Unit 7- Essay: The Americas

The Aztecs and Inca people had many issues and concerns when they came in contact with the European people. In this essay I will be comparing the issues, and concerns of Aztec and Inca cultures to their contacts with the Europeans. Some of the issues that I will be discussing are from the time period that covered roughly the 1400’s to roughly around the 1500’s. The Aztecs were American Indian people who ruled a mighty empire in Mexico from the 1400’s to 1500’s. In the late fourteenth century, the Inkas were a very small community in the area of Cuzco, a city located at an altitude of 10,000 feet in the mountains of Southern Peru (Pg. 181, Dukier). The lives of the people in these two cultures were forever
Then they set out in this direction, about to enter Mexico here. Then they all dressed and equipped themselves for war.( Bernardino de Sahagan). The Aztecs were attacked by Cortes and his army but they didn’t go down without a fight. “ The warriors quickly came and outfitted, bunched together, carrying arrows and shields. The fighting that ensued drove the Spaniards and their allies back to the palace enclave.( Bernardino de Sahagan). Along with the attack which the Aztecs endured, although lives were lost, they came out victorious but not before being struck by the Bubonic plague where many, many more lives were destroyed.

In the 1440’s under their powerful ruler Packakuti (sometimes called Pachacutec or “he who transforms the world”) the Inka launched a campaign of conquest that eventually brought the entire region under their authority( Dukier, pg. 182).” Land of four quarters” or Tahuantinsuyu was the name given to their empire. Each contained about ten thousand residents and was ruled by a governor. The capital Cuzco was divided into four quarters, or residential areas( Dukier, Pg. 182). It was said that the state was built on forced labor. Under leader Pachakuti, Cuzco was transformed from a city of mud into an imposing metropolis of stone( Dukier, pg. 182). The Inkas of the rural areas lived by farming. In the mountains, the most common form was terraced agriculture, watered by