Andres de Tapia Wrote An Eyewitness Account of the Conquest in Mexico in 1519 [Revised]

Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a soldier of fortune who served under Hernan Cortes in the conquest of Mexico, provided a brilliant eyewitness account of the conquest of the Aztec Empire.  Published in 1568 as The True History of the Conquest of New Spain,  the book is a highly readable and exciting account of an epic battle between the Old and New World.  Sixty years after my first reading of Castillo’s book, by using the Mormon database and historical articles to track my ancestors, I have discovered that Andres de Tapia, Cortes’s trusted Lieutenant who was frequently mentioned in Castillo’s account, is indeed my direct descendant twelve generations back. 

Artist Frederico Vigil portrays the chronicler Bartolome de Las Casas in a Santa Fe Courthouse mural. Photo by Ricardo Romo. 

The search for my relationship with Andres de Tapia began after my visit to the Albuquerque Art Museum in early November.  Several bronze plates near the entrance of the museum honored the soldiers and families that founded New Mexico in 1598. Captain Alonso de Sosa,**[corrected from an earlier mention of Vicente Sosa] his wife Beatriz Navarro, and their family, who were my ancestors [10th generation great-grandfather], were recognized among New Mexico’s earliest Spanish settlers. 

A bronze plaque honoring Alonso Sosa, [Alonso de Sosa Albornoz] one of the first settlers of New Mexico. The Albuquerque Museum of Art. Photo by Ricardo Romo.  

The bronze plaques for Sosa and Navarro made me wonder where they came from and why they chose to go north across the Rio Grande to colonize unknown territory. With the aid of the  Mormon database FamilySearch and Bing, a new Microsoft search engine, I ventured into discovering my association with de Sosa and de Tapia.  

What I found about Alonso de Sosa, my maternal grandfather [10th generation great-grandfather] and Andres de Tapia [12th generation great-grandfather] was truly unexpected. 

Alonso de Sosa was among the soldiers that New Mexico colonizer Juan de Onate recruited from the Zacatecas region of New Spain. Sosa sold his interest in the Spanish San Martin mines in the late 1500s in order to accompany de Onate in his exploration of what is now New Mexico. 

 The Sosa family’s mining ownership in Zacatecas had early Spanish conquest origins.  The San Martin mines originally belonged to  Francisco Sosa Albornoz [father of Alonso de Sosa] and one of the conquerors of the Kingdom of Galicia [Guanajuato, Jalisco, Zacatecas] and  Nueva Vizcaya [Chihuahua and Durango].  De Sosa’s wife,  Ines de Tapia, was the daughter of the conquistador Andres de Tapia. 

Cover of the book by Patricia De Fuentes, The Conquistadors. 1963 edition. Collection of Ricardo Romo. 

Ines de Tapia was born in Medellin, Spain, the same birth town of Hernan Cortes, as was her future husband,  Francisco de Sosa Albornoz.  She emigrated to Mexico with her father Andres de Tapia sometime in the 1530s or early 1540s. In 1548, Ines de Tapia married Francisco de Sosa in Mexico City.  She is described in a genealogy account as  “daughter of the highly esteemed and remarkable Maese de Campo and Teniente”  Andres de Tapia.  

Andres de Tapia was a highly respected Spanish soldier who participated in the conquest of Mexico from 1519 to 1521.  Tapia was born in Medellin, Extremadura, Spain in 1485 and lived in Sevilla as a young man.  In Sevilla, Tapia is reported to have served as a valet to Admiral Christopher Columbus and journeyed to the New World in 1517. In Cuba, Tapia joined the Spanish military and participated in the pacification of several surrounding islands.  

Vicente Telles, “La Malinche.” 2018. The artwork tells the story of the conquest with Malinche’s role as a translator. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

 In 1519, Tapia joined Hernan Cortes’s army which was preparing to embark on an expedition to explore the coast of China. The reference to China stems from the idea that at that time the Spanish explorers in Cuba still believed they had landed in the Indies and that China was in close proximity. Fernando Cervantes, the highly accomplished author of Conquistadores: A New History of Spanish Discovery and Conquest, included one chapter appropriately titled “The Lure of China.” Cortes had requested permission from the Governor of Cuba to sail westward toward China. 

Prior to the publication of Patricia De Fuentes’ book, The Conquistadors: First Person Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, scholars and students interested in details of the conquest relied heavily on Bernal Diaz del Castillo’s The True History of the Conquest of Mexico [originally published in Spanish]. Three scholars,  Castillo [1568], De Fuentes [1963], and Cervantes [2021], all comment on the close association of Andres de Tapia with Cortes. De Fuentes’s publication is especially critical to understanding Tapia’s role in the conquest of Mexico.

