Summary Of Seven Myths Of The Spanish Conquest

Analyzing and understanding human history is often a challenge in the search for the truth as history is summed up to be an interpretation of biases and fiction-based stories. Historians research items such as documents and photographs as a way to piece back jumbled puzzles of past events. Archaeologists uncover ancient sites and ruins in which they analyze history through artifacts and radiocarbon dating to find clues of the past. These materials that researchers utilize are an example of primary sources: a material source that offers information on the time frame in which it was created (ie. diary, photograph, document, artifact). From analyzing the book, The Jesuit Relations, edited by Alan Greer, we (the reader) are reading a primary source.
On the other note, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, by Matthew Restall is an excellent example of a secondary source because this book was created at a later time than its noteworthy events. This type of source can be crucial toward the understanding of human history because these are often are composed of well-thought ideas and supported truths. These two factors allow one to analyze an event in history and compose a chain of events. Human interpretation of the past and the present are always changing, therefore secondary sources are an important factor as the sources and information become readapted. With this truth understood, new generations of historians bring their unique and diverse point of view’s and select biases to preexisting history books, thus allowing for adaptations of historical events to be understood in new
This is bound to occur as our intake of facts from materials and sources increase, thus allowing us to analyze the same story from different angles. Perspectives, point of view’s, and biases are all subject to change as nothing is set in stone. In, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, author Restall’s inspiration for the book stemmed from the curiosity of his students regarding why there was a good number of myths surrounding the history of the Spanish Conquest. Restall goes over seven different myths in seven chapters, as he links the repetition of the number seven with utmost importance. These different myths discuss different point of view’s of the same story, in turn allowing us readers to develop a deeper understanding of the nature of the conquest, uniquely from the eyes of the Spanish’s allies. In chapter 2, “Neither Paid Nor Forced: The Myth of the King’s Army,” Restall breaks down the myth that an army of soldiers, 300 men on foot, was not an actual Spaniard Army and that our faulty translation of Cortes’ letters is how we have created this picture. In 1553 the Roman army was the only army in Europe, and so conquests such as that of Peru is: “presented as even more extraordinary and impressive precisely because it was not the achievement of “paid captains and armies.” (Pg-28) This recount of achievement along with more successes by the Spaniards is supported with letters and documentation by Cortes and his