Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

“The fact that it was Columbus’s voyages, not da Gama’s, that would lead to the changing of world history was not to the Genoese’s credit. His discoveries were an accidental geographical byproduct of Portuguese expansion two centuries old, of Portuguese-Castilian competition for Atlantic control a century old, and of Portuguese-Castilian competition for a sea route to India older than Columbus himself.”

The Genoese explorer, Christopher Columbus, is not an exceptional historical figure. His encounter with the Caribbean was the result of wider historical processes that grew out of the rivalry between the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal. The Portuguese ambitiously explored the Atlantic, colonizing islands like the Azores and Canaries before making their way to West Africa and the Indian Ocean. The navigator Vasco da Gama eventually sailed from Portugal and around Africa, sailing to southern India. This passage debunks the idea of Spanish exceptionalism, exemplifying the theme of The Importance of Historical Context and Processes.

“Yet whether the Genoese explorer is vilified or celebrated as a hero, our Columbus—the one of present-day myth, history, and debate—is not a fifteenth-century man, but a nineteenth-century one, with a twentieth-century veneer.”

Restall argues that modern views of Christopher Columbus are largely the product of 19th-century thought. Writers in the United States rehabilitated Columbus and his legacy while Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants formed fraternal orders (like the Knights of Columbus) that turned him into a heroic Catholic figure. Restall thus speaks to The Persistence of Historical Myths, suggesting that such mythmaking obscures the more complicated reality of historical figures and their times.

“If Columbus is the principal icon of Discovery, Cortés is the principal icon of the Conquest.”

Much historical literature centers Columbus as the “great man” who “discovered” the Americas. Similarly, Hernán Cortés is the “great man” who conquered the Mexica Empire and thus became another heroic and celebrated figure of the Spanish Conquest. Both men, however, were not unique and their accomplishments were the result of larger historical processes.

“Just as prominent conquistadors such as Cortés and Pizarro were not original in their decisions and actions, nor were the Spaniards in their general conformity to the routine aspects of the Conquest employing unique tactics.”

The Spanish used methods in the Americas that they had previously developed in European campaigns. The Conquest thus extended these methods to the Americas. The strategies that conquistadors employed, such as the reading of the Requiremiento that drew on Spanish Islamic tradition, were not original to them or the Americas. Restall therefore suggests that the conquistadors were less innovative than is commonly supposed.

“We are accustomed to legal, armed activity being the monopoly of highly institutionalized national forces. Understanding sixteenth-century Spanish expeditions requires a leap of imagination.”

Restall argues that the Conquest has been misunderstood and misrepresented as a Spanish military effort directly sponsored and overseen by the crown. Early colonial sources, however, do not use the term for soldiers, and the professionalization of the Spanish military was in its infancy. Instead, conquest efforts were private ventures approved by the crown, with the majority of the men who took part in the Conquest not operating as professional soldiers. To view them as such is, Restall claims, anachronistic.

“The spirit of commercialism thus infused conquest expeditions from start to finish, with participants selling services and trading goods with each other throughout the endeavor. The conquerors were, in other words, armed entrepreneurs.”

Restall stresses that it was desire for wealth and power that fueled Spanish conquests. Though the men who took part engaged in military activity, they did not receive direct payment from Spain as professional soldiers would. Instead, they engaged in commercial activity, hoping to bolster their own economic and social standing.

“The varieties of identities, experiences, and life stories in the ‘Indies’ renders the concept of the typical conquistador somewhat nonsensical.”

Demographic evidence suggests that the conquistadors came from a variety of backgrounds, and most had little experience as professional soldiers. Moreover, the Spaniards were always outnumbered by their Indigenous allies and the Africans who took part in the Conquest. There were Indigenous and African conquistadors, as well as Indigenous people who acted as cooks, messengers, and spies in the service of the Spanish. Without these other peoples, the Conquest would not have been possible.

