Entering Tlaxcala: Codex Florentinus: A Welcome In Fear: September 1519

There are three different versions, of course, of how the europeans first entered the city of Tlaxcala. Bernal Diaz has one that gives remarkable, picturesque first-person details of how their troop entered the city and the amazing reception that he says they received. The local's tale documented by Sahagun decades later, had a remembered version that is just as remarkable for how different it is than both that of Diaz and the one Cortes offered in his second letter to the young King and Emperor Charles V. The version that Cortes told is almost entirely about geography and local economics.

In the Codex Florentinus, Friar Sahagun's informants painted a simpler picture. They assert the Cempoala did help the Spaniards showing the best routes inland and even led their party. They also say it was Otomies who attacked the europeans in Tlaxcala, not mentioning Xicotencatl the younger whom Diaz said led those attacks. It was, to be fair, the Otomies and chontales - wild, unreasonable people - that the Tlaxcala claimed who had attacked them at first. But when the Tlaxcala chiefs spoke among themselves, according to the informants telling the story many years later, they were very afraid.

"They felt premonitions of death: terror overwhelmed them, and they were filled with foreboding.... the captains met together in a council. They talked about what had happened, and said: "What shall we do? Shall we go out to meet them? The Otomi is a brave warrior, but he was helpless against them: they scorned him as a mere nothing! They destroyed the poor macehual with a look, with a glance of their eyes! We should go over to their side: we should make friends with them and be their allies. If not they will destroy us too...." 

As a result, the welcome into Tlaxcala was warm and full of gifts.

"Therefore the lords of Tlaxcala went out to meet them, bringing many things to eat: hens and hens' eggs and the finest tortillas. They said to the strangers: "Our lords, you are weary."

The strangers replied: "Where do you live? Where are you from?"

 They said: "We are from Tlaxcala. You have come here, you have entered our land. We are from Tlaxcala; our city is the City of the Eagle, Tlaxcala." (For in ancient times it was called Texcala, and its people were known as Texcaltecas.)"

The editor here tells us that the Aztecs called it 'The Place of Rocks' while the Tlaxcala themselves called it 'The Place of Corn'. What this tells us, at least, is that the informants credited with this story were not likely Tlaxcalans themselves. But to this day, the outstretched wings of an eagle are on the official coat of arms of the province of Tlaxcala. But this short version of the meeting of the Tlaxcalan people with the first europeans  thus far, ends very simply.

"Then they guided them to the city; they brought them there and invited them to enter. They paid them great honours, attended to their every want, joined them as allies and even gave them their daughters.

The Spaniards asked: "Where is the City of Mexico? Is it far from here?"

They said: "No, it is not far, it is only a three day march. And it is a great city. The Aztecs are very brave. They are great warriors and great conquerors and have defeated their neighbors on every side."

At this time the Tlaxcaltecas were enemies of Cholula. They feared the Cholultecas; they envied and cursed them; their sould burned with hatred for the people of Cholula. This is why they brought certain rumors to cortes, so that he would destroy them. They said to him: "Cholula is our enemy. It is an evil city. The people are as brave as the Aztecs and they are the Aztecs' friends." When the Spaniards heard this, they marched against Cholula."

It appears that these voices of locals (set down when Friar Sahagun collected them c 1555), either didn't know these Tlaxcalans, weren't in communication with or heard from (or remembered) them much, or perhaps, simply knew just a few elements, and built a story around those. Namely that, the Tlaxcalans hated the Cholula and feared the Spaniards more than anyone else at hand. 
But these informants even so, managed to convey the general tone, intentions, as well as the major effects of these interactions, compared with the Diaz and Cortes accounts. If we can believe them any more than Diaz or Cortes, because we can't even really know if these are the same witnesses that knew the details of the first eyewitnesses sent by Motecuhzoma, for comparison. If they were and knew the messengers that boarded ship, or saw the boats at sea from the treetops, and therefore had some knowledge of Mexica state affairs as those earliest witnesses must have had, then they would have known about the independence of Tlaxcala, from a Mexica point of view. Even if they could not sympathize exactly with the Tlaxcala. Tlaxcala was for generations, effectively under siege by the Mexica of the interior Great Basin of Mexico. They lived without salt or cotton because of the continued antagonism with the Mexica. And these Mexica informants were very likely to know of these age-old antagonisms.
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all quotes from pages thirty-eight - forty in  The Broken Spears: the Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico, translated, edited with an introduction by Miguel León-Portilla, expanded and with a postscript, Boston, Beacon Press, 2006.