Event

Smallpox in Mexico, 1520

A smallpox epidemic spread through central Mexico in 1520 and after; the Spanish and Nahua accounts both record it.

5 links, 5 backed by primary records

How each side tells it

A smallpox epidemic spread through central Mexico in 1520 and after; the Spanish and Nahua accounts both record it.

Connections 5

Bernal Díaz del Castillo 1520 reports how smallpox came According to Bernal Díaz del Castillo Primary record 1
Maxixcatzin 1520–1521 died of smallpox Primary record 2

True History of the Conquest of New Spain According to Bernal Díaz del Castillo Primary record 1
Bernal Díaz says a servant of the Spanish captain Narváez carried the disease. None of the accounts quoted says anyone meant to spread it.
Florentine Codex According to Florentine Codex Primary record 3

Timeline 3 dates

1520–1521 Smallpox in Mexico, 1520
1520 Bernal Díaz del Castillo intervened in Smallpox in Mexico, 1520 According to Bernal Díaz del Castillo
1520–1521 Maxixcatzin intervened in Smallpox in Mexico, 1520

Proof 3 sources

The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, volume 1 (English translation by John Ingram Lockhart, 1844; text via Project Gutenberg #32474), Project Gutenberg (from the translation published in London, 1844), 1844. Primary record
He happened to have a negro servant with him ill with the smallpox, through whom this terrific disease, which, according to the accounts of the inhabitants, was previously unknown in the country, spread itself through New Spain
Letters of Cortés: the five letters of relation to the Emperor Charles V, volume 2 (English translation by Francis Augustus MacNutt, 1908; the Third Letter is dated 15 May 1522), G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London (scan on the Internet Archive), 1908. Primary record
told me how Magiscatcin, who was the principal lord of all of them, had died of that illness, the small-pox
Florentine Codex, Book 12: The Conquest of Mexico (Nahuatl text gathered under Bernardino de Sahagún in the 1500s; English translation by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, second edition, 1975), School of American Research and the University of Utah; the manuscript is on the Getty Research Institute's Digital Florentine Codex, 1975. Primary record
first there came to be prevalent a great sickness, a plague
There was indeed perishing; many indeed died of it.

Page history 1 change