When the Spaniards arrived they could scarcely believe what they saw: 70,000 buildings, housing perhaps 200,000 to 250,000 people, all built on a lake and connected by causeways and canals. A massive pyramid temple, the Templo Mayor, was located at the city center (its ruins can still be found in the center of Mexico City). Much of the city was built on large artificial islands called chinampas which the Aztec constructed by dredging mud and rich sediment from the bottom of the lake and depositing it over time to form new landscapes. Tenochtitlan, founded in 1325, rivaled the world’s largest cities in size and grandeur. When the Spaniards arrived in Mexico they found a sprawling Aztec civilization centered around Tenochtitlan, an awe-inspiring city built on a series of natural and man-made islands in the middle of Lake Texcoco, located today within modern-day Mexico City. The Spanish arrival coincided with the height of the Aztec Empire. Militaristic migrants from northern Mexico, the Aztec had moved south into the Valley of Mexico, conquered their way to dominance, and built the largest empire in the New World. Spaniard Bartolomé de las Casas, who arrived in the New World in 1502 and witnessed the impact of his countrymen’s actions, later reflected, “Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it.” SUBDUING tHE AZTECĪs Spain’s New World empire expanded, Spanish conquerors, or conquistadors, met the massive empires of Central and South America. Historians’ estimates of the death toll range from fewer than 1 million to as many as 8 million. Within a few generations the whole island of Hispaniola had been depopulated and a whole people exterminated. The 39 Spaniards he left behind on Hispaniola, meanwhile, were to secure a source of gold and enlist the natives to extract it. When the gold reserves proved meager, the Spaniards forced the Arawaks to labor on their huge new estates. By presuming the natives had no humanity, the Spaniards abandoned their own. When he first returned to Europe he brought with him a dozen captured and branded Arawaks to prove his point. He insisted, “with fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them.” It was God’s will, he said. Their innocence, he continued, came with vulnerability. “They are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil nor the sins of murder or theft,” he reported to the Spanish crown. They fished and grew corn, yams, and cassava. Indications of what was to come were already visible in the wake of Columbus’s arrival in the Caribbean. The indigenous Arawaks, or Taino, of the Caribbean islands were an agricultural people. Adding to the devastation inflicted upon native populations were the germs the Spaniards spread, often ravaging entire communities. When material wealth proved slow in coming, the Spanish embarked upon a vicious campaign that extracted wealth through the labor of native peoples. Motives were plain: said one soldier, “we came here to serve God and the king, and also to ge t rich.” Mercenaries joined the conquest and raced to capture the wealth of the New World. A New World empire spread from Spain’s Caribbean foothold.
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