First Steps on New Land

November 8, 1519
The battle that followed our landing on Cozumel was a quick battle with a very primitive army force. The Caciques as they called themselves were not very well equipped for fighting. After they lost, they surrendered and offered food, gold, and maidens to my tired men. We then landed farther north on land and harbored our ships and started to move inward. We passed a tribe around 150 kilometers inland that were not friendly with the tribe that was said to carry the most gold of any other place on this new world. We set up a deal where several thousand of the natives traveled with us to Tenochtitlan. We entered Tenochtitlan on a wooden bridge, over a breach to allow water to flow, that was ten paces wide. Moctezuma greeted us on this bridge with some two hundred lords, all barefoot. They processed in columns and welcomed us into their great city.