Now for most of the first thirty years of the Spanish being in the New World, they mostly just hung out on the islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico, which were widely seen as a curious backwater by the Spanish elite. The only people really interested in the New World were bored people looking for adventure and those with little opportunity to move up in the world at home in Spain. Though there was little gold or riches to be had, by enslaving the local natives and treating them like shit, it was possible for even a poor Spaniard to live a life of relative leisure. It should probably be stated that at the time morality was largely based on how similar someone was to you. Same region, same nationality, same religion. As long as people could be classified as “other” in some way, it was pretty a-okay to do all sorts of terrible shit to them. This wasn’t just a European thing, this was an everywhere kind of thing, the only deciding factor being who had the greatest opportunity and ability to treat someone else like crap.
Anyways, starting around 1517, explorers visiting the coast of what is now Mexico began hearing rumors about rich cities of gold in the interior of the continent. However, rumors also included tales of violent locals who practiced enslavement and human sacrifice, which limited interest until 1519, when a guy named Hernan Cortes decided that becoming insanely rich was totally worth the risk of having his still beating heart cut out of his chest. Raising an army of about 700 men without permission, he set sail to Mexico, sunk his fleet to prevent retreat, and marched into the interior.
Now at the time pretty much all of central Mexico was controlled by the Aztec, a powerful militaristic society which ruled over and terrorized the other native groups in the region, forcing them to pay tribute and hand over hundreds of their own to be human sacrifices. It should probably be mentioned that most of the major civilizations in the region practiced human sacrifice, believing that if they didn’t nourish the gods then the sun would cease to rise and the world would end. Though the Aztec had been in the region since the thirteenth century, they didn’t start expanding until the early fifteenth century, resulting in them carving out their empire over the ninety year period before Cortes’ arrival. As a result, many of the first groups Cortes met didn’t see him and his army as invaders, but rather as a possible route for salvation and freedom. As a result, by the time Cortes arrived at the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, an engineering marvel built in the middle of a lake, he had an army of several thousand.
What followed was a chaotic mess of the Aztecs trying to buy the Spanish off by giving them a bunch of gold, Cortes taking the Aztec emperor, Montezuma II, hostage after learning the Aztec had killed some of his men left on the coast, and then Cortes having to march back to the coast to defeat a Spanish army sent to arrest him, the murder of Montezuma II by either the Spanish or his own people, the Spanish and their native allies being forced to flee from Tenochtitlan, Cortes returning to besiege the city for ninety days, disease killing thousands of Aztecs and Cortes’ allies, the eventual fall of the city, and Cortes destroying the city and rebuilding it as Mexico City. All of this took place over a period of about two years, with the end result being the Spanish taking control of central Mexico, both their enemies and allies too weakened from warfare and disease to stop them. As for Cortes, he was not only forgiven for his illegal conquering of the Aztec Empire, because the region was chock full of easily mined gold and silver, but was made governor over the entire region.
The discovery of ridiculous amounts of gold and silver completely changed the dynamic of how the Spanish saw the New World, shifting it from curious backwater to a potential source of untold riches. Nobles and commoners of all types boarded ships to seek these riches. Known as conquistadors, they created armies which rapidly began conquering great civilizations of Mesoamerica. Over the next thirty years they largely conquered southern Mexico, Central America, and the great Incan Empire of the Andes. The great civilizations did not take it lying down, fighting back every step of the way, but their efforts were stymied by rapidly spreading disease, the Spanish taking advantage of long standing rivalries, and the Spanish having horses and superior arms. Though isolated holdouts would remain in many areas until the end of the sixteenth century, the Spanish effectively controlled from Chile in the south to Mexico in the north by 1550.
While conquests were pushing their way southward, a few conquistadors also began pushing their way north, but they found little of interest. While those moving south continued to find fantastic cities of gold, those moving north found only desert and nomadic peoples doing their best to survive. Known as the Chichimeca, these peoples were hostile to outsiders, and facing lots of pain for little gain, the conquistadors largely gave up on ideas of exploring to the north. This changed in 1546, when rich silver mines were discovered in the region. Hopeful conquistadors began moving north to claim these riches, sparking a war that would last for forty years, the Chichimeca using guerilla tactics to wear down the Spanish and their more numerous native allies, who made up the bulk of the Spanish armies in New Spain. The Chichimeca also stole and learned how to ride horses, turning themselves into an even more formidable foe. As the war wore on, the atrocities by both sides became worse and worse. The war did not end until the Spanish changed tactics, shifting from fighting to handing out free goods to the Chichimeca, sending friars north to convert the Chichimeca to Christianity, stopping the enslavement of the Chichimeca, and and handing out free lands on the frontier and higher status in the social ladder to native allies. It worked surprisingly well, and by the start of the seventeenth century, the Chichimeca were largely absorbed into the culture of New Spain.
