Camilla Townsend

Fifth Sun offers a comprehensive history of the Aztecs, spanning the period before conquest to a century after the conquest, based on rarely-used Nahuatl-language sources written by the indigenous people.

A New History of the Aztecs

Fifth Sun

Camilla Townsend's stunning book differs from all previous biographies of Pocahontas in capturing how similar seventeenth-century Native Americans were--in the way they saw, understood, and struggled to control their world--not only to the invading English but to ourselves. Neither naïve nor innocent, Indians like Pocahontas and her father, the powerful king Powhatan, confronted the vast might of the English with sophistication, diplomacy, and violence. Indeed, Pocahontas's life is a testament to the subtle intelligence that Native Americans, always aware of their material disadvantages, brought against the military power of the colonizing English. Resistance, espionage, collaboration, deception: Pocahontas's life is shown as a road map to Native American strategies of defiance exercised in the face of overwhelming odds and in the hope for a semblance of independence worth the name.

The American Portraits Series

Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma


The essential guide to the world of Aztec mythology, based on Nahuatl-language sources that challenge the colonial history passed down to us by the Spanish.

From their remote origins as migrating tribes to their rise as builders of empire, the Aztecs were among the most dynamic and feared peoples of ancient Mexico, with a belief system that was one of the most complex and vital in the ancient world. Historian Camilla Townsend returns to the original tales, told at the fireside by generations of Indigenous Nahuatl speakers. Along the way, she deals with human sacrifice, the raising of great temples, and the troubling legacy of the Spanish conquest.

Few cultures are generally understood to have been so controlled by their religion as the Aztecs, and few religions are envisioned as being as violent and celebratory of death as theirs. In this introduction to the Aztec myths, Townsend draws from sixteenth-century historical annals and songs written down by Nahuatl-speaking peoples, now known as the Aztecs, in their own language to counter this narrative, inherited from the conquering Spaniards. In doing so, she reveals a rich tapestry of mythic tradition that defies modern expectations.

Townsend retells stories ranging from the creation of the world, revealing the Aztec cosmological vision of nature and the divine, to legends of the Aztecs’ own past that show how they understood the foundation of their state and the course of their wars. She considers the impact of colonial contact on the myths and demonstrates that Indigenous engagement with the new cultural customs introduced by the Europeans never entirely uprooted old ways of thinking.


A Guide to the Ancient Stories and Legends

 The Aztec Myths: 

Malintzin's was the indigenous woman who translated for Hernando Cortes in his dealings with the Aztec emperor Moctezuma from 1519 to 1521. The Spanish called her dona Marina, and she has become known to posterity as La Malinche. As Malinche, she has long been regarded as a traitor to her people, a dangerously sexy, scheming woman who facilitated Cortes's conquest." "The life of the real woman, however, was much more complicated. She was sold into slavery as a child, and eventually given away to the Spanish as a concubine and cook. In this major reevaluation we gain new respect for her steely courage, as well as for the creativity, bravery, and resourcefulness of native peoples in the wake of conquest. Camilla Townsend rejects the myths that obscured this life. Drawing on Spanish and Aztec language sources, she breathes new life into an old tale, and offers insights into the major issues of conquest and colonization, including technology and violence, resistance and accommodation, gender and power.

una mujer indígena en la conquista de México

Malintzin

The complicated life of the real woman who came to be known as La Malinche.

An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico

Malintzin's Choices

Old stories in new letters (1520s-1550s) -- Becoming conquered (the 1560s) -- Forging friendship with Franciscans (1560s-1580s) -- The riches of twilight (circa 1600) -- Renaissance in the East (the seventeenth century) -- Epilogue: Postscript from a golden age -- Appendices -- The texts in Nahuatl -- Historia Tolteca Chichimeca -- Annals of Tlatelolco -- Annals of Juan Bautista -- Annals of Tecamachalco -- Annals of Cuauhtitlan -- Chimalpahin, seventh relation -- Don Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza

