From 1492 to the 1800s, Spanish explorers were the bullies of the New World. 

Beginning with Columbus in 1492 and continuing for nearly 350 years, Spain conquered and settled most of South America, the Caribbean, and the American Southwest. 

Yeah, they kept themselves busy.

Christopher Columbus and his crew arrived in 1492 after sailing the ocean blue in a quest to find a faster trade route to Asia. They wanted riches and the eternal glory of being really cool by discovering the better water highway to Asia. They also wanted to spread what they thought was the Best Religion Ever, Catholicism. 

Maybe the explorers thought they were bringing something great (religion and Catholicism) to the local tribes, but they actually brought diseases that killed millions of Native Americans.

To add insult to smallpox, the Spanish explorers enslaved the Native Americans who weren't killed and then took their natural resources. It was a pretty ugly time period for the Native Americans, who fought back and won some key battles, but in the end they were dealing with so many diseases that they weren't exactly in tip-top fighting shape. 

Sound too good to be true? (For Spain, that is.) Well, it was. 

The growth of a racially-mixed society eventually caused rifts to develop between Spain and its American colonies, and by 1824, all of Spain's New World colonies except Cuba and Puerto Rico had fought for and won their independence.

So, it's hard to say that anything "good" came out of the conquest, but that's the thing with history. It happens whether you like it or not. 

Hate 'em or hate 'em less, the Spanish explorers did leave a deep and lasting mark on the Americas. To see the Spanish legacy, all you have to do is look around you. See those horses and that wheat? The conquest brought those. Ever notice that there are more than 400 million people who practice Catholicism in Latin America today? The conquest did that. Does the phrase "Spanish language" ring any bells? Of course it does because more than 8% of the world speaks it as a first language. 

That's the conquest again. Say what you will about the conquistadors, but you can't say they weren't important.

Ever wonder how we, as modern Americans, got here?

After all, our society doesn't look much like the societies that existed here in the Western Hemisphere during the previous few thousand years. And while the American people today are descendants of peoples from every continent, American culture does look a lot like European culture. Which is funny because Europe is far away. 

European culture in America began not with the English, but with Spain, which over the course of about one hundred years, managed to conquer the native societies of Latin America and install a forceful presence in what's now the United States.

Christopher Columbus is a controversial figure today, celebrated by some as a great hero, while others attack him as a historical villain, responsible for the often-vicious conquest of the Americas by the Spanish who followed in the wake of his "discovery" of this continent. 

Whether you imagine Columbus in the role of hero or villain, there's no denying his importance. Columbus opened the Atlantic to European explorers, adventures, merchants, and the famous conquistadores. And the process that Columbus set in motion led to the foundation of the United States about three hundred years after Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue.

The Spanish were able to colonize much of South and Central America, but the territory that later became the United States stood on the far periphery of Spain's New World empire. Only in the West did the Spanish have a serious presence in territory that's now the United States, and Spanish penetration of California and New Mexico came only in the 17th and 18th centuries. 

Spanish place names and institutions are still found all over California and the Southwest.

But even more important than the physical remains of Spanish society in the United States is the mere fact that the Spanish came here, paved the way for later European nations to come here, and provided the models on which those other societies thrived. There would be no United States without Spain, and it's with Spain that the history of the United States as we know it began.