Spanish Conquest And The Conquistadors

In this week’s reading, “Spanish Conquest” by Elizabeth Carmichael and Chloe Sayer discuss the subjugation, ethnocide, and struggle the indigenous population of Mexico endured during the Spanish conquest. The Spanish conquistador, Hernan Cortez, enslave and forced the Aztecs to believe that Christianity was the one true religion. Therefore, the indigenous people were forced to convert their faith through the Spanish missionaries to lose their indigenous roots. Later, the authors explain the many difficulties and conflicts Spanish priest underwent to teach the Christian faith to the Aztecs. The Spanish friar first taught the indigenous people Christianity in Nahuatl. However, there was a debate if teaching the Aztecs in Nahuatl hindered

Q1: A. According to Las Casas, the Spaniards had one influence that encouraged such acts of cruelty and that was greed. The Spaniards wanted gold. As much gold as they could get their hands on. Las Casas stated that by becoming rich so fast, the Spaniards hoped that this would lead to a “rise to a high estate disproportionate to their merits” (3). In order for the Spaniards to attain the riches they desired, they used Indians to do their bidding. The Indians that weren’t killed were forced into enslavement- mining for gold or working the land to provide sustenance for the Spaniards. Though the Spaniards did use some of the Indians for work purposes, Las Casas believed that the kind of treatment the natives endured was unnecessary and evil. Slaughtering thousands of Indians didn’t aid Spaniard's quest to attain gold. Las Casas viewed the Spaniards as living in sin with their greed and lust for spilling innocent blood.

The English were more concerned with finding gold rather than building functioning societies; which were primarily built around biblical teachings, while the Spanish intended for European national power to extend to western civilization beginning with Catholicism and influence of the pope. English settlers were driven from England due to religious practices and perceived themselves as saving the Indians from the Spanish and their tyrannical ways. For the English, owning land would give men control over their own labor and the right to vote in most colonies, and this land possession would show wealth. This new obtained wealth would not only have demonstrated power, but it could also be used to influence a society a certain way to convince others to follow suit. The English believed that their motives for colonization were pure, and that the growth of empire and freedom would always go together, unlike the Spanish.

In the 16th Century, Spain became one of the European forces to reckon with. To expand even further globally, Spanish conquistadors were sent abroad to discover lands, riches, and North America and its civilizations. When the Spanish and Native American groups met one another, they judged each other, as they were both unfamiliar with the people that stood before them. The Native American and Spanish views and opinions of one another are more similar than different because when meeting and getting to know each other, neither the Spaniards nor the Native Americans saw the other group of people as human. Both groups of people thought of one another as barbaric monsters and were confused and amazed by each other’s cultures. But, even though both

Conquistadors: A Conquistador is a leader in the Spanish conquest of the Americas. They were individuals whose weapons, organizational skills, and determination brought them remarkable success. Hernan cortes was a very important conquistador because he defeated the Aztec empire, and took over Mexico for Spain. Francisco Pizarro was an also an important conquistador because he brought over weapons, gunpowder, and horses and he discovered the Incas and then he conquered the Inca empire. Francisco Vasquez de coronado was an explorer and a conquistador who led a large voyage from Mexico to present-day Kansas.

European explorers and conquistadors during the age of exploration were motivated by three things: God, gold and glory. The two most prominent of the three between 1492 and 1607 were gold and glory. Beginning in 1492 gold motivated many explorers, from Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the New World to the Virginia Company’s colonization of America. Gold is a symbol for wealth, and many explorers soon realized the New World’s potential for wealth. The Spanish’s interest in wealth inspired Columbus’s expedition in the first place, as he was sent to India to trade for spices. Columbus reportedly traded pieces of his ship for gold, and was given a golden mask by a native chief. He later said in court (believing he had reached India) “There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals…”. After learning of the untapped natural resources and potential for wealth, European nations created an exploration frenzy, with constant voyages to the new world. The nations which sponsored these expeditions would give the explorers a cut of all the gold they found, which helped motivate conquistadors to make the long and treacherous journey to the New World. These explorers knew gold would bring wealth and power to them and their country, in addition to achieving tremendous glory for both.

