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Columbus And Conquistadors

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The first gallant adventurers of the New World were daring Spaniards. Fueled by the desire of adventure and riches, Spanish explorers and conquistadors spread throughout the newly discovered Americas like wildfire. It all started in 1492 when the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria shattered through the glass gateway of the Atlantic, which had previously isolated two worlds of people, cultures, and ideas. Christopher Columbus, a Portuguese sailor with a dream of finding an alternate route to India, came to the King and Queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella. After finishing their Reconquista of Spain from the Moors, the couple heard him. They shared Columbus’s vision so greatly, that they rejected the advice of their own geographers. Columbus’s three vessels anchored on the shores of an island …show more content…
It wasn’t long before this flood spilled into the heart of Mexico. The Spaniards rushed toward the majestic Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlán, along with allied Natives from Tlaxcala. Although the conquistadors captured the city, the Aztecs soon chased them out of the city. But, a disastrous smallpox epidemic swept over the city and central Mexico in 1520 and 1521. Seeing weakness, Cortés and his conquistadors again sieged Tenochtitlán and reconquered it. This victory launched an invasion of Mexico by the swift Spaniards. Mexico’s Pacific coast and Michoacán were taken over between 1522 and 1524. In 1524, Cristóbal de Olid and Pedro de Alvarado led incursions into Guatemala and Honduras. By 1532, the advanced Incan empire fell to Francisco Pizzaro’s conquistadors. Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada directed his men in a conquest of the tribes living in the Columbian highlands from 1537 to 1543. The Mayans came next under the Spaniard’s crosshairs, and the invasion of the Yucatán started in 1551. Spain’s mass occupation of the Americas didn’t just include warring with Native Americans,

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