Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs

by Camilla Townsend

Cristóbal picked up the quill, ready to write. And don Alonso de Castañeda Chimalpopoca began to speak. He told an ancient tale, about the breakup of a happy community centuries earlier. It was a story his people had been telling for many, many years, since they were wanderers. “When Huemac became a young man, he gave orders that the Nonohualca tend to his home. Then the Nonohualca said to him, ‘So be it, my lord. May we do what you desire.’ The Nonohualca came to tend to his home. And then he demanded women of them. He said to the Nonohualca, ‘You are to give me women. I order that the buttocks be four spans wide.’” Surely don Alonso stopped here to have a good laugh at the preposterous arrogance of the man. But then he would have faced the cultural divide that was beginning to form between him and his descendants. Was young Cristóbal’s Nahuatl still good enough for him to get the joke? Did don Alonso have to explain everything to the younger man, brought up in a different time? Did he tell him that the story was particularly rich because “Huemac” meant “Big Gift”? He had been a foundling and was supposedly a gift from the gods. Some “Big Gift” he turned out to be! It was because of him that all the discord between the ancestors originally arose. “Huemac” indeed! He had been no gift, but he certainly had brought the unexpected—like so much of life, don Alonso must have thought, as one who had seen one world give way to another and who had survived with his humor intact. H...