[Leonardo Daneluz]

Storing powder wasn´t a problem. After all they stored horses all the way from Spain. But the spanish kings deliberately limited the amount of modern weapons in America. From the very beginning it was clear that the conquistadors would revolt against Spain at the first opportunity.
Like in the case of Pedro Aguirre. There is a Herzog´s movie with Klaus Kinski, not entirely accurate but it has Klaus Kinski in a spanish sallet!

[Merv Cannon]

Hi James............ I am not an expert on Conquistadors but I want to make mention of the "Adarga" shield. I have some documentation stating that most of the Soldiers eventually found that the steel Rondella shields were too heavy in the tropics and also were quite unnecessary ( as a matter of over-kill ) in regard to defence against Indian darts and arrows, etc.
It states that they finally took the Round shields back to their ships to swap for the lighter weight and more mobile Adargas which they had inherited from the Moors. The Adargas were mostly made of thick leather (cuir-boulli ?) and gave the user plenty of protection without being a burdon. This explains why most of the surviving Adargas are in South Americian museums and also New Mexico, etc. Adargas evolved from a heart shape to a unique shape of two joined a-symetricial overlaping ovals. Some had fringes all the way around too. ( BTW, there is also adequate reference in period art showing Spanish Catholic Knights using Adarga ( shape) shields, albeit probably in wood or wood with metal reinforce. )
Cheers

[M. Eversberg II]

[Leonardo Daneluz]

Going to the "Indias" was the last resource of the losers of Spanish society. Something you decide when the other option is either starvation, jail or the galleys.
As far I know all the conquistadores were volunteers. The spanish crown reserved its better men and weapons for far more technological and dangerous wars. Like Flandes.

[Gordon Frye]

Most of the Conquistadors were what a later generation would call "Freebooters", in that they had little or no official help in their adventures. Cortez was in fact declared outlaw by the Governor of Cuba, but when he sent back five ships full of gold and other treasures to the King, all was forgiven. Likewise with Pizzaro. There were also fights between the various Conquistadors to see who would get the right to conquer a new territory. Sometimes, such as with Bogota where three separate Spanish armies showed up at the same time, from different directions, two of them would buy out the third and then join forces against the locals. (Pedro Alvarado, lieutenant of Cortez and Conqueror of Guatemala came from the north, and was the one bought out, while Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada coming from the East was one of the winners. A Pizzaro (IIRC) coming up from Peru was the third.

The Spanish Crown was always very suspicious of these men, and rightly so. Cortez, after giving Mexico to Carlos I (AKA the Emperor Charles V of Germany) was made a Marquis, and kept on a short leash in Spain, being replaced by first a triumvarate of judges, and when that didn't work (one of them getting a free trip home in chains for his slaving expeditions in the northwest of Mexico) Charles replaced the system with that of a Viceroy, such as the Spaniards had in Italy at the time. With the right man, who had large estates in Spain that could be confiscated if he went "bad", the system worked well. For the Crown, at least. But the Crown never had a lot of faith in the loyalties of the Conquistadors, and none of them ever really did well afterwards, with the possible exeption of Cortez, who was exeptional anyway.

BTW, sufficient gunpowder never seems to have been an issue, whereas sufficient crossbow-bolts was. Cortez had to have the Tlaxcalans make up several hundred thousand of them for his crossbowmen for the siege of Tenochtitlan.

Cheers!

Gordon

[M. Eversberg II]

They seem to have a different way of doing things than I would have expected.

I will have to read into their conquers sometime; it's a little out of bounds of my interests, but I *have* been ignoring the Americas.

M.