Matthew Restall, the author of “Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest,” outlines some of the myths associated with the Spanish conquest and how they have developed over time. One obvious theme that Restall incorporated throughout the entire book was of course myths during the Spanish Conquest, as the book title states. One thing that Restall does, that goes along with the theme of myths, is he picked seven distinct myths to specifically write about. Not only that but the myths Restall chose to write about were heavily elaborated and explained in the individual chapters. His outlined myths are as follows: the myth of exceptional men (chapter 1), the myth of the King’s Army (chapter 2), the myth of the white conquistador (chapter 3), the myth of

After the Civil War, the second Industrial Revolution swept the US and the country began to flourish. Baring the economic prosperity, many Americans grew the urge to expand overseas. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, foreign policy was the hot topic among citizens and government officials. There were two sides to the argument; some Americans pushed for the aggressive foreign policy while others favored for the US to keep their nose out of foreign affairs. Notable figures in government took bold stands for and against foreign affairs. Theodore Roosevelt and William McKinley believed in imperialism, and that the booming US should spread their prosperity to other nations and territories while William Jennings Bryan and Mark

In 1519, Hernándo Cortés, a Spanish Conquistador ventured into Tenochtitlan, the capital of Aztec empire, searching for gold and glory. He set out to conquer the empire and to capture the Aztecs in order to achieve his ambitions. Moctezuma, the highly respected leader of the mighty Aztec Empire, came confronting with Hernán Cortés, the leader of a small band of professional European soldiers from a huge island that lay six day’s sail to the east. In “Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Women in the Conquest of Mexico” and “Mexico and the Spanish Conquest”, Camilla Townsend and Ross Hassig respectively present one histories in their own interpretations of the conquest of Mexico.

The same hostilities were found in New Mexico, Naranjo a priest led a revolt against the Spanish colonists. The natives secretly planned an attack against the Spanish, to their misfortune the secret of their attack was out and impulsively carried out an attack. Spanish priests, women and children were killed, the governor was their next target but he escaped with his life. Under the orders of Naranjo the natives burned the Spanish churches and everything that pertained to Christianity, even seizing cultivated lands of the Spanish back as their own. The natives were tired of the Spanish rule over them and sought to drive out the inhabitants and their faith to restore their religion and way of life once more. Naranjo was captured but declared

In the late 1400's, conquistadors started their first voyages to the “New World”. They sought gold, resources, and to convert any indigenous peoples they came across. The Spanish, the conquistadors were heroes for spreading Catholicism and returning new resources. Yet, from the point of view of the natives and Bartholome de Las Casas, they were villains. The conquistadors massacred the natives; enslaving those who escaped. The conquistadors were no heroes. By the early 1500’s, the Spanish were already conquering more land by killing more natives for gold and greed.

“ It should be kept in mind that their insatiable greed and ambition, the greatest ever seen in the world, is the cause of their villainies.” (Las Casas) The people of Spain used murder and slavery as a means to depopulate the Islands due to their greed. According to Casas, the number of slain Indians is about 15 million in the fourty years that the Spaniards have intruded on the Natives land. Young men and rulers were killed, while women and young children were forced to be slaves to the Christians. At one point some Indians escaped a ship that was going to take them to Hispaniola to be sold as slaves, and the Spaniards sent a ship to voyage through the island for three years to hunt down those who fled. It is astonishing how cruel the Christians were solely for personal and materialistic

Europeans had many effects on the area now known as Texas and on the Indians. Few if any of those effects were positive. The Conquistadors affected the people, the land, and caused the colonization of Texas. They had many motives for their deeds, converting the Indians to Christianity, finding cities of gold, or just claiming land. A Spanish conquistador named Cabeza de Vaca crashed into the mainland near Galveston in 1528 and began exploring the area now known as Texas. He spent about eight years wandering among the Indians. In this time he met, traded, and earned the trust (and) respect of many Indians. De Vaca had a relatively friendly and peaceful relationship with the Indians. Unfortunately he encountered a hostile tribe of Indians who took

In 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas was established in order to evenly divide unclaimed lands between Portugal and Spain. This led to the Line of Demarcation, in which the non-European world was divided into two zones. Portugal had rights to the eastern hemisphere, and Spain had rights to the western hemisphere. This allowed Spain to colonize areas in the New World. Even though they had this opportunity, they were not able to colonize specific areas in North America due to competition with other European countries. Spain fought with countries such as France, England, and the Dutch for control over lands in the New World, because they were all seeking wealth and power. They had even faced the threat of foreign attacks from England. Because of

When thinking of the Spanish Conquest, two groups often come to mind: the Spaniards and the Native Americans. The roles of each of these groups and their encounters have been so heavily studied that often the role of Africans is undermined. As Matthew Restall states in his article Black Conquistadors, the justifications for African contribution are often “inadequately substantiated if not marginalized [as the] Africans were a ubiquitous and pivotal part of the Spanish conquest campaigns in the Americas […]” (Restall 172). Early on in his article, Restall characterizes three categories of Africans present during the Conquest – mass slaves, unarmed servants of the Spanish, and armed auxillaries (Restall 175). Estebanico, the protagonist of The