carry out. More than 400 Spanish died,
along with thousands of their Native
American allies, and many horses and
weapons were lost. Still more were lost on
July 7 when the new emperor, Cuitláhuac,
Montezuma’s brother, caught up with
them at Otumba. Yet Cortés defeated a
much larger force there and managed to
reach safe terrritory in Tlaxcala.
Despite the disaster of Noche Triste,
which he viewed only as a setback, the
unstoppable Cortés remained determined
to conquer the Aztec. He reorganized his
army and brought in reinforcements from
Veracruz. He built up an army of 200,000
Native American allies, drawn from those
who hated the Aztec. Sailing ships called
brigantines were built for an assault on
the lake-bound capital.
The march on Tenochtitlán began.
Cortés first seized outlying cities and
then laid siege to the capital for three
months. A smallpox epidemic, introduced
by the Spanish, raged within the city.
On August 13, 1521, the emperor
Cuauhtémoc—successor to Cuitláhuac,
who had died of smallpox—was captured,
and Tenochtitlán fell.
Cortés razed the city, and on its ruins
he built Mexico City, capital of the new
colony of New Spain. Colonists flowed in
from Spain to make it the greatest city in
the Spanish American empire, with
churches, palaces, a printing press built in
1535 (the New World’s first), and a uni-
versity in 1551.
The Native Americans of the Aztec
Empire were made to swear allegiance to
their new Spanish overlords, just as they
had once done to their Aztec overlords.
Native Americans who had worked for
the Aztec now worked for the Spanish,
who introduced the same encomienda
system that had reduced the Caribbean
peoples to virtual slavery. Under Nuño de
Guzmán, who replaced Cortés as ruler in
1528, abuses against Native Americans
were common, from rape of women to
branding of slaves.
Some priests, such as Juan de
Zumarraga, Mexico’s first bishop, did
what they could to alleviate Native
American suffering, founding schools and
convincing King Charles I to replace
Guzmán. But the priests’ main priority
was to root out Aztec religion and replace
it with Christianity. Despite their efforts,
some old traditions blended with the new,
and subtle forms of resistance sprang up.In statues of Roman Catholic saints,
Native American sculptors sometimes hid
figurines of the old gods and goddesses.
As for Cortés, his personal triumph
did not last long. The Spanish crown
feared he was becoming too powerful, so
they ordered him out of office and back
to Spain in 1528. He never regained the
governorship and bickered constantly
with the court over his rights. More expe-
ditions followed for Cortés—to
Honduras and the Pacific coast of
Mexico—but his star had faded, and he
died in retirement near Seville.A SPANISH EMPIRE
With the conquest of Mexico, there
seemed to be endless possibilities for
empire in the New World. In the years that
followed, Spanish conquistadores acted
exactly as if there were no limits. In Peru,
Francisco Pizarro conquered yet another
empire, that of the Inca. The Caribbean
became a Spanish sea, Central America a
Spanish land-bridge, and colonies sprout-
ed from California to Chile. By the early
18th century, Spanish America was a thriv-
ing entity: centrally controlled but full of
potential for disunion; ripe with extremes
of rich and poor; and blending Spanish,
Native American, and African peoples and
traditions.Pizarro and the Inca
Like Cortés, Francisco Pizarro (ca.
1476–1541) was a daring and unscrupu-
lous man of little money but gentle birth
(illegitimate, in Pizarro’s case) who came
to the New World to seek his fortune.
After arriving in 1510, he served under
Balboa in Central America and, in 1519,
settled in Panama, which he used as a base
for exploration to the south. Eager to fol-
low Cortés’s example of conquering an
empire, he was thrilled to learn in his trav-
els of the existence of the Inca Empire, a
vast and wealthy state based in Cuzco,
Peru, that governed millions of people
throughout the Andes. With royal back-
ing from Charles I and fewer than 200
men, Pizarro sailed from Panama in 1531
and landed in Peru in 1532.
Like Cortés, Pizarro was aided by an
epidemic of Spanish-introduced small-36 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY
Francisco Pizarro (Library of
Congress)Atahualpa (Library of Congress)“Be advised that I, being
free, do not have to pay
tribute to anyone, nor do
I believe there is a king
greater than I.”
— Atahualpa