The outnumbered Spanish conquistadors were able to so easily defeat the natives of South and Central America for many reasons. These reasons include the spread of disease, the fear the Spanish spread, civil war, and the thought that Cortez was a God. The Natives were not immune to the European disease such as smallpox, influenza measles, typhus, plague, malaria, and yellow fever. This wiped out 85-90% of the Native population in 50 years. This was the largest demographic catastrophe in human history. (Document 4: The American Holocaust) The fear the Spanish unleashed to the Natives was immense. The armor the Spaniard’s whore terrified everyone who saw them. The loud clamor they made as they marched also installed fear into the Natives heads.
The passage from Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s The True History of the Conquest of New Spain is a clear example of a narrative source. Díaz is presenting his personal account of Hernan Cortes’s expedition into Tenochtitlan. An interesting aspect of this narrative is that it was written almost 50 years after the events described occurred . Bernal Díaz del Castillo was only 24 years old when on November 8, 1519 he and the rest of Hernán Cortés’s expedition first entered the city of Tenochtitlán . He did not finish his account, titled The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, which many suspect was intended as a slight to Francisco López de Gómara’s accounts of the expeditions , until 1567 . This was not his first travel to the New World, in fact, it was his fourth . Díaz del Castillo was 19 years old the first time he traveled to the Americas, this time was to Panama . Díaz later became a governor in Guatemala, mostly as a reward for his actions as a conquistador . The event that is commonly seen as spurring the not-well-educated Bernal Díaz del Castillo to write of his experiences with Cortés was the publication of Francisco López de Gómara’s Coleccion de historiadores primitivos de las Indias Occidentales, which Díaz saw as seriously flawed and underappreciating the work of the conquistadors . The book this passage comes from languished on shelves until it was published in 1632, posthumously .
Juan Ponce de Leon is most recognized as the Spanish explorer who discovered Florida. However this was not his only achievement or contribution to the Spanish empire. Prior to discovering Florida he helped fight off the last of the Moors in Granada, he prevented the Indians from attacking the Spaniards in Hispaniola, he served as the first governor of Puerto Rico, discovered other geographical features off of Florida’s coast all while never giving up on his quest for gold or to gain the same recognition as Christopher Columbus.
Beginning in the fifteenth century with the arrival of Columbus, natives of the Americas were infected with European diseases that proved to be deadly to the Indians. The population in northern Mexico suffered an immense decimation of 2,500,000 peoples to less than 320,000 by the end of the sixteenth century (Vargas, 30). The Spaniards’ cruel treatment of the natives aided this vast reduction in the Aztec and Mexican population, enabling the Spaniards to conquer the lands of the Aztecs and other native tribes. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Spaniards had expanded their conquests into the southwest region of what is now known as the United States of America.
Bowden’s idea of why this happened focused mainly on the old misunderstood traditions of the tribes living in Mexico. He shows how the friars, churches and icons took the blunt of the revolts force. Bowden points out the religious differences and similarities be...
The Spanish began their movement to Southwest America in the late sixteenth century. From that point on, their influence both on the Native Americans and the environment was extraordinaire. The goal of the Spaniards with regards to the Native Americans was to transform them “into tax-paying Christians.” This is in contrast to the idea that their goal was to eradicate the Indians form the Americas. Consequently, the Spaniards took many Indians so that they may plant their religion in the Natives and to use them as cheap labor. This led many Indians to learn the customs and language of the Spaniards so they could to be able to thrive in the Spanish culture. Thus, some Natives acquired Spanish, which was the main source of their Hispanicization; this was the notion of Indians becoming encompassed by the Spanish society. Furthermore, Indians gradually learned skills, obtained land, and sometimes found Hispanic spouses, thus furthering their Hispanicization. They now began to live in a Spanish manner and blend into the bottom of the Spanish societal ladder. This “acculturation” of the Native Americans was in contrast to the models of early English colonization. Spanish goals and plans sought to involve the Indians so that they may live in their society even if at the lower end of it’s ladder. English colonies viewed the Natives as savages and looked to them for slave labor or to rape their women. They did not plan to take the Indians into their society as the Spaniards did so throughout this era.
