The Spanish conquest of the Maya was a protracted conflict during the Spanish colonisation of the Americas, in which the Spanish conquistadores and their allies gradually incorporated the territory of the Late Postclassic Maya states and polities into the colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Maya occupied the Maya Region, an area that is now part of the modern countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador; the conquest began in the early 16th century and is generally considered to have ended in 1697.
Before the conquest, Maya territory contained a number of competing kingdoms. Many conquistadors viewed the Maya as infidels who needed to be forcefully converted and pacified, despite the achievements of their civilization. The first contact between the Maya and European explorers came in 1502, during the fourth voyage of Christopher Columbus, when his brother Bartholomew encountered a canoe. Several Spanish expeditions followed in 1517 and 1519, making landfall on various parts of the Yucatán coast. The Spanish conquest of the Maya was a prolonged affair; the Maya kingdoms resisted integration into the Spanish Empire with such tenacity that their defeat took almost two centuries. The Itza Maya and other lowland groups in the Petén Basin were first contacted by Hernán Cortés in 1525, but remained independent and hostile to the encroaching Spanish until 1697, when a concerted Spanish assault led by Martín de Urzúa y Arizmendi finally defeated the last independent Maya kingdom.
The conquest of the Maya was hindered by their politically fragmented state. Spanish and native tactics and technology differed greatly. The Spanish engaged in a strategy of concentrating native populations in newly founded colonial towns; they viewed the taking of prisoners as a hindrance to outright victory, whereas the Maya prioritised the capture of live prisoners and of booty. Among the Maya, ambush was a favoured tactic; in response to the use of Spanish cavalry, the highland Maya took to digging pits and lining them with wooden stakes. Native resistance to the new nucleated settlements took the form of the flight into inaccessible regions such as the forest or joining neighbouring Maya groups that had not yet submitted to the European conquerors. Spanish weaponry included crossbows, firearms (including muskets, arquebuses and cannon), and war horses. Maya warriors fought with flint-tipped spears, bows and arrows, stones, and wooden swords with inset obsidian blades, and wore padded cotton armour to protect themselves. The Maya lacked key elements of Old World technology such as a functional wheel, horses, iron, steel, and gunpowder; they were also extremely susceptible to Old World diseases, against which they had no resistance.
Geography
The Maya civilization occupied the Maya Region, a wide territory that included southeastern Mexico and northern Central America; this area included the entire Yucatán Peninsula, and all of the territory now incorporated into the modern countries of Guatemala and Belize, as well as the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. In Mexico, the Maya occupied territory now incorporated into the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Yucatán.
The Yucatán Peninsula is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the east and by the Gulf of Mexico to the north and west. It incorporates the modern Mexican states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Campeche, the eastern portion of the state of Tabasco, most of the Petén Department in Guatemala, and all of Belize. Most of the peninsula is formed by a vast plain with few hills or mountains and a generally low coastline. The northwestern and northern portions of the Yucatán Peninsula experience lower rainfall than the rest of the peninsula; these regions feature highly porous limestone bedrock resulting in less surface water. In contrast, the northeastern portion of the peninsula is characterised by forested swamplands. The northern portion of the peninsula lacks rivers, except for the Champotón River – all other rivers are located in the south.
The Petén region consists of densely forested low-lying limestone plain, crossed by low east–west oriented ridges and is characterised by a variety of forest and soil types; water sources include generally small rivers and low-lying seasonal swamps known as bajos. A chain of fourteen lakes runs across the central drainage basin of Petén. The largest lake is Lake Petén Itza; it measures . A broad savannah extends south of the central lakes. To the north of the lakes region bajos become more frequent, interspersed with forest. To the south the plain gradually rises towards the Guatemalan Highlands. Dense forest covers northern Petén and Belize, most of Quintana Roo, southern Campeche and a portion of the south of Yucatán state. Further north, the vegetation turns to lower forest consisting of dense scrub.
Chiapas occupies the extreme southeast of Mexico; it possesses of Pacific coastline. Chiapas features two principal highland regions; to the south is the Sierra Madre de Chiapas and in central Chiapas are the Montañas Centrales (Central Highlands). They are separated by the Depresión Central, containing the drainage basin of the Grijalva River, featuring a hot climate with moderate rainfall. The Sierra Madre highlands gain altitude from west to east, with the highest mountains near the Guatemalan border. The Central Highlands of Chiapas rise sharply to the north of the Grijalva, to a maximum altitude of , then descend gradually towards the Yucatán Peninsula. They are cut by deep valleys running parallel to the Pacific coast, and feature a complex drainage system that feeds both the Grijalva and the Lacantún River. At the eastern end of the Central Highlands is the Lacandon Forest, this region is largely mountainous with lowland tropical plains at its easternmost extreme. The littoral zone of Soconusco lies to the south of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, and consists of a narrow coastal plain and the foothills of the Sierra Madre.
