Cortes ‘turns off’ the sun

by Puk-_-man

I once heard a story about Cortes, who tracked the cycle of eclipses and threatened to ‘turn off’ the sun to initimidate the local sun worshipping population.

How accurate is this story? Have their been any individuals who have used eclipses to intimidate a population?

TywinDeVillena

This a clear case of a mix-up. Hernán Cortés never did such a thing, and thus is not registered in his Cartas de Relación, nor is it present in Bartolomé de las Casas' Historia General de las Indias, or in Bernal Díaz del Castillo's Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España. Also, the trick would have never worked on the aztecs, as they had very good knowledge on astronomy.

However, Christopher Columbus' actually did this with the tainos in 1504, on his last expedition to the Americas. Things were very dire, as Columbus and his crew had been left stranded for months on the island of Jamaica. Half the crew mutinied against Columbus and went rogue, stealing from the native tainos and committing other misdeeds. This only made things worse, just about eliminating any chance of the natives cooperating with the Spaniard. Columbus, "a very educated cosmographer" in the words of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, was aware that there was going to be a lunar eclipse on february the 29th of 1504, knowledge he had from an astronomic almanach by Johannes Müller, better known as Regiomontanus. With this knowledge in mind, he admonished the tainos that if they did not cooperate with him bringing him food and supplies, the christian God would be angry at them and in three days time he would take the Moon off the sky with flames of wrath.

When the third day came, and the night arrived, the moon started to become smaller and red, which intimidated the native tainos, and they asked Columbus if he could talk to his God to make the Moon come back. Columbus, of course, told them that he needed some time, which he used to measure the length of the eclipse's phases. When the eclipse was about to end, he told the tainos that his God was willing to forgive them and give them back their Moon. I will quote Bartolomé de las Casas on this:

[The tainos] as they saw the red colour going away, and the eclipse diminishing, and in the end going away completely, they thanked the Admiral very much, and wondered and praised God's works, and all of them went back to their homes full of joy. And being there, they were not negligent nor they forgot the benefit they though the Admiral had granted them, so they were very careful to supply everything the Spaniards needed, and in abundance, always praising God, and thinking He could harm them for their sins, and that the eclipses they had seen at other times must have been threats and punishments that, for their sins, God had sent them.

Sources:

Casas, Bartolomé de las (1559, manuscript), Historia de las Indias. Digitised here. Modern edition by Paulino Castañeda (1994, Madrid:Alianza).

Fernández Armesto, Felipe (2003), Cristóbal Colón, Barcelona: ABC.

Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo (1535), Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Sevilla: Montesdoca. Modern edition by Juan Pérez de Tudela (1959, Madrid: BAE).

Regiomontanus, Johannes (1485), Calendarium, Venice: Ratdolt. Digitised here

Tena, Rafael (2008). El calendario mexica y la cronografía. México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia