conquistador

The Catalan conquistador led the first mainland expedition of Europeans up and down what’s now California.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 4, 2026

Gen. George Patton and Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conquistador who famously destroyed his own ships so his soldiers couldn’t retreat.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 28, 2026

Others credit Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes, who got a taste of chocolate after being served Xocolatl by Montezuma himself.

From Salon ● Feb. 17, 2025

A statue of the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro has been reinstalled in the centre of Peru's capital Lima, more than 20 years after it was removed.

From BBC ● Jan. 18, 2025

The most dramatic moment in subsequent European—Native American relations was the first encounter between the Inca emperor Atahuallpa and the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro at the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca on November 16, 1532.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

But the preoccupations among the conquistadores are plunder, religious conversions or, in Magellan’s case, an impulse to bring the world to his feet by making it navigable.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 23, 2026

Peru's largest archaeological sites are located outside Lima in places such as Cusco, which was the capital of the Inca Empire and fell to Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century.

From Reuters ● Nov. 22, 2023

They threw together a mining camp they called Eldoradoville, named for the mythic golden king and kingdom of the questing Spanish conquistadores.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 24, 2022

Some of the vines had been planted centuries earlier, by conquistadores and missionaries.

From The New Yorker ● Nov. 18, 2019

In that case, however, conquistadores contributed nothing directly to the societies’ destruction; Eurasian germs, spreading in advance, did everything.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

Characterized as “myths,” for example, were the age-old beliefs that Native Americans mistook the conquistadors for gods, and that a mere handful of Spaniards toppled great empires with ease.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 2, 2026

Somewhat later, Spanish conquistadors followed Columbus across the Atlantic to conquer the Aztec and Incan empires, occupying significant parts of the Americas.

From Salon ● Sep. 20, 2024

The new findings, published in the scientific journal Nature, call into question previous theories concerning the spread of syphilis by the Spanish conquistadors.

From Science Daily ● Jan. 24, 2024

Across Mexico, hundreds of people take to the skies this way, spiraling gently to earth and preserving an Indigenous tradition that survived the Spanish conquistadors perhaps simply because it is jaw-dropping.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 20, 2023

I just wished I had been with Atahualpa and his army when the conquistadors fired off that blunderbuss.

From "Dead End in Norvelt" by Jack Gantos