Extending Spain’s Empire to the North 23world empire. During the 1530s, the monarchy
forced all of the leading conquistadors, including
Cortés, to surrender their military commands. The
new governors were obliged to confer with the
Catholic archbishop and an advisory council of
prominent colonists.
Much of the work of implanting Spanish civiliza-
tion was undertaken by Catholic missionaries. Like
theconquistadores, Spanish friars built their first mis-
sions in the largest Indian villages and towns. In an
effort to “love their neighbor,” as Christ enjoined,
they sought to save as many Indian souls as possible.
But when some Indians held tight to their own gods
and beliefs, missionaries destroyedkivasand temples,
banned Indian dances and games, and outlawed
polygamy. When Indians resisted, the friars called on
Spanish soldiers to arrest the rebels.
By the 1570s the Spanish had founded some
200 cities and towns, each with a central plaza that
included a town hall and church and precisely rectilin-
ear street plans. They had also set up printing presses
and published pamphlets and books, and established
universities in Mexico City and Lima. With the help
of Indian artisans, they constructed and decorated
lavishly a large number of impressive cathedrals.
Extending Spain’s Empire to the North
Within two decades of Columbus’s first voyage to
the Americas, Spanish explorers had surveyed vast
regions of what is now the United States. Juan
Ponce de Léon, a shipmate of Columbus on the
admiral’s second voyage, made the first Spanish
landing on the mainland of North America, explor-
ing the east coast of Florida in 1513. In the 1520s
Pánfilo de Narváez explored the Gulf Coast west-
ward from Florida, and after his death his lieu-
tenant, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, wandered for
years in the region north of the Gulf. Finally, along
with three companions, one a black slave named
Esteban, de Vaca made his way across what is now
New Mexico and Arizona and then south to
Mexico City. Between 1539 and 1543, Hernando
de Soto traveled north from Florida to the
Carolinas, then westward to the Mississippi River.
During the same period Francisco Vásquez de
Coronado ventured as far north as Kansas and west
to the Grand Canyon. All sought to replicate
Cortés’s triumph, but none succeeded; most
treated the Indians barbarously.
By the early 1600s, Spanish explorers had
reached Virginia, and in Florida a single Spanish
military garrison remained at San Augustin—
today’s Saint Augustine. Years later the governor of
Cuba, having failed to promote Spanish settlement
of San Augustin, explained that “only hoodlums
and the mischievous go there.”
More consequential was the attempt to extend
the Spanish empire beyond the Rio Grande into New
Mexico. By the close of the sixteenth century, the
Spaniards had learned that it was more profitable to
acquire the crops and labor of Indian farmers than to
search for rumored cities of gold. In 1598, theEuropean soldiers, clad in armor and wielding iron weapons, were nearly invincible in close
fighting—all the more so when their foes were unarmed, as in this drawing. Here Cortés and
his men slash through Montezuma’s Aztec court.