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full view, Scene 22

full view, Scene 22

"Here we suffer the bitter grief occasioned by the sad information which they gave us that they were going to inform the Emperor Charles V of all the honor and services which they had received from us and the great labors which they had to suffer in giving us faith as is written in the history which those wrote who divided out our lands to us, to wit, the Señor Don Pedro Alvarado, famous conquerors, and the Señor Don Fernando Cortes, Marquis of the Valley, who wrote the history of my deeds in detail, of my valor and of my services with which I aided them, for which he gave me my title of noble knight, which title I merited by my sweat and labors as is represented in this my mapa, wherein you are shown the grant which was made to me in the Pueblo of Xalitzintla and I exhort you that you honor my descendants and do not oppress them in distributing and working my lands since they ought to live as my sons and to work my lands, united to my pueblo whence they ought never to be removed, neither they nor my descendants." [Source: Frederick Starr's English translation of the text found in the corresponding scene in the version he saw in the pueblo in 1898, published in his The Mapa de Cuauhtlantzinco (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1898), p. 19] Starr's footnote: "Apparently Tepostecatzin here made a public and solemn appeal to the Spaniards, placing his infant in the arms of Cortes." [p. 19]
Escena entera (No. 22)