Africans were also conquistadors in the early Conquest campaigns in the Caribbean and Mexico. In the 1500s there were enslaved black, free black, and free black sailors on Spanish ships crossing the Atlantic and developing new routes of conquest and trade in the Americas. After 1521, the wealth and credit generated by the acquisition of the Mexica Empire funded auxiliary forces of black conquistadors that could number as many as five hundred. Spaniards recognized the value of these fighters. Although they usually chose to forget black contributions in written accounts of Spanish campaigns, Spaniards occasionally admitted that African men were outstanding soldiers (because so many African men became slaves by being captured on battlefields back in Africa, they already had military experience before coming to the Americas).