Surely millions of people should be able to defend themselves from outside invaders. However, that wasn’t possible for them. By 1900, only 300,000 of the population remained. Around the time the Natives encountered the Europeans, they suffered from diseases and bloodshed. Later on they were forced by the Spaniards to convert to a new religion, Christianity.
them, and little if any was given in return. The people who live among these
The corrido has been identified as having distinctive characteristics that make up its theme and plot. First, the corrido has a “context of hostile relations between Anglos and Mexicans along the border and the establishment of a scenic structure, geographical locale, and opposing social forces” (Mendoza 146). The corrido’s hero “is a hard-working, peace-loving Mexican, who, when goaded by Anglos, outrages into violence, causing him to defend his rights and those of others of his community against the rinches, the Rangers” (Saldívar). This hero “is quickly introduced in legendary proportions and defiant stature” and many people must die before the hero reaches his triumphant, but tragic, demise (Mendoza 146).
The extraordinary good health of the natives prior to the coming of the Europeans would become a key ingredient in their disastrous undoing. The greatest cause of disease in America was epidemic diseases imported from Europe. Epidemic diseases killed with added virulence in the " virgin soil" populations of the Americas. The great plague that arose in the Old World never emerged on their own among the western hemisphere and did not spread across oceans until Columbus' discovery.
Native Americans were abused by Spanish officials when the Spanish invaded their lands. In an attempt to control the attacks of the Native Americans, they enlisted fear into the minds of the Indians.
Native Americans never came in contact with diseases that developed in the Old World because they were separated from Asia, Africa, and Europe when ocean levels rose following the end of the last Ice Age. Diseases like smallpox, measles, pneumonia, influenza, and malaria were unknown to the Native Americans until the Europeans brought these diseases over time to them. This triggered the largest population decline in all recorded history. Fifty percent of the Native American population had died of disease within twenty years. Soon after, Native Americans began to question their religion and doubted the ability of shamen to heal. This was the first step towards the destruction of Native cultures. The Native Americans had never experienced anything like these deadly diseases before and they came to believe that Europeans had the power to kill or give life.
...essfully ran them out of their village. The Natives won their land and way of life back from Spanish rule. The atrocities that the Natives faced was not because they did anything wrong to the Spanish, it was because the Spanish did not respect the indigenous peoples and believed they could treat them in anyway they desired.
Historians use a variety of evidence, such as written accounts from primary sources, in an attempt to reconstruct and understand the true events of history. Primary source accounts are a type of firsthand evidence made by a person at that specific time. Historians think of these accounts as the closest source to the origin of idea under study. When a historian reads A Conquistador Arrives in Mexico, 1519-1520 written by Bernal Díaz and The Diario of Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage to America written by Christopher Columbus, he or she can look at both accounts to verify their accuracy and to find comparisons when considering the Aztecs. The Aztecs were believed to be unorganized, unfriendly, and in need of conversion to people that did not take part in the conquest. When both Díaz and Cortez wrote these accounts they proved that this early American society was indeed not related to the ideas listed above, but in actuality was quite the sight to see. Historians can use these documents to infer that the Aztecs, an early American society, were mistakenly categorized and falsely accused of being uncivilized.
A tall, stately conquistador sat high in the saddle of his blood red, high stepping stallion, its long tail was perched high over his back, the masculine man adorning the magnificent creature sat as if in a rocking chair as the high spirited animal danced about. The conquistador held his stallion firmly by his reins, forcing his steed to step to the side as the rest of the regiment moved along the trail, trudging alone in the balmy heat, he removed his helmet tucking it firmly under his left arm against his body, he located his handkerchief that he had tucked into his left sleeve of his shirt, retrieving the white hanky Carrasco begin dabbing his handkerchief around his forehead and the back of his neck, mopping up the corpus amount of perspiration that was running down the sides of his face and trickling down the back of his neck, gobs of black hair tossed about his head as he dabbed his handkerchief about trying to keep the sweat from running into his armor. Dear God, he thought to himself, this is intolerable, what did I do to deserve such punishment? It is only spring and alrea...