Maya region before the conquest
The Maya had never been unified as a single empire, but by the time the Spanish arrived Maya civilization was thousands of years old and had already seen the rise and fall of great cities.
Maya Lowlands The first large Maya cities developed in the Petén Basin in the southern Maya Lowlands (far south of the Yucatán Peninsula) as far back as the Middle Preclassic (c. 600–350 BC), and Petén formed the heartland of the ancient Maya civilization during the Classic period (c. AD 250–900). The 16th-century Maya provinces of northern Yucatán are likely to have evolved out of polities of the Maya Classic period. The great cities that dominated Petén had fallen into ruin by the beginning of the 10th century with the onset of the Classic Maya collapse. A significant Maya presence remained in Petén into the Postclassic period after the abandonment of the major Classic period cities; the population was particularly concentrated near permanent water sources.
In the early 16th century, the Yucatán Peninsula was still dominated by the Maya civilization. It was divided into a number of independent provinces that shared a common culture but varied in their internal sociopolitical organisation. When the Spanish discovered Yucatán, the provinces of Mani and Sotuta were two of the most important polities in the region. They were mutually hostile; the Xiu Maya of Mani allied themselves with the Spanish, while the Cocom Maya of Sotuta became the implacable enemies of the European colonisers.
At the time of conquest, polities in the northern Yucatán peninsula included Mani, Cehpech, and Chakan; further east along the north coast were Ah Kin Chel, Cupul, and Chikinchel. Ecab, Uaymil, and Chetumal all bordered on the Caribbean Sea. Cochuah was also in the eastern half of the peninsula. Tases, Hocaba, and Sotuta were all landlocked provinces. Chanputun (modern Champotón) was on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, as was Acalan. In the southern portion of the peninsula, a number of polities occupied the Petén Basin. The Kejache occupied a territory between the Petén lakes and what is now Campeche. The Cholan Maya-speaking Lakandon (not to be confused with the modern inhabitants of Chiapas by that name) controlled territory along the tributaries of the Usumacinta River spanning eastern Chiapas and southwestern Petén. The Lakandon had a fierce reputation amongst the Spanish.
Before their defeat in 1697, the Itza controlled or influenced much of Petén and parts of Belize. The Itza were warlike, and their capital was Nojpetén, an island city upon Lake Petén Itzá. The Kowoj were the second in importance; they were hostile towards their Itza neighbours. The Kowoj were located around the eastern Petén lakes. The Yalain occupied a territory that extended eastwards to Tipuj in Belize. Other groups in Petén are less well known, and their precise territorial extent and political makeup remains obscure; among them were the Chinamita, the Icaiche, the Kejache, the Lakandon Chʼol, the Manche Chʼol, and the Mopan.
Maya Highlands
What is now the Mexican state of Chiapas was divided roughly equally between the non-Maya Zoque in the western half and Maya in the eastern half; this distribution continued up to the time of the Spanish conquest. On the eve of the conquest, the highlands of Guatemala were dominated by several powerful Maya states. In the centuries preceding the arrival of the Spanish the Kʼicheʼ had carved out a small empire covering a large part of the western Guatemalan Highlands and the neighbouring Pacific coastal plain. However, in the late 15th century the Kaqchikel rebelled against their former Kʼicheʼ allies and founded a new kingdom to the southeast with Iximche as its capital. In the decades before the Spanish invasion the Kaqchikel kingdom had been steadily eroding the kingdom of the Kʼicheʼ. Other highland groups included the Tzʼutujil around Lake Atitlán, the Mam in the western highlands and the Poqomam in the eastern highlands. The central highlands of Chiapas were occupied by a number of Maya peoples, including the Tzotzil, who were divided into a number of provinces; the province of Chamula was said to have five small towns grouped closely together. The Tojolabal held territory around Comitán. The Coxoh Maya held territory in the upper reaches of the Grijalva drainage, near the Guatemalan border, and were probably a subgroup of the Tojolabal.
Pacific Lowlands Soconusco was an important communication route between the central Mexican highlands and Central America. It had been subjugated by the Aztec Triple Alliance at the end of the 15th century, under the emperor Ahuizotl, and paid tribute in cacao. The dominant ethnolinguistic group of Soconusco, and indeed the Chiapas coast as a whole may have been Tapachultec, which was a Mixe–Zoque language and not Mayan.Campbell, Lyle, et al. (1988). The linguistics of Southeast Chiapas, Mexico. New World Archaeological Foundation, Brigham Young University. The highland Kʼicheʼ dominated the Pacific coastal plain of western Guatemala. The eastern portion of the Pacific plain was occupied by the non-Maya Pipil and Xinca.
Background to the conquest