Encomienda in Spanish America

Encomienda in Spanish America

Encomienda ranked among the most important institutions of early colonial Spanish America. Described as a kind of transitional device between the violence of conquest and the formation of stable settler societies, encomienda has been the topic of enormous research and debate among scholars.

Rooted in the verb encomender (“to entrust”, “to commend”), an encomienda was a grant of Indian labor by the Crown to a specific individual. Holders of such grants, called encomenderos, were said to hold Indians in encomienda or “in trust.”

The institution and practice of encomienda originated during the Spanish Christian reconquest of Iberia from the Muslims (718–1492 c.e.), creating an institutional template that was quickly transferred to the New World after 1492. Unlike its Iberian predecessor, encomienda in the Americas did not include land grants, except occasionally in marginal areas.


Instead, it was primarily a mechanism of labor control that also permitted the Crown to maintain the legal fiction that Indians held in encomienda were technically free, were not chattel, and could not be bought or sold. It also served as an effective way to reward conquistadores and others in service to the Crown, including priests and bureaucrats.

The term encomienda was often used interchangeably with repartimiento (“distribution” or “allotment”) during the early years of conquest and colonization, though the two were legally distinct. The later practice of compelling subject Indian communities to purchase Spanish goods, common in the 17th and 18th centuries, was also called repartimiento. Later forcedsale repartimiento had little relation to the institution of encomienda.

The first substantial effort to codify encomienda in the New World were the Laws of Burgos (1512–13), which required encomenderos to “civilize,” “Christianize,” protect, and treat humanely Indians held in encomienda. A vast corpus of subsequent laws, proclamations, and edicts further refined and limited the institution. The practical effect of these laws was minimal.

In practice encomienda was akin to slavery, especially during the early years of the conquests. Abundant evidence exists of the abuses and mistreatment inflicted upon encomienda Indians, who were bought and sold, worked to death, and in other ways treated for all practical purposes as slaves.

These abundant abuses prompted some Spaniards to condemn the institution as unchristian, most prominently the priest Bartolomé de Las Casas, beginning in 1514. In response to this simmering debate, in 1520 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V decreed that the institution of encomienda was to be abolished. In the Americas the decree had little practical effect, as most encomenderos and officials ignored it.

The Crown, concerned that encomenderos not become a permanent aristocracy, continued its efforts to impose strict limits on the institution, culminating in the so-called New Laws of 1542–43, which from the perspective of encomenderos were far more draconian than the Laws of Burgos issued 30 years earlier.

The major features of the New Laws included provisions preventing the inheritance of encomiendas; the forbidding of new grants, requiring royal officers and ecclesiastics to give up their encomiendas; and prohibitions against Indian enslavement for whatever reason.

The New Laws provoked an outcry across the colonies, especially in Peru, where factions of colonists rose in rebellion against them. In 1545–46, three years after they were issued, the New Laws were repealed as unenforceable.

Encomienda nevertheless died a slow death over the next half-century. The principal cause for its decline was not royal decree but Indian depopulation. Grants of Indian labor became moot when there were so few Indians left to grant.

Encomienda lasted less than a century in most areas, enduring into the late colonial period only in peripheral regions such as Yucatán. The transition from encomienda to hacienda (private landownership) was neither direct nor clearcut, and comprises another major arena of scholarly research and debate.

Hernán Cortés - Spanish Conqueror

Hernán Cortés - Spanish Conqueror

Famed for his ruthlessly brilliant leadership in the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Hernán Cortés (Hernando [or Fernando] Cortez) occupies a peculiar position in Mexican national memory, remembered by all but revered by none. A contemporary of Niccolò Machiavelli, Cortés through his exploits in Mexico earned the reputation as one of the early modern era’s most Machiavellian of historical actors.

Born in Medellín, Estremadura, Spain, in 1485, of minor nobility, his mother related to the family of Francisco Pizarro, Cortés studied briefly at the University of Salamanca before opting for a life of militarism and adventure in the recently discovered Americas.

In 1504, he journeyed to Hispaniola, and soon after, from 1511, participated in the conquest of Cuba under Governor Diego Velázquez. His successes earned him a substantial encomienda, sufficient to provide a steady stream of revenue for the rest of his life, though his adventures and conquests had only begun.


