John, I also want to add that I don't think that the Spanish conquistadores were racists. They were generally ignorant opportunists, elitists, and religious fanatics. Many people do not know that before the conquest, perhaps most of the common people among the Spaniards and Portuguese had Negroid ancestry - and this included the conquistadores.

At the same time, the Aztecs would have not noticed anything particularly unusual about the "whiteness" of some of the Spaniards. The Spaniards especially noted that all of the races of man were well represented in the Americas when they arrived here. They also said that the rulers among the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas appeared to be nearly Caucasian in appearance. The Spaniards also intermarried freely with the Amerindians as evidenced by the fact that they didn't bring White women with them at first.

I myself have seen Amerindians in the mountains of Jalisco, as white and blonde as any Swede. However, their facial features were definitely Amerindian. Cortes did not defeat the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan by warfare alone. He had among his soldiers a Negro who had smallpox. Cortes sent him among the citizens of Tenochtitlan, and in no time at all, a smallpox epidemic was killing them by the thousands.

Gene D. Matlock