Title: Spanish Colonization People | Shmoop
Headings: Spanish Colonization People
Spanish Colonization People
Christopher Columbus
Hernán Cortés
Hernando de Soto
Moctezuma II
Francisco Pizarro
Junipero Serra

Content: Cortés set the standard that all later conquistadores followed in the New World, and it was through his efforts and those of Francisco Pizarro and others that the large Native American empires of the New World were subjugated to Spanish rule. Hernando de Soto
Hernando de Soto (1496–1542) was a Spanish conquistador who led a disastrous expedition of conquest into the North American interior between 1539 and 1542. De Soto, who hoped to follow in the footsteps of Cortés and Pizarro, failed in his hunt for gold on the North American mainland. After leading his men on a fruitless three-year search throughout much of what now makes up the southeastern United States, de Soto died on the banks of the Mississippi River. His men fled back to Mexico. While de Soto's journey of conquest was an unmitigated failure, it was nevertheless historically significant. During his travels, de Soto encountered a densely populated and culturally sophisticated Native American civilization in the Mississippi Valley. However, de Soto—and his men and livestock— introduced new diseases to the region that subsequently destroyed those Native American populations. By the time Europeans returned to the area again in the late-17th century, the Mississippi Valley appeared to be a depopulated wilderness. Moctezuma II
Moctezuma II (1466–1520), also known as Montezuma, was the last emperor of the Aztecs.