Hernan Cortes: The King Of Spain

Hernan Cortes’ main point in writing this piece was to show the king of Spain his attempt to reason with the natives and how he reacted to their refusal to agree with the requerimiento. Cortes supposedly entered peacefully into the natives’ land and expected them to accept a new God and the repossession of their land without any argument. Since the natives did not agree to requerimiento, Cortes saw fit that he defend himself by killing hundreds of people thought he had no business in entering their land or converting them. As such, Cortes saw himself in the right and believed that God was on his side because he was able to defeat the multitude of natives with primitive weapons due to his almost minuscule amount of men “with the half dozen
cannon which had, five or six muskets and the thirteen horsemen who remained”. Cortes believed he was doing God’s work by forcefully converting the natives, constantly referring and thanking God for allowing them to be victorious. The natives are almost seen as unequal animals to Cortes, resulting in ruthless killings and village burnings. Bartoleme de Las Casas’ main point in writing his piece was to show the inhumanity of the Spanish Christians due to their raping, murdering and enslaving of such a simple, loving and good people. As opposed to Cortes, who believed that he was in the right for doing God’s work, Las Casas sees the Spaniards to be behaving like animals who became notorious for destroying, devastating and depopulating the natives’ land.