The Conquest of America

High school history class programmed me to immediately think "God, gold, and glory" after hearing conquistador. And it doesn't seem that far off after reading Todorov, who went into greater detail than any high school history class. At times, it was painstakingly difficult to read quotation after quotation after quotation. I know he was trying to present an unbiased narrative of what happened through primary sources that I would never have read before, but halfway through I wished for more from Todorov, less Columbus/Cortes/Las Casas/etc.

That being said, it was interesting to read after The Sparrow, which kept popping up in my mind, but how couldn't it with all the talk of Columbus and divine intervention? He saw a lot of turtles on fenceposts, or the equivalent of such back in those days (mermaids, perhaps?). But reading about Cortes and the myth of Quetzalcoatl reminded me of Paul in Dune. During that class, a long long time ago, we brought up whether Paul manipulated the Fremen's belief in a messiah. It's a little fuzzy right now, but I thought I'd bring up that.

In preparation for PTJ's question about whether the Spaniards should have and/or could have done something different, in the text Todorov says "I do not want to suggest, by accumulating such quotations, that Las Casas or the other defenders of the Indians should, or even could, have behaved differently." (172). Interestingly, he doesn't mention Columbus or Cortes and instead focuses on defenders of the Indians or those that tried to learn about their culture. However, Cortes did learn the signs, but manipulated them against the Indians, leading to death and destruction. I don't know if Columbus or Cortes could have behaved differently because we're looking at it in hindsight.