Compare And Contrast The Spanish Conquistadors

In 1492, on a search for an Atlantic route to the West Indies, the explorer Christopher Columbus became the first European to set foot in the Americas after disembarking on the island of Hispaniola. The Spanish, who had financed Columbus’s voyage, wasted little time in sending men to settle and explore the newly discovered land. However, the Spanish settlers were not alone; the Americas were already inhabited by indigenous peoples living in complex societies. The Spanish arrival in the Americas led to the collapse of the great Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations and the mass subjugation of the Amerindian population. The exchange of religion, goods, livestock, and disease between the Spanish and indigenous tribes further transformed Native American societies.

The Spanish conquistadors facilitated the downfall of the great pre-Columbian empires and dominated the native peoples.

First, in 1521, Hernán Cortés and a small Spanish army captured the Aztec emperor along with the empire’s capital city of Tenochtitlan. Later, in 1533, another conquistador, Francisco Pizarro, executed the Incan emperor and plundered the Incan capital of Cuzco. The Spaniards’ gunpowder weapons and steel armor easily outmatched the more primitive weaponry of the indigenous Americans, who had a very limited knowledge of metallurgy. Furthermore, after taking decisive control of much of the Americas, the Spanish Crown brought over Iberian legal codes and established a bureaucratic empire, appointing officials and instituting courts. Finally, under the encomienda system, the Crown granted conquistadors large tracts of land and a number of Native American laborers, who were forced to work in plantations or mines. Under Spanish governance, indigenous groups lost a large degree of

autonomy.
The Columbian Exchange introduced a variety of new crops, animals, and diseases to the Americas and affected the social status and lifestyle of Native Americans. Firstly, Europeans brought across the Atlantic livestock such as cattle, pigs, sheep, and horses, along with grains such as wheat and barley. Previously, Native Americans had only domesticated llamas and alpacas; new livestock allowed allowed natives to farm animals, and horses revolutionized the lifestyles of nomadic Plains Indians. Furthermore, the introduction of new crops allowed sedentary indigenous communities to farm more crops than the traditional corn, squash, and beans. Next, relations between Native Americans, European settlers, and West African slaves led to the emergence of racially mixed groups and an elaborate racial caste system, in which Native Americans and their progeny had a very low social status. Finally, European diseases decimated the Native Americans, whose isolation had left them with no immunities, killing about ninety percent of the population.
Although the majority of Native Americans practiced forms of animism, devout Spaniards were determined to introduce Christianity to the Americas. Franciscan missionaries convinced the Spanish government to adopt a policy of converting indigenous peoples to Christianity. The missionaries built cathedrals and syncretized Christianity with the indigenous religions, preaching manifestations such as the Virgin of Guadalupe. However, the missionaries often also used violent tactics to coerce conversion; they smashed idols and punished natives for worshipping traditional deities. After Christianity failed to protect them from disease and invasion, many Native Americans rejected the European religion and returned to their traditional gods. This repudiation of Christianity often led to brutal conflicts between Native Americans and Spanish settlers, such as Popé’s Rebellion in 1680.
Native American society was abruptly impacted by the arrival of Spanish explorers, who introduced new crops, livestock, religion, and disease to the Americas. Spanish conquistadors destroyed the great pre-Columbian civilizations and put many Native Americans into systems of coerced labor. The Spanish conquest had disastrous effects on the indigenous Americans, millions of whom were wiped out by war and disease. The decline of the Native Americans remains an important legacy of Spanish colonialism in the New World.