Spanish Conquistadors Research Paper

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.

In 1521, Hernan Cortes captured the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, ending the reign of the Aztecs in what is now modern day Mexico. However, does the riches, land, and power gained by the Spanish justify the killing and looting? This vanquishment, as well as the ethical predicament it creates, considerably affected Latin America and Europe. Before we get into the ethical portion of Cortes' conquest, we must first explore the conquest itself.

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

“ 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

The Spanish American war was a product of Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis and the urbanization of America. In 1895, a rebellion broke out in Cuba, as Cuban patriots wanted independences from Spain. Through the yellow journalism, reports of Spain’s cruel military tactics lead to a public uproar in the U.S. However, most of these stories were exaggerated as a form to promote war. After an American battleship, the USS Maine, was destroyed, America was “forced” to start war and stop Spanish occupation. The war lasted from April 1898 till August 1898; through this war we took control over Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the islands of the Philippines. The end result of this war comes to show that the reasoning behind the war has more to do with

Throughout the late 1400’s and the 1500’s, the world experienced many changes due to the discoveries of new lands and peoples that had been never been visited before. The new-found lands of the Americas and exploration of Africa by the Europeans led to new colonies and discoveries in both areas. It also brought different societies and cultures together that had never before communicated, causing conflict in many of these places. While the Europeans treated both the Native Americans and West Africans as inferior people, the early effects they had on the Native Americans were much worse.

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.

Hernan Cortes was a Spanish conqueror. He was born in 1485 in Medellin, Spain. He died on December 2, 1547. He invaded Mexico in 1519, and he conquered the Aztec Empire in 1521. His parents’ names were Martin Cortez and Catalina Pizarro Altamirano. Hernan Cortes was a hero that conquered the Aztec Empire.

The Spanish exploration and colonisation made both a positive and negative impact on Latin America. The arrival of the Spanish explorers to the new world made a big change and they are the reason Latin America looks the way it does today. However these people were ruthless and were the tyrants of the new world. One of Spain’s major foreign policy objectives since the advent of democracy has been to increase its influence in Latin America. Spain has had interest in this area due to historical ties and a common linguistic, cultural and religious heritage (Countrystudies.us, 2017).

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.

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 relationships between the three major settlers and the Native Americans differed in many ways. All the evidence needed is in the seven documents shown. Each of the documents provides insight to one of the three nationalities. It is fair to assume that the English were focused more on friendship, the Spanish set their eyes on the gold, and the French were insistent on converting the Native Americans to Christianity.

Juan de Onate, described as the last conquistador was a great person who led hundreds of families to settle in one of the oldest European colonies in the United States in search of unimaginable wealth. Juan de Onate was born in 1550 to aristocrats Cristobal de Onate and Catalina de Salazar in Vera Cruz, Mexico. Cristobal and Catalina were wealthy Spanish colonists and proud owners of a silver mine in Zacatecas, which is currently located in the north central Mexico. Juan involved himself in safeguarding his father’s silver mines right from an early age. As a child, Juan started accompanying his father in the raids against the Indians. Juan also led many campaigns at his own cost. When Juan was just twenty years old, he started defending and expanding Spanish settlements in the northern part of Mexico by conquering the Indian communities. Although Juan was born in New Spain, he never set his foot on the European land. Juan was a true Spaniard who devoted his life to the church, the king and the expansion of his empire.

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

The progress of Spanish colonization was shaped by several factors involving war, disease, and religion. The main motivation for colonization during this time period were the “Three G’s” - gold, gaining riches and wealth; glory, success during war; and gospel, spreading religion. Spanish colonization has largely impacted Central and South America’s history and culture, which has made them the continents that they are