I recently watched two documentaries on the Conquistadors. One was an excellent documentary from PBS entitled The Conquistadors and the other an informative documentary entitled The Roads to El Dorado (from The Secrets of Archaeology series).

It’s such an incredibly sad history. Hernan Cortes was the first of the conquistadors. He managed to get a slave girl who knew both the Mayan and Aztec languages to help betray her people. I can’t help but wonder if you are a slave to your people if it is your people you are betraying? But the Mexican people to this day consider her a traitor and a whore.

It was said that the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II believed that Cortes was the god Quetzalcoatl who had been expelled from Mexico and said he would come back and regain his Kingdom in the same year as Cortes conquered. The film doesn’t say this, but I have read (and it seems likely to me), that this was a Spanish fabrication. (It’s not unlike claiming that the Bible predicts the falling of the temple in Jerusalem and then later discovering the texts referring to the fall of the temple were written after it’s fall and not before. It’s an effective means to cement “believers”.)

Cortes made alliances with enemies of the Aztecs and it was through their help that he was able to destroy a civilization virtually singlehandedly. This is almost unheard of. But the Aztecs didn’t have guns or horses. And the starvation of women and children was not a part of the Aztec idea of warfare. Unfortunately, the Spaniards had horses, guns and the starvation of women and children was part of their warfare. Cortes starved women and children in every village and this was a big part of how he was able to bring the civilization down. It’s no wonder the Aztecs viewed the Spaniards as contemptible people. They were contemptible.

Francisco Pizarro (around 1527) is another famous conquistador whose conquest was the Incas. The Incas worshiped the Sun as their God and were obedient to their rulers. They revered their ancestors and the mountain spirits which gave the Spanish Catholics justification for war - they claimed it was in order to save the souls of the Incas.

The way the Incas saw it - if the Spanish rule Spain and the Incas rule Inca civilization, all is right with the world. But, if Spain tries to rule land that is not their own, it will create disorder and the world will be upside down. The plundering of the lands of the Incas is the greatest plundering raid in history. It is a wonder that the leader of the Incas, Atahualpa, allowed the Spanish to travel freely.

A deal was made between Pizarro and Atahualpa that Atahualpa provide a large amount of gold and the Spanish would leave. Atahuala kept his word and delivered the gold, but Pizarro put Atahualpa on a mock trial - mock because the jury was Pizarro’s brothers. Not surprisingly, they found him guilty of failing to uphold his end of the deal and killed him. These events were beyond belief to the Inca people and the world had indeed been turned upside down for them. For the Incas, this was the end of sacred time and the beginning of profane time.

It is thought that the Incas came from Asia 18,000 years ago. Their territory covered Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia. For the Incas, everything belonged to the state. There was no monetary taxation, but people had to pay a tax in the form of work which is likely how they built their incredible walls and buildings. Yet another great civilization came to an end through the Spaniards.

After the Spanish conquered, Spaniards flooded into Peru in search of gold. The Incas called this the “more syndrome”. “You have enough, why do you want more?” Many were in search of El Dorado which was an Inca myth the Spaniards believed was literally true.

In search of El Dorado, Pizarro took off on an expedition with Francisco de Orellana but Orellana’s ship was separated at the Napo River and Orellana ended up travelling the full extent of the Amazon.

In the sixteenth century, before Orellana arrived from Spain, the Amazon had big, well-organized towns all along it. There were well over 6 million people who lived in an elaborate series of ancient kingdoms united by the Amazon River itself. So what happened to all of these people? Today, there are only 250,000!

Of course, El Dorado was never discovered.

One of the nicer Conquistadors, Cabeza de Vaca, came to Texas (long before it was Texas, of course). He started in Florida where he met the Seminole Indians (the American tribe to never sign a peace treaty with the U.S. government). He traveled on to Galveston Island where he met the Karankawa. These were hunter gatherers and Galveston was their winter residence. The “uncivilized” men shared their food with him. And when he broke down in desparation, they cried with him which made Cabeza de Vaca recognize their common humanity.

The Karankawa saved Cabeza de Vaca to their own detriment because the Karankawa eventually vanished for good. The Spanish didn’t want human beings, they wanted slaves. But Cabeza de Vaca recognized that these people were human beings, not animals. He argued for benevolent rule but failed. He died a pauper and his only legacy is his book of travel.

The Karankawa’s compassion and Cabeza de Vaca’s efforts were not entirely in vain. Catholic Spain began questioning the Spanish conquests and a philosophical debate on the ethics of the treatment of the “New World” was organized by King Charles V. Sepulveda, a famous philosopher and theologian, argued that the conquest was a natural state of affairs. Some people are simply superior to others and so it is just and fair to make of those that are inferior, slaves: “Those whose condition is such that their function is the use of their bodies and nothing better can be expected of them, those, I say, are slaves of nature. It is better for them to be ruled thus.” He said the natives are “as children to parents, as women are to men, as cruel people are from mild people”

Bartoleme de las Casas was a priest who argued that all people of the world are human beings and all are rational and take pleasure in good. He said that the conquests in the New World must be stopped. The torture and genocide of the natives of the Americas and Caribbean (West Indies) was completely unethical and against the will of God.

After the debate, the King ordered that all conquests be stopped. But it didn’t matter, the conquests continued without his approval.