“This spin on the Conquest as a native civil war resulting in an incomplete Spanish domination offers and alternative to the predictably hispanocentric perspective of the Spaniards, and one that is readily found in native sources.”

Spanish colonial documents and Indigenous accounts present overlapping but conflicting views of the Conquest. The Spanish celebrate Cortés for building strategic alliances with Indigenous rivals of the Mexica to topple the empire. Indigenous peoples, however, saw the arrival of the Spanish as a tool they could use to strike back at their imperial overlords, making the Conquest part of larger internal, Indigenous conflicts. This passage speaks to The Erasure of Indigenous Roles in Conquest History.

“That Spaniards expected to have several native or black auxiliaries, and that they considered it a great hardship to go without them, is evidence enough of their important role in the Conquest.”

Spanish primary sources repeatedly mention Indigenous allies and the involvement of Black auxiliaries in campaigns. Though they do not always provide specific numbers or mention names, Restall is able to collect information on some of these specific men, who sometimes became conquistadors in their own right.

“Juan Valiente’s movements and motives thus made him an unexceptional member of the African diaspora that was part of Spanish expansion in the sixteenth century.”

Juan Valiente was a Black conquistador who was born in West Africa, enslaved, and purchased by a Spanish colonist in Mexico who permitted him to participate in the Conquest. Valiente made his way to South America and took part in expeditions in Peru and Chile, received an encomienda, and never returned to Mexico. While his story may appear extraordinary, Restall provides evidence from colonial sources to show that he was one among many Black conquistadors who were born in West Africa.

“Whether in the heart of the Mexica empire or down in the Chilean frontier, the Spaniards were by no means the sole conquistadors.”

The myth of the white conquistador ignores the roles Indigenous Americans and Black auxiliaries played in the Conquest as servants, messengers, spies, and even conquistadors in their own right. Non-Europeans, like the Tlaxcalans, took part in the toppling of the Mexica Empire while Black conquistadors were active in campaigns across the Americas.

“So while 1521 was the end of the two-year war against the Mexica empire, it was the beginning of the wars of conquest in most of greater Mexico and Mesoamerica, wars that would persist into the twentieth century.”

The Spanish Conquest of the Americas was not swift or total. The Spanish had only loose control over Tenochtitlán after the fall of the Mexica in 1521. Evidence shows that the following year they were still working to fortify the city and thus maintain control over it. Meanwhile, the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica and the creation of “New Spain” took years.

“For centuries after the arrival of the Spaniards, the majority of natives subject to colonial rule continued to live in their own communities, speak their own languages, work their own fields, and be judged and ruled by their own elders.”

Restall argues that Indigenous Americans maintained some level of autonomy, even under Spanish colonial rule. They did so through adaptation to their colonial conditions. For example, they adopted and served on Spanish-style town councils, thus continuing to exercise local authority.

“Spaniards thought natives were all firmly ‘under the lordship of the king.’ Natives saw themselves as much subject to their own lords as any distant Spaniards. In their own ways, they were both correct and both mistaken.”

The way the Spanish viewed Indigenous communities under colonial rule and the way Indigenous Americans saw themselves differed. Since Indigenous peoples often exercised some local control over their communities, they often viewed their Spanish overlords as far away and of little significance. The Spanish, alternatively, saw these communities as distinctly under their domination.

“On the morning of 8 November 1519, on a causeway crossing Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico, a unique encounter in world history occurred: Moctezuma met Cortés. For centuries this meeting has been taken as symbolic of the great encounter of continents that was now in its third decade. And with good reason.”

Though the meeting between the conquistador Hernán Cortés and the Mexica emperor Moctezuma II represents a historic meeting of two worlds, it is also representative of culture clash because of the way communications between the two were understood by their respective societies. Spanish sources portray Moctezuma as submissive to the “great man,” Cortés, while the Nahuatl version of the story indicates that Moctezuma engaged in traditional and powerful Mexica polite communication, which the Spanish incorrectly interpreted as submissive.

