Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

Restall argues that the Spanish Conquest did not entirely destroy Indigenous cultures. Furthermore, pre-Conquest peoples neither lived in ideal, utopian societies nor were uncivilized. It is also unlikely that Indigenous Americans, like the Mexica and the Incas, believed the Spanish were gods, thus supposedly making them more susceptible to conquest. Indigenous people appear as cunning, innocent, or “barbaric” according to these interrelated myths, all of which are derived from the concept of “native desolation” post-Conquest.

Restall argues that neither the Mexica nor Incas believed the Spanish were gods, and their reaction to the Spanish was therefore not shaped by this false belief. This myth originates in Columbus’s letters, in which he uses the Spanish word “cielo” that translates as either “sky” or “heaven,” when he writes that the Indigenous people of the Caribbean believed he and his men had come “from the sky.” This, Restall asserts, is actually an “ambiguous” statement (111). Furthermore, Columbus never uses the word “gods,” so his writings are not evidence that Indigenous Americans believed the Spanish to be gods.

Restall claims that if the Mexica thought Cortés was a god, his biographer would have written about it, but no such claim is made in his biography, and nor does Cortés claim deification in his own writings.