The document discusses seven myths of the Spanish conquest, including the myth of the "great men" like Columbus, Cortes, and Pizarro conquering empires alone, the myth that the Spanish conquest was a clash of civilizations rather than involving native allies, and the myth that the Spanish crown directly organized and financed the conquests from the beginning.

1. Shai Borwick-Cooper
The Seven Myths of Spanish Conquest

2.  The number seven has almost mystical qualities and has
deep roots and symbolic significance in the history of the
Americas, both North American and Spanish.
 The origin of the myth of Mexica included a tale of
descent from seven lineages who emerged from seven
caves in a mythical location in Mexico’s north.
 The medieval law code that was the basis of law during
the Spanish conquest period was called Las siete partidas
or the seven items.
 There was rumored to be seven cities of gold in Cibola,
which was the name given to northern South America
before it was invaded, as well as what is now south west
United States.

3.  Eye witness accounts of any historical event is bent through the
prism of their culture and language. Furthermore the happenings
of an event are not what the witness saw but what he
remembered.
 From the day that Plato set out to bust the myths of his day,
modern science and historians have placed myth and history as
being opposed to one another, with myth being a construction of
fictional events and history as a reconstruction of the truth.
 When Bernal Diaz first saw Tenochtitlan he was in awe of the city,
later he tried to write down his thoughts, but he used as his frame
of reference his experience as a European
 Today we have a better understanding of the conquest because of
source documents from other involved at the time.

4.  How could so few men overcome so many?
 The myth goes that there were a few exceptional men, at the
vanguard stands Columbus, Cortes and Pizarro.
 Columbus, discovered the Americas, without this would Spain
have had an empire? The answer is of course no, but
Columbus based all of his actions off of a mistake, he thought
that the world was smaller than it actually was.
 Cortes and Pizarro each explored the hinterland and
discovered the Aztec and Inca empires accordingly. Would the
Spanish Empire been able to grow without explorers? The
answer is no.
 To use the “great men” myth in it’s absolute form would be to
ignore other men that did exactly the same things as these
three, but due to circumstance were not recognized. Francisco Pizarro
 Finally the methods used were not pioneered by these three
“great men” but were standard modus operandi for explorers
of the time.

5.  When the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores
conquered New Spain in the Americas they were
usually outnumbered by the thousand. The stories do
not mention the Native allies or the black
conquistadores that accompany them. These usually
outnumber the white conquistadores by the thousand
as well.
 The Spanish managed to insert themselves into the
local politics and pit one nation, or kingdom against
another. This is known as divide and conquer.
 When we read native narratives of the conquest we
There were some black
find that it is considered a local war between nations conquistadores that
with the Spaniards taking an important but secondary accompanied the
role. Spanish
 There are also many black conquistadores dispelling
the myth of the “White Conquistador” doing
everything by himself.

6.  The King and Queen of Spain did not organize or
finance these expeditions to the Americas, they did
however grant licenses to would be conquistadores,
who could then be the ruler of these areas that they
conquered in return for 1/5 of the profits that were
realized from the endeavors.
 If the conquistador did not hold up his side of this
contract he could be thrown into prison or fined and
the contract would be taken from him and sold.
 The reports from the conquistador had to convince his
patron that the land was worth conquering, and so the
myth of completion where the whole of the continent
was under Spanish rule very soon after it began.
 This was of course not true, in fact there were several
Columbus Greeted by King
kingdoms and lands such as Tayasal (captured in 1697),
Ferdinand and Queen Isabella
that remained free for centuries after the conquest. Upon His Return to Spain from
the New World

7.  There are four different accounts of the death of the Aztec king
Cuauhtémoc. Two very similar in Spanish by Cortez and his
biographer Gomara. Another by one of the party named Diaz, this
account is not the same as the first two. An account is by a Nahua
nobleman. Finally there is the account of the Mactun Maya.
 The Spanish account tells about Cortes finding out about an alleged
plot among the Mayan to kill the Spanish. The leaders are arrested
and tried and executed. Diaz however writes that the leaders are
arrested, interrogated and executed.
 The Nahua account Cortes initiates the discovery of the plot, that the
kings were joking among themselves when Cortes arrests and
executes them
 The Mactor Maya account has their king reporting to Cortes about
alleged threats from his Indians that are part of his party. He is taken
and killed by Cortes.
 Looking at all of the accounts it is difficult to know which account is
true.
 This is part of the myths that have been propagated over the Monument to
centuries by the conquistadores and the historians. Cuauhtémoc in
Veracruz, Mexico