Aztecs didn't value gold all that much. If they put through the effort to smuggle anything it would have been cacao seeds or quetzal feathers.
this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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Yep. Cacao seeds were used like currency.
Currency to buy what? To buy gold of course, which was a famous Aztec staple. They were very fond of it. Never heard the expressions "I hunger for gold", "as delicious as a gold ingot", "this cake must be made of gold"? All proofs of the sacred place of gold in the Aztec kitchen. It is known, look it up on YouTube.
You had me going for a second.
Got any utube videos about it?
I'm sorry, I only have a uarticle about it.
https://bigthink.com/sponsored/aztec-mesoamerican-chocolate-money/
As that article says, the Aztecs eventually realized that money that grew on trees was not the best idea.
Above everything, they valued human sacrifice, mainly from other nearby nations, which they would regularly raid for people to sacrifice. The Aztecs had every opportunity to just conquer these other, weaker nations, and specifically didn't so that they could farm them for human sacrifices.
When the conquistadors came over looking for gold, these weaker nations pointed to the Aztecs. Yeah, the Aztecs had gold, but the more important thing was getting the Europeans to point their boom sticks at the Aztecs, which they did.
After having subjugated the Aztecs, the Europeans were like, "Okay, maybe we can slow down here and turn these people into a vassal state," but those weaker tribes were like "Fuck that, the Aztecs are weak enough now for us to destroy them," and they took their revenge by completely annihilating the Aztecs.
The Aztecs were massive assholes, pretty much had it coming when it came to being obliterated, and the final blow was handed to them not by European conquerors, but by the enemies they'd made right next door.
I think the nation/tribe that were the Spanish collaborators you're referring to was Tlaxcala which were the target of habitual Flower Wars for captuered warrior sacrifice. The pleas of the Tenochca, the residents of Tenochtitlan, fell on deaf ears to the only other major power in the region the Purépecha Empire.
While Aztecs valued human sacrifice to a great extent it was due to the benefits it's bestowed in Mixtec-Pueblo culture. It was a source of not only spiritual reverence, but also military and economic superiority. It also had non domestic function as a diplomatic tool to visiting nobles and bounty haulers / tax collectors. Not to mention it served as a form of community entertainment in a similar fashion to European public executions.
As far as saying Europeans tried to slow down to make the Americas a vassal state is a misconception. Disease wiped out an apocalyptic amount of people. Following the fall of Tenochtitlan small pox ravaged the Valley of Mexico and all along the Gulf Coast. This nearly wiped out all infrastructure and Spain tried to subjugate the rest. Hilariously trying to impose a 30% tax written in Spanish and using that as a legal justification for military actions.
Tangent, but I get irrationally angry when people do "go to site X and search for blah and it's the 3rd result down" when trying to convey the location of some information on the internet rather than just sharing the goddam URL.
That's not irrational.
Being frustrated sure, but being angry at someone because they just don't have a functional mental model of how the internet works is kinda pointless
Its because they're bullshitting
Thought this was KenM for a second.
Alternatively, it was made by somebody and sold to tourists. If it was actually an artifact, it would be far more likely that it had been traded north into the area centuries ago before white people ever turned up to ruin everything for everyone.
Although to be fair, I'm okay with them taking out the Aztec religions. My biggest problem there is that they forced out human sacrifice for more classical human murder and Catholicism, which is really more of a lateral move.
The thing about Aztecs and human sacrifice is that they did it to peoples that were captured on the battlefield. And the Aztecs went to war intending to capture, not kill most of the time. The killing happened after the battle.
So really, it's not all that different in terms of lives being taken from a standard war. It's just done in a different way.