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.
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