Leonor Cortés Moctezuma (born c. 1528) was the illegitimate child of Hernan Cortés, conquistador of Mexico, and Isabel Moctezuma the eldest daughter of the Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II.
Isabel Moctezuma was married and widowed four times by the time she was 17 or 18 years old. With the death of her fourth husband in 1527, Cortés, the ruler of New Spain moved her into his palace and, shortly, she became pregnant with her first child. Cortés, a chronicler said, ‘conquered no fewer women than towns.”[1] The relationship between Cortés and Doña Isabel was not a happy one and he married the pregnant Isabel to a subordinate. Four or five months later in 1528 Leonor was born. Leonor was separated from Isabel and raised in the household of Juan Gutierrez de Altamirano. Cortés, however, acknowledged Leonor as his daughter and ensured that her life would be comfortable.[2]
Doña Leonor, bearing the two most prestigious surnames in Mexico, became moderately wealthy. Her father, who died in 1547 in Spain, left her 10,000 ducats and her mother gave her part of her estate, apparently reconciled with her out-of-wedlock daughter.[3] She accepted marriage with Juan de Tolosa, one of the discoverers of the silver mines and founders of the city of Zacatecas in 1546. With her half brother, Luis Cortés, she traveled from Mexico City to Zacatecas in 1550 to be married. Tolosa was a Basque. The colonial aristocracy of Zacatecas was a close knit community of Basques intermarried with Spanish and Aztec aristocracy.
The couple had at least three children. Juan de Tolosa Cortés de Moctuzema, born in the 1550s, became a priest and Vicar of Zacatecas. Leonor de Tolosa Cortés Moctezuma, also born in the 1550s, married into another of the Basque founding families of Zacatecas. Her husband was Cristobal de Zaldivar Mendoza. Isabel de Tolosa Cortés Moctezuma, born about 1568, married Juan de Onate who founded the Spanish colony of New Mexico in 1598.[4] Other daughters, names unknown, are mentioned in the records as being in a convent in Seville in 1604.[5]
The date of Doña Leonor’s death is unknown, although apparently she died, as did her husband, before 1594.[6]