Conquistador: Unwelcome Tourist from Europe

The word that still echoes through history classrooms and travel documentaries alike: conquistador. It sounds like a title bestowed upon a sword-wielding overachiever in a metal hat, and in many ways, that’s not far off. These were the original overconfident gap year students of the 16th century, except instead of finding themselves in Bali, they found gold in Peru and promptly ruined everything.

And oh, the stories they left behind. Not just tales of battle and glory, but oddities, blunders, and some moments so absurd you’d think they’d come from a sitcom set in chainmail. Take Hernán Cortés, the guy everyone remembers for allegedly burning his ships to stop his men from going home. Except he didn’t. He sank them. Still dramatic, just a bit soggy.

Then there’s Francisco Pizarro, who conquered an empire and founded Lima, yet couldn’t write his own name. Literacy: optional, apparently. But cruelty? Mandatory. When Atahualpa, the Inca emperor, offered a roomful of gold for his freedom, Pizarro took the bling and killed him anyway. The ransom room is real. The morals, less so.

Let’s talk wardrobe. The conquistadors’ famous metal armour might have looked great in a courtroom painting, but under the tropical sun it turned into a personal slow cooker. Many gave up and wore quilted cotton like the locals. Less shine, more survival.

And the animals. Dear reader, they thought armadillos were pigs in armour. And turkeys? They were convinced those bizarre gobbling birds were some divine punishment. Horses, meanwhile, terrified the locals—at first. The initial shock of seeing a half-man-half-beast combo wore off once people realised you could just aim for the legs.

One man didn’t just go native—he went rogue. Gonzalo Guerrero, shipwrecked in the Yucatán, married into Maya nobility and helped them fight off the next wave of Spaniards. Full tattoos, full rebellion. A conquistador turned anti-conquistador. We all know someone who takes their new lifestyle a bit too seriously.

And then there was Hernando de Soto, the conquistador who wandered the southeastern United States looking for El Dorado and found mostly mosquitoes. When he died, his men secretly buried him in the Mississippi River to hide his death from local tribes, telling them he had turned into a god. Because apparently that was less awkward than saying, “He didn’t make it.”

Their adventures were so strange that lawyers back in Spain had to invent new paperwork for them. Enter the “Requerimiento” —a legal notice read to Indigenous people in Spanish, giving them the chance to surrender before being attacked. Often delivered mid-charge. Bureaucracy, but make it violent.

The conquistadors weren’t shy with a pen, either. They drew wildly inaccurate maps, wrote letters full of fantasy, and swore they’d found cities paved with silver and women who fought like Amazons. Most of it was fiction. All of it helped them get more funding.

They also believed in some spectacularly bizarre theories. Like the one suggesting Native Americans were one of the lost tribes of Israel. You could almost hear the priests scrambling for theological relevance as they stumbled through jungles armed with crucifixes and complete bewilderment.

Even pigs played a part. The ones they brought over bred like rabbits and wreaked havoc on local ecosystems. In many places, pigs became feral nuisances that outlived the conquistadors. Imagine being remembered not for your victories, but for your pork.

Not all of them even fought. Some latecomers simply showed up, claimed they were part of the expedition, and demanded a share of the treasure. The Spanish crown eventually cracked down on these guys, calling it “conquest by footnote.” Nice try, though.

Among the more complicated legacies is that of La Malinche, Cortés’ translator, advisor, and mother of his child. Her story straddles the line between traitor and survivor. Without her, Cortés would’ve been linguistically lost and possibly very, very dead.

Their maps misled, their laws confused, their alliances backfired. Yet the myth of the conquistador stuck. Half hero, half villain. Remembered in names of cities, strains of DNA, church bells that ring from the ruins of pyramids.

The legacy isn’t gold or glory. It’s a tangle of contradictions, colonial ruins, and diary entries full of overconfidence. The conquistador was many things—but most of all, he was sure of himself. Even when he was hopelessly lost, dangerously wrong, or wildly deluded. That, more than anything, is what made him unforgettable.