Conquistadors Quotes

“Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels. They gathered mountains and valleys, rivers and whole horizons, the way a man might now gain tittle to building lots.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Los blancos hicieron que estas tierras fueran extranjeras para el indio; hicieron que el indio comprara con su sangre el aire que respira.”
― Ermilo Abreu Gómez, Canek

“Some readers who have visited New Spain, and other interested persons who have not, may be aware that Mexico was a very large city, built in the water like Venice, and governed by a great prince called Montezuma, who was a king of many neighbouring lands and ruled over the whole of New Spain, which is a country twice the size of out own.”
― Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain

“We fought for centuries to wrest our land from Moors, only to free ourselves by turning into the slaves of war. Deprived by victory of combat, we sailed far horizons in search of carnage and found the Indies. Now we must save them from our past.”
― John Caviglia, Arauco

“We don’t want to be the conquistadors. We want to be Charles Darwin.”
― Lydia Millet, Mermaids in Paradise

“But even the Nazis realized that if there was something that gave more power than merely destroying the word, it was owning and controlling it.”
― Anders Rydell

“On May 30, 1539, Hernando De Soto landed his private army near Tampa Bay in Florida. De Soto was a novel figure: half warrior, half venture capitalist. He grew very rich very young in Spanish America by becoming a market leader in the nascent slave trade. The profits helped to fund the conquest of the Inka, which made De Soto wealthier still. He accompanied Pizarro to Tawantinsuyu (aka, The Inka Empire), burnishing his reputation for brutality - he personally tortured Challcochima (a leading Inka general of the north) before his execution.

Literally looking for new worlds to conquer, De Soto returned to Spain soon after his exploits in Peru. In Charles V's court he persuaded the bored monarch to let him loose in North America with an expedition of his own. He sailed to Florida with six hundred soldiers, two hundred horses, and three hundred pigs.

From today's perspective, it is difficult to imagine the ethical system that culd justify De Soto's subsequent actions. For four years his force wandered through what are now Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana, looking for gold and wrecking most everything it touched. The inhabitants often fought back viorously, but they were baffled by the Spaniards' motives. De Soto and his soldiers managed to rape, torture, enslave, and kill countless Indians. But the worst thing he did, some researchers say, was entirely without malice - he brought pigs.”
― Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

“Ah, et l'or du Pérou qui (...) se transforme en venin de serpent quand la cupidité mord les hommes de Castille.”
― Antonio Gil, Hijo de Mi

“Do we prejudice our discussion and privilege traditional answers by styling the invaders as "explorers", th einvaded as "Indians", and their war as "the Conquest of Mexico" ?”
― Matthew Restall, When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History

“The conquistador has no real appreciation of the new, wanting only to make his fortune and return to build an ugly palace towering the pigsty of his birth, but not before he does his best to transform the Indies into the nightmare they left behind.”
― John Caviglia, Arauco

“But one item was left behind in Kansas, to be discovered in 1886: a Spanish sword from Coronado's expedition, inscribed with the name of its owner, Juan Gallegos, and on the blade these words: "Do not draw me without right. Do not sheath me without honor." Here at once is summed up the essential chivalry of the Conquistadors.”
― Charles A. Coulombe, Puritan's Empire