The Broken Spears

Blurb

The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico is a book by Miguel León-Portilla, translating selections of Nahuatl-language accounts of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. It was first published in Spanish in 1959, and in English in 1962. The most recent English edition was published in 2007.
The English-language title, "The Broken Spears", comes from a phrase in one version of the Annals of Tlatelolco, xaxama[n]toc omitl. According to James Lockhart, this is a mistranslation resulting from confusion between the Nahuatl words mitl "arrow", "dart" or "spear", and omitl "bone"; an alternative translation is thus "broken bones".