12 Oct The most fascinating cultural clash in history

October 12, 1492 marked the beginning of the most extraordinary encounter between two civilizations that had never had contact. What followed was a series of misunderstandings, mutual surprises, and erroneous perceptions that today, more than 500 years later, seem as fascinating to us as they are revealing of human nature.

First impressions: Mutual amazement

Historical illustration of Christopher Columbus meeting indigenous Americans in 1492 under palm trees

What followed was an exchange that seemed taken from a fantastic tale. The indigenous people, believing that those bearded beings were gods coming from heaven, brought them offerings: “they brought us parrots and cotton balls and spears and many other things that they exchanged for beads and bells.” They swam toward the ships with an audacity that surprised the Europeans, boarded without any fear, and “took and gave what they had, all in good will.”

The misunderstanding of the swords

One of the most revealing anecdotes of the initial cultural clash was the indigenous people’s reaction to Spanish swords. Columbus wrote in his diary: “They carry no weapons, nor do they know them. When showing them a sword, they grabbed it by the blade and cut themselves not knowing what it was.” This apparently naive gesture revealed completely different worlds: a society that was unaware of metal weapons versus another that considered them essential for survival.

The mystery of the Centaurs: Horses and Men

Illustration of Spanish conquistadores on horseback confronting Indigenous American warriors on foot during a historic battle

This belief was so powerful that the Spanish did everything possible to maintain it. Hernán Cortés “always ordered the dead horses to be buried”  so that the indigenous people would not discover that they were mortal. Francisco Pizarro adopted the same strategy, ordering in 1530 “to bury his steed in a secret place so that the Indians would always believe that horses could not be killed.”

This perception led to both tragicomic and tragic situations. A Mayan chief called Tecún Umán, convinced that horse and rider were a single creature, threw himself against Pedro de Alvarado killing his horse, but was stupefied when the conquistador rose from the ground and pierced him with his sword.

The Mapuches of southern Chile also lived this experience: “When the indigenous people saw the Castilians for the first time, they were very terrified by these strange beings, as they believed at first that man and horse together were a single animal.” However, these warriors demonstrated a remarkable capacity for adaptation: “After the first surprises, their reaction came: they organized, hid, and stole their horses to fight as equals.”

The Gods who ate and bled

Mural depicting the historical encounter between Moctezuma and Hernán Cortés in Tenochtitlan.

The most famous case of divine confusion occurred during the encounter between Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma. Contrary to popular myth, historical evidence suggests that Moctezuma never really believed that Cortés was the god Quetzalcoatl. In their first encounter, the Aztec emperor told the conquistador: “I know well that those from Tlaxcala have told you that I am like a god or teule … see: my body of bone and flesh like yours.”

Moctezuma himself joked about this confusion: “you will also take it as a joke, as I take your thunder and lightning,” referring to how the indigenous people called Spanish firearms “thunder.”

The fascinating exchange of “trinkets”

One of the most misinterpreted aspects of the encounter is the famous exchange of “mirrors for gold.” However, the reality was much more complex. The Spanish did not carry mirrors properly speaking, but glass beads, bells, and other objects that had a very specific symbolic value for American peoples.

Blue and green colored beads were especially appreciated by Mesoamericans because in their worldview they represented water and rain, sacred elements. It was not deception, but an exchange where both parties valued the received objects according to their own cultural codes.

The indigenous people went to such extremes in their desire to obtain these objects that “when they could not obtain the counter-gifts from the sailors, because they were very numerous, they took it from the ship’s deck, even if it was nothing more than a piece of wood; they dove and fled swimming.”

Linguistic misunderstandings that changed History

Communication was one of the greatest challenges of the encounter. The Spanish classified indigenous languages as “foreign” and “barbarous,” interpreting idiomatic difference as “synonymous with lack of language.” Columbus wrote about the first indigenous people he met: “none has language,” when in reality he was referring to the fact that they did not speak Castilian.

One of the most celebrated misunderstandings occurred in Yucatan. When Francisco Hernández de Córdoba asked the natives what their land was called, they responded “Yucatan,” which in Mayan meant “I don’t understand you.” The name remained for history.

Mutual technological surprise

Crafting or maintaining an Aztec macuahuitl by embedding obsidian blades into the wooden weapon.

The Aztec macuahuitl, a wooden sword with embedded obsidian blades, was so deadly that it “even affected Spanish troops with their iron helmets and breastplates.” One conquistador wrote that it could “cut off a horse’s head with a single blow.”

The Spanish were so impressed by the Chinantc spears that Cortés ordered 300 of them, but asking that copper points be placed instead of obsidian. A Spanish soldier commented that these weapons were “very extremely good” and superior to those they knew.

The clash of religious perceptions

The religious encounter was particularly complex. The Spanish interpreted many indigenous practices as “diabolical,” while the indigenous people initially saw the Spanish as supernatural beings. The word “teule” they used to refer to the Spanish does not mean exactly “god,” but something more like “extraordinary being” or “supernatural.”

A revealing episode occurred when the Spanish destroyed indigenous idols. The natives, far from being scandalized, often interpreted this as a demonstration that Spanish gods were more powerful than theirs, and adapted with notable pragmatism to the new religious situation.

The biological exchange: Beyond gold

One of the most revolutionary exchanges was that of food products. The Spanish brought wheat, rice, sugar cane, horses, cows, and pigs, while America gave the world potatoes, corn, tomatoes, cocoa, and tobacco.

This exchange transformed the diets of both continents. The potato helped feed Europe’s growing population and prevented famines that previously occurred “regularly every ten years.” For its part, American corn changed European agriculture to the point that today it is difficult to imagine Spanish fields without this crop.

Indigenous Conquistadors: The least told Story

One of the most surprising aspects of the encounter is that “95% of the conquistadors were indigenous.” Many American peoples saw in the Spanish an opportunity to free themselves from the dominion of empires like the Aztec or Inca.

The Tlaxcaltecs, for example, “reproached that Hernán Cortés would not have achieved anything without them.” These “indigenous conquistadors” even traveled to Spain to claim noble titles and privileges, considering themselves “as much conquistadors as Hernán Cortés.”

Conclusion: The encounter of Humanities

The encounter between Spanish and indigenous Americans was not simply the clash between “civilized” and “primitive,” but the encounter between two equally complex humanities, each with their own sophisticated ways of understanding the world.

The initial misunderstandings – from confusion about horses to the exchange of objects with different symbolic values – reveal how each culture interpreted the “other” from their own frames of reference. Over time, both groups demonstrated a remarkable capacity for adaptation and mutual learning.

This encounter of two worlds, with all its misunderstandings and tragedies, also generated a cultural, technological, and biological exchange that forever transformed the history of humanity. The descendants of that encounter are us: a mestizo civilization that combines elements from both worlds in a unique cultural synthesis.

The history of discovery is not just the history of conquest, but the history of how humanity learned to recognize itself in the mirror of the other, however different they were.

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