The voyages of Christopher Columbus initiated the European exploration of the Americas. The following selections come from a letter written by Columbus upon his return from the New World. After landing in Lisbon in March 1493, Columbus sent a letter describing his discoveries to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. In the letter, Columbus describes the geography and people of the islands that he believed were in the "Indian Sea." The letter was first published in Barcelona and immediately went into multiple editions, becoming one of Europe's earliest "bestsellers." Eleven editions were published in 1493 alone.

Columbus's letter announcing his findings in the New World was printed along with images that illustrated his discoveries. This print depicts the inhabitants of the New World as Columbus saw them.

Hernan Cortes (1485-1546) and his troops managed in a short time to invade Mexico and topple the Aztec civilization there, culminating in the 1523 destruction of the capital of Tenochtitlan. Cortes arrived on the mainland of Mexico as a rebel against both the governor of Cuba and the king of Spain, but he won back royal support after his conquests. In this selection taken from a letter to the Spanish king, Cortes described Aztec human sacrifices and suggested that he conquer the people in the name of Christianity. Fusing description, flattery, and a belief in the power of European civilization, this letter represents an ideal window into the mind of the Spanish conquistador.

This image from the sixteenth century Duran Codex shows an Aztec priest and his followers performing a human sacrifice. Cortes and his fellow Spaniards recoiled at this practice, and used it as a justification for their conquest.

Bernardino de Sahagún wrote a history of New Spain in Nahuatl based on Indian informants. Of all the Spanish accounts of the conquest of the New World, Sahagún's came the closest to expressing the Indian version of events, a fact that got him into trouble back in his native Spain. Sahagún's account, from which this excerpt is taken, reads like a pure tragedy and depicts the conquistadors as bloodthirsty conquerors.

The Battle for Tenochtitlan as depicted in a sixteenth-century Spanish painting.

The fall of Tenochtitlan was greeted by Aztecs as a sign of divine displeasure and unmitigated disaster. The following "song of sorrow," composed in 1523, captures the trauma of conquest and the effects it had on the Indians.

Copied from the lost Lienzo of Tlaxcala, this painting depicts the battle around the capital city from the Aztec perspective.

In this passage taken from his history of the New World, Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo describes Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of the Incas. Oviedo provides insight into the motivations of the conquistadors, as well as how Pizarro entered into a partnership to increase his wealth at the expense of the native population.

While Cortes conquered Mexico in an act of rebellion, Pizarro and his partners requested royal favor for their endeavors. The following document is the royal charter issued by the Queen of Spain in 1529 granting Pizarro permission to conquer Peru in the name of Spain and bestowing rewards on the conquistador for his successes.

One of the primary reasons for the exploration and conquest of the New World was the search for gold, silver, and other precious metals. The discovery of the silver mine of Potosi, recounted in the following passage from 1550, represented one of the most lucrative results of the conquest of the Inca lands.

In this selection, William Smyth, a Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge in the mid-19th century, offers his view of the conquest of the New World. While dismissive of the Aztec and Inca civilizations, Smyth is equally dismissive of the Spaniards who conquered the New World.

Fisher, who was a warden at Oxford when he wrote this history in 1936, described the conquest of the New World as a battle between heroic conquistadors and savage natives. The Aztecs, according to Fisher, were a "cruel race," while the Incas practiced "despotic communism."

The contemporary historian Norman Davies offers a present-day interpretation of the conquest, one that notes the significance of the American civilizations and the devastation that Europeans inflicted upon the New World. For Davies, the natives suffered "genocidal casualties" at the hands of their European conquerors.