Talk:Sioux/@comment-26459635-20170501203107/@comment-27726014-20171024131322

A good comparison with the Aztecs are the Romans. Rome also was the center point of the empire and when it was sacked the Roman Empire was pretty much done for. Unlike the Aztecs they didn't at the same time have to content with the greatest plague of all time wiping out 90% of their population and having the content with a foreign enemy with superior weapons. It was an amount of pressure the empire simply couldn't bear. The only reason the Eastern Roman empire surived was because it was already independent from the Western half for over a century. The quick fall of the Aztecs does not mean Tenostitlan was the only notable city but it does speak that it was the center of a centralized empire and without that center to empire collapses.

The Maya city states didn't fall easily at all. They actually held out as long as the Inca did despite the conflict starting much earlier. However a large reason for that is that the Spaniards didn't commit as many resources to it as they did the Inca. After all the Maya didn't have gold and didn't really bother that many.

The spaniards also reached the major cities fairly quickly and took them over. It was the remote fortresses up on the mountains that continued to resist for decades. A major advantage the Inca had over the Aztecs was that the plague reached them just over a decade before the Spanish themselves arrived. It gave them the chance to ride it out and recover some of their infrastructure. That, in combination with rumors about the Aztecs ensured the Inca empire didn't just collapse when the Spanish arrived. They were mainly fighting against the Spanish putting up their precious metal mines and trying to free the people the Spanish used as slaves.

I don't see why it butchers it at all. I actually think it does paint it in a realistic light how the Spaniards thought of the natives. They didn't go out of their way to abuse them but they also didn't really care what happened to them. The second one portrayed the relationship more realistically than most works of fiction did. Natives were not always the victims and relationships weren't always hostile. The only thing that I feel they could have included was Spanish misionaries trying to convert the natives though I think actually involving religion in that way was something that Microsoft was a little scared of. Not to mention I don't see why the circle is disrespectful in any way. It's obviously fictional so what's the big deal?