Although tied to recent news: The 1519 Project: How Early Spanish Explorers Took Down A Mass-Murdering Indigenous Cult.
Let’s take a brief recess from the 1619 Project to explore another project. Call it the “1519 Project.” A full century before The New York Times’ proposed re-dating of the American founding and 2,200 miles southwest of Jamestown, European contact sparked a native uprising against a gruesome cult of cannibalism and mass murder.
Graphically described in the 1855 book, “Makers of History: Hernando Cortez,” John S.C. Abbott paints a picture of desperation for a tiny band of Spanish soldiers and their native allies. Next year marks the 500th anniversary of the Battle of the Dismal Night, where an initially successful Cortez was nearly crushed by superior Aztec forces.
Hugh Thomas described the human sacrifice with some approval, calling them “astonishing, often splendid, and sometimes beautiful barbarities”, in his book Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico. Since then, I have been on Team Cortez.
Ignorance of history is what they teach in history classes these days.
(Link via Ace of Spades HQ.)
