Spanish Influence On Native Americans

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.

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

When the Spanish conquistadors came upon the Incan Empire, they realized that there were bountiful amounts of treasure such as gold and silver, which tempted them to conquer the empire and found their own colonies. Consequently, the conquistadors, led by Francisco Pizarro, fought the Inca and utilized their steel weapons and horses, as well as the smallpox virus to rout their enemies. The conquistadors easily defeated the Inca, who were already fighting a civil war before the Spaniards arrived. In order to legitimize their ruthless killing of the Inca, the Spaniards said that they were ridding God of His enemies and preventing the Inca from insulting His rule. The supposedly religiously motivated clash between the Spaniards and the Inca resulted in the decline of the Incan Empire and the expansion of Spanish rule throughout Central America.

The author gives insight on how many ways the Spaniards used their power to assist in the downfall of the Aztecs. The reason why the Spaniards became victorious, was because the Spaniards were looked upon as if they were gods because of their outer appearance. The Aztecs broke bread and welcomed the Spaniards with gifts and parties. The Aztecs triggered their relationship with the Spaniards by holding a ritual for the arrival of the god which included a human sacrifice. The Spaniards didn’t agree with the rituals and began to despise the Aztecs.

The Aztecs were a very religious group who were disciplined and independent. They were powerful warriors that conquered and raided neighbouring cities. The Aztec were educated and formed defense alliances, but this could not help the Aztec’s society as they were all killed off by the Spanish. This conflict and defeat of the Aztecs was unavoidable. It was unavoidable because of the Spanish’s obsession with gold, god, glory.

These conflicts made it easy for such European foreigners as the Spanish to conquer the local communities. The second vulnerability that Native Americans suffer is that they lacked sophisticated weapons and tools (Cleary, n.d). They were unable to wage war against the European adventurers who possessed better equipment. For instance, the Spaniards were able to conquer American lands because they had access to complex equipment that allowed them to travel by sea and wage war (Cleary, n.d).

Even though this was apart of their culture they still made these enemies because a lot of the people they were sacrificing were apart of different cultures, and groups. This gave them a lot of rival cultures to have to face, and look out for during their time. Considering the weapons the Aztecs had, if the Spaniards were to attack the Aztecs, they could easily have had success because of the amount of enemies the Aztecs created, and the amount of allies the Spanish got because of that. Another thing that caused the Aztecs to have to claim defeat against the Spaniards was their values. If they had not welcomed the Spanish onto their land, a lot could have been

The Spanish conquest on the Mayans was a significant event during the 1500’s. The Spanish conquest brought their military equipment’s that was no match for the Mayan Indians. As the conquest continued to expand throughout Central America there was little unity among other tribes beside the Mayan empire. The reason for this is because they believe that the Spanish were much inferior to their own beliefs and ancestry.

The Aztecs were constantly launching raids to capture prisoners for the enormous number of human sacrifices they conducted. There is important archeological evidence showing that several Indian civilizations suffered violent ends at the hands of other Indian cultures long before the arrival of the Europeans in America. • In effect, the Spanish employed a colonization strategy of "gold and souls. " Converting the native population to Catholicism not only spread the doctrines of the Catholic Church, then under threat in Europe, but could, it was believed, further the control of Indian behavior in the mines and on the plantations.

However, due to the fact that many Europeans and their ancestors had worked with animals and in dirty places, many had already built up strong immunities to new diseases. This resulted in insignificant deaths of Europeans. Therefore, one of the major reasons for the victory of the Europeans over Americans was the biological weapon of diseases. Native Americans were easily conquered by Europeans because of the advantage in development Europe had. The advanced technologies developed in Europe were no match to the old and weak tools of the Americans.

The Spaniards made a big impact in the Americas. They killed many Incas,Tainos, and Aztecs. These populations lost many including their emperors. On the Spaniard 's side they had power by killing Atahualpa and Montezuma they could create colonies and take riched back to their country. The Spaniards weren 't the only ones to look for riches in the New World. Portugal conquered big parts of Central and South

Conquerors also threatened the natives. It was required that the natives accept the Church as the “Ruler”, and if they didn’t, war would be made against them and their family would become enslaved (document 7). The natives in America suffered severely during this time. In Latin America, the Spanish conquerors overworked the Indian natives and treated them harshly. The Spaniards broke apart families and relationships so that they would have limited contact with each other and would be forced to give up their customs.

On the other hand the Aztecs had no horses which was a disadvantage for them. The aztecs had a war club instead of a sword. It was so heavy that the fighter had to use both hands to carry it. The downside it was they could not carry a shield with them like the spanish did to protect themselves . The Aztecs had a spear instead of a halberd.

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).

Cortez’s army knew they were sent to Mexico with order to capture the territory, but if they went back empty handed they knew they would be severely punished, so they desperate to win the battle. Another big advantage Spaniard have is the weapon, they completely took Aztecs by surprise. Some of the firearms included muskets, crossbows, sword, halberd, and the most destructive canons. This naturally feared the Aztecs and gave the Spaniards the victory. Canons were very powerful and could kill dozens at the same time.