Accounts of historical events often vary depending on who is telling the story or which side is being favored. This short essay discusses the events surrounding the initial contact of the Europeans with the American Indians and briefly tackles the issues raised by a couple key documents. Further elaboration of one issue about the conquest is presented in the second half of the paper.
Initial impressions
As far as I can remember, my idea about the “discovery” of Mesoamerica by the Spaniard has been of a superior race coming over a new land to improve the lives of the people here, teaching them to read, count, and pray. The Europeans have always been pictured as the bearers of “civilization” and that they came to “tame” the “savages” and introduce to them religion. From hindsight, I can see that these initial impressions were filled with a lot of misconceptions. I was surprised to learn about the Conquest from the point of view of the American Indians.I did not realize that the initial contact was very violent; nor the fact that the American Indians had their own system of governance. They were already civilized. They had their own belief systems and were certainly not in need of any “taming.” The Europeans were clearly outsiders who attacked the American Indians and encroached into their lands.
Issues about the European expansion
Leon-Portilla and de las Casas raised the issues of dominance and power perpetuated by religion in their works about the Conquest. The disrespect for culture was also pointed out in the narratives. The Spaniards were welcomed by the Aztecs but instead of returning the favor, the Spaniard Cortes and his crew stole all the gold that they can find and committed barbaric acts towards the indigenous people.
Leon-Portilla provided a detailed picture about the cultures of the indigenous peoples of Mexico up to the time the Europeans arrived. He gave a vivid account of how the Spaniards were treated by the American Indians. The Aztecs and other indigenous groups believed that the newcomers were descendants of their gods, thus they treated them well and even the nobles bowed down before the Spaniards. The Aztec king Motecuhzoma said to the Spaniard Cortes “Our Lord, you are weary. The journey has tired you, but now you have arrived on the earth. You have come to your city, Mexico. You have come here to sit on your throne” ( Leon-Portilla II-333). The Spaniards assured the nobles that they came in friendship but then they held the king captive and stripped his palace of treasures, particularly of gold. The seized everything of value, and the Mexicans were very scared of them (Leon-Portilla II-334).
Bartholome de las Casas, a Bishop there wrote his personal account of the things that the newcomers did. He said that “the Spaniards never received any injury from the Indians, but that they rather reverenced them as Persons descended from Heaven” (de las Casas, 2). The Acts of the Europeans had also desecrated not only the valuable sites but also the culture of peoples who have a fully developed civilization flourishing for centuries way before the first Spaniard stepped on Mexico’s shore.
Relevant issue about the Conquest
Religion is the most dominant issue about the Conquest. It was the Aztecs’ religious beliefs that led to their defeat by the Spaniards. They believed that Cortes was their god Quelzatcoatl and his companions were other gods too (Leon-Portilla, II-324). According to legend, Quelzatcoatl, who the Aztec might have envisioned as tall, with white skin and dark beard, would come back on earth as this was his previous home (Prescott). The Aztecs showered Cortes with gifts and were very subservient to him. This legend was a very important part of the Aztec cultural tradition which favored the interests of the Spaniards
Religion was likewise maximized by the Spaniards to further their interests and to continue to subdue the people of Mesoamerica. When Cortez was declared governor in 1522, a year after he defeated the Aztec, he requested the King of Spain to send priests to Mexico to undertake evangelization work. Cortes declared that “the aim of his expedition was the extirpation of idolatry and the conversion of the native people to the Christian faith” (qtd. in Moises, 24).
The function of religion in society and how it has evolved in Mesoamerica was extensively discussed by Moises. He claimed that the encounter between the Aztecs and Spaniards was an encounter of two cultures. When analyzed from a religious perspective both Aztec traditions and Christian traditions placed importance on symbols. For the Aztec, it was the plumed serpent of Quetzalcoatl “which has the same evocative force as the Crucifix for Christianity” (Moises, 23). Just as the Aztecs’ religious beliefs shapes their social decisions, the new religion introduced by the Spaniards was used to control social order in Mesoamerica.
Works Cited
Delas Casas, Bartolome. A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Project Gutenberg. Web. 10 Apr. 2013.
Moises, Alfonso. “Religion in Mesoamerica.” International Journal of Humanities and Social Science 2.8 (2012): 20-33. Web. 11 Apr. 2013.
Leon-Portilla, Miguel. The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Boston: Bacon Press , 1992. Web. 11 April 2013.
Prescott, William H. “History of the Conquest of Mexico.” Masterplots, Definitive Revised Edition (1976):1-2. MagiOnLiterature Plus. Web. 10 Apr. 2013.
