Dear Historians,

How did we get where we are today? That’s the big question that historians try to answer. As historians we’re not too interested in the why questions. Those questions are too complex and elusive. Many times, we don’t really know why things happened, but with research, insight, and hard work, we can piece together how things happened, even things that happened hundreds or thousands of years ago.

History is never a simple story. The story of Cortes and the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire isn’t the simple story of Spanish power overwhelming the Aztecs. As we read yesterday, some Aztecs joined the Spanish because they were unhappy with Aztec rule. Similarly, not all Spaniards approved of Spain’s conquest of the Americas. Today we’ll read about Bartolome de las Casas, a Spaniard who spoke out against the enslavement and mistreatment of native peoples.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck