[Spooky23]

If you study this stuff in the americas it’s depressing as the Spanish in particular slaughtered people and culture so completely and unimpeded for so long. The evil and barbarism of this colonial episode is difficult to fathom. The 20th century horror show of slaughter ran in relatively short episodes… this imperial era ran for hundreds of years.

Because you’re left with archeological evidence, whose interpretation is always very conservative, and limited oral tradition, it’s easy to veer into legend, because honestly that’s that who have to work with.

[tomrod]

The Spanish, the Portuguese, and most importantly, diseases that killed massive proportions of the population.

[AlotOfReading]

The disease aspects are inseparable from colonialism. Here's a quote from a recent survey on the matter [0] that describes the current understanding much better than I would:

    The contours of Indigenous depopulation were shaped not only by disease but also by complex colonial factors including violence, forced labor, exorbitant taxation, malnutrition, and dislocation. Archaeology has shown that Native populations were not destined to be decimated but were made vulnerable through the policies, choices, and behaviors of colonists.

[0] https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/97804292...

[Spooky23]

Diseases imo are empathized because they contribute to the body count and have an “act of god” nature to them. It’s an easier story than to describe a type of industrial genocide.

Read about the Mit'a system that was perverted by the colonial government to essentially improve the return on assets of the colony versus slaves or other means of cheap labor. It broke down the society of the native population completely and made it impossible for them to respond or react to disasters.

[ashoeafoot]

but then why romanticise what was destroyed ? Why not go at the world with a realistic view, which is that the "new world" was exactly the same as the old with dominant landempires holding colonies and tributories, aristocrats holding slaves, that where the landbound spaniards to their neighbors. Just because they have been genocided into a blank slate and you rightfully despise the acts of the genociders, does not mean you get to paint a utopia on the disfigured corpse. The hideaways of chaco canyon speak of slavers expeditions.

[Spooky23]

I didn’t. Why do you feel compelled to engage in “both sides” fallacy?

The Spanish Empire killed about 55M people or 90% of the indigenous population in a hundred years. That’s a scale of slaughter and suffering unprecedented even by the murderous ways of modern society, greater than even the Roman slaughter in Gaul.

Why is it so difficult for you to imagine that perhaps some of those 50 million people perhaps knew something? We’ll never know for sure, as everyone was killed and most aspects of their societies were destroyed.

[HideousKojima]

As bad as the Spaniards were, the Aztec's neighbors despised the Aztecs and their brutality so much that they willingly and gladly allied with the first viable challenger to their rule.