Year 8 History

 

 

Cortés landed in Mexico with dogs and other animals, as shown in a plate from the Florentine Codex by Friar Bernardino de Sahagún. The Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico by Hernán Cortés in 1519 includes a description of the dogs running ahead of the column, their muzzles high, lifted to the wind, saliva dripping from their jaws. Moctezuma was told that the Spaniards rode deer without horns, and he received an extensive description of the dogs:

 

“Their dogs are enormous, with flat ears and long, dangling tongues. The color of their eyes is a burning yellow; their eyes flash fire and shoot off sparks. Their bellies are hollow, their flanks long and narrow. They are tireless and very powerful. They bound here and there, panting, with their tongues hanging out. And they are spotted like an ocelot.”

 

An Aztec visual perspective on Cortés’s dogs can be found in a mid-16th century painting on a large cloth panel, or lienzo, referred to as the Lienzo de Tlaxcala. The original lienzo is lost, but copies were made from the original, including the depiction here of soldiers marching with a dog on leash (Chavero 1892).