Long before Jamestown, long
before the Roanoke Colony (“Lost Colony”), long before the first English
attempts to gain a foothold in the Americas, Spanish explorers and adventurers
were hard at work trying to plant the royal flag of Spain in Central America
and South America.
On August 13, 1521, Hernán
Cortés and his small force captured Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec
empire, on the site of present-day Mexico City. This conquest marked the
downfall of the Aztecs’ far-flung domain, as Cortés became the de facto ruler.
Before the fall of their
capital, the Aztecs’ empire embraced almost 500 small “states” with a
population of 5-6 million people. At the pinnacle of Aztec power, the capital
city had more than 140,000 inhabitants and was the most densely urban city that
ever existed in Mesoamerica.
Disease played a role in the
transition of power, as it did later in the conflict of European settlers and
Native Americans in North America. An outbreak of smallpox among the Aztecs in
1520 substantially weakened their ability to resist the Spanish conquistadors.
Almost 250,000 Aztecs died in the fighting for Tenochtitlán.
By 1530, the Spanish conquerors had renamed the Aztecs’ domain and
called it “New Spain.”
The Aztecs had an advanced culture, including sophisticated science and
highly developed commerce and arts. Familiar words in our modern conversations
can be traced to Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs: these include avocado,
chocolate, coyote and guacamole.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber
2015 All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment