1. Through persuasion and the belief that Cortez was the God Quetzalcoatl the Spaniards entered in peacefully and captured Montezuma.
2. The Sistema de Castas organized individuals into racial groups based on their supposed "purity of blood".
3. This racial hierarchy was created as a prerequisites for social and political advancement. Iberian-born Spaniards occupied the highest levels of administration. Their descendants, New World born Spaniards occupied the next rung. Those mixed with Spanish and Indian heritage followed.

1. How does internal tension in the Native American empires of the Americas aid Spanish attempts to create their empire?

2. The Spanish wanted to take over the natives land because of the wealth and happiness it could bring to them. Central and South America was rumored to have fortunes around the land.

3. In the biological exchange between Europeans and Native Americans, what diseases, plants, and animals were exchanged? The diseases that Europeans brought over to the Americas were measles, smallpox and influenza. Domesticated animals, squash, beans, corn and tobacco were among the many things traded between the Native Americans and the Europeans.

4. What are the ways that European powers claim their right to claim land in the Americas?

5. The pope authorized the Europeans to claim the land, claimed they discovered the land, and claiming they improved the land from the people they took it over from.

It is amazing how many people risked their own lives just to come to America because they knew that they could make money off of what was already there.

The Spanish was trying to take control over North and Central America. They were taking away valued goods from the Native Americans and made money off of it.