On Matthew Restall’s Seven Myths

Restall starts his introduction with a quote from Felipe Fernández-Armesto: “Historians today are priests of a cult of truth, called to the service of a god whose existence they are doomed to doubt.”  Truer words were never spoken.  On one level, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest is about debunking seven persistent myths about the Spanish Conquest and its indigenous and Spanish participants.  But on another level, Restall brilliantly engages questions of historical objectivity, how make sense of multiple and often conflicting accounts, and more.  In the Prologue, Restall says Spanish accounts are “inescapably framed by the concepts and language of their own culture” (xv).  In other words, the letters of Hernán Cortés and the histories of Gómara are not enough.  Restall digs into indigenous sources as well, having clearly mastered several languages.  That alone is no small accomplishment.  He also looks at academic books and even popular films.  For me, the “big point” is that we must examine subjectivity and truth, question our own assumptions, and open-mindedly explore the social-cultural worlds of historical actors if we are ever going to begin to understand.

Restall understands.  He takes us through seven chapters describing the seven myths, which are: 1. The Myth of Exceptional Men, 2. The Myth of the King’s Army, 3. The Myth of the White Conquistador, 4. The Myth of Completion, 5.  The Myth of (Mis)Communication, 6. The Myth of Native Desolation, and 7. The Myth of Superiority.

First, the “Myth of Exceptional Men” addresses the pernicious idea that Cortés, Columbus, Pizarro and their ilk were some kind of supermen, possessing superhuman strength, intelligence, tactics, etc. that allowed their small bands of men to overcome thousands of indigenous warriors.  This is simply not the case.  We learn that the conquistadores were merely following patterns established during earlier phases of Caribbean conquest, patterns that date back to the brutal Reconquista of Spain.  The big name conquistadores that we all remember from our high school history textbooks were not, in fact, big men.  They were mere humans, part of the historical process of empire expansion—which had, for the record, been occurring on both sides of the globe for quite some time—e.g. the Aztecs/Mexica took over their neighbors, too.

The next myth Restall takes down is the Myth of the King’s Army.  This one was a bit of a shocker for me.  Restall painstakingly proves that conquistadores were not paid, regular, trained, soldiers.  Rather, they were “armed entrepreneurs.”  As historian James Lockhart has pointed out, soldiers receive salaries, while conquistadores did not.  Locked into a culture of patronage, conquistadores had to write letters to Spain justifying their adventures in the eyes of the Crown.  This self-congratulating “culture of the probanza” became the dominant discourse of the conquest, and, unfortunately, it still taints much of history.  Foreshadowing English penetrations into North America, conquistadores called their ventures “companies” (35).

The Myth of the White Conquistador must be dismantled, too.  While history tells “tales of barbarian hordes miraculously repulsed,” this too is a falsehood (44).  Certainly, small numbers of Spanish fighters were able to win many battles, but they did not do it alone.  The Spanish had an enormous number of Indian allies; one historian has estimated there were 200,000 Tlaxcalans with Cortes at Tenochtitlan (47).  But these warriors were not traitors—the Tlaxcalans pragmatically used the Spanish to help rout their own enemy.  Restall highlights that there were Africans with the conquistadores, as well.  Such as, Juan Valiente, a young West African man who had been enslaved and brought to the new world, where he convinced his owner to let him branch out on his own for four years.  Valiente went on Pedro de Alvarado’s campaign to Peru, and in doing so was able to procure his own freedom.

The Myth of Completion is next. Cortés himself, past historians, and many present-day textbooks make it seem as though the Spanish merely had to enter Mexico and like magic it was conquered, all neat and tidy, by 1521.  Reality was infinitely more complicated.  Indians resisted in a variety of ways.  There was a great deal of intermittent armed resistance, and there were infinite varieties of everyday resistance.  Indigenous groups employed a strategy of mixed accommodation and resistance, and were never fully conquered in the way the Spanish imagined.   Native cultures persisted and native traditions endured, many to this day.

The Myth of (Mis)Communication is a dual myth.  On one hand, Cortes and historian William Prescott would have us believe that everyone understood each other perfectly.  But there is virtually no mention of interpreters in Cortes’ letters to the King—Malintzin is completely absent.  And let’s not forget the absurd Requerimiento, read in Spanish before an attack, offering Indians the chance to submit to the rule of Spain and its Christian god.  It may as well have been gibberish.   Rituals for greetings and almost everything else were different amongst Mesoamerican peoples and Spaniards, and there was confusion about the meaning of gestures and words even with interpreters.  For example, when Cortes tried to hug Moctezuma, it was interpreted as an insult.  And perhaps it was… This is where things get really complicated.  It was, as James Lockhart puts it, a case of “Double Mistaken Identity,” where “each side of the cultural exchange presumes that a given form or concept is functioning in the way familiar within its own tradition and is unaware of or unimpressed by the other side’s interpretation” (76).  But while words and customs were certainly miscommunicated, Restall points out that the Spanish intent to take over came across quite clearly.

Which brings us to the Myth of Native Desolation and the Myth of Superiority.  Native cultures were not wholesale destroyed in an instant after 1521, and the European conquerors did not win territory because of any superiority, whether technological or cultural.  Since my undergrad degree is in cultural anthropology, a big part of my undergraduate education was devoted to exploring native cultures that have carried on, resisting and reinventing and persisting into our own era.  But the way that Restall synthesizes and explains this familiar ground is refreshing and brilliant.  I particularly appreciated his concise summary of pathogens’ impact upon indigenous America, and his sensitive portrayal of Moctezuma.

Restall’s achievement in Seven Myths is nothing short of brilliant.  After opening the book with a call to recognizing not just Spanish bias and agendas, but our own unconscious assumptions and the way that they shape how we perceive history, Restall delivers.  This is a fresh and gripping analysis of a history that we all think we are pretty familiar with.  But Restall unpacks our assumptions, and presents multiple voices from which we may attempt to glean the historical truth.