Compare the way the Aztecs dealt with Cortes to the way the Powhatans Essay

Compare the way the Aztecs dealt with Cortes to the way the Powhatans dealt with the English - Essay Example In both cases, there was an uprising as a retaliation to the enemy’s act, but after incorporating the enemy in the society. For example, Carrasco and Sessions (229) assert that Cortes was welcomed by the Motecuhzoma. The Aztec ruler offered the Spaniards with high-class accommodations, touring them around the gardens, city, marketplace, and zoo something which the people did not want. A rebellion rose up when Cortes’ second-in-command in the Aztec capital murdered a group of unarmed warriors and priests at the Main Temple of Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs, under the leadership of Cuitlahuac led a massive attack in the night of June 1520 driving the Spaniards out of the town. Kupperman (174) argues that the Powhatanss incorporated the English settlers as clients so as to learn their economic and political arrangements. This made the English think they had submitted to King James which was not so. In both conquests, there were numerous casualties. White notes that during the Aztec’s resistance, â€Å"over 2,000 Tlaxcalan soldiers and 500 Spaniards were killed in the battle† (467). The Powhatans riddled the colonists with arrows, killing 347 settlers. Divine intervention was also used to fight off the enemy. The soothsayers informed Aztec emperor Montezuma II as well as the people of calamities to come. The Powhatans hatched the plan to attack the English settlers based on their religion. In both native groups, the captives were tortured and humiliated. The Aztecs ate the flesh of the enemies they had captured in the battle (Carrasco and Sessions 231). The Aztecs carried out campaigns to capture the enemy warriors for sacrifice and humiliation as much for killing on the battlefield. The Powhatans performed rituals on the captured enemies and killed them (Axtell 67). Captain John Smith, in December 1607, was almost executed by the king after being captured. The Aztec empire used conquests, wealth, a series of alliances, forced payments of the