Spanish Motives Dbq Analysis

Spanish Motives play a major role in why the Europeans take advantage of the Indians, use Christianity as an excuse to abuse their authority, and destroy the culture of the Aztecs. The Spanish motives are that of any explorer going on a conquest which is anything of value like gold. The Europeans main goal before the start of this conquest is to conquer and settle, gain gold,silver,and riches, and to enslave the Indian people (Doc. 2). The Europeans do these things even if it destroys the people in their path. The Spanish motives are negative, which results in their attitude toward the people of the New World being even more negative. The Europeans take advantage of and blatantly abuse the Indians. In Document 1 the excerpt talks about how …show more content…
In Document 2 it states, " Brothers and comrades, let us follow the sign of the Holy Christ in true faith, for under this sign we shall conquer." which means they are putting God as the head of the conquest and saying he is the reason for it. They also thought their actions would please God because document 3 talks about how they felt God favored the Spanish nation in the Americas and that is why they never lacked courage and strength. Forcing the Indians to either convert to Christianity or die gives the Europeans a sense of power and control which contributes to them taking over the New World (Doc. …show more content…
A document such as the one mentioned in Document 7 about the ways of the Indians would be of value because it would show us how the Indians before the Europeans took over. Also, if documentation of reports from Europeans living in Spain during the Spanish conquest were around, we would actually know the full effect the conquest had in Spain, the benefits and the disadvantages it had. Evidence such as those would help historians decide what the Spanish Conquest was really all