De Fuentes wrote that in Andres Tapia’s chronicles  “there are first-hand accounts of the march from Veracruz to the great city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and the impressive welcome that Moctezuma gave the Spaniards.” I should add that prior to the founding of Veracruz, Cortes learned that three Spanish sailors may have been stranded in Cozumel and that one, a  Spanish missionary, had been rescued. 

Spanish ships sailing from Darien Panama to Santo Domingo in 1511 had sunk near Cozumel. Tapia documented  Cortes's first landing in Cozumel in 1519 where friendly natives informed Cortes and his men of three Spaniards living among them who had been shipwrecked some years earlier.   One of the survivors, Tapia wrote, was a friar who claimed to have been stranded for ten years. The friar joyfully joined Cortes.  Tapia noted that another Spaniard [Jeromino Aguilar] “had taken as wife an Indian woman of rank” and refused to leave with the Spaniards. 

Cassiano Homes mural. “Cortes meeting Moctezuma.” Photo by Ricardo Romo

 From Cozumel, Cortes’s ships sailed to the province of present-day Tabasco where upon landing they were attacked by Mayan natives. Cortes defeated the combatants.  In return, Tapia wrote, the Mayans “gave the marques [Cortes] twenty of the women they kept as slaves.”  Tapia was among the first of Cortez’s men to recognize that “one of the women” [whom other scholars called Marina or La Malinche] spoke both the Mayan and Nahuatl languages. Since the rescued missionary had learned the Mayan language, he could communicate with Marina, and in turn, she could speak to the Aztec and Mayan Indians.  

A bronze plaque honoring Beatriz Navarro [wife of Alonso de Sosa] one of the first settlers of New Mexico. The Albuquerque Museum of Art. Photo by Ricardo Romo.  

Cortes and his soldiers continued on their journey and next found a natural harbor which he named Veracruz. As the Spaniards moved inland, they repeatedly heard stories about the Aztecs and their formidable leader Moctezuma. In an effort to convince the Spaniards to leave the area, the Aztec emperor sent, according to Tapia,  “a gold disk and another of silver, each the size of a cartwheel…said to represent the sun and the moon.” Tapia’s description is precise, and he captures the dynamics of two major societies about to clash. 

Jesse Trevino's mural portrays the battle between the Aztecs and Spanish forces.  Our Lady of the Lake Library. Photo by Ricardo Romo

Cortes ordered Tapia and two other of his men to place Moctezuma under house arrest following an attack on the Spaniards by  Aztec forces in Veracruz. Tapia captured the moment with precise detail. He described Moctezuma as saying  with all the gravity imaginable: “My person is not one to be taken captive, and even if I should consent, my people would not tolerate it.”  Tapia’s account abruptly ends with Cortes convincing the Spanish forces sent to arrest him for leaving Havana without permission to join his conquering forces. 

That Tapia joined Cortes is not surprising. Noted historian Robert Himmerich y Valencia in his book The Encomenderos of New Spain 1521-1555 observed that Cortes was a native of Medellin, Spain located on the Guadiana River, and ten of the major encomenderos [holders of Indian labor] serving under Cortes came from that same region. Valencia mentioned Tapia as favored by Cortes adding to Bernal Diaz del Castillo’s views  that “Cortes limited his favors to those from Medellin.”  When Tapia married Isabel de Sosa of Medellin, he changed his name to Andres Tapia de Sosa. 

Frederico Vigil's mural portrays a  Hacienda overseer managing a Mestizo worker. Santa Fe Courthouse. Photo by Ricardo Romo. 

In the aftermath of the fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Tapia received an encomienda [award of Indian labor] from Cortes. In the book The Encomenderos of New Spain, Himmerich y Valencia listed Andres de Tapia as a “First Conqueror,”  a reference to those who served with Cortes in the conquest of Mexico.  Valencia wrote that in the early 1520s, Cortes assigned Tapia,  his “close associate and vecino of Mexico City, the encomienda of Cholula [60 miles east-southeast of Mexico City].”  

Tapia’s fortune changed somewhat a few years later when Cortes gave Tapia’s Cholula parcel to the father-in-law of his first wife. However, in 1530, according to Valencia,  Cortes gave Tapia the Veracruz region of  Tuxpan, Papantla with control of at least 60 estancias in the lowlands of Panuco. 

Andres de Tapia’s account of the conquest of Mexico is one of only six eyewitness accounts that documented the fall of the Aztec Empire.  Unfortunately, we lack a fuller understanding of the Aztec perspective of the conquest. Thus, much research remains to be done, and hopefully, with the new technology for ancestor research, that story will also be discovered. 

A San Anto Cultural Arts mural on Brazos Street in San Antonio depicts a pre-Columbian Indian dance. Photo by Ricardo Romo.