Archaeology Magazine - July/August 2022 - 38

callan consisted of a council of 50 to
200 men drawn from the 17 districts
that made up the Tlaxcallan confederation
who would gather to hash out
problems. Fargher says that around
4,000 people in all participated in
political decision-making at any one
time in Tlaxcallan. In about 1558, the
Spanish scholar Francisco Cervantes
de Salazar traveled to Tlaxcala, as
it was called by then, and, drawing
on earlier reports and discussions
with eyewitnesses, wrote a thorough
account of how the council had chosen
to support Cortés. Cervantes de
Salazar mentioned four governors
of Tlaxcala, but also " many other
principals who formed the council of
government and war. "
With Cortés, his troops, and
local allies encamped outside the
city, Cervantes de Salazar wrote, a
Tlaxcallan militia leader named Xicotenga argued in favor
of supporting the strange foreigners because they had
sworn to " take on Moctezuma, our capital enemy. " Another
leader, Magiscacín, " a man of great prudence and affable
conversation, " agreed to back Cortés because the Tlaxcallan
ancestors had prophesied that strangers would come, " and it
seems to me that they have come, in the name of a powerful
god. " These voices were slapped down by an old man named
Xicotencatl, who advised against joining forces with the
Spaniards. " No one can stand them, " he said. " They are lazy
and like to sleep in their clothes and are given to vices and
delights and cause more trouble than fifty thousand of us. "
It is true that Moctezuma's economic warfare had prevented
Tlaxcallan from obtaining salt and good cotton blankets,
Xicotencatl said, but allying with Spaniards " will cause us to
lose the tlaxcalteca good name that strikes so much fear in
the hearts of our enemies. " To some degree, Xicotencatl was
A restored section of Tlaxcallan's defensive walls, which once rose as high as 16 feet
correct-the pro-Cortés side prevailed, and today Tlaxcallan
is remembered, and sometimes vilified, by modern Mexicans
as his partners in conquest.
T
here are, however, some scholars who disagree
with López and Fargher. They see the relationship
between Tlaxcallan and the Spaniards differently and
caution that colonial texts can give a distorted view of how the
people of Tlaxcallan dealt with the Aztecs. " The archaeological
evidence is intriguing and deserves to be considered carefully, "
says Penn State University historian Matthew Restall. " Written
sources show how Spaniards and Nahuas viewed pre-invasion
Tlaxcala decades after the invasion. They're not evidence of
the form of government and society that existed in Tlaxcala
before the invasion. " He calls the notion of Tlaxcallan as a
republic " a micro-patriotic myth " that the people of Tlaxcallan
and the Spaniards told themselves at the time, and that has
survived to the present. " By the late sixteenth century, they both
believed that the 'good' Tlaxcallans had always been more like
Spaniards-or closer to how Spaniards liked to see themselves-
in contrast to the 'bad' Aztecs, " says Restall. Archaeologist David
Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin is also skeptical that
Tlaxcallan was somehow immune to an elite class structure.
" Elites and the nobility were part of the overall social fabric
of Mesoamerica, " he says, " though they probably organized
themselves in different ways over time and space. "
The ancient city's material culture, however, displays a uniExcavations
of one of Tlaxcallan's households, which were of a
standard, modest size across the site
38
formity that López and Fargher see as clear evidence of extreme
class compression. Virtually every house was built to the same
standard: two or three rooms with packed-earth floors with a
thin layer of white stucco, rough walls, and a small patio. Some
houses have alternating stripes of white plaster and red brick on
their lower facade, a spartan adornment that might have signified
that a resident held political office, says Fargher. The houses
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Archaeology Magazine - July/August 2022

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