Why read The Native Conquistador?

Book cover of The Native Conquistador: Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Account of the Conquest of New Spain

Book description

For many years, scholars of the conquest worked to shift focus away from the Spanish perspective and bring attention to the often-ignored voices and viewpoints of the Indians. But recent work that highlights the "Indian conquistadors" has forced scholars to reexamine the simple categories of conqueror and subject and to…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Native Conquistador as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Camilla Townsend

Author

Many people don’t realize that there were Indigenous people who chose to side with the Spaniards.

If they had reasons of their own to support the powerful outsiders, they sometimes did so. One such man had a great-great-grandson who became a writer in colonial Mexico. He took the family stories and did some research of his own, and then wrote this compelling account of the decisions his ancestor made and the actions he took.

I love his pride! (Warning: you have to like battle scenes to like this one.)

From Camilla's list on The best books on the Aztecs by people who once knew an Aztec.