You think what was going on down there was any better?
Of course not-but heavy-handed interference just escalated the whole situation, and the Spaniards were entirely motivated by greed-they needed to pillage and loot any place they got to ahead of the Brits, Dutch, French in order to finance their wars with all of the aforementioned. Another poster said they followed the medieval Viking model-but I think they added their own Latin/Roman touch, too.
Not saying the Brits, Dutch or French were much nicer to the Indians in what is now the US and Canada, but the Spaniards have been notoriously greedy and bloodthirsty from early times-they learned well from the Romans and never forgot-pains me to say that about my own antecedents, but it is historical fact-of the few people I’ve met from Spain, the only ones who weren’t absolute ass***es were Basques, like many of my ancestors were...