http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== Cholula During his stay in Tlaxcala , Cortes was approached by Mexica ambassadors who encouraged the strangers to come to Tenochtitlan along the trail that led through Cholula. Cortes' new Tlaxcalan allies pleaded with him not to go through Cholula, arguing that the city was not a safe place for them. After careful consideration, Cortes decided to go, and took with him over 100,000 Tlaxcalan porters and soldiers. When the Conquistadors arrived, the Cholulans saw the heavily armed Tlaxcalans and protested to Cortes that their old rivals would not be welcomed into their city. Cortes ordered the Tlaxcalans to camp outside the city, while the Spanish soldiers were welcomed and treated to bountiful feasts. The city of Cholula greatly impressed Cortes, who wrote that it "was situated in a plain and has as many as twenty thousand houses within the main part of the city and as many again in the outskirts?the state is very rich in crops, for it posses much land, most of it irrigated. The city itself is more beautiful to look at than any in Spain, for it is very well proportioned and has many towers?.from a temple I counted more than 430 towers, and they were all of temples" (Cortes, 75). While in Cholula, Cortes' Nican Tlaca interpreter, known to many as La Malinche, was supposedly approached by an old woman who told her that the Cholulans were planning to attack the Spaniards. Cortes "questioned" a local inhabitant who corroborated Malinche's story-undoubtedly after being tortured by the Spaniards. Cortes seized upon this situation as an opportunity to "punish" the Cholulans. He did this by ordering all the "nobles and leading citizens" of the city to gather together at the temple of Quetzalcoatl for a speech he wished to give them. According to most sources, 3000 unarmed Cholulans were gathered together when the Spaniards cowardly attacked them-killing them all. According to Bartolome de Las Casas, a 16th century Spanish priest, the real reason for the slaughter was that "the Spaniards decided that the moment had come to organize a massacre?in order to inspire fear and terror in all the people of the territory. This was, indeed, the pattern they followed in all the lands they invaded" (Las Casas, 45). This brutal act of terrorism perpetrated by the Spanish was also chronicled by the Nican Tlaca people of Anahuac , who wrote of the tragedy: "all the noblemen, the lords, those who led one, the brave warriors [came]. There was crowding into the temple courtyard. And when all had come together, then [the Spaniards and their allies] closed off each of the entrances?There was thereupon the stabbing, the slaying, the beating of the people. The Cholulan had suspected nothing; neither with arrows nor with shields had he contended against the Spaniards. Just so were they treacherously slain, deceitfully slain, unknowingly slain" (Florentine Codex, 29-30). In addition to slaughtering 3,000 Cholulan nobles and leaders, the Spanish and their allies stole all the gold and jewelry they could find, looted blankets and the city's food supply, and burned all the temples in the sacred precinct. All told, an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 Cholulans died during the two hour attack (Marks, 114). Afterward, Cortes and his army spent between two and three weeks in Cholula, before packing up and heading for Tenochtitlan.