{"id":91,"date":"2015-08-21T17:59:33","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T17:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/ushistory1os2xmaster\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=91"},"modified":"2019-08-23T21:30:59","modified_gmt":"2019-08-23T21:30:59","slug":"the-spanish-conquest","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-jcc-ushistory1os\/chapter\/the-spanish-conquest\/","title":{"raw":"The Spanish Conquest","rendered":"The Spanish Conquest"},"content":{"raw":"<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-highlight\">\r\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\r\nBy the end of this section, you will be able to:\r\n<ul class=\"im_orderedlist\">\r\n \t<li>Explain the factors that enabled the Spanish to defeat the Aztec and take control over the Aztec Empire<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Evaluate the impact of the Spanish conquest on native peoples<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Analyze the effects of the Columbian Exchange<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<section id=\"fs-idp30350448\" class=\" focusable\">As news of the Spanish conquest spread, wealth-hungry Spaniards poured into the New World seeking land and gold and titles. A New World empire spread from Spain\u2019s Caribbean foothold. Motives were plain: said one soldier, \u201cwe came here to serve God and the king, and also to ge<span style=\"background-color: #ffffff\">t rich.\u201d[footnote]J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469\u20131716 (London: Edward Arnold, 1963), 53, as stated in the American Yawp, Ch. 1.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>Mercenaries joined the conquest and raced to capture the wealth of the New World. When\u00a0material wealth proved slow in coming, the Spanish embarked upon a vicious campaign that extracted wealth through the labor of native peoples. Adding to the devastation inflicted upon native populations were the germs the Spaniards spread, often ravaging entire communities.<\/section><section><\/section><section><\/section><section><\/section>\r\n<p class=\"focusable no-indent\">Indications of what was to come were already visible in the wake of Columbus's arrival in the Caribbean.\u00a0The indigenous Arawaks, or Taino, of the Caribbean islands were an agricultural people. They fished and grew corn, yams, and cassava. Columbus described them as innocents. \u201cThey are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor the sins of murder or theft,\u201d he reported to the Spanish crown. Their innocence, he continued, came with vulnerability. He insisted, \u201cwith fifty men they [the native Arawaks] can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them.\u201d It was God\u2019s will, he said.[footnote]Clements R. Markham, ed. and trans., The Journal of Christopher Columbus (During His First Voyage), and Documents Relating to the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real (London: Hakluyt Society, 1893), 73, 135, 41, as quoted in the American Yawp, Ch. 1.[\/footnote] When he first returned to Europe he brought with him a dozen captured and branded Arawaks to prove his point. The 39 Spaniards he left behind on Hispaniola, meanwhile, were to secure a source of gold and enlist the natives to extract it.\u00a0When the gold reserves proved meager, the Spaniards forced the Arawaks to labor on their huge new estates.\u00a0By presuming the natives had no humanity, the Spaniards abandoned their own. Within a few generations the whole island of Hispaniola\u00a0had been depopulated and a whole people exterminated. Historians\u2019 estimates of the death toll range from fewer than 1 million to as many as 8 million. Spaniard Bartolom\u00e9 de las Casas, who arrived in the New World in 1502 and witnessed the impact of his countrymen's actions, later reflected, \u201cWho in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n<section><\/section><section><\/section><section><\/section><section class=\" focusable\">\r\n<h1>SUBDUING tHE AZTEC<\/h1>\r\nAs Spain\u2019s New World empire expanded, Spanish conquerors, or conquistadors, met the massive empires of Central and South America. The Spanish arrival coincided with the height of the Aztec Empire.\u00a0Militaristic migrants from northern Mexico, the Aztec had moved south into the Valley of Mexico, conquered their way to dominance, and built the largest empire in the New World.\r\n\r\nWhen the Spaniards arrived in Mexico they found a sprawling Aztec civilization centered around Tenochtitlan, an awe-inspiring city built on a series of natural and man-made islands in the middle of Lake Texcoco, located today within modern-day Mexico City. Tenochtitlan, founded in 1325, rivaled the world\u2019s largest cities in size and grandeur. Much of the city was built on large artificial islands called\u00a0<em>chinampas<\/em>\u00a0which the Aztec constructed by dredging mud and rich sediment from the bottom of the lake and depositing it over time to form new landscapes. A massive pyramid temple, the Templo Mayor, was located at the city center (its ruins can still be found in the center of Mexico City). When the Spaniards arrived they could scarcely believe what they saw: 70,000 buildings, housing perhaps 200,000 to 250,000 people, all built on a lake and connected by causeways and canals. Bernal D\u00edaz del Castillo, one of the Spanish soldiers, later recalled, \u201cWhen we saw so many cities and villages built in the water and other great towns on dry land, we were amazed and said that it was like the enchantments \u2026 Some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream? \u2026 I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about.\u201d[footnote]27. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, A. P. Maudslay, trans. The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517-1521 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 190-191, as quoted in the American Yawp, Ch. 1.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\n<section id=\"fs-idm73887824\">\r\n<figure id=\"CNX_History_01_01_Tenochtitl\">\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"730\"]<img src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/883\/2015\/08\/23202039\/CNX_History_01_01_Tenochtitl.jpg\" alt=\"A map shows the city of Tenochtitl\u00e1n. The rendering depicts waterways, sophisticated buildings, ships, and flags. Numerous causeways connect the central city to the surrounding land.\" width=\"730\" height=\"461\" \/> This sixteenth-century rendering of Tenochtitlan shows the causeways that connected the island city to the surrounding land.[\/caption]<\/figure>\r\n<div id=\"fs-idm50516160\" class=\"history my-story\">\r\n<div>\r\n<div>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm21191008\"><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;text-align: initial\">From their island city the Aztec dominated an enormous swath of central and southern Mesoamerica. They ruled their empire through a decentralized network of subject peoples that paid regular tribute\u2014including everything from the most basic items, such as corn, beans, and other foodstuffs, to luxury goods such as jade, cacao, and gold\u2014and provided troops for the empire. But unrest festered beneath the surface.\u00a0Aztec dominance rested upon fragile foundations and many of the region\u2019s semi-independent city-states yearned to break from Aztec rule. Meanwhile, European conquerors lusted after the empire's vast wealth.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section>Hern\u00e1n Cortes, an ambitious, thirty-four year old Spaniard who had won riches in the conquest of Cuba, organized an invasion of Mexico in 1519. Sailing with 600 men, horses, and cannon, he landed on the coast of Mexico. Relying on a Native translator, whom he called Do\u00f1a Marina, and whom Mexican folklore denounces as