Welcome to Part 3 of our thought-provoking series “Conquest of America” by contributing writer Michal Pawles.
Most of us have heard of the Spanish conquistadors conquering the Maya, Aztec and Inca Civilizations. We can get the impression that the conquest of America was immediate. Several dozen years after Europeans arrived in the new world. The three most powerful Civilizations, which were at a high level of cultural, social and economic development, were conquered by a group of Westerners. But was it really so?
This series of articles explores the Spanish conquest of America, presenting to readers the conquest from the perspective of Europeans and Native Americans, so as to show this period impartially.
If you’d like to start from the beginning, read Part 1 and Part 2.
The Paradox of The Knights of Saint James [Part 3]
Many people looking at the sixteenth-century map of the world may get the impression that the Spanish conquest of America took place at an express pace.
These maps show the vast areas under the administration of the Spanish Crown, shortly after the arrival of the first conquistadors. Today’s people, seeing the territories assigned to a given country on the map, have the impression of modern states in which the majority of authorities and police services are organized.
During the colonial era, the Europeans were unable to effectively control their great overseas afflictions. Because often these colonies were zones of influence, established between the European powers.
An example is the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Treaty of Zaragoza. Europe’s forts and cities were, like the islands in the Pacific, relative to the great expanses of Africa, Asia, and America. The French colony of Louisiana, which occupied one-third of the present United States, was inhabited by 30,000 white people at its peak after 100 years of French colonial rule.
So what was the Spanish conquest process like?
Quick Conquest
The Spanish crown did not take a direct part in organizing, financing, and planning conquest expeditions, but controlled the conquest.
It did so by issuing licenses and contracts for conquest, conferring the title of adelantado (captain-general). The person who wanted to get the licenses was obligated to finance, plan and lead the expedition. The licenses guaranteed the Spanish crown one-fifth of the gains and taxes from the new territories. Adelantado had to follow the conquest procedure stated in the license, otherwise, they could be arrested for not following the agreement. This was done by the conquistadors Sebastian de Belancazr, Hernando Pizarro and Juan de Onate.
In order to fulfill all the terms of the contract, the leaders of the expedition quickly found that the new territories were rich in precious metals and friendly natives. Likewise, Columbus tried to prove that they would reach India (which was written in his contract), Juan Onate, Francisco Montejo, and Hernan Cortes distorted the image of the conquests in order to fulfill the licensing criteria, and lend credibility to the conquest as missions in spreading civilization and the Christian faith.
In ancient Rome there was a Pax Romana (Roman Peace), the Roman authority provided peace and stabilization within the borders of the empire. There was supposed to be a Pax Colonial in the Spanish Empire. The Spanish authority in the conquered territories was not strong enough to create security and peace for itself and the conquered peoples. The Spaniards were focused on the profit and exploitation of the conquered territories, while the local peoples who surrendered to the conquistadors were independent enough to continue to engage in wars against other Indians. The atrocities of the colonizers and the uprisings of the Indians are forgotten. There was a division into Indians allied with the Spaniards and Indians who rebelled.
The Language of Misunderstandings
The next stage to understand the conquest is the clash of cultures.
The Spaniards conquering the civilizations of the Maya, Aztecs, and Inca, already knew that they had discovered new land and new peoples, and they had experience from the conquests of the Canary and Caribbean islands.
For Native Americans living in the American continents, white newcomers were new, and they did not know what to expect from them and what forces were behind them. It would be allegorical if a foreign civilization came to our planet today (who would know a lot about the solar system, but the inhabitants of the earth would not know anything about their place of origin). Such consternation occurred when the first Europeans came to America.
Therefore, the Aztec, Maya, and Inca Lords did not make the decision to immediately attack and destroy a small group of conquistadors.
The great advantage of the Spaniards was the ability to communicate with the local population. They devoted a lot of attention to finding an interpreter. In 1528 Pizarro, off the coast of Peru, they recruited two local boys who were taken to Spain and taught the Spanish language. And in 1531, they were enlisted in a conquistador expedition. However, the translucent ones did not guarantee faithful translations, which led to later misunderstandings, including historical ones. Examples are the saucers, Pizarro and Atahualpa (Atahualpa was the last Inca Emperor), Cortes and Montezuma (Aztec Emperor who ruled during the arrival of the Spanish to his country).
During Atahualpa’s meeting with the Spaniards, the Spanish monk could not explain the meaning of the Bible to the emperor. The monk gave the Bible to the Emperor. For Atahualpa, the Bible was just plain pages, nothing precious. None of the Spaniards explained the value of the Bible to them. The emperor dropped the Bible on the ground because he thought it was worthless. We must remember that the Christian faith, especially the Catholic faith, was very strong in Spain in the sixteenth century. Slandering the holy book was one of the worst offenses. ”After that, the monk rushes to Pizarro and says that Atahualpa is a ‘tyrant’, ‘a rabid dog’ and ‘they should attack him”. This misunderstanding ended diplomacy and launched an attack by 200 armed Spaniards against Atahualpa’s 5,000 mostly unarmed retinues.
