Sources from the period of Aztec conquest include the Florentine Codex by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún. His codex was informed by associates from Nahua communities; their texts provide the written accounts of Sahagún. These accounts speak of the series of bad omens experienced by the Nahua in the years preceding the Spanish conquest; eight omens are described overall. Despite the creative narrative such foreboding adds to the conquest story, overall evidence suggests that the Spanish were initially met without supernatural fear; they were instead treated as another outside force to be dealt with accordingly. After the conquest, however, the omen narrative emerges from indignous and Spanish sources.
The fall of Tenochtitlan and the inadequacy of Moctezuma’s response begged for explanation beyond the rational. Only a supernatural reason, such as the return of Quetzalcoatl, could seemingly explain the destruction of native independence. Pre-conquest omens are then described such as fiery comets and random lightning strikes. These omens were also utilized by Spanish writers as proof that their conquest was “preordained” by a higher power. Native omens may also have strengthened “exotic” accounts of indigenous societies.
Eight omens are described by the Nahua in Sahagún’s codex. The first recounts, “Ten years before the arrival of the Spaniards an omen first appeared in the sky, like a flame or tongue of fire…” a contemporary illustration depicts Moctezuma witnessing this comet. The accounts further details, “People were taken aback, they lamented”. Since Quetzalcoatl was a celestial being and the god of death and resurrection, such a fiery comet would have been in line with Aztec cosmology.
The following omens echo the images of fire: “The second omen that happened here in Mexico was that of its own accord the house of the devil Huitzilopochtli, what they call his mountain, named Tlacateccan, burned and flared up; no one set fire to it, it just took fire itself”.
“The third omen was that a temple was struck by lightning, hit by a thunderbolt”; “The fourth omen was that while the sun was still out a comet fell…”; “The fifth omen was that the water [of the lake] boiled up…”; “The sixth omen was that many times a woman would be heard going along weeping and shouting.”; “The seventh omen was that once the water-folk were hunting… and caught an ash-colored bird, like a crane.”; “The eighth omen was that many times people appeared, thistle-people with two heads but one body…”.
The subtext of these omens suggest fear, foreboding, and inevitably. If these were described post-conquest, then the evocation of cosmological images (like comets) can lend an air of inevitably to native defeat; that no matter how hard they tried, leaders like Moctezuma never stood a fighting chance. Indigenous survivors can also recount these apocalyptic scenes as a way to make sense of the ending of the world as they knew it; these omens could fit into the larger narrative of their cosmology.
VINCENT S. HANNAM 