Compare And Contrast The Conquistadors Conquer The Americas

Franciso Pizzaro, a Spanish conquistador, arrived at the capital of the Inca empire with 168 men on November 15, 1532, and within 24 hours of coming into contact with the Incas, 7,000 Inca warriors lay lifeless, and yet not a single Spanish life was shed during the battle. Hernan Cortes accomplished something very similar in the invasion of the Aztec empire. These two conquistadors were able to conquer the Americas with significantly fewer men, killing thousands of Native Americans in Central and South America within hours and unknowingly killing around 25 million Native Americans within a century. Pizzaro, Cortes, and many other conquistadors were able to bring about this through guns, germs, and steel.

The harquebus was an early development

Early Europeans and Cortes had brought over smallpox, which is an airborne virus that causes fever, vomiting, and blisters that cover your body in fluid. One in three people die from smallpox, making it a very deadly disease. Europeans had been exposed to smallpox and had built immunities against it, but the Aztecs' immune systems had never experienced such a virus, making them especially vulnerable to the disease. The Aztec population was reduced to 60% of its original numbers in a span of one year. "Mayan and Incan civilizations were also nearly wiped out by smallpox..., reducing some indigenous populations in the new world by 90 percent or more." (Gunderman,15). Smallpox killed soldiers and rendered them incapable of fighting, which made it very easy for Cortez to take over the Aztecs. Smallpox was such a great weapon for the Conquistadors because you could not see it and it did not affect the Conquistadors. Germs were able to take over the natives because there was no technology that treated smallpox, and its ability to quickly cause death, which left the remaining natives vulnerable to guns and steel because of the absence of the majority of the

Conquistador armor was worn from head to toe and was designed for the European battlefront, being able to resist steel swords and some bows in Europe. The indigenous people, on the other hand, were in the stone and bronze era of technology and had no such weapons to harm the Conquistadors. The natives had stone and wooden axes and clubs and the occasional obsidian knife, which at worst "could batter and bruise Spanish conquistadors, but only rarely did any serious damage through the heavy armor." (Minster, 15). The Conquistadors realized that the armor was excessive and could use lighter chainmail armor when fighting natives. Conquistadors carried lances and swords, which gave them close-range and long-range options. These weapons were sharper, lighter, and more flexible than most others because they were made in Toledo, which was the sword-making capital of the world, and it happened to be in Spain, giving the Conquistadors the highest quality swords. "Men would dress in Jaguar skins or eagle feathers and were very brave warriors. The Incas wore quilted or padded armor and used shields and helmets made of wood or bronze." (Minster, 17). The natives had no armor that would protect them from steel, which made it very easy for the Conquistadors to kill them and overtake the Americas. It would be like slicing