ment said it was legal to start a war on the natives only if theydidn’t convert to Christianity. According to a man named Bernardino deSahagun, he never saw Cortes read this document to the Aztecs in the year1519. Therefore, Cortes did not have the right to make war on the Aztecslegally.In December 1520, Cortes gathered an army of allies, and fromJanuary through May 1521, he surrounded the city of Tenochtitlan, andfinally in July, Cortes began the attack. He totally destroyed the city.They knocked down buildings, and burned anything that could be burned.150,00 native allies joined in the final assaults. During theAztec-Spanish war, 240,000 Aztecs died, between 30,000-100,000 of thenative allies were killed. The figures do not include the people killedby any kind of disease. As the defeated but alive Aztecs were herded outof the city, the women and the boys were considered property of individualSpaniards. The men were put to work building a new city on top of therubble of Tenochtitlan. The priests were executed, torn apart by dogs.Bartolome de las Casas (1474-1566) was Spain’s defender ofAmerindian rights. His parents were small merchants, but he abandoned hisstudies for that and went to soldiering. He went to Hispanola in 1502. Hereceived grants of land and Indian labor. In 1515 he renounced allproperty and rights in the Americas and returned to Spain. He later wenton a voyage with Hernan Cortes, and he wrote down what kind of horribletreatment Cortes gave to the natives there. The Spaniards did thingslike, smash babies’ heads against walls, use some babies as food for their dogs, and once theystuffed almost the whole population of a town into only three of thehouses. When all of the people were in the houses, they set fire to thehouses. The houses easily burned to the ground, and burned all of thepeople in the houses easily also. The Spaniards Greed was overwhelming. After an attack on an Aztecfiesta...
