In 1933 [[Archibald MacLeish]] won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his narrative poem Conquistador. The poem is based on the memoir of Bernal Diaz del Castillo -- The True History of the Conquest of New Spain. Diaz was a conquistador in the company of Fernando Cortez during the conquest of Mexico. His memoir, written over 30 years after the conquest, partially in response to the historian Gomara's accounts of the conquest and partially to seek reward from the King of Spain, emphasizes the important contributions of the ordinary soldiers in the Spanish conquest.

MacLeish had followed the path of Cortez and his soldiers through Mexico and used his knowledge of the topography of the Mexican landscape and Diaz's account in his poetic re-imagining.

The narrator is Diaz, at the end of this life, recounting his story of the conquest and wondering at its effects:

"The tedious veteran jealous of his fame!"
What is my fame or the fame of these my companions?
Their tombs are the bellies of Indians: theirs are the shameful

Graves in the wild earth: in the Godless sand:
None know the place of their bones: as for mine
Strangers will dig my grave in a stony land:

Even my sons have the strangeness of dark kind in them:
Indian dogs will bark at dusk by my sepulchre:
What is my fame! ( )