In 1518, after much behind the scenes maneuvering by Cortés, Governor Velásquez appointed him to head an exploratory expedition to the Mexican mainland. Over the next three years (1519–21), Cortés revealed the extraordinary courage, ambition, single-minded determination, and political cunning for which he became justly renowned. Time and again, faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, he managed to turn the political and military tide to his favor.

Among his most brilliant maneuvers were his swift recognition and deft exploitation of the political divisions between the Aztecs and their subject polities; his keen perception of the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II’s psychological weaknesses and the stratagems he devised to exploit them; his instillation of a sense of unity of purpose and inevitability of victory among his men; his winning over of members of the Narváez expedition sent by Governor Velázquez to bring him to heel; and his successful representation of himself to King Charles V and the court as a loyal subject acting only on behalf of church and king.

This latter capacity is especially apparent in the five lengthy letters Cortés dispatched to King Charles from 1519 to 1526, reporting on and justifying his actions. After reducing Tenochtitlán to rubble, he continued the conquests, sending expeditions north, west, and south into northern Central America.

Hernán Cortés and the Aztec

His appointment as governor and captain-general of New Spain in 1522 was considered the high point of his life, along with his admission into the Order of Santiago in 1525. In 1524–26, he headed an expedition overland through the Maya zones into Honduras, along the way executing his prisoner, the Aztec lord Cuautemoc, in 1525.

The expedition a disaster, he returned to Mexico City in 1526 only to find that his enemies had gained power at his expense. Journeying to Spain (1528–30), he was appointed marqués of the Valley of Oaxaca by King Charles, who granted him the colony’s largest encomienda (of 23,000 Indians), making him one of the richest men in all of Spain’s dominions.

Upon his return to New Spain in 1530, his enemies again had gained the upper hand, including (from 1535) Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, among others, against whom he spent years in fruitless squabbling and defending himself in a long series of accusations and judicial inquiries.

After embarking on an expedition to the Pacific and discovering and naming California in the late 1530s, he once again returned to Spain in 1540 to continue to press his claims, was largely ignored by the court, and died.

Insights into Cortés’s political and military brilliance during the conquest of Mexico, and his political shortcomings later in life, can be gleaned from his five letters, along with the narrative of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, and a range of other accounts.

Dominicans in the Americas

Dominicans in the Americas

When the first wave of Spanish explorers and invaders came to the Americas, they were accompanied by a few clergy who served the sailors and military personnel as chaplains, but none of any note belonged to the Dominican order.

However it was a Dominican bishop, Diego de Deza, who first sponsored Christopher Columbus at the Spanish court and afterward took credit for Spain’s opportunity to claim the West Indies. In 1508, the master of the Order of Preachers, Thomas de Vio (also known to history as Cajetan), called for 15 Dominican friars to be sent from the University of Salamanca in Spain to the island of Hispaniola (modern Haiti and Dominican Republic).

The first four friars arrived in 1510 at Santo Domingo and quickly made that stronghold their base of operations. They learned the indigenous language and proceeded to minister to both Spaniards and the local people. It did not take them long to become critical of the treatment of the natives by the Europeans.


These early friars refused the comfortable accommodations that were offered to them by the colonizers and instead moved into a simple hut where they began to share in communal life and common prayer and give support to each other’s ministry of preaching. Dominican criticism of the Spanish who were forcing natives to labor in mines and on estates is recalled in a number of early sermons aimed at colonists, soldiers, and representatives of the Crown.

In 1512, Dominicans traveled back to Spain and brought their criticisms of the Caribbean encomendero system and its human rights violations directly to King Ferdinand V. Certain compromises with the Crown were put into effect in the form of modified laws that gave natives some protection, putting an end to child labor, as well as the exploitation of Native women.

The conversion to the Dominican order of a Spanish secular priest in the Caribbean, Bartolomé de Las Casas, proved to be instrumental in the struggles of the church against Native oppression. Bartolomé had come with the conquerors in 1502 and was given a huge portion of land to administrate, sharing in the fruits of Native exploitation and forced labor.

