The Dead Warrior Society
Exploring history's greatest soldiers, warriors, and armies throughout the ages. The Dead Warrior Society uses contemporary accounts of what actually happened from those who saw it as well as scholarly research.
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The Dead Warrior Society
They Tried To Eat the Conquistadors
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In this episode of the Dead Warrior Society, we dive into the brutal clash between the Spaniards and the Tlaxcalans and challenge one of the most persistent myths in the history of Mesoamerican warfare.
You’ve heard it before: that native armies fought to capture, not kill. That their goal was ritual, not destruction.
But what if that’s wrong?
Drawing on firsthand accounts and battlefield realities, this episode breaks down what actually happened when the Spaniards marched into Tlaxcalan territory outnumbered, surrounded, and under constant attack. This was not a controlled effort to take prisoners. This was a fight to the death.
We examine the intensity of the combat, the use of ranged weapons, the collapse of the “ritual warfare” narrative under pressure, and the sheer difficulty of maintaining formation against overwhelming force. If the Tlaxcalans were trying to capture the Spaniards, the evidence doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
Instead, what we see is something far more familiar—and far more dangerous: a determined effort to kill a foreign enemy that refused to break.
This episode takes a hard look at revisionist interpretations and asks a simple question:
When men are being cut down in front of you… are you really trying to take prisoners?