Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was a Portuguese explorer and was famous for his exploration of the west coast of North America on behalf of Spain. Cabrillo was the first European explorer to navigate the coast of present day California.Not much is known about his early life, but Juan Rodriguez was born on 1499 in Castilla .Cabrillo served in the army of a famous conquistador Hernan Cortes, where he joined the conquest of Mexico and Guatemala. Cabrillo fought as a captain of crossbowmen in the battles between Aztecs and the Spanish. After the defeat of the Aztecs, Cabrillo joined different Spanish military expeditions in what today southern Mexico, Guatemala and San Salvador. By the 1530s Cabrillo established himself as a citizen of Santiago.
They started a colony, called Darien. The captain and Balboa, started fighting, because, they both wanted to be in charge. The captain lost, and went back to Spain, and Balboa became governor of Darien. Then, Balboa set out to explore the surrounding country, hoping to find gold. Since he was very nice, he won him the friendship of the Indians.
1. Fernando Cortes was a Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire. In his First Letter to King Charles I of Spain dating to July 10, 1519, Fernando Cortes provided a detailed account of his activities in Mexico. He described the country as rich in resources and its native people as savage barbarians who sacrifice their own persons for their idols. Cortes wrote that in the short time they explored the lands, the expedition has discovered that everything that King Solomon brought for the Temple existed in this country.
Just before he left for Mexico, Governor Velazquez revoked Cortez's commission because he feared that Cortez would not recognize his authority once in Mexico. Cortez however, left anyway, and later destroyed his ships so that men loyal to the governor would not have the ability to return to Cuba. When they arrived in Mexico, the Spaniards imprisoned many captives and later founded a town called La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, now called Veracruz. One of the prisoners, Malinche, became his lady and acted as a guide and an interpreter. Cortez established an independent government and only recognized the authority of the Spanish crown.
By the 1600s, Spain, England, and France were all struggling to establish footholds in the newly discovered American continent. Spain achieved initial success when the Spanish conquistadors plundered the Mayan, Aztec, and Incan empires in South America. The French were also successful in the New World, when they established trading outposts along the Saint Lawrence river and traded with the Native Americans for precious animal furs. The English began their colonization efforts in the 1580s when they established their first permanent colonies at Roanoke, Jamestown, and Plymouth. The Roanoke, Jamestown, and Plymouth colonies can all be compared on the basis of the motivation for settling, economic conditions, race relations, problems, and
In the 1800s the Anglos took the mestizaje’s land and Mexico was forced to give up what it now is Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and California. Some of the native Mexican-Texan now looked at the Southwest as their home, but US built a fence which divided US and Mexico and drove the native Indians and Mexican-Texans off their land. The Americans lynched all the Chicanos and began to work with Mexican landowners to expand in
In 1535, I sailed to Mexico with Antonio de Mendoza, the colony’s first Admiral. I became one of the governors of New Galacia (one of the Spanish colonies in the New World). Searching for the Seven Cities of Gold Between 1536 and 1539, Admiral Mendoza heard stories about the Seven Cities of Cibolo, the Seven Cities of Gold where the streets and houses were made of gold and jewels. He sent me on an expedition to find them and claim the wealth for Spain. In 1540 I set out with 300 soldiers and about 1,000 Indians.
The Cruel ways of the Spaniards In “A Brief Account of the Destruction,” Bartolome Las Casas vividly describes how the Spaniards first came to the new world and ended up destroying nearly all the native populations of the Caribbean and Mexico. Bartolome Las Casas was a Spanish priest, social reformer, and historian. He is known as the principal organizer and champion of the 16th-century movement in Spain and Spanish America in defense of the Indians. In 1502, Las Casas sailed to Espanola in the expedition of Governor Nicolas de Ovando. While in the West Indies, he participated in Indian wars and acquired land and slaves.
Francisco Pizarro The man who conquered the Incan Empire did so, at the modest age of about 40. Francisco Pizarro obviously didn’t do this task all by himself but with the help of about only 100 foot soldiers who were determined to help conquer the Incan Empire. His conquest started in Panama, 1513, where from there he had several expeditions to Peru where he encountered many failures but great retaliations. Expedition after expedition Pizarro would learn many lessons but why did he succeed? Francisco Pizarro of Spain succeeded because he had a rise to fame, thought logically, and had power and authority.
Then in 1502 Christopher Columbus became the first European to visit the fine country of Nicaragua. That was that for a while until the beginning of the 1520s when the Spanish took more interest in settling the land. The indigenous people kept fighting the Spanish off until the Spanish finally conquered them in 1552. Which would mean they would be ruled by Spain until Nicaragua declared independence