In 1524, he took on the Dominican habit and gave up his estates in Cuba. Through his writings (particularly Historia de las Indias) as well as his preaching and ministry, Bartolomé became an advocate for justice in the Spanish colonies.

Dominican professors of theology like Francisco de Vitoria (1485–1546) at Salamanca in Spain had argued against slavery using Thomistic principles to support the case for basic human dignity. Francisco was one of the first to condemn the conquest of Peru by Francisco Pizarro, promoting instead a pastoral evangelization of the region.

Francisco de Vitoria is best known for his treatises Relecciones de Indias and De jure belli. Julián Garcés, the Dominican bishop of Tlaxcala in New Spain, along with Las Casas and other friars sent petitions to Pope Paul III to become an advocate for the rights of natives in the Americas.

This resulted in the 1537 bull Sublimis Deus. In it Paul III wrote, “The Indians are truly men, and are not only capable of understanding the Catholic faith, but according to our information they desire exceedingly to receive it....” This opened the door for continued missionary activity in Central and South America as well as the islands.

Antonio de Montesinos was among the first party of Dominicans to land in North America, near Georgetown, South Carolina, in 1526. They build a small church, San Miguel de Gualdape, and a temporary settlement where the expedition’s leader, Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón, was to die a few months later. He was buried there.

The following year de Montessinos abandoned the settlement and returned to the Caribbean where he was assigned by the Crown as protector to the natives of Venezuela. After some 15 years of service to the community in Venezuela, Friar Antonio was murdered by a Spanish officer in 1540.

The Maya and North America

The Dominicans also sent missionaries to the Mayans. Luis Cancer, who served the community of Hispaniola as a young friar, was assigned in 1521 to the mission of San Juan in Puerto Rico. In 1542, he left San Juan to join Bartolomé de Las Casas among the Maya in Guatemala.

The two friars learned the Mayan language and attempted to cooperate with the natives, delivering the message of the Gospel in the land the Spanish referred to as La Tierra de la Guerra (the land of war). Struggles between the Maya and Spanish had been ongoing in the region since the arrival of the invaders. Las Casas and Cancer even succeeded in translating Bible passages into Mayan song.

Friar Luis traveled unescorted into their lands and was said to have been welcomed by the Mayan people. Cancer next traveled to Florida in 1548 accompanied by a native woman and translator from the island of Hispaniola named Magdalena. She had been converted to Christianity by the Dominicans.

The party landed on the west coast of Florida and Magdalena went ashore with Friar Diego de Tolosa and an oblate named Fuentes. Both of the Dominicans were killed and Magdalena was never found. The following year Luis Cancer was murdered near Tampa Bay during an effort by his landing party to make contact with the natives.

Earlier expeditions to North America by Hernando De Soto in 1539 had resulted in battles between natives and some 600 Spanish soldiers near Mobile. Three Dominican chaplains had accompanied the voyage that sailed out of Havana.

De Soto continued with his troops along the coast of Louisiana and ventured into parts of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas. The excursion ended in 1543 with Juan Gallegos being the only friar to survive. Subsequent Dominican missions to Florida were attempted in 1559 and in the early 1560s.

The first attempt by Tristán de Luna y Arellano and a talented Mexican preacher named Domingo de Salazar was abandoned for lack of food and terrible weather conditions. They were followed by Gregorio de Beteta, a former companion of the martyred Luis Cancer. The mission met with mixed success.

Dominican foundations in Mexico had been highly successful as they were able to enlist both friars trained on the Continent as well as colonial Europeans born in the New World. They were reluctant however to accept Mesoamerican natives or even recruits of mixed blood. In 1526, they established a house in Mexico City.

By 1555, the province of St. James in Mexico counted some 210 friars residing in 40 houses. In the fall of 1528, Dominicans developing southern missions reached the town of Huaxyacac (modern Oaxaca). Among the friars making that journey were Father Gonzalo Lucero and Bernardino de Minaya.

A royal patent letter from Charles V bestowed upon Huaxyacac the rights of a city and it was given the name Antequera. They begin building the first Dominican priory there and dedicated it to St. Paul. By the 17th century, there were more than 70 priories functioning in the province of St. Hyppolitus in the Oaxaca area.

