72 CHAPTER 3 THE CONQUEST OF AMERICA
of this type contributed more than their share of
the atrocities that stained the Spanish Conquest.
But the background of the conquistadors was ex-
tremely varied, running the whole gamut of the
Spanish social spectrum. The majority were com-
moners, but some were marginal hidalgos, poor
gentlemen who wished to improve their fortunes.
Of the 168 men who captured Atahualpa at Caja-
marca in 1532, 38 were hidalgos and 91 were ple-
beians, with the background of the rest unknown
or uncertain. According to James Lockhart, who
has studied the men of Cajamarca, 51 members
of the group were defi nitely literate and about 76
“almost certainly functioning literates.” The group
included 19 artisans, 12 notaries or clerks, and 13
“men of affairs.”
Of the Spanish kingdoms, Castile provided
the largest contingent, with natives of Andalusia
predominating in the fi rst, or Caribbean, phase of
the Conquest; men from Estremadura, the poorest
region of Spain, made up the largest single group
in the second, or mainland, phase. Cortés, Pizarro,
Almagro, Valdivia, Balboa, Orellana, and other fa-
mous conquistadors all came from Estremadura.
Foreigners were not absent from the Conquest.
Oviedo assures us that men had come “from all the
other nations of Asia, Africa, and Europe.”
By the 1520s, an institution inherited from
the Spanish Reconquest, the compaña (warrior
band), whose members shared in the profi ts of
conquest according to certain rules, had become
the principal instrument of Spanish expansion in
the New World. At its head stood a military leader
who usually possessed a royal capitulación, which
vested him with the title of “adelantado” and with
the governorship of the territory to be conquered.
Sometimes these men were wealthy in their own
right and contributed large sums or incurred enor-
mous debts to fi nance the expedition. Italian, Ger-
man, and Spanish merchant capitalists and royal
offi cials grown wealthy through the slave trade or
other means provided much of the capital needed
to fi t out ships, acquire horses and slaves, and sup-
ply arms and food.
The warrior band was in principle a military
democracy, with the distribution of spoils carried
out by a committee elected from among the entire
company. After subtracting the quinto and the
common debts, the remaining booty was divided
into equal shares. In the distribution of Atahualpa’s
treasure were 217 such shares, each worth 5,345
gold pesos, a tidy sum for that time. Distribution
was made in accordance with the individual’s rank
and contribution to the enterprise. The norm was
one share for a peón or foot soldier, two for a cabal-
lero or horseman (one for the rider, another for the
horse), and more for a captain.
Despite its democratic aspect, the captains,
large investors, and royal offi cials dominated the
enterprise of conquest and took the lion’s share
for themselves. Some of the men were servants
or slaves of the captains and investors, and their
shares went entirely or in part to their employers
or masters. In other cases, conquistadors had bor-
rowed or bought on credit to outfi t themselves,
and the greater part of their earnings went to their
creditors. Contemporary accounts complain of the
predatory ways of some captains, who sold sup-
plies to their men in time of need at profi teering
prices. At a later stage of each conquest came the
distribution of encomiendas. Craftsmen and other
plebeians received encomiendas after the conquest
of Mexico and Peru; later, however, only the lead-
ers and hidalgo members of expeditions were re-
warded with such grants.
Many conquistadors were hard, ruthless men,
hard in dealing with each other and harder still with
indigenous peoples. The conquistador and chroni-
cler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, an ardent impe-
rialist, wrote that some conquistadors could more
accurately be called “depopulators or destroyers of
the new lands.” The harshness of the conquistador
refl ected the conditions that formed his character:
the climate of violence in Spain as it emerged from
seven centuries of warfare against the Moor, the
desperate struggle of most Spaniards to survive in a
society divided by great inequalities of wealth, and
the brutalizing effects of a colonial war.
It would be wrong, however, to conclude
that all conquistadors fi tted this negative pattern.
Some were transformed by their experiences, were
taught humility and respect for indigenous values,
or even came to concede the moral superiority of
the “Indian” over the Spaniard. This was the les-