ABSTRACT
The conquest of the Americas, like similar enterprises before and after, attracted a wide variety of people. An account of the fall of Tenochtitlan as remembered by Aztec eyewitnesses was recorded in Bernardino de Sahaguns General History of the Things of New Spain. It conveys with simple eloquence the pathos of the surrender and the terrible aftermath of the conquest. As the conquest of Peru unfolded, it repeated in a number of ways the sequence of events in Mexico. In Atahualpa 1534 True History of the Conquest of Peru, Francisco de Xerez, secretary to Francisco Pizarro and an active participant in the conquest, describes the fateful meeting between Spaniards and Inca at Cajamarca. The principal instrument of Spain's conquest of the New World was the com-pana whose members shared in the profits of an expedition or campaign according to their rank and services. The conquest of the Americas, like similar enterprises before and after, attracted a wide variety of people.