It took more than 50 years fully to complete construction of a magnificent new priory named after Santo Domingo. In 1623, Santo Domingo became a university offering degrees in theology and philosophy for both secular and religious clergy.

Peru

Missionary work in Peru was initiated by the Dominicans when Vincent Valverde arrived in 1531. The Dominicans were successful in ministering to the Indians of Peru decades before Franciscan evangelizers. By 1544, the Dominican province in Peru had 55 members. Two of the most famous saints of Peru were Dominicans.

Saint Rose of Lima (1586–1617) was a Creole and member of the third (lay) Order of St. Dominic. Rose spent most of her life as a contemplative, living at her parents’ home, wearing a coarse habit and living the vow of perpetual virginity. Her life was devoted to prayer, penance, and fasting. It has been recorded that she slept on broken glass, potsherds, and thorns. She also constructed a crown of metal spikes and wore an iron chain about her waist.

Later in life, Rose retired to a small cell in the garden of her home where she spent her simpulan days in prayer and mortification. Visions, revelations, and divine voices were visited upon her. Rose’s death was reputedly followed by numerous miracles and in 1670 she was canonized by Pope Clement X.

Martín de Porres (1569–1639) was another famous Dominican saint of Peru. He was a mulatto from Lima, son of a free black woman and a white noble father. As a young man he received training as an apothecary (druggist), surgeon, barber, and physician. His skills were used to serve the poor.

He became a lay associate of the Dominican monastery of the Holy Rosary and later joined the community as a lay brother. He spent his life healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and attending to abandoned children. Martin was also reputed to have the gifts of visions, mystical experiences, miraculous healing, and even bilocation.

Interestingly, Saint Toribio, the arch-bishop of Lima, and St. John Massias (also a Dominican lay brother) were contemporaries of both Saint Rose and Saint Martín in Peru. The Dominicans maintained both urban and rural Peruvian missions, monasteries, and schools throughout the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.

The conquest of Colombia by Spain in 1536 and its eventual unification with Venezuela in 1549 produced the Audiencia of New Granada. This quickly became the domain of Dominican missionary activity. However unlike their efforts in Mexico and Peru, the Dominicans began to develop small missions and schools rather than monastaries.

By 1569, there were 40 small missions (or doctrinas); some 18 priories were also established. One of the leading Dominican figures in New Granada was Saint Louis Beltran (1526–81), who converted thousands of Natives to Christianity.

The running of schools and universities was among the special talents of the Dominicans. At Lima and in Mexico City universities were founded in the 16th century. In Guatemala the Real y Pontificia Universidad de San Carlos was recognized in 1676.

Universities were also founded in Bogotá (1627), Quito (1688), and Santiago, Chile (first as a college in 1619 and then as a university in 1684). Faculties included studies in logic, history, physics, philosophy, mathematics, theology, and canon law.

Early on, the Jesuits had begun to compete with the Dominicans in Latin America for students and had founded rival universities and colleges in Bogotá, Quito, Bolivia, and Santiago. During the 18th century, the Dominicans succeeded in establishing a university at Havana (1728), which was raised to the title of Royal and Pontifical University in 1734.

The end of the 17th century saw a rise in the number of Dominican foundations for women. There were 22 houses in Mexico City, 10 in Puebla, and a male monastery outside Oaxaca that was turned into a convent for Dominican nuns. The education of Spanish, Creole, and Indian women was undertaken in a number of these convents.

There were also separate convents for the education of the daughters of native chiefs (caciques). Indian women were rarely denied admittance to the Dominican order. The creation of female houses followed throughout the 18th century with convents established at Corpus Christi in Mexico (1724), Cosamalupan (1737), and Oaxaca (1782).

Bernal Díaz del Castillo - Spanish Historian

Bernal Díaz del Castillo - Spanish Historian

Author of one of the most widely read and important chronicles of the conquest of Mexico, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain (originally published in 1632; English translation published in five volumes in 1908–16), Bernal Díaz del Castillo was born in Spain in 1492, the son of magistrate Francisco Díaz del Castillo and María Díez Rejón.

