“I must now speak of the skilled workmen whom Montezuma employed in all the crafts they practices beginning with the jewellers and workers in silver and gold and various kinds of hollowed objects which excited the admiration of our great silversmiths at home” (pg 230).
This sentence stood out to me because it shows the authors credibility. On the page before this sentence, the author describe the ways the Indians made human sacrifices and also describes how they kept meat eating animals and fed them with the human sacrifice’s meat. The author uses the words like “horrible”, “monstrous” to show her/his disgust towards the customs. The author even wrote “…when the lions and tigers roared…and the serpents hissed, it was so appalling that one seemed to be in hell.” Using the world hell to describe a place shows how the author had a strong dislike of the Indian’s customs and ‘pets’.
But even thought the author didn’t like their customs, the author didn’t show any bias towards them and still talked about the good things about the Indians. In the sentence above the author is basically admiring the craftsmanship and skills the Indians had. The author wrote “… hollowed objects which excited the admiration of out great silversmiths at home.” The author believes that the Indian’s skills were so amazing and beautiful that their work will make the Europeans workers jealous.
The fact that the author is able to explain both the negatives and positives of a culture without showing any bias towards that culture, makes the writing more reliable and real.
I do agree with your statement of the author being believable about his narrative because he does show both sides of life in Mexico as positive and negative. I believe that the story emphasized the negative just a bit more than the positives. I think probably the sentence of “when they drove us out of Mexico and killed over eight hundred fifty of our soldiers, they def those beasts and snakes on their bodies for many days” would be an example to narrow down how overall in the end they got betrayed. This example also can explain how food was human beings itself and didn’t matter what you ate. It can show how this was a nation of survival of the fittest as it is explained that people would kill and eat and use other peoples body parts for a use of living. But with your choice of statement it can reveal how unique this piece of land was to him and his people for it can only enhance their knowledge for prosperity.