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Cultural Differences: Similarities Between Spanish And Native Americans

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In the 16th Century, Spain became one of the European forces to reckon with. To expand even further globally, Spanish conquistadors were sent abroad to discover lands, riches, and North America and its civilizations. When the Spanish and Native American groups met one another, they judged each other, as they were both unfamiliar with the people that stood before them. The Native American and Spanish views and opinions of one another are more similar than different because when meeting and getting to know each other, neither the Spaniards nor the Native Americans saw the other group of people as human. Both groups of people thought of one another as barbaric monsters and were confused and amazed by each other’s cultures. But, even though both …show more content…

These differences were also smaller details under the larger ideas of barbarianism, new cultures, and the even bigger idea of inhumanity. The Spanish saw the Native Americans as slaves because they showed to be hard laborers and gave into the Spanish power. The Native Americans had a natural knack for manual tasks, so much that most Spaniards compared them to insects because both insects and Native Americans could do certain tasks that normal humans, such as high class Spaniards, could not. The Spaniards would never do such work as they believed that work was meant for slaves. When the Spanish took over the Aztec capital city, Sepúlveda remarks of how the Native Americans were “oppressed and fearful at the beginning.” The Native Americans were seen as weak willed, for they barely resisted the conquest of their homes. If the Native Americans showed no incentive of retaliating and were better at manual work, it seemed natural to the Spanish that they be enslaved. The Native Americans, on the other hand, saw the Spanish in a different light as well as they watched many Spaniards become obsessed with gold. The Spanish were given Gold as gifts and went crazy just holding it and lusting for more, like savage monkeys. The Spanish, by nature, couldn’t help but become greedy monsters for gold, because in Europe riches were equivalent to power. They could care less about how the Native Americans acquired the gold; all that mattered was that they had it, and the Spanish could take it. These differences in detail are just fragments of the overall beliefs both groups shared, which were barbarianism and inhumanity. Therefore these differences are far less significant than the

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