Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

Both colonial and modern writers perpetuate the myth of Spanish superiority that dehumanized Indigenous populations and explained Spanish success. This final myth buffers the previous six. Restall presents a “set of antimythic explanations for the Conquest” in his final chapter (132).

The Spanish credited the Christian God with their success in the Americas—a concept that appears in miracle stories, like the tale of the Virgin’s apparition when the Incas besieged the Spaniards at Cuzco in 1537. The Conquest itself thus becomes a miraculous and divinely-inspired endeavor. This idea appears in sources composed by Franciscan and Dominican friars and secular colonial writers alike, thereby legitimizing colonialism. Others claim Indigenous peoples were responsible for the downfall of their societies because of paralysis inspired by their belief that the Spanish were deities. Similarly, Eurocentric perspectives hold that Indigenous people were “backward” and cultureless and therefore submissive, or they were inherently evil and worthy of conquest.

These views are not confined to the 16th century: “[T]hese cultural explanations were also perpetrated in modern history books” (134). For example, Benjamin Keen’s A History of Latin America (now in its ninth edition) credits the secular spirit of the Italian Renaissance with Spanish success and contrasts this attitude with the Indigenous peoples’ supposedly “archaic worldview” (137). Writing is one of the characteristics identified with the European ideal of civilization, and because the Spanish kept written records, they are presumed to be superior communicators. Columbus even claimed that he transported Indigenous peoples to Spain so they could learn to speak, as if they had no ability to communicate prior to his arrival.

Finally, Spanish technology is also used to justify superiority and explain their success in conquest. By the early modern period, Europeans had guns and cannons because of increased contact with the East, where gunpowder was invented. Restall agrees that weapons were not unimportant, but clarifies that “the extreme version of this explanation—whereby weaponry explains everything—has become a modern manifestation of the old superiority myth” (139). Restall suggests that, as academics moved away from the concept of superior “civilization,” they repackaged it with the idea of superior technology in the form of weapons vanquishing simplistic Indigenous peoples. This myth is simply an extension of the myth of a more civilized Spanish society subduing more “barbarous” and “backward” peoples and remains grounded in Eurocentrism. 

In response to these myths, Restall offers “five factors that, in combination better explain the Conquest’s outcomes” (140). The first is epidemic disease. Europeans brought to the Americas diseases (like measles and smallpox) that did not exist in the continents before contact. Europeans thus had some natural immunity to them while Indigenous populations had none, dying in huge numbers as a result of sudden exposure: “Sudden epidemics had immediate impacts on the invasions of the Mexica and Inca empires” (141). Both Indigenous empires were internally weakened by disease and mass death that made defense more difficult.

Disunion among Indigenous peoples also benefitted the Spanish Conquest. As Restall explains, “Native American identity was highly localized; native peoples saw themselves as members of particular communities or city-states” (141, emphasis added), not as the equivalent of a European nation-state. In other words, those who lived as tributary cities under Mexica rule had no common or shared identity. They certainly had no sense of “nationhood” in the modern sense, and therefore had no loyalty toward the Mexica empire or a desire to hold it together against the Spanish attacks. People like the Tlaxcalans, who were subordinated to the Mexica and who had grown to resent their tributary status, were willing “native allies” in the Conquest who played an “essential role.” Indeed, more Indigenous allies took part in the Conquest than the Spanish themselves.

Third, Spanish military technology played a less-significant role in the Conquest than previous scholarship suggests. As soon as this technology, like guns, was introduced, Indigenous people gained access to those weapons as well and used them for defensive purposes. Moreover, weaponry like guns were not that useful because there was little infrastructure that the Spanish could use to move cannons, and the humidity of the climate in parts of Latin America made it impractical to use gunpowder. The steel sword was the weapon that gave the Spanish an advantage because it “was longer and less brittle than the obsidian weapons of Mesoamerican warriors, and longer and sharper than Andean clubbing weapons or copper-tipped axes” (143).

Differences in how Indigenous Americans and Europeans carried out warfare are also significant. The Mexica, for instance, fought to take men captive (who might be used in religious rituals of blood sacrifice) while the Spanish fought to kill. More importantly, Indigenous peoples were on the defensive, fighting on their own lands to save their homes, families, and communities. The Spanish were not and therefore had “nothing more to lose than their lives” (144), making them more agile and adaptable as a result.

The Conquest must also be understood as part of the broader “age of expansion” that extends beyond Europe. It is a phenomenon best understood as part of a global process, because “the age of expansion began with the rise of empires outside of Europe, with the Mexica fanning out across Mesoamerica and the Inca dominating the Andes, and in West Africa with the rising of the Songhay empire from the ashes of that of Mali” (145, emphasis added). Imperialism is therefore not a phenomenon unique to Europe even though Europeans carved out some of the largest global empires in world history. As Restall notes, “We are still living through the long period of uneven encounters and the gradual globalization of resources” (145).

Restall offers a historical example that is illustrative of the major myths and how they function. After the Spanish conquered the Mexica Empire and killed Moctezuma, they controlled Tenochtitlán via a puppet monarch named Caunhtémoc. In 1525, Cortés traveled to the Chontal Mayan city of Itzamkanac, bringing his puppet emperor along, on the way to Honduras. According to surviving Spanish accounts, an Indigenous conspiracy against Cortés involving lesser rulers, including Caunhtémoc, was uncovered. Once arrested and interrogated, the conspirators turned on one another and were executed by hanging. Nevertheless, Cortés’s account “is self-justifying, while that of his biographer [Gómarra] pushes the envelope a little further to glorify Cortés as bold, brilliant, and just” (150). Bernal Díaz, alternately, portrays the affair as a sham and Cortés subsequently remorseful for his unjust actions, so much so that he fell down a set of stairs while wandering about in the night.

Nahua and Maya accounts, in turn, are critical of the Spanish. The Nahua version claims the Spanish “manufacture[d] a native plot,” while the Maya avoids stereotyping the Spanish and Indigenous lords: Restall believes that it “has a ring of verisimilitude to it because it is so devoid of stereotypes. The protagonists are not divided into the noble and the wicked, the brave and the feeble, or the civilized and the savage” (153). These accounts also counter the myth of cowering Indigenous populations post-Conquest, while the existence of such accounts supports the argument that Indigenous societies continued to flourish, even under Spanish domination.

The Spanish accounts propagate the myth of Cortés as a “great man,” but, Restall argues, his actions were in keeping with Spanish colonial practices in which Indigenous leaders were held captive either to be ransomed, manipulated by the Spanish, or killed. This story also exemplifies the myth of the Spanish as a state military force while the contributions of Indigenous allies and African auxiliaries are conspicuously absent. This analysis also reveals the difficulty historians face when presented with conflicting primary sources: “In the end, we cannot be sure there was a plot at all, or who knew of it, or whose initiative catalyzed the incident” (155). Restall’s work ultimately reveals the complexities of history and the importance of comparing evidence, with an eye on contradictions and nuances, in order to get closer to the “truth” in all its elusiveness and complexity.