How the Nahuas of Colonial Mexico Kept Their History Alive

Annals of Native America

Mark Summers

Jan Lewis

Karen M. Dunak

Michael E. McGerr

"A higher education history text for United States history courses"--

A History of the United States with Sources

Of the People

Camilla Townsend's stunning new book, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma, differs from all previous biographies of Pocahontas in capturing how similar seventeenth century Native Americans were--in the way they saw, understood, and struggled to control their world---not only to the invading British but to ourselves. Neither naïve nor innocent, Indians like Pocahontas and her father, the powerful king Powhatan, confronted the vast might of the English with sophistication, diplomacy, and violence. Indeed, Pocahontas's life is a testament to the subtle intelligence that Native Americans, always aware of their material disadvantages, brought against the military power of the colonizing English. Resistance, espionage, collaboration, deception: Pocahontas's life is here shown as a road map to Native American strategies of defiance exercised in the face of overwhelming odds and in the hope for a semblance of independence worth the name. Townsend's Pocahontas emerges--as a young child on the banks of the Chesapeake, an influential noblewoman visiting a struggling Jamestown, an English gentlewoman in London--for the first time in three-dimensions; allowing us to see and sympathize with her people as never before.

Indigenous breadsellers riot over a Spanish monopoly scheme; Spanish authorities plan to remove native people from the city; indigenous people struggle to construct a splendid church; the city's inhabitants fight over elections and witness hangings, epidemics, and eclipses. All this and more a Native American writer of Puebla, Mexico, reported in the late seventeenth century in a set of annals in his own language, Nahuatl, telling his people's local history from the coming of the Christian faith down to his own day. These records were part of a corpus of such annals produced in the Tlaxcala-Puebla region during this period. These writings by native peoples for their own posterity provide the most direct access to the indigenous perspective on the postconquest centuries that we are ever going to find. Here in This Year for the first time brings two sets of Nahuatl annals—the other one being from a more provincial locale—to the English-speaking world, presenting the original Nahuatl with facing, very readable translations.

Seventeenth-Century Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley

Here in This Year

Mark Summers (History professor)

This Reader from the Uncovering the Past series provides a comprehensive introduction to American Indianhistory. Over 60 primary documents allow the voices of natives toilluminate the American past Includes samples of native languages just above the fulltranslations of particular texts Provides comprehensive introductions and headnotes, as well asimages, an extensive bibliography, and suggestions for furtherresearch Includes such texts as a decoded Maya inscription, letterswritten during the French and Indian War on the distribution ofsmall pox blankets, and a diatribe by General George ArmstrongCuster shortly before he was killed at the Battle of the Little BigHorn

A Documentary Reader

American Indian History

El quinto sol es el que iluminó a los aztecas, el que los acompañó en su peregrinar desde la mítica Aztlán hasta el islote que se convertiría en Tenochtitlan, el que inspiró su mitología y por ello muchos de sus relatos fundacionales, el que atestiguó cómo un astuto enemigo logró someterlos. Los mexicas se consideraban a sí mismos humildes y valientes, afectos a los placeres de la vida —incluidos el baile y la poesía— y a contar historias, respetuosos de las tradiciones y hábiles negociantes. Aquí, Camilla Townsend presenta de modo novedoso la trayectoria del pueblo que llegó a regir en el centro de Mesoamérica, con mano dura, un uso inteligente de los linajes familiares y el establecimiento de un severo sistema de producción, hasta constituir eso que a falta de mejor término hemos llamado imperio. Con base principalmente en xiuhpohualli —los anales en que se consignaron los hechos más sobresalientes de un periodo— y otros documentos escritos en náhuatl, esta historia diferente de los aztecas derriba algunos mitos sobre su apetito sanguinario o su credulidad, y permite apreciar cómo perduró, incluso después de la conquista, una forma originalísima de entender el mundo y enfrentar la vida. Con una narración ágil y notables ejemplos que retratan el auge y la caída de los mexicas, esta obra le mostrará al lector que, de alguna manera, aún hoy estamos cobijados por el quinto sol.

Camilla Townsend

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