Cortez was a monster and his doing brought terrible consequences for the natives as much as for the white colonizers. Not only he robbed and pillaged for himself soo much gold and precious artifacts that could have fuelled europe, not only he ravaged a fertile land making the later occupation and sustaining of the colonies much more difficult, but he slaughtered countless fertile native wombs and made impossible to ever appear as the righteous liberators for everyone populating those lands. Cortez is no hero, if anything he's a traitor of the White cause

Apparently his whole venture was illegal. But the spanish crown was unable to have the man apprehended, and even the expedition meant to arrest him was crushed. Man... If things only went differently.