Spanish colonization of the Americas

weaker and naïve natives. The European invasion of the Americas was not only a racial cleansing, but a complete cultural subjugation. When European explorers landed in the Americas, they changed everything; natives were impacted through cultural conversion, aggressive…

peace, full of happy souls was now burned and brought to pieces. De las Casas continues and in detail talks about the acts that the Spanish committed; actions such as “slicing open the belly of a man with one stroke…hanging men and burning them alive…snatching babies from their mothers breast and taking them by their feet and dashing their heads against the rocks. The Spanish would enter into the villages and spare not children, or old people or pregnant women, or women with suckling…

1. What was this movie about? How did it relate to other material in this module? Did you know about this topic prior to learning about it in HIST 100? This video is about the Spanish invasion and colonization of Mexico. The main focus was on Cortes and his battle against the Aztec people. This video gave further detailed on the battle tactics that Cortes on the Aztec empire to becoming the ruler of Mexico. In the textbook, similarly, the Native Americans did suffer a similar type of tactical…

century, Mexico was under Spanish ruling and was called New Spain. Spanish monarch forced the indigenous people of mesoamerica to worship their God and follow their religion of christianity. As both cultures fused together, there was a hierarchy of importance based on race. Those on top were referred to as Peninsulares who were Spaniards born in Spain; after that were Creoles, those who were born in New Spain of Spanish parents. Towards…

or raising gardens to grow food. A spanish explorer named Herman Cortes met with Montezuma the emperor and kidnapped him. The Mayan empire is located in Guatemala. Since they have fertile lands it led to one of the Mayans great achievements the slash and burn agriculture because of this achievement agriculture surpluses and population…

although he was Spanish. There was no relation to the Spanish, thus it can be thought as unbiased. (Aztecs Economically Isolate an Enemy explains a…

woman named Huitzitzilin who explains her story to a Spanish monk. The Spanish monk finds her story to be fascinating because it is not what he was taught back in Spain. He sympathizes with her and begins to see the conquest through her perspective. She details the events that her people endured at the hands of Cortes and his Spanish conquerors. The text is organized by chapters as Huitzitzilin reiterates her story to Father Benito Lara the Spanish monk. The author proves and supports their…

The Maya, Aztec, and the Inca have similarities and differences. The Maya and the Aztec might have something in common that the Inca don’t have or vise versa. The Maya lived in the modern day Yucatan Peninsula. The Maya time period lasted from 200 AD to 925 AD. The Aztec lived in the modern day Valley of Mexico. The Aztec time period lasted from 1200 AD to 1521 AD. The Inca lived in Cusco which is located in modern day Peru. The Inca time period lasted from 1200 AD to 1537 AD. The Aztec and the…

is making Moctezuma’s power known, while also showing how his reign is controlled by fear, not by his fair decisions for his people. He continues to portray Moctezuma in a powerful, yet negative light, continuously referring his power to that of Spanish nobility and royalty. From his descriptions, Cortes creates some paranoia in Emperor Charles V and depicts Moctezuma as almost undermining his authority. This context could have been used by Cortes in order to gain support to take control of the…

punished the royal envoy (Conquest of Mexico). This act of moral impurity formed only the basis of Cortés’s justification for subjugating the Aztec natives. Because of the natives' seemingly savage worship and rituals and resistance to Spanish advances, the Spanish were warranted in dominating and enslaving the natives. While the Catholic Spaniards believed in the sacrifice of the Mass, the polytheistic Aztecs believed in the sacrifice of humans for worship. This disgusting behavior validated…