“Historically, the myth of communication was constructed by the conquistadors and predominated during Conquest and colonial times. The myth was convenient to Spaniards in that claims of communication with native peoples bolstered claims that natives were subjugated, coopted, and converted.”

Many Spanish sources represent the conquistadors as superior communicators. These sources birthed the myth of communication that emphasizes Spanish superiority over peoples who were “uncivilized” in European eyes. Such misrepresentation in the sources leads to The Persistence of Historical Myths.

“Moments like these illustrate the ‘crude pantomime’ to which Europeans and natives in the Americas were often reduced by language barriers.”

Restall describes a recorded account of miscommunication between Christopher Columbus and Indigenous people in the Caribbean, in which the “Indians” repeatedly raise their arms and shout. Columbus assumes this is a gesture of welcome, but an interpreter tells him they are planning to kill him. Such a scene illustrates the challenges of communication that the Spaniards and Indigenous Americans faced when they came into contact. The Dominican friar who recorded this account lambasts Columbus for his failure to effectively communicate, while subsequent historians treat him similarly while praising Cortés’s presumed effectiveness.

“The differences between these accounts—and other versions offering yet further variations—vividly illustrate the difficulties historians have in deducing what ‘really’ happened, in finding ‘something true’ about an event.”

The conflicting accounts of the meeting between the conquistador, Francisco Pizarro, and the Inca emperor, Atahuallpa, illustrate the challenges scholars face when reading primary sources. Historical “truth” is thus not absolute and objective, but frequently subjective and fragmentary.

“[I]n the early decades of the Conquest it was by the sword and compass that the Spaniards most successfully communicated.”

Restall argues that an example of The Persistence of Historical Myths is that historians have overemphasized Spanish effectiveness in communication and the importance of writing in the Conquest’s outcomes. It was, Restall claims, actually the Spanish steel sword and their ability to navigate the Americas that contributed most to their personal successes.

“But by emphasizing ‘loss’ and ‘destruction’ it unwillingly perpetuates a myth that does little favor to the native cultures with which students are supposed to sympathize.”

While Indigenous Americans were subject to devastation, especially by disease, during the Conquest, focusing on this devastation to the exclusion of survival gives rise to the myth of “native desolation.” In the face of destruction, Indigenous communities persisted, preserved elements of their own cultures, and adapted to colonial rule. Vibrant Indigenous communities continued to exist post-Conquest. This passage speaks to another aspect of The Erasure of Indigenous Roles in Conquest History.

“Over the centuries Europeans have imagined and invented the cultural and social breakdown of Native American societies. In its most extreme form, this perspective not only emphasizes depopulation and destruction, but perceived a more profound desolation amounting to a state of anomie.”

The myth of “native desolation” leads to the false perception that depopulation wrought by violence and disease caused Indigenous societies to break down completely after the Conquest. In reality, many of these societies survived and some even flourished under Spanish colonial rule because of Indigenous Americans’ ability to strategically adapt to their lives under the Spanish.

“All of this is ignored by the myth of native desolation, which subsumes into ‘nothingness’ the complex vitality of native cultures and societies during and after the Conquest.”

The Conquest did not result in culture loss, and the myth of “native desolation” ignores the vibrancy of Indigenous societies after the Conquest and the ways they adapted to colonial rule. For example, Indigenous elites, like the Duchisela family in South America, seized opportunities to obtain local positions of power and thus exploit Spanish colonialism to their advantage.

“The opposition of man and native, the civilized and the barbarous, the advanced and the primitive, is seen everywhere, not only in colonial and early modern sources.”

Eurocentric ideals shaped by imperialism and colonialism emphasize the “civilized” nature of the colonizers over those they conquered. This emphasis on Europe as “civilized” and the non-Western world as “barbaric” serves as justification for colonialism, which becomes an altruistic venture as opposed to one based on the desire for access to new sources of wealth and power extracted from the colonized.