Entering Tlaxcala: Diaz: The Approach: September 22-3, 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.

Due to the stark differences, it is worth quoting them at length and verbatim. First is the story of Bernal Diaz, which begins his chapter lxxv.

"When the caciques saw that our baggage was on its way to their city, they immediately went on ahead to make sure everything would be ready to receive us and to have the lodgings adorned with boughs. When we were within a quarter of a league of the city, the same caciques who had gone ahead came out to greet us, and they brought their sons and nephews and many leading people, each kin group, faction, and party as a unit; in Tlaxcala, there were four parties, not counting that of Tecapaneca, lord of Topeyanco, which makes five. Also the people came from all the places that were subject to them and wore their different liveries, which, although they were of maguey fiber because they could not obtain any cotton, were very delicate, with good embroidery and painting. Then came the papas from throughout the province, and there were many of them because of the great adoratorios they had, which, as I have said, they call cus, where they have their idols and make their sacrifices. Those papas brought fire pans burning with coals and, with their incense, perfumed all of us. Some wore very long robes like surplices, which were white and had hoods, like those the canons wear, their hair very long and tangled so it could not be separated without being cut, full of blood coming from their ears, which they had cut in sacrifice that day. When they saw us, they lowered their heads as if in humility, and they wore their fingernails very long. We heard it said that those papas were seen as devout men of very good living.

Many chieftains came near Cortes, accompanying him, and when we entered the town, there was no room in the streets and on the roofs because so many Indian men and women came out to see us with very happy faces."

This is how Diaz describes the great welcoming of the europeans into the city of Tlaxcala.
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all quotes from chapter lxxv of Bernal Díaz de Castillo: The True History of the Conquest of New Spain translated with an introduction and notes by Janet Burke and Ted Humphrey, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Co, Inc. 2012