Many of the accounts of the Aztecs that  we have were not written by them. They were written by the Spanish who  conquered the Aztec empire (including Moctezuma’s greeting to Cortés).  What do the Spanish (Cortés and Díaz) find noteworthy about the Aztecs  and their empire? How might their background and social position have  influenced what they saw and described? Did they see everything they  described, or were things described to them by others? Did they think  the culture that they were writing about was lesser than their own or  equal to it? How does the Aztec explanation of the Spanish conquest of  Mexico reinforce yet differ from the Spaniards’ versions? What do you  think explains those differences?