THE QUEST FOR EL DORADO 69
these great empires. At least four other factors con-
tributed to that outcome:
- Spanish fi rearms and cannon, although
primitive by modern standards, gave the invaders
a decided superiority over Aztecs and Incas armed
with bows and arrows, wooden lances and darts,
slings, war clubs with stone or bronze heads, and
wooden swords tipped with obsidian points. Even
more decisive for the Spanish was the horse, an
animal unknown to both Aztecs and Incas, who
at least initially regarded it with awe. The Spanish
cavalryman, armed with lance and sword, clad in
armor and chain mail, had a striking force com-
parable to that of the modern tank. Time and time
again, a small Spanish squadron of cavalry routed
a much larger number of Aztec and Inca warriors. - Diseases, notably smallpox, unwittingly in-
troduced by the invaders, became effective Span-
ish allies. To give one instance, smallpox raged in
Tenochtitlán during the Spanish siege of the city,
killing King Cuitlahuac and many Aztec soldiers
and civilians, and thereby contributed to its fall. - The Spaniards were Renaissance men with
a basically secular outlook, whereas their adver-
saries represented a much more archaic worldview
in which ritual and magic played a large role. Cer-
tainly the conquistadors were in part inspired by
religious zeal. For the Spanish, however, war was
basically a science or art based on centuries of Eu-
ropean study and practice of military strategy and
tactics. For the Aztecs and the Incas, war had a large
religious component. The Aztec method of waging
war, for example, emphasized capturing Spaniards
and dragging them off to be sacrifi ced to their gods
instead of killing them on the spot. Aztec and Inca
warfare also included elaborate ceremonies and
conventions that required giving proper notice to
a people targeted for attack. The Spaniards did not
limit themselves with such conventions.^4
(^4) One exception was the Requerimiento, or Requirement,
a document designed to satisfy Spanish royal conscience.
It contained Spanish demands that must be read before
making war. For the farcical use of this document, see
Chapter 4.
- Internal division was a major factor in the
swift collapse of these empires. Hatred of the Aztecs
by tributary peoples or unvanquished peoples like
the Tlaxcalans explains why they formed a major-
ity of Cortés’s forces during the last struggle for
Tenochtitlán. In what is now Peru, the confl ict be-
tween two claimants of the Inca throne and their
followers played directly into Pizarro’s hands. Also,
the Inca Empire was a mosaic of states, some quite
recently incorporated into the empire, and the for-
mer lords or curacas of these states, eager to regain
their independence, rallied to the Spanish side. All
too late, they discovered that they had exchanged
one oppressor for a worse one.
Thus, these sophisticated, highly organized
empires fell to the Spaniards because of the supe-
rior armament and decimating diseases brought
by the latter, the differing worldviews of the two
peoples, and the internal divisions within the em-
pires themselves.
The Quest for El Dorado
FAILURES IN NORTH AMERICA
From its original base in the West Indies and from
the two new centers of Mexico and Peru, the great
movement of Spanish conquest radiated in all di-
rections. While Spanish ships were launched on the
waters of the Pacifi c to search for the Spice Islands,
land expeditions roamed the interior of North and
South America in quest of new golden kingdoms.
The North American mainland early attracted
the attention of Spanish gold hunters and slave
hunters based in the West Indies. In 1513, Ponce
de León, governor of Puerto Rico, sailed west and
claimed a subtropical land to which he gave the
name La Florida. His subsequent efforts to colonize
the region ended with his death. In the 1520s an-
other expedition, ineptly led by Pánfi lo de Narváez,
met with disaster in the vast, indefi nite expanse of La
Florida. Only four survivors of the venture, among
them its future chronicler, the honest and humane
Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, reached Mexico safely
after a long, circuitous trek over the plains of Texas.
Cabeza de Vaca’s tales of adventure, with their
hints of populous cities just beyond the horizon,