Journeying to Panama in 1514 with a military expedition led by Pedrarias Dávila, he then went to Cuba and participated in two initial reconnaissance expeditions of the Mexican gulf coast under Francisco Hernández de Córdoba and Juan de Grijalva. It was his experiences in the subsequent expedition of Hernán Cortés in 1519 that provided him with the raw material from which he penned his classic chronicle many years later.

Lauded especially for its direct and plainspoken style—and criticized for its pedestrian rudeness—Díaz’s True History provides an intimate and unvarnished look at the conquest of Mexico from the perspective of a common foot soldier.

Among the most oft-cited portions of his chronicle are those describing the Spaniards’s first sighting of the Aztec island-city of Tenochtitlán, the entry of Cortés’s army into the basin of Mexico, and the initial meeting between Cortés and Moctezuma II. Also frequently quoted is his remark on the mingling of religious and economic motives that propelled the Spanish conquests in Mexico and beyond.


Intending to honor his fallen comrades, he wrote: “For they died in the service of God and of His Majesty, and to give light to those who sat in darkness—and also to acquire that wealth which most men covet.” This was a remark that the 19th-century historian William Prescott described as “a specimen of that naïveté which gives an irresistible charm to the old chronicler.”

statue of Bernal Díaz del Castillo

After the fall of Tenochtitlán, Díaz went on to accompany Cortés in his ill-fated trek across Central America, and later served under Pedro de Alvarado in the conquest of Central America.

It was from his encomienda in Guatemala in the late 1500s that Díaz (who was, by his own description, an infirm, deaf, and blind old man) brought to completion his True History, begun years before and finished largely as a rebuttal to other chronicles of the conquest of Mexico that incensed him because he regarded them as filled with inaccuracies.

Contemporary English translations have pruned many redundancies and excised many superfluous passages, trimming the original five volumes down to one and making The Conquest of New Spain one of the most gripping and popular accounts of one of the most consequential episodes in world history.

Bartolomeu Dias - Portuguese Explorer

Bartolomeu Dias - Portuguese Explorer

Bartolomeu Dias, sometimes spelled Bartholomew Diaz, was an explorer for the Portuguese. He is best known for being the first European to round the southern tip of Africa, thereby establishing a sea trading route between Western Europe and Asia.

Very little is known about Dias’s early life. Unproven tradition holds that he descended from one of Prince Henry the Navigator’s pilots. In the early 1470s, Portugal expanded trade with Guinea and other parts of Africa’s western coast.

In 1481, voyages were ordered to ascertain the southern boundary of the African continent and stake claims. In 1487, Dias was ordered by King João II to reach the southern end of Africa to determine whether ships could reach Asia by sailing around Africa.

Dias’s fleet of three ships, which left in August 1487, reached Walvis Bay on December 8 and Elizabeth Bay on December 26. Storms prevented him from proceeding along the coast during January 1488, so he sailed out of sight of land for several days. When he turned back toward land, no land was spotted. He turned north and sighted land on February 3. Dias unknowingly rounded the southern tip of Africa.


It was clear India could be reached by sailing around Africa, so Dias turned back. Little is known of the return journey or of his reception by King João II. After his return, Vasco da Gama was authorized to continue along Dias’s route by King Manuel I, whom Dias accompanied for a time.

On his return to Portugal, Dias commanded a ship that was part of a fleet commanded by Pedro Cabral. However, Dias did not survive the journey, as he died on May 29, 1500, near the Cape of Good Hope.

Hernando De Soto - Spanish Explorer

Hernando De Soto - Spanish Explorer

There is no accurate record of when Hernando De Soto was born in Spain, but historians believe it was in 1500. Being from a poor community, De Soto looked to the New World to make his fortune.

He left on February 25, 1514, for Castilla del Oro (present-day Costa Rica and Panama), where he served under Pedrarias Dávila. In 1524, he was involved with the conquest of Nicaragua. During this time, he and Hernán Ponce de León became partners and became two of the richest men in Nicaragua.

From 1524 to 1528, De Soto was involved with the exploration of the Pacific coast of South America financed by Francisco Pizarro, Diego de Almagro, and Hernando de Luque. It was in 1528 that the expedition made contact with the Incas.

When Pizarro launched his expedition into the Incan lands, he was in need of ships. De Soto and de León had a ship that Pizarro hired along with both men. The expedition set sail in December 1531. At that time, the Incan Empire was in the midst of a civil war and Pizarro used this to his advantage.


