Fernando Cortes Conquest

In 1519 conquistador Fernando Cortes and his men, along with their horses and weapons, arrived on the Mexican island of Cozumel off of the Yucatan after sailing months on the Atlantic Ocean from their home country of Spain (Deeds, Meyer, and Sherman, 78). After arriving on Cozumel, they were instructed by the “friendly natives” to go to the Yucatan and then later to an area by the name of Tabasco (Deeds, Meyer, and Sherman, 78). Once arriving in Tabasco, the Spaniards became aware that not all of the natives living in this new strange world would be quite as friendly as the ones on Cozumel. Here the Spaniards were greeted with arrows of resentment by the natives after Cortes explained that he and his men just wanted peace (Deeds, Meyer, and

The natives here “attacked with abandon” and after a “bloody contest, Cortes took the city by force (Deeds, Meyer, and Sherman, 78).” The Spaniards later traveled to the near present city of Veracruz, where Cortes first reciprocated messages to Aztec ruler Moctezuma (Deeds, Meyer, and Sherman, 81). After being invited by Moctezuma, Cortes and his men decided to make the 200 miles journey to Tenochtitlan (Deeds, Meyer, and Sherman, 81). Along the way he gained allied, including the Cempoalans and the Tlaxcalans ,whom were native rivals of the Aztec empire (Deeds, Meyer, and Sherman, 82-83). On November 8, 1519, the Spaniards finally arrived in the city and were stared at in awe by the natives as they finally met Moctezuma (Deeds, Meyer, and Sherman, 85). After exploring the city, Spanish forces slowly began to take control of the city. Examples of this can be seen in the confinement of Moctezuma, the unsuccessful and devastating attack by the Spanish forces in Tenochtitlan during the night ,known as the “the night of sorrow”, and the death of Moctezuma in 1520 (Deeds, Meyer, and Sherman, 87-89). After these occurrences, the Spanish regrouped with Panfilo de Narvaez men and other allied native groups and made their headquarters at Texcoco (Deeds, Meyer, and

As he was led to his execution, “don Carlos was paraded from the inquisitorial jail to the scaffold to the city’s main square bearing the markings of a Holy Office convict (Tavarez, 26).” These executions attacked “a style of rulership that posed an obstacle to missionary evangelism enterprises (Tavarez, 26).” For many Christians, “don Carlos’s execution” was “to be an exemplary punishment to be witnessed by all native neophytes in the city (Tavarez, 26).” Other examples of exemplary punishment” include beginning in 1525 “when the Franciscans expelled the…priests of Texcoco from their temples, which were then demolished”, which in turn later led to the praising of “children from the first Franciscan school in Tlaxcala, who stoned to death a priest who had walked through a crowded market chewing on obsidian blades while dressed as Ome Tochtli, the Mexica deity associated with pulque ,an alcoholic beverage(Tavarez,31).” If these children would have been taught properly by their Franciscan teachers they would have known that this goes against God’s teachings within the Ten Commandments found in Exodus 20:1-17(Exodus