Why Did Steel Armor Matter More Than Guns for Cortés?

Si Sheppard says steel armor and steel helmets mattered more than guns once native fighters got past the first shock.

A few hundred men with Cortés fought the Tlaxcalans, who numbered in the multiple thousands, to a standstill, and he was still fighting without native allies. Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel lists the Spanish advantages, but Sheppard says firearms drop out of the real fight because they took so long to reload. Local weapons of wood, stone, and obsidian stayed dangerous as slashing blades. Obsidian is razor sharp. Against steel armor, and especially steel helmets, it did much less.

The other half of the edge was training. Conquistadors used long Toledo steel swords as thrusting weapons against fighters who cut and slashed, which left the body open. Technology plus generations of military practice, not the guns, is what he calls the critical edge. They were not invincible. Cortés buried his dead under the houses where his men sheltered so the Tlaxcalans would not see that the hand-to-hand fighting was costing him men.