Hernando Cortés and the Spanish Soldiers Confront the Indians.

In Fray Diego Durán. La Historia antigua de la Nueva España. 1585 [Manuscript facsimile, ca. nineteenth century]. The fierce confrontation between the Spaniards under Cortés and the followers of Moctezuma received full treatment in Father’s Durán’s illustrated history of Mexico, compiled shortly after the early sixteenth-century conquest. The Mexica (Aztec) peoples confronted a powerful Spanish force supplemented by a sizable number of allies from the area surrounding Tenochtitlán [later named Mexico City] during the 1519-1521 campaigns. Durán’s informants have skillfully distinguished Indian peoples from the European invaders, with a ghostly white image representing the Spanish. The Library of Congress acquired this extremely rare facsimile manuscript in the Peter Force Collection purchase in 1867. (Peter Force Collection, Manuscript Division)

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