The Conquistadores

• "The first Spaniards to arrive in the New World, the conquistadores, were interested in only one thing: getting rich." (p. 18)
• gold and silver mines, brutality and greed, exterminated native populations
• "In this horrible way, they made possible the creation of a vast Spanish empire in the New World." (p. 17)
• Hernando Cortes, "the most brutal" conqueror of the Aztecs of Montezuma, brought smallpox; Duran Codex image shows Spanish soldiers with rifles and crossbows
• Francisco Pizarro conquered the Incas of Peru
• Hernando de Soto conquered Florida, "the first white man known to have crossed the Mississippi River." (p. 16)
• Francisco Coronado "opened the Southwest of what is now the United States to Spanish settlement." (p. 16)
• "after the era of the conquistadores came to a close in the 1540s, the missionary impulse became one of the principal motives for European immigration to America." (p. 19)