Answer:The relationship between Europeans explorers and Native American People was a difficult one, which ultimately led to the destruction of most American civilizations, at the time much more advanced than European society.
Europeans used this on their behalf. They didn’t change much of the hierarchy of the society, they just removed the governments that existed and replaced it with their own.
The first translator from Nahuatl, the language that Aztecs spoke, and Spanish was a Native American woman called Malincha, and most of the translators were natives who were taught the European languages by monks and other preachers who travelled to the New World to teach the true religion and save Natives from sin. Monks and preachers were the only ones who learnt the Native languages and customs, in order to teach them better the true belief and to “civilize” them better.
Europeans lived in their cities and constructed above them – such are the cases of Mexico City and Cuzco. They used Natives as workforce, learnt to eat local food such as corn, that didn’t exist in Europe, and introduced their own food, such as wheat.
Europeans used Native’s customs on their behalf, for example the way they worked in mines and in harvest. Take the case of mita, which was the system the Incas used in mining, based on rotary workforce from all the Empire.
In other words, in the beginning they didn't change much. As time went by they introduced their own customs, except in the case of religion.
It’s very difficult to understand someone form a different culture. First of all, both of the sides didn’t even know the other one existed. And when they found each other, they interpreted the new phenomena with their own view of the world. Europeans were looking for a new route to India and China, that’s why they called Natives Indians, because they thought they have reached that country. As time went by they realized they found a different continent, and for a while they thought it was paradise. On the other hand, Natives thought that Europeans were former gods seeking for revenge.
The judgment of other culture with one’s view of the world is called ethnocentrism, and no society has ever escaped from it. A person and a society judges the world according to their own parameters, principles and experience. Ultimately, is a defensive strategy. They weren’t used to the new, so both sides reacted with fear. Things didn't change as fast as they change now, change came very slow and the introduction of these new cultures was a major one that nobody knew how to digest.
The primal source of knowledge for historians are journals and other written evidence left behind by the explorers, such as the case of Columbus journal. On the other hand, Natives who were taught how to write were able to collect their culture knowledge and leave it to posterity, such is the case of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Europeans left behind as well information about the experience of the Natives. So it did de Las Casas, who denounced the tortures the Europeans inflected the Natives.
Archeologists know all of these because of their excavations. They can reconstruct the way a city used to look like by its foundations and other traces left behind. Both historical and archeological knowledge support each other.
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