Walaa Alyousif HIST 125 February 27 2014 The Spanish Conquest Mexico was having many civilizations, and

one of its most advanced civil was the Aztec empire. Early in the 16th century, the Spanish made an expedition to conquest Mexico for two main reasons. The first reason is god; they wanted to make the indigenous people follow the Christian religion. The second reason is gold and silver; they were greedy in the land because it is wealthy with gold and silver. After their attack into Mexico, 90% of the indigenous people had been plotted out. The Spanish domination finished in 1521. There are three documents that had been written about the same period of time about the event of the Spanish conquest, with different perspectives and points. The first document is Second Letter of Hernan Cortez to King Charles V of Spain by Cortez. The second document is The Broken Spears, an Indian account of the conquest of Mexico by un-known authors. The third one is Bernal Diaz del Castillo, from True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Diaz. I think that Cortezs account is more reliable than Diaz and The Broken Spears accounts because it has more details about the event, and it makes the reader live the event. Im going to talk about some differences between these three accounts, such as the date, the audience, the purpose, the tone, and the language. The first difference is when each account was written. Cortezs account has been

written during the event in 1519, and it shows a real massage from Cortez to the King Charles. Writing a document during an event makes the account more reliable. In comparison, Diazs account was written about 20 years after the event, and based on his own memorization of the event. There is no evidence to support his memory because he wrote it to himself as the beginning and then he published it. Also, The Broken Spears was written about 20-30 years after the event, and no one knows who wrote it, because it is a collection of people opinions about the event just to keep a record of it. The second difference is the audience and the purpose of each account. The audience of Cortezs account was his king; to inform him about what is happening about the attack on the Aztec Empire. On the other hand, the audience for Diazs account is the general public. In the same way, the audience of The Broken Spears account is the Native American public. Moreover, every account has its purpose, Cortezs purpose was to write messages to his king to inform him about how his conquest was going and what strategies he used to not let the other towns know about him, as he said: But I did not burn the houses lest the fires should alert the other towns nearby (Cortez, 1). Also, to show the king that he is the winner against the Aztec empire, and they came and offer themselves to him, to stop the harming the towns. Otherwise, the Diaz purpose of writing the account is just for his own memories, to not forget the events of the battle. The Broken Spears purpose was just to make story about the event of the Spanish conquest. There is no convincing explanation as to what they hoped to achieve from writing their account.

The third difference that makes me believe more in Cortezs account is the tone and language. First, Cortezs account tone was ironic, and explaining what he did, and how he harmed the Native American. Which makes it more reliable, because thats what everyone expected from a conquest; harm, atrocities, and dead people. However, the tone of Diaz account was objective, and he wrote positives things happened in the event of the Spanish conquest. As we know, it is impossible to happen positive and nice things in a conquest. So that makes Diazs account less believable. In addition, The Broken Spears tone was fear, the Native American defeat of the Spanish. That could be a good evidence to believe this account, but Cortezs account has more evidence to believe it. The other difference that makes Cortezs account more accurate is the language that the accounts were written in. Cortezs account was written with the Aztec language then later on was translated to the English language, so its translated only once. The English language and Spanish language are both back originally to the Latin language. So that, Cortezs account is more reliable. However, The Broken Spearss account has been written with the Nahuatli language. Then, translated into the Spanish language, no one know who translated it, whether he or she spoke the Aztec language well or not, and the Aztec people do they speak Spanish or not. After that, it was translated into the English language, so, it has translated twice by unknown people, and we dont know when it was translated. Consequently, the meaning of the account might be lost, or uncompleted. Also, things in the Aztec language might mean different than in Spanish. So because of this, The Broken Spearss account is less believable, and that because it was twice

translated makes the account more weaker. Moreover, Diazs account has only been translated only once, from the Aztec language to English. That is also is good evidence to make the account accurate, regardless; Cortezs account has more evidence. In conclusion, Cortezs account is the most reliable considering his use of ironic tone, his purpose and audience to inform the king of what us going on in the Aztec Empire, and the language used and the number of times it had been translated.