Chimalpahin Rewrites the Conquest: Yet Another Epic History

The seventeenth-century Nahua historian Chimalpahin is famous for his epic history of Indian Mexico, 670 A.D. to 1631 A.D., written and signed by him in Nahuatl, which treats the conquests and rise of the great Mexica state. Less known is his rewriting of Francisco López de Gómara’s Conquista de México, which gives Hernando Cortés his due while adding a more worldly perspective to his oeuvre. But his histories have an even greater transnational perspective in that he concerned himself with the peoples of ancient Mexico, believing they may have had Old World origins, since they have the same physique and countenance as the people of Poland. Using the Old Testament, Chimalpahin also ponders whether they may have been Jews and takes his argument back to Adam and Eve and then Noah’s descendents, who settled in Spain. The great conqueror Alexander was another of his heroes, and he brings them all together as he writes for his own local and future Nahua readership.