Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Spanish Conquistadors
- Ponce de Leon
- 1513; searched for "fountain of youth"; explored Fl, found lots of flowers & named it Florida
- motives: getting old, looking to revive w/ the fountain of youth
- Vasco de Balboa
- first white eyes to see the Pacific Ocean from the American continent (not panama); he fought the natives & and jungle; proved that there is a Pacific Ocean
- Ferdinand Magellan
- fell out of favor w/ Portugal, went to the enemy and sailed for Spain
- the first to circle the world (crew was bc Magellan died in the Philippines)
- destination: spice islands
- lost 4/5 of boats, took 3 years, went around the tip of South America, Magellan died bc of an argument with locals
- Hernando Cortez
- ambitious, cocky, believed he was the highest authority
- a superior governor grants Cortez permission to explore and then takes it back; Cortez leaves Cuba anyways without permission even though punishment would be death
- his crew starts to doubt him, he burns the ships and eliminates an option of leaving; go on to glory or die here
- governor finds out about him leaving and organizes a plot to kill him
- they find the Aztecs and take over (30,000 Aztecs vs 300 Spaniards)
- spaniards have extremely high motivation
- natives are unexperienced with diversity; white people are walking dead, metal armor looks like skin (shiny skin), lots of body hair; ghosts, demons, gods;
Cortez realizes and plays on this
- spaniards pretend to be magic; thunder is loudest thing NA hear; Cortez claims that he can control nature; guns can kill things without touching; their biggest animal was a deer, sees human riding a horse and thinks its a horse/human; spaniards can control animals too
- ancient aztec ruler claimed he would come back as dead, during same year that Cortez
came, out of a tortoise mouth; Aztecs though Cortez was him
- the mightiest warrior strikes a Spaniard and club breaks against the armor; they are gods
- battle strategies: aztecs and Spaniards are matched in numbers on a bridge to Tenochtitlan, S put the NA who turned S in the front and S in the back; Spanish built boats; the city is infected with small pox and people are weak; the Aztec Empire collapsing;
Emperor Montezuma II of 1519; they took gold and shook the European economy
- translation from spanish to aztec language is through Cortez's mistress who had a talent for language; she made herself valuable to Cortez
- Francisco Pizarro
- 1532; lieutenant of Cortez, gets bored of being rich from Aztec gold, finds Incan Empire
- Incan Empire in turmoil; Pizarro uses same technique as Cortez
- imprisons Emperor Atahualpa, knows he will die, promises that he will fill a room with gold; the spanish cheat the incans, incans fill up room and spanish take some out so they are constantly refilling the
room; gold is decoration to incans while it is wealth and power for Spaniards
- Pizarro kills Atahualpa and mines for gold; Spaniards incredibly rich, Incan gold even better than Aztec gold
- Cabeza de Vaca
- (head of cow, name from ancestors, a head of a cow was placed on top of a hill for spanish victory
- shipwrecked looking for the 7 cities of gold, built small ships, landed in Texas
- 3 men; Cabeza and two others
- wanders into Spanish village, Natives said the 7 cities aren't real; lost in translation, the gold glow off of 7 cities to 7 cities of gold
- Hernando de Soto
- explored Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma
- buried in Mississippi River after being trapped in Tuscaloosa
- vicious and cruel to NA; GOLD AT ALL COSTS
- lots of things in Alabama are named after him which is controversial
- tricked natives and stole from them then burned the village
- not a lot of gold in South East, Natives had very little to give to Spanish, Spanish believed that Natives were holding out on them
- Tuscaloosa is a NA leader; Tuscaloosa named after him; he hears of white devil, traps him, hurts them, releases them
- Desoto and men get sick very easily and start to die
- about to die when get to Mi River
- 2 theories
- spanish: de Soto died of sickness and received proper Spanish burial in Mi River
- NA: attacked de Soto and men, killed a few men and de Soto while some got away, de Soto buried face down in Mi River so soul couldn't escape to afterlife
- truths: de Soto dies near Mississippi River
- ones who escape leave with
gold; leave pigs that go feral
quickly; grew tusks and black
skin from sun
- Coronado
- first white eyes to see the Grand Canyon
- Juan de Oñate
- explored and set up New Mexico, brutal towards NA but determined, controversy over whether he was a hero or a monster