinue (over 600 retainers precede the morning levée),
the demeanour of the courtiers (all of whom avert their gaze at all
times), his wardrobe (Moctezuma changes his clothes four times every day
and never wears the same thing twice), his numerous wives and concubines
(two wives and 'muchas mujeres por amigas'),
43
and, above all, the meals and associated rituals.
The service and consumption of food are central to both Cortés's and
Bernal Díaz's accounts of the ceremonial at Moctezuma's court. Meals are
served by 300-400 young men, a huge variety of dishes is provided at
every meal, and each dish is kept hot on its own brazier. When the
emperor eats he does so behind a richly decorated wooden screen,
attended by five or six elders, who sit slightly apart from him, and a
head attendant who serves the food. Before and after the meal water for
washing is brought by four serving girls, and a towel, which is never
re-used, as are the dishes from which the emperor eats. What he eats and
drinks he takes sparingly, and is careful to ensure that his
counsellors, entertainers and guards are properly attended to.
Cortés comments that no sultan or other infidel to his knowledge has
such a large number of elaborate ceremonies at this court,
44
a remark
which tends to suggest that accounts of court ceremony were perhaps
taken seriously as indicators of the relative status of foreign princes.
If so, Cortés's readers, perhaps his own Emperor or his civil servants
in Europe, would have been struck by the comparisons with Marco Polo's
descriptions of the Great Khan: the four wives and many concubines
(100-1), the gardens, collections of animals, fishponds and arboretums
(104), the banquets and the 40,000 guests (112-14), and the 12,000
guards whom he employs 'not out of fear of any man but in token of his
sovereignty' (112).
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V
What is missing from this, however, is any sense of Moctezuma's
ability as a ruler.
45
As with Columbus, Cortés takes for granted that the
régime with which he is dealing is stable and, to an extent, legitimate.
Moctezuma's role was simply to possess a great empire and play the part
of a willing and cooperative subject. Although Cortés was clearly aware
that the Mexica had only comparatively recently displaced earlier
inhabitants of the region, and that their tenure of the territory was
contested by other tribes, some of whom had fought alongside Cortés and
would do so again, Cortés shows no interest in Moctezuma's prowess as a
military or political leader, or in his ability to maintain the status
quo on Cortés's behalf. As far as Cortés is concerned, he had taken on a
going concern in whose stability he trusted, give or take a few minor
revolts which were swiftly dealt with. Events were soon to show that the
political system and the leadership on which Cortés relied would be
found wanting. In consequence, we witness a shift in Spanish
perceptions, away from the leader as a kind of ceremonial keystone, a
god- like creature presiding over a well-ordered, benign and prosperous
state, towards a much more down-to- earth view of leadership as a role
which requires political and military skills to manage and defend a
state which is in constant turmoil.
This realisation quickly dawned on Cortés on his return to
Tenochtitlan from a brief expedition to deal with the threat posed by
Pánfilo de Narváez down at the coast. During his absence, the Spaniards
under Alvarado had killed a number of celebrants during a religious
festival and Cortés returned to find the Mexica in open revolt. He made
no secret of his anger with Alvarado, but Bernal Díaz also records an
imperious display of bad manners towards Moctezuma (248), which seems to
suggest that he blamed the emperor either for the uprising, or for not
being able to repress the revolt, or both. In any event, a few days
later and at Cortés's request, Moctezuma vainly tried to quell the
uprising by appealing to his people from a rooftop. He was stoned for
his pains and died shortly afterwards, to the general distress of Cortés
and his men.
46
It was now clear that the order and stability which
Moctezuma appeared to represent had gone for good, and a new generation
had emerged to lead the Mexica against the Spaniards. Within a few weeks
the succession had gone to Moctezuma's nephew, Cuauhtémoc, who was
responsible for the rout of the Noche Triste (30 June 1520), and the
three months of resistance during the siege of Tenochtitlan in 1521.
