Hernan Cortes was not just pleased by the submission of the Indians, he demanded that the natives must be converted to Christianity.

By 1525 Franciscan monks began to arrive in the new world in small numbers. They were very successful at winning over part of the native elite mostly in part because they were able to offer the natives a sense of security. The natives at this time were being exploited by Spanish conquest and were in a state of constant turmoil.

The Monks allowed the natives some protections from the chaos around then and allowed the natives to some extent reorganize their lives and live in a more civil, peaceful manner.

With the arrival of the first of the Spanish Inquisitors; the Archbishop, Christianity strained to flex its muscle in creating to what they believed to be “law and order.”

They closed down all the schools of the Native nobility and demanded that all practices of their native religion be stopped at once and all idolaters to be punished.

The Native Indians Lose Their Way.

The Church sets out to Christianize the New World.

The church imposed a uniform system of marriage on the natives and claimed that all of the polygamists marriages of the natives were not legitimate. They took the children of the women who no longer had “legitimate” husbands and educated and converted them to Catholicism. They often used these children as spies and informants.

The church also organized marriages between native nobility and Spaniards to aid in the hispanization of the new world. They also began to impose education on the natives introducing them to the European alphabet.

The church set out to destroy all remnants of the native religion with the force of the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico.

With the total collapse of their traditional institutions and their drastic dropping numbers due to disease, the old way of life for the natives was completely lost.