Although his army was significantly smaller (a few hundred against hundreds of thousands), the Spanish army was technologically superior. Especially important to the Spanish were their mounted lancers led by De Soto, who repeatedly routed the Incan soldiers in battle.

Pizarro eventually captured the Incan emperor and after his ransom was paid, killed him. When the loot was divided up, De Soto came away with the third largest amount. Still, what De Soto really wanted was to govern his own territory in the New World, but Pizarro was not inclined to give him any territory to govern.

De Soto returned to Spain in 1536 with most of the gold and silver that he and de León had accumulated. De Soto used his new wealth to live well and get married. He was also admitted to the Order of Santiago. Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, granted De Soto the right to conquer Florida in 1537 and made him governor of Cuba. De Soto would have to pay for the expedition, but would receive land in the area as payment.

De Soto launched his expedition from Havana, Cuba, in May 1539, and landed on May 30 at Tampa Bay, where the expedition remained until mid-July. De Soto moved north, fighting battles with the local natives and looting their villages. He spent the winter of 1539–40 in the area of present-day Tallahassee.

On March 3, 1540, De Soto and his men started northeast passing through Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. At that point De Soto turned west and his men became the first Europeans to cross the Appalachian Mountains. The expedition then moved through Georgia and Alabama, finally ending near Columbus, Mississippi. They stayed there through the winter of 1540–41.

The next year De Soto and his men continued west, and in June 1541 they became the first Europeans to see the Mississippi River, which they called the Río del Spirito Santo. They crossed the river on June 10 and continued west into Arkansas. De Soto’s scouts pushed farther west as far as the edge of the Great Plains.

The expedition spent the winter of 1541–42 camped in the area of modern-day Little Rock, Arkansas. It was during this winter that De Soto realized there was no great civilization in this area on par with the Incans or Aztecs, and that he was financially ruined. In spring he fell sick, and on May 21, 1542, he died. His body was dropped into the Mississippi River.

The remainder of the expedition explored eastern Texas before returning to the Mississippi River. From there they built barges and floated down the river to the Gulf of Mexico. Then they sailed along the coast until they finally reached a Spanish settlement in Mexico in September 1543.

With De Soto’s death, de León sought to recover money he said De Soto owed him. De Soto’s widow fought these charges in court, but the decision of the court was not recorded.

Cuautemoc - Aztec Defender

Cuautemoc - Aztec Defender

Young cousin of Aztec emperor Moctezuma II, married to Moctezuma’s daughter, and the son of Ahuitzotl, Moctezuma’s uncle and the previous Aztec emperor, Cuautemoc assumed command of defense of Tenochtitlán after Hernán Cortés and the Spaniards killed Moctezuma and laid siege to the island-city in June 1521.

He had been a lord of Ixtatecpan and royal eksekutif of Tlatelolco, the “fifth ward” of Tenochtitlán. His name has come to be associated with implacable resistance to the Spanish invasion.

His decisive leadership during a catastrophic period in Mexican history is often contrasted to the vacillating stance taken by the emperor Moctezuma. This is seen, for example, in the Codex Ramírez, which has Cuauhtémoc denouncing Moctezuma for his weak leadership immediately prior to the latter’s death in June 1520, an event that preceded the Night of Sorrows in which the Spaniards were forced to flee the island-city.


After the siege of Tenochtitlán began, and despite a raging smallpox epidemic and severe shortages of water, food, and other supplies, Cuautemoc refused negotiations and did everything possible to prevent a Spanish victory.

According to one account, during the darkest hours of the siege he delivered the following speech: “O Brave Mexicans ... remember the bold hearts of the Mexica–Chichimeca, our ancestors who, though few in number, dared to enter this land and to conquer it.... Therefore, O Mexica, do not be dismayed or cowardly. On the contrary, strengthen your chests and your hearts ... and ... do not scorn me because of my youth.”

After the Spanish had reduced Tenochtitlán to rubble, they captured Cuautemoc and brought him prisoner before Cortés. “I beg you to end my life” were his reported words to the victorious conquistador. Cortés instead installed him as a figurehead emperor, imprisoned him, and designated lesser notables to take charge of the day-to-day maintenance of the island-city.

His empire in ruins, Cuautemoc did everything he could to lessen the suffering of his surviving subjects, supervising the repair of the city’s water supply and other tasks crucial to the health and well-being of the people.

Cuautemoc -Statue

Because he and his men were hungry for gold, which they were convinced was hidden somewhere, Cortés had Cuautemoc tortured so he would reveal its location, tying him to a pole, dipping his feet and hands in oil, and setting them aflame. The tortures crippled Cuautemoc for the rest of his life.

A prisoner of the Spanish for four years, Cuautemoc died in 1525 at the hands of Cortés, who had him hanged on the pretext of his fomenting rebellion during the latter’s ill-fated overland expedition to Honduras.

His memory among Mexicans remains strong, as evidenced by reports of his remains’ being found in Guerrero state in 1949, and by naming practices, most notably Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, a leading political figure of the late 20th century and son of Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas.

Francisco Vásquez de Coronado

Francisco Vásquez de Coronado

Francisco Vásquez de Coronado was the Spanish explorer who led the expedition looking for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola rumored to be located in south-western North America. Coronado served in the entourage of Antonio de Mendoza, Spain’s first viceroy to Mexico.

He served as governor of New Galicia from 1538–39, when he was named the commander of the expedition Mendoza was putting together to look for the Seven Cities of Cibola. The expedition spent 1540–42 looking for the cities, but did not find them. After the expeditions returned to Mexico, Coronado faded into obscurity and died in 1554.

Born into a wealthy family in Burgos, Spain, in 1510, Coronado decided to go to the New World to make his fortune. He arrived in Mexico in 1535 as part of Mendoza’s following, where he was appointed as governor of New Galicia in August 1538. New Galicia was a frontier outpost on Spain’s northernmost border of Mexico.

During the preceding years, rumors had circulated in Mexico of a fabulously rich kingdom of seven cities called Cibola in the American Southwest. In 1539, Mendoza determined to send an expedition into that area to find the Seven Cities of Cibola, and he named Coronado to command the expedition.


The expedition set out on April 22, 1540, and headed where the first of the cities was supposedly located. Arriving on July 7, Coronado discovered only an unimpressive pueblo village. Attacking the village Coronado was knocked out by a stone and almost killed, but was saved by two of his officers.

The Spanish eventually captured the village, and Coronado made the pueblo his temporary camp from which he sent out parties to scout the surrounding area in hopes of finding Cibola.

These parties scouted a large part of the American Southwest and were the first Europeans to see the Grand Canyon. In November 1540, the main body of the expedition caught up with Coronado. He then moved his base camp into the valley of the Rio Grande in December, where they spent the winter forcing the local natives to give them food and warm clothing.

The expedition set out again in spring, leaving camp on April 22, 1541. They moved east into Texas and then southwest. They picked up a local guide, who told them of rich kingdoms to the north. Coronado sent most of the expedition back to the previous winter’s camp and headed north with a small group of horsemen to try to find these kingdoms.

The rich villages turned out to be Wichita Indian villages made up of grass huts along the Arkansas River in what would become Kansas. Finding no gold, Coronado returned to his camp. In December 1541, Coronado was thrown from his horse under another horse and nearly killed. The following April, Coronado decided to return to Mexico.

Upon returning to Mexico, Coronado lost his governorship and was charged with incompetence and mistreating the local natives. He was cleared of both charges but never held another command or office. He died in 1542.

Christopher Columbus

Genoese navigator and explorer, most renowned for his voyage to the Americas on October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón) ranks among the most important actors in the early modern era. His encounter with the Americas ranks among the most consequential events in world history, placing Old World and New into sustained contact with repercussions that are still being felt today.

Sometimes erroneously credited with the notion that the Earth was spherical and that sailing west would permit reaching the Far East, Columbus was but one of many European navigators in the late 1400s to hold such views.

His fame is not based on his pursuit of an original idea, but on his dogged determination, despite many setbacks, to achieve his goals, combined with the striking good fortune to be the first to reach the Americas and return with evidence of a world that hitherto had lain beyond the ken of Europe.

