Hernan Cortes: Letter to Charles V

Hernan Cortes's letter to Charles V depicts the New World's landscape and the society of people that live there. This is a very useful "primary source" document because it shows us one side of the story of the colonization of the New World strait from the source of the colonizers. It is clear that the author approaches his description of the indigenous people in the America's through a "distorted lens" so to speak. Cortes vastly over exaggerated the sacrificing of humans. He says that the natives sacrificed their own, women and children. This is not true, because the natives only made sacrifices to the Gods with war prisoners, not their own people. Cortes also depicts a large number of human sacrifices ranging in the thousands, although it is likely that Cortes exaggerated this number. By depicting the natives as violent people who sacrifice their own children constantly, it gave Cortes a reason to control the people: to change them from their violent ways and turn them into Christians. In reality, Cortes was much more concerned with profiting of the natives than helping them become better people.