This tool is donation based and free. 🙏 We're looking for donations to keep it running — $360/year covers our server costs.

$18 of $360 · 5%
Donate
This fact check is over 5 months old. The situation may have changed significantly — please recheck before relying on it.

Spanish Alliance with Indigenous Peoples Against Aztecs Mostly True

“After the spanish reached central mexico, they quickly realized that the Aztec empire was very powerful, but disliked and resented by many of the other indigenous peoples of the area. The indigenous peoples saw the spanish as a possible tool to overthrow the aztecs and they quickly formed an allyship. It was very tense, Moctezuma viewed the spanish as dangerous and sent gifts to keep them away, but the gold only made the Spanish want to invade even more.”
Mostly true
Confidence: High Checked on March 26, 2026

Summary

The Spanish did recognize the Aztec Empire’s strength upon reaching central Mexico and found that many neighboring indigenous groups, such as the Tlaxcalans, resented Aztec domination and allied with the Spaniards to overthrow them. Moctezuma attempted to placate the newcomers by sending large quantities of gold and other gifts, a move that heightened Spanish greed and accelerated their push for conquest. Overall, the description aligns with the historical record.

Recheck this fact Runs a fresh check with up-to-date sources

Sources 58 searched

neh.gov
npr.org
  • 500 Years Later, The Spanish Conquest Of Mexico Is Still Being Debated : NPR

    About 650,000 people come to learn about the Aztecs at the Great Temple every year, 80% of them Mexican, according to the National Institute of Anthropology and History. José María Rosas, a 62-year-old taxi driver in Mexico City, was visiting it for the first time in early November. "Seeing this is like going back in time, and I'm recognizing that these are my roots," he says. "Who am I as a descendant of the Indigenous people?" ... González says he has seen that attitudes toward pre-Hispanic history have changed during his four decades of work at the Great Temple.

gallery.library.vanderbilt.edu
blogs.uoregon.edu
  • Spanish Invasion | Mesoamerican Cultures and their Histories

    Xicotencatl is a name that contains the word “xico” (bee), and you can see that his name glyph features a bee. The people of Tlaxcala were traditional enemies of the Mexica, and so they joined forces with the Spaniards (in fact, vastly outnumbering the Spaniards), in the defeat of the Mexica.

digitalcommons.csumb.edu
  • The Effects of Colonization on the Aztecs: Early Colonial ...

    However, Camilla Townsend states,” In fact, there is little evidence that the indigenous · people ever seriously believed the newcomers were gods, and there is no meaningful · evidence that any story about Quetzalcoatl’s returning from the east ever existed before ... Native population had been reduced to fewer than seven million. By 1650, only one-and- a-half-million pureblooded Natives remained. 25 Essentially, the Spanish and the Aztecs

scholarship.richmond.edu
  • University of Richmond University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository

    because Díaz reports that this ... of Moctezuma. In the ... Conquest. Naming his chronicle The True History of the Conquest of New Spain envisions the · truthfulness of this narrative as Díaz’s historical contention. Díaz’s claim that his actions · conquered American civilizations is distinct from his argument that he will give a more truthful · account. He determines that representing ...

en.wikipedia.org
  • Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire - Wikipedia

    The Spanish conquest of the Aztec ... Between 1519 and 1521, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his small army of European soldiers and numerous Indigenous allies, overthrew the most powerful empire in Mesoamerica....

  • Moctezuma II - Wikipedia

    Historian Matthew Restall claims that the Codex depicts Moctezuma as weak-willed, superstitious, and indulgent. James Lockhart suggests that Moctezuma fills the role of a scapegoat for the Aztec defeat. Other historians have noted that the Codex may not necessarily cast Moctezuma as cowardly and responsible for Spanish colonization.

historians.org
  • Moctezuma Sends Gold to the Spaniards – AHA

    During the time I was at war with this province, Most Catholic Sire, and while I was yet in camp, there came to me six lords, the principal vassals, of Moctezuma, with about two hundred men in their train and assured me that he desired to become a subject of your Highness, and my friend; and to satisfy me of the sincerity of his professions, he would yield to your Highness every year a tribute of gold and silver, precious stones, slaves, and cotton cloth, and such other things as he had; that he would give all this, but that he desired I would not visit his dominions, because the country was very barren and destitute of the necessaries of life, and he should regret the privations that I and those who came with me would have to endure.

This fact check is free and donation-based. $1 powers ~30 fact-checks.

Donate $1 to support fact-checking

Check another fact