Another important event was Montezuma’s meeting with Cortes on the causeway crossing Lake Texcoco. The whole meeting was held in a friendly atmosphere, but it was a pretext for European chroniclers to say that Montezuma believed that Cortes was a god.
Cortés quoted the Aztec ruler’s speech in a letter to the Spanish king, and even if the Spanish chroniclers wrote fairly generally, you can see how the text of the speech has evolved as it passed through the hands of Spanish historians. From the very beginning, in the version given by Cortés, one gets the impression that Moctezuma announced to the Spaniards that his people were always waiting for the arrival of an overseas ruler, and that they recognized that the ruler must be the king of Spain:
Therefore, be sure, Lord, that we will obey You and recognize You as the goal of this great ruler whom you speak of. I will stick to it without errors and frauds. So all over the country, and I speak of the one over whom I reign, I command according to Your will, and every command will be obediently carried out. You can also get rid of all our stuff as you see fit. And since you are at home in the country and at home in September, feel at home and rest after the hardships and battles that you had to fight. ” The emperor then denied that his “houses of gold were built” or that he “was or pretended to be a god”
Gomara (Spanish historian), wrote thirty years later, introducing this iconic speech with an introduction to show that the Mexicans took the Spaniards for gods. The paragraph gives the text a new meaning because Montezuma admits in it that Cortés is not a god-like him, Montezuma, who is “mortal … like you.” A plot introduced by Cortés has developed in the text window, in line with the Spanish label of the return of an ancient ruler or his descendant, which is another step on the way to portraying the myth of Cortés as the returning Mexican god Quetzalcoatl.
Bernal Díaz‘s (Spanish conquistador) version, though written at the end of the 16th century, is also closer to that of Cortés and Moctezuma, according to which his ancestors predicted “that one day Westerners from the countries under assessment would come to conquer and rule over them. their. Díaz mentions nothing about the gods.
The Lords’ Speech
Montezuma’s speech written in Nahuatl:
“O our lord, greet yourselves twice when you come to these lands; you have come to satisfy your curiosity about your altepetl [city-states) of Mexico, you have come to sit in three. not my authority, which I have guarded for you, which I commanded in your name, for your envoys, Messrs. Itzco, Atzin, Montezuma Elder Axayacatl, Tizoc and Ahuitzotl, after they represented you and gave you alte. mexico petl. It was after them that your poor vassal (me) came. Will they return to the place of their absence? If only one of them could see what just happened in my time, what I see now that our gentlemen are gone! Because I’m not dreaming, I’m not sleeping, but I don’t see it in my dreams, I just don’t dream that I saw you, that I looked at your face. I was anxious for a moment, looking for that mysterious place from which you came, amidst the clouds and fog. It so happened that, on the way out, the rulers announced that you would come to see your altepetl and sit on the throne. And now it has come true, you have come. Welcome twice, come to the countryside, enjoy your palace, give your body a rest. Let our gentlemen go this way. ”
We really get the impression that Montezuma, the ruler of the Aztecs, is giving a speech that is submissive. Or maybe this is the impression of Europeans who have not dealt with this civilization before.
In the culture of the Aztecs, Mayans, and other Mesoamerican communities, the language of polite rhetorical phrases was highly developed. Children of the upper class were taught to address in a manner appropriate to their age, gender, social standing, and the circumstances of the encounter itself. It was a variation of Nahuatl called huehuetlatolli (speech of the elders).’’The rhetorical orations were delivered by the king, nobles, and high-ranking elders’’.
One of the trends of huehuetlatolli, which should be used when addressing the ruler, was pillahtolli (the speech of lords, the language of the aristocracy). A historical example of “pillahtolli” is the Gothic language, typical of the Visigothic elite. It’s a dead language now. He wanted to be a communicative language but couldn’t.
Something similar happened with Latin in relation to the Romance languages. Vulgar people chose Romance languages, and Latin became the language of the cultural elite. In this variation, the Nahuatl vocabulary is very extensive with polite prefixes and suffixes, and sentences are arranged according to the rules of indirect and inverse. Therefore, the good-mannered Aztecs avoided showing their emotions and speaking directly. It was an element of good manners.
Therefore, the personality of Moctezuma, who is associated with a ruler who did not care for his empire and brought it to an end because he was too submissive to the Spaniards, is the main propaganda line of the Invaders.
We are forgetting the great role of culture in Mesoamerican civilizations, which was treated as barbaric by the conquistadors. As the Romans and Greeks treated the Iberians (the inhabitants of today’s Spain) Celtic, German and Slavic peoples, and the Aztecs treated the Nahuatl tribes north of Tenochtitlan.
What happened to the Native Americans during the conquest?
This is not the end of the articles in this series.
There will be a fourth article that summarizes what happened to the Indian people during the conquest. This fourth part will end the series THE PARADOX OF THE KNIGHTS OF SAINT JAMES, which briefly describes the course of the American conquest. There are also plans for a series of articles that will describe in detail the conquest of the Aztecs, Inca, and Maya.
Thank you for reading, and f you have any questions or comments, please share them in the comments below.
If you have specific questions on this topic, you are also welcome to email me.
Do you know your Mayan Sign? Get your free report.