Zhichen Wang
HIST 2
14 March 2014 Savage or Culturally Advanced?
In 15th century, when INCA EMPIRE was still occupying a large areas of Latin Americas and Indians were still a riddle to European voyages and royal households. What on earth is happening on that mistery land ?No one can gave a direct answer. Was that a empire which is high civilized with well developed culture, or it was just a group of barbarian lives there with extreme ignorance and barbarity? The altitude displayed by Cobo towards the indigenous inhabitants of Peru and the altitude displayed by Hernan Cortes was totally different.In this paper, We gonna discuss the hidden reasons behind the data.Though both of their opinions are reasonable, however,I think the disparity were caused by two reasons. In Hernan’s letter to Charles V, 1520. He think that the city of Tenochtitlan , which is the capital of Inca Empire, was a great city. He describes this city(nowadays Mexican）as a high civilized city with temples, squares and different stores.He gave lots of minor details about that city and tries to describes that city as well structured and organized. “In regard to the domestic appointments of Moctezuma, and the wonderful grandeur and state that he maintains, there is so much to be told, that I assure your highness i know not where to begin my relation, so as to be finish to be able to finsh a part of it” This was cited by the letter, we can see that how jealous the author feel when he first saw a building built with golds and silvers.Thus, it gave us an illusion of that every building there was as magnificent as domestic appointments of Moctezuma. In fact, every single thing written by Hernan Cortes were illusions. He mentioned the stores in the city. “There are all kinds of green vegetables, especially onions, leeks, garlic,watercresses, nasturtium, borage, sorrel, artichokes, and golden thistle,fruits etc.” Hs was so amazed by the sells of the fruit, fish , vegetables and different porcelains and silks sold in the stores.It is true that all the sells in the city is true but that was because the land of American is abundant. Compared to mainland of European, because the lacks of productivity of corps and fruits, Europeans looks this as a simple of rich and wealth.On the other hand , Latin America was full of silvers and golds, as a result.Hernan Cortes was confused by those illusions and think this as a rich great “land”.Moreover , the place he described and praised most is the place related to the religion and the center of authority, he was ingenious muted the place where normal citizens of Inca empire lives. In my point , when we talks about a nations , we can’t argued by a piece of block but the entire city. Henan Cortes can’t be a fool to have this one-sided opinion, what he did is to write to Charles V and talks about how wealthy the Inca was in order to invade and conquest the city.As a result, he can pillage the silvers and golds in Inca and get the permissions to do this.This is one of main reason Hernan misdescribed the city of Temixtitlan.
According to the second document “The History of the Inca Empire”,