Question

Which order of Catholic missionaries was the first to attempt to convert the Native Americans of North America?

Answer 1

By the time Christopher Columbus set sail in 1492, the Christians of Spain had already spent nearly 700 years waging a religious war against the Muslims who had come up through Northern Africa. The Reconquista has instilled in the Christian Spaniards a fierce sense of religious pride, as well as a need to find treasures to refill both the Royal coffers and the personal accounts. The country was nearly united for the first time since the Roman Empire fell and the new catholic monarchs were trying to keep their tenuous hold on the throne. After having finally expelled the Muslims in the early 1490s, exploration was the best way to utilize the newly out of work soldiers. So the Spanish set sail and lay claim to the Americas. The goals of the excursions were 3 fold: expand the power and dominance of the Spanish monarchy, expand the wealth of the Spanish Monarch, and finally, to spread the reach of the Catholic faith to new souls. The particular brand of religion the Spanish brought with them to the Americas was not the peaceful and accepting faith that the French Jesuits displayed, rather,