María de Estrada: Difference between revisions

Most of the early sources refer to María de Estrada in general terms among the small number of women who accompanied the army at this time, but a handful of writers of the later sixteenth century single her out as a soldier. The [[Tlaxcala (Nahua state)|Tlaxcallan]] chronicler [[Diego Muñoz Camargo]] wrote that she fought her way out of the city as a [[rodelero]] during the battle, proving herself "as good a warrior as any man", and that she participated in the decisive charge of armored cavalry at the [[Battle of Otumba]]. For their part, historians [[Fray Juan de Torquemada]] and [[Francisco Cervantes de Salazar]] also describe those feats, adding that she participated in the [[Fall of Tenochtitlan|Siege of Tenochtitlan]] along with other women soldiers and nurses, like [[Isabel Rodríguez]], [[Beatriz de Palacios]] and [[Beatriz Bermúdez de Velasco]]. Furthermore, Dominican historian [[Diego Durán]] claims that she led a force of conquistadors into the area around [[Popocatépetl]], where she defeated the [[Nahua peoples|Nahua]] Indians of [[Hueyapan]], charging head first and screaming "[[James, son of Zebedee|Santiago]]!"

 

 

==Academic perspectives==