Furthermore, two birds with green plumage and their feet, beaks and eyes made of gold. These are put on one of those pieces of gold that resemble shells.
Furthermore, two large ear ornaments of blue stone mosaic which are for the large alligator head.
In another square box, a large alligator head in gold, which is the one mentioned above where the aforementioned pieces are to be put.
Also, a helmet of blue stone mosaic with twenty small gold bells hanging round the outside of it with two strings of beads above each bell: and two ear ornaments of wood with gold plates. […]
Item: A large buckler of featherwork trimmed on the back with the skin of a spotted animal. In the center of the field of this buckler is a gold plate with a design such as the Indians make, with four other half plates of gold round the edge, which together form a cross.
Another item: A piece of featherwork of various colors made in the manner of a half chasuble, lined with the skin of a spotted animal. This, the lords of these parts, which we have seen up to now, hang from about their necks. On the front it has thirteen pieces of gold very well fitted together.
Item: A piece of colored featherwork, made in the manner of a jousting helmet, which the lords of this land wear on their heads. From it hang two ear ornaments of stone mosaic with two small bells and two beads of gold; and above there is a piece of featherwork of broad green feathers, while below hang some white hairs.
Furthermore, four animal heads, two of which seem to be wolves, the other two tigers, with some spotted skins: from these heads hang some small bronze bells….
Furthermore, a large silver wheel which weighed forty‐eight silver marks, and also some bracelets, some beaten [silver] leaves; and one mark five ounces and forty adarmes of silver; and a large buckler and another small one of silver, which weighed four marks and two ounces; and another two bucklers which appear to be silver and which weighed six marks and two ounces; and another buckler, which likewise appears to be of silver, which weighed one mark and seven ounces, which is in all sixty‐two marks of silver. […]
THE SECOND LETTER
This great city of Temixtitan is built on the salt lake, and no matter by what road you travel there are two leagues from the main body of the city to the mainland. There are four artificial causeways leading to it, and each is as wide as two cavalry lances. The city itself is as big as Seville or Córdoba. […]
There are, in all districts of this great city, many temples or houses for their idols. They are all very beautiful buildings, and in the important ones there are priests of their sect who live there permanently; and, in addition to the houses for the idols, they also have very good lodgings….
Amongst these temples there is one, the principal one, whose great size and magnificence no human tongue could describe, for it is so large that within the precincts, which are surrounded by a very high wall, a town of some five hundred inhabitants could easily be built. All round inside this wall there are very elegant quarters with very large rooms and corridors where their priests live. There are as many as forty towers, all of which are so high that in the case of the largest there are fifty steps leading up to the main part of it; and the most important of these towers is higher than that of the cathedral of Seville. They are so well constructed in both their stone and woodwork that there can be none better in any place, for all the stonework inside the chapels where they keep their idols is in high relief, with figures and little houses, and the woodwork is likewise of relief and painted with monsters and other figures and designs. All these towers are burial places of chiefs, and the chapels therein are each dedicated to the idol which he venerated.
There are three rooms within this great temple for the principal idols, which are of remarkable size and stature and decorated with many designs and sculptures, both in stone and in wood. Within these rooms are other chapels, and the doors to them are very small. Inside there is no light whatsoever; there only some of the priests may enter, for inside are the sculptured figures of the idols, although, as I have said, there are also many outside.
The most important of these idols, and the ones in whom they have most faith, I had taken from their places and thrown down the steps; and I had those chapels where they were cleaned, for they were full of the blood of sacrifices; and I had images of Our Lady and of other saints put there, which caused Mutezuma and the other natives some sorrow. First they asked me not to do it, for when the communities learnt of it they would rise against me, for they believed that those idols gave them all their worldly goods, and that if they were allowed to be ill treated, they would become angry and give them nothing and take the fruit from the earth leaving the people to die of hunger. I made them understand through the interpreters how deceived they were in placing their trust in those idols which they had made with their hands from unclean things. They must know that there was only one God, Lord of all things, who had created heaven and earth and all else and who made all of us; and He was without beginning or end, and they must adore and worship only Him, not any other creature or thing.
IB4 Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474–1566) from Apologetic History of the Indies
Las Casas was a Spanish colonist and landowner in Haiti, where he arrived in 1502 and subsequently underwent a form of conversion around 1511, becoming a Dominican intellectual who spent the rest of his career arguing for more humane treatment of the indigenous inhabitants of Latin America. His writings were seized upon by Protestant powers to underwrite the so‐called Black Legend of Spanish atrocities in the New World. This meant that he was for long a figure of some notoriety, though in the present, post‐colonial age, his reputation has been restored. The work for which he is best known, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, was composed in the 1540s but not published until after a debate on the Indian question with Juan Ginés Sepúlveda at Valladolid in 1550. Our present short extracts from a later work, the Apologetic History of c.1559, have for their centrepiece a celebration of indigenous featherwork, one of the principal art forms of the native people. Striking as it is, however, it is important not to conflate Las Casas’s description with a modern celebration of cultural diversity. He is specifically countering Sepúlveda’s argument that the ‘Indians’ were less human than animal, and that their supposed lack of religion and culture and their cannibalism showed they had been created by God for slavery. Instead, Las Casas goes back to Aristotle’s Politics, which lays out the requirements of civilization. These include the building of adequate dwellings, the existence of trade (hence descriptions of the bustling markets of Mexico) and of craftsmen, which in the present case includes silversmiths and goldsmiths and the notable featherworks. Our extracts are from Bartolomé de Las Casas: A Selection of his Writings, translated and edited by George Sanderlin, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971, pp. 127–31 and 133–5.
If we would consider … the unmistakable evidence offered by communities large and small, living in peace, order, and concord, we must recognize clearly that the Indians … have had, and continue to have, this second kind of prudence, the domestic, in the government of their homes and families. But let us apply to them the specific rules and requirements of the Philosopher [Aristotle].
The first thing he says is incumbent upon men, in order that philosophers may be kings, is that they construct their own houses. These peoples built these houses in accord with the region they inhabited and their experience of their needs; they made them strong, suitable, and also attractive – very well fabricated. […]
But what appears without doubt to exceed all human genius … is the art which those Mexican peoples have so perfectly mastered, of making from natural feathers, fixed in position with their own natural colors, anything that they or any other first‐class painters can paint with brushes. They were accustomed to make many things out of feathers, such as animals, birds, men, capes or blankets to cover themselves, vestments for their priests, crowns or mitres, shields, flies, and a thousand other sorts of objects which they fancy.
These feathers were green, red or gold, purple, bright red, yellow, blue or pale