What should be noted, is the condition in the three major areas: Inca and Aztec Empires, and North America. These indigenous peoples were neither oblivious to the Spanish threat, nor at their peak of power to withstand them, though they each had tens of thousands more in arms than did the Spanish. The problem was, that calamities and wars had always been part of native life long before the Spanish arrived in Central and South America, and the Europeans in North America.
Mayflower Landing 1620 and early settlements in the area
In South America, the Inca had a civil war on the eve of the Spanish arrival, called the Dynastic War or War of Succession, which was fought between the two brothers, Huáscar and Ataphalpa, sons of Emporer Huayna Capac, over the succession to the Inca throne, in which the Inca population was severely decreased. Including this war and the Spanish conquest, it is today estimated that the overall total was the destruction of 95% of the population (C.T. Smith, et al., "Depopulation of the Central Andes in the 16th Century," Current Anthropology, vol.11, iss.4-5, January 1970, pp453–464).
In Mesoamerica, the Aztec before the Spanish arrived, was a society centered on warfare; every Aztec male received basic military training from an early age and the only possibility of upward social mobility for commoners was through the military achievement within the six warrior societies, especially the taking of captives, with warfare the main driving force of both the economy and religion. The Aztec had two main objectives in warfare: 1) Political—the subjugation of enemy city states in order to exact tribute and expand Aztec political hegemony; 2) Religious—the taking of captives to be sacrificed in religious ceremonies. All of this led to the Aztec empire maintaining their state through warfare or the threat of war with other cities.
About 70 years before the arrival of the Spanish, the Aztec Empire was involved in a devastating civil war over succession between Tayahuah and Maxtla, after the death of the Tepanec king Tezozomoc, weakening the Empire. About 30 years before Cortez invaded, the Aztecs lost a major battle to the Purépecha Empire, losing 95% of their army, some 40,000 warriors. Following, the Aztec Empire was involved in numerous wars, intrigues, and assassinations until Montecuzoma (Montezuma) gained control. In 1515, the Aztecs again lost a major war four years before the Spanish arrived, who found a greatly reduced and fragmented Aztec Empire.
The major Indian tribes in the northeast at the time of the European
landings in North America
The point is, much death among native tribes in the Americas had been taking place for some time before the Europeans arrived in the Western Hemisphere. Indian life had not been easy, fruitful or free to engage in other pursuits than that of warfare and defense. The plight of the Lamanites in the Americas had been foretold many centuries earlier, from the end of Lehi life onward, when he blessed his sons and prophesied the consequences of their differing ways of life. Speaking to Laman and Lemuel, he regretted that, because of the hardness of their hearts, they would be “cut off and destroyed forever,” and that a curse would come upon them because they would be “led according to the will and captivity of the devil” (2 Nephi 1:17–18).
The people who followed Laman and Lemuel “hardened their hearts against [God], that they had become like unto a flint” (2 Nephi 5:21). The Lord, therefore, caused a “sore cursing” to come upon them “because of their iniquity.” They suffered spiritual death as they were cut off from his presence and “because of their cursing which was upon them they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey” (2 Nephi 5:21, 24).
The Lord also placed upon these Lamanites the mark of a dark skin. The Lord warned that anyone who mingled with the wicked would also become subject to their curse (2 Nephi 5:21–23). In Mormon’s time, the Lamanites sacrificed women and children to idols (Mormon 4:11, 14). Nevertheless, the mark of the dark skin evidently had not yet returned to the wicked. Mormon noted that the remnant of this people would “become a dark, a filthy, and a loathsome people, beyond the description of that whichever hath been amongst us, yea, even that which hath been among the Lamanites” (Mormon 5:15).
The Lamanites became a mixture of many lines. Undoubtedly, there was in their veins the blood of Nephi, Joseph, and Jacob, as well as that of Laman, Lemuel and Sam, and also that of the Mulekites of Judah. The name “Indian” was given to the early possessors of the Americas by Columbus, mistaking them for indigenous people of India. As the Indians of the Americas intermarried with the invading European conquerors and nations were formed, they became Mexicans, Peruvians, Bolivians, Guatemalans, and others. But the correct name for all the descendants of Lehi and Ishmael is “Lamanite.”
This brutality of the Spanish conquest has been pointed out lately by the unearthing of a 500-yer-old cemetery in Peru. Human skeletons have yielded the first direct evidence of Inca fatalities caused by Spanish conquerors. Despite the fact that Spanish documents of the 16th century show their preference for the steel sword, these dead had been killed by the Spanish with guns, steel lances, or hammers, along with the likelihood of light cannon, according to a report in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, March 23, 2010. Surprising there were no incisions or other marks characteristic of sword injuries appeared on the bones reported by anthropologist Melissa Murphy of the University of Wyoming.
In fact, skeletons in the Inca cemetery, as well as at another grave site about a mile away, display a gruesome array of violent injuries, many probably caused by maces, clubs and other Inca weapons, the researchers report. Those weapons may have been wielded by Inca from communities known to have collaborated with the Spanish, or might have been borrowed by the Spanish, they posit. “The nature and pattern of these skeletal injuries were unlike anything colleagues and I had seen before,” Murphy says. “Many of these people died brutal, horrible deaths.”
Skulls showing heavy blows to the head with large, weighted instruments
causing death; the number of these type injuries to skulls was inordinately
high for the number found in the cemetery
The point is, the violent Lamanite end was foretold in the scriptural record by Lehi, Nephi, and others, and of all the contact between Europeans and indigenous peoples of the Americas, that which took place in Andean Peru was by far the most brutal and devastating, wiping out the vast majority of the population in cruel and vicious acts of violent brutality.
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