Cortés has little to say directly about Cuauhtémoc, although his
views of his adversary are clear from the long and gruelling account of
the siege which dominates the third carta relación. Cortés's many
attempts to negotiate a surrender were constantly frustrated by a master
tactician who used any respite in the fighting to re-group his forces
and redouble his resistance. On more than one occasion Cuauhtémoc simply
failed to show up to a parley he had himself requested, and no amount of
persuasion would induce him to stop fighting against all odds. Cortés's
concealed admiration for a man whose determination grew stronger as his
position grew weaker is evident. After 75 days' fighting, and with the
city reduced to rubble, Cuauhtémoc was arrested while trying to make
good his escape in a canoe, and brought before Cortés to take part in a
small ceremony imbued with mythical resonance:
As I had no desire to treat Guatimucín harshly, I asked him to be
seated, whereupon he came up to me and, speaking in his language, said
that he had done all he was bound to do to defend his own person and his
people, so that now they were reduced to this sad state, and I might do
with him as I pleased. Then he placed his hand upon a dagger of mine and
asked me to kill him with it; but I reassured him saying that he need
fear nothing. (264-5)
47
The great general needs to know not only how to fight, but how to
surrender. His resistance has been total, even down to his refusal to
speak the language of the enemy, and he has given his all. Death is the
only honourable thing left to him. But even this glorious gesture can be
trumped. The victorious general must also know how to win, with dignity,
and clemency. And so these two great figures of history play their parts
in an oddly Corinthian ritual worthy in its way of the surrender of
Granada -so often alluded to by Columbus-, or of Breda -so magnificently
commemorated by Velázquez-, or any number of other equally uplifting
examples of a successful end to a bloody campaign. Cortés, of course,
lived to regret his act of clemency and was reduced to hanging
Cuauhtémoc on trumped-up charges during the expedition to Honduras in
1526, a reversion to realpolitik which Bernal Díaz condemned as unjust
and unseemly.
48
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VI
Issues of realpolitik and seemliness are also prominent in the last
of the great one-to-one encounters of the Spanish conquest, that between
Francisco Pizarro and the Inca leader Atahualpa. In many ways, the
Spanish experience in Peru repeated features of the campaign in Mexico.
Once again, the Spaniards encountered a once-great civilization now
seriously weakened, this time by the bitter feud between the half
brothers Huáscar and Atahualpa which followed the death of Huayna Capac
in 1525. Although questions could be and were asked about the legitimacy
of the Mexica claim to the lake and its surrounding territories, there
had been little doubt about Moctezuma's own claim to the throne.
Atahualpa's claim, in contrast, was based on the capture and subsequent
execution of Huáscar, with all the questionable legitimacy that this
entailed. From the moment of Pizarro's arrival in Peru in 1532, to the
execution of Atahualpa on 29 August 1533, it was clear to the Spaniards
that they were facing formidable resistance from a skilful and
determined, not to say cruel and cunning, opponent.
Unlike Columbus and Cortés, Pizarro did not leave a personal account
of the campaign against Atahualpa, but there are several reports by
other eye-witnesses, which present a complex and shifting set of images
of the Inca leader.
49
Shortage of space prevents a detailed discussion of
the many versions of the conquest of Peru, but one account is
particularly interesting for the way it dwells on aspects of the Inca
which are not mentioned in other, more operational, reports. The text in
question is the recently discovered Descubrimiento y conquista del Perú,
which forms the lost third part of the Crónica del Perú by Pedro de
Cieza de León.
50
Although not himself an eye-witness, Cieza provides a
detailed, almost theatrical account of the negotiations which took place
at Cajamarca on 15 November 1532 and which marked the opening of the
final phase of the campaign. Pizarro sent Hernando de Soto with an
interpreter and 24 horsemen to visit Atahualpa in his camp and gauge his
military strength and frame of mind. The impression given is one of
almost classical conformity to type. Atahualpa is seated on a rich
throne ('asiento rico', 150), manifesting a grave and dignified
demeanour ('gentil denuedo y gravedad, tanto, que bien representaba su
dignidad'). Neither Soto nor any of his men dismount during the meeting,
and Atahualpa matches their discourtesy by declining to answer, or by
not answering directly.
Soto tries to disturb the studied calm of Atahualpa's response by
making his horse rear up so close that the breeze ruffles the fringe of
the llautu, the crown of fine coloured wool which covered his forehead.
Atahualpa remained so serene and unmoved, Cieza writes, that one might
have thought that he had spent his whole life breaking horses.
51
But forty or so of Atahualpa's men were unable to maintain such indifference
and were put to death as a punishment for flinching. On their return to
the Spanish camp, Soto and Hernando Pizarro reported on what they had
seen: Atahualpa had the bearing of a great prince; he had many men, all
well armed; and a will to take war and not give peace.
52
The weakness shown by his men in flinching in the face of the
Spaniards' rearing horses gives Atahualpa the key to a trap which he
intended to set for Pizarro. In a slow and measured speech ('llena de
pausa', 152) Atahualpa tells his men how he intends to deceive Pizarro
with cunning ('pensaba engañarlos sutilmente'). He plans to pretend that
the incas are so afraid of the horses and dogs that they will only meet
the Spaniards if their animals are tethered. With the Christians' most
potent weapon disarmed, Atahualpa's forces will be able to attack from
hidden positions and destroy the enemy at will. Pizarro, of course, had
his own plans for an ambush, which in the event proved more effective,
and the Inca leader was overwhelmed and captured while many of his
forces were slaughtered. Although other accounts record that the
Spaniards were suspicious of the request to keep the horses and dogs
away from the allegedly timid native warriors, Cieza's account is
unusual in attributing to Atahualpa an explicit intention to deceive
('fingiendo'). The consistent train of thought and action, from a
display of weakness, an exemplary punishment of the men showing that
weakness, then an attempt to spring a trap based on that initial show of
weakness, makes Cieza's account of Atahualpa's cunning particularly
convincing.
The fact that both leaders were preparing to deceive each other into
an ambush raises an important question of honesty and honourable dealing
in politics and warfare, a question which is put in a much sharper form
once Cieza moves on to discuss the issues surrounding Atahualpa's
ransom. In exchange for an undertaking that he will be allowed to go
free, Atahualpa agrees to fill a large house with gold. Cieza comments
that the Spaniards did not take the agreement seriously, thinking that
the Inca would find it impossible to fulfil, but the language he uses
makes it clear that he at least, as narrator, views this undertaking as
a promise, a giving of his word.
53
When Atalhualpa and his men fulfil the
promise, and the ransom is collected, Pizarro is put in a difficult
position, brilliantly dramatised by Peter Shaffer in his play The Royal
Hunt of the Sun. When Pizarro tries to wriggle out of the agreement,
Atahualpa challenges him: 'You gave a word'. To which Pizarro can only
reply: 'And will keep it!...Only not now. Not today.'
54
And the upshot is
that while he is technically a free man, 'for the welfare of the
country, he will remain for the moment as guest of the army.'
All of the contemporary accounts of these events, in their different
ways, make it clear that Pizarro was helped out of this impasse by the
fabrication of charges against Atahualpa of fomenting rebellion. Cieza
is clear about the unjustness of the charges
55
and makes his Atahualpa
reply, in a few classically grave and wise words, that the incas never
lied and had never failed to tell the truth, and that not only did his
men comply with his orders, but the very leaves on the trees would not
move without his consent.
56
These are fine words, but they are given an
edge by the fact that Atahualpa has already, in Cieza's account,
admitted to deception in the preparation of the ambush. His assertion
that he never lies becomes, in the context, an attitude which is struck
in order to mask what is in effect a strategic lie. The resulting image
of the Inca is at once more ambivalent and perhaps more appreciative
than some of the representations we have seen of other leaders from
earlier writers. Atahualpa can play two roles equally well: that of the
ceremonial monarch, with the gravitas, the entourage and the ceremony;
and that of the cunning and unprincipled commander who will use every
strategem and every trick to gain an advantage.
In the final analysis, however, Atahualpa more than met his match.
Pizarro turned out to be not only a better military strategist, but an
even more unprincipled general. In spite of the squirming Peter Shaffer
puts him through in the play, in life Pizarro had no qualms about
learning from Cortés and Cuauhtémoc: it made no sense to take as a
prisoner a man who was bound to become a focus of resistance. To achieve
the greater purpose, he was prepared to do what no honourable Spaniard,
or inca, would ever do, to break his word. And in this respect he could
have called as a precedent, assuming he had access to it, the advice of
a more contemporary authority on leadership, Machiavelli:
Everyone realizes how praiseworthy it is for a prince to honour his
word and to be straightforward rather than crafty in his dealings; none
the less contemporary experience shows that princes who have achieved
great things have been those who have given their word lightly, who have
known how to trick men with their cunning, and who, in the end, have
overcome those abiding by honest principles ... a prudent ruler cannot,
and must not, honour his word when it places him at a disadvantage...
57
Pizarro clearly met these criteria, but so too, in Cieza's account,
did Atahualpa, and the image of the new-world leader which emerges is
the more complex and more convincing because of it. It seems clear that,
by the 1530s, Spanish chroniclers and writers about the New World had
thrown off the classic, exotic templates of kingship inherited from
writers like Mandeville and Marco Polo, and had begun to see their
adversaries in a more contemporary guise, as practitioners of statecraft
in a recognisably European mould.
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