As a youth Columbus followed his father’s trade and worked as a weaver, also spending some of his time at sea. In 1475, in his early 20s, he journeyed to the eastern Mediterranean. The following year he arrived in England.


Settling in Lisbon in 1477, he married and became enmeshed in the heady world of Portuguese navigators, who at that time were in the forefront of European efforts to reach India and China by sea and thus skirt the Muslim-dominated lands of the Middle East.

Adopting the conviction, widespread among experienced navigators, that uncharted lands lay west across the sea, Columbus for several years tried and failed to secure the patronage of King João II of Portugal for his exploratory venture.

Rebuffed in Lisbon, Columbus took his scheme to the court at Castile, the largest and most powerful of the Spanish Christian kingdoms, and at that time in the selesai stages of expelling the Moors from Iberia. After eight years, his persistence finally paid off, when Ferdinand V and Isabella I of Spain, flush with their victory over the Moors in Granada, agreed to patronize the scheme of the Genoese navigator.

Setting sail from Palos, Spain, on August 3, 1492, Columbus commanded three small caravels: the Santa María, which he himself captained; the Pinta under experienced navigator Martín Alonso Pinzón; and the Niña under Vicente Yáñez Pinzón.

After replenishing supplies in the Canary Islands, the convoy headed due west from September 6 to October 7, changing course to southwest at the suggestion of Martín Pinzón. Quelling a small mutiny on October 10, Columbus and his convoy sighted land on October 12, probably Watling Island in the Bahamas.

claiming the land for Spain

Erecting a cross, planting a flag, and claiming the land for Spain, Columbus christened the island San Salvador. He also interrogated the natives about the source of the gold ornaments they were wearing. As in subsequent expeditions, gold was paramount in the litany of marketable commodities from which Columbus and his subordinates were seeking to profit.

After exploring and charting neighboring islands, on October 27, the convoy sighted Cuba, and on December 5, Hispaniola. Earlier, in late November, in an act of insubordination, Martín Pinzón took the Pinta east in search of the island of Babeque, reputed to be a source of gold.

Columbus did not see Pinzón again until January 6, 1493, when they reunited on the north coast of Hispaniola. On December 20, the Santa María and Niña sailed into Acul Bay on the north coast of Hispaniola. On December 24, in the midst of Christmas Eve celebrations, the Santa María drifted onto a coral reef and was destroyed.

Interpreting the wreck as a sign from God, Columbus used what remained of the Santa María to create the rudiments of the first European settlement in the New World, which he called Villa de la Navidad (Christmas Village).

Leaving some 40 men behind at Navidad, Columbus linked up with the Pinta under Pinzón, and together they continued exploring the north coast of Hispaniola. On January 15, 1493, Columbus decided to return to Spain. After a brief and unexpected stop in Lisbon, he, Pinzón, their crews, and six native Taínos sailed into Palos, Spain, on March 15.

Received at the court with great pomp and majesty, Columbus was granted a coat of arms and other high honors, including being named Admiral of the Ocean Sea as stipulated in his contract. Less than two months later, on April 29, his letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella describing his discoveries was published in Italy, and within the year was circulating widely throughout Europe.

The overall effect was electrifying and distinguishes Columbus’s voyage from others who may have reached the Americas before him. Its political impact was also immediate and profound, ratcheting up the competition between Spain and Portugal in particular.

Fortunately for Spain, Pope Alexander VI declared Spain’s right to claim all new lands west of a north-south line 100 leagues (less than 500 kilometers) west of the Azores, into which all of the Americas fell. In 1494, the line was modified, to the benefit of Portugal, in the Treaty of Tordesillas.

Columbus made three subsequent voyages to the New World in 1493, 1498, and 1502, making many additional discoveries, none of which, however, compared to his first.

During this period, his reputation at the Spanish court declined markedly, as he proved a great explorer and self-promoter but a very poor direktur of the numerous settlements he had founded. Indeed in 1500, the newly appointed governor of Hispaniola sent Columbus back to Spain in chains in consequence of the colony’s dismal conditions.

Until the end of his days, Columbus was convinced that he had reached the East Indies, while the scramble for lands and resources that his discoveries initiated forever transformed the face of Europe, Africa, and the Americas.