1519–1521
Spanish conquest of the Mexica state
Central Mexico; Mexica and neighboring nations
Hernán Cortés’s forces and Indigenous allies fought the Mexica state in 1519–1521. The campaign included the killing of assembled people at Cholula and the siege and fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Nahua accounts describe the violence, flight and plunder that accompanied conquest.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
Tlaxcalans and other Indigenous participants had their own interests; the conflict was not simply Europeans against a single Native population. The Florentine Codex preserves retrospective Nahua accounts compiled under colonial rule. Its Nahuatl and Spanish versions differ, and neither establishes what all participants believed or intended.
Sources
- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (2014), chapter 2
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chapter 1, pp. 11–12; supplied print pages, edition/year unidentified
- Florentine Codex, book 12, chapter 11, fols. 16r–16v: Cholula; James Lockhart translation ↗
- Florentine Codex, book 12, chapter 30, fols. 54v–55v: siege, flight and plunder; Lockhart translation ↗
- Florentine Codex, book 12, chapter 40, fol. 81r onward: Cuauhtemoc’s surrender; Lockhart translation ↗