Florentine codex summary

Excerpt from General History of the Things of New Spain. Book XII: The Conquest of Mexico by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún.

The Spaniards approached Tenochtitlan from the south, crossing to the city along the causeway from Ixtapalapa.

The Nahua accounts concentrate on those things that were new and strange like horses and crossbows but also seek to find parallels and comparisons between their own practices and customs and the ways of the strangers. Here, for example, Cortés is compared to the tlacatecatl or military commander.

The welcoming “speech” of Moctezuma and his concession of authority to Cortés is particularly interesting and raises questions about the nature of “polite” political discourse among the Nahua as well as the possibility of later interpretations and explanations being placed in the historical record after the conquest.

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Fifteenth chapter, where it is said how the Spaniards came from Itztapalapan when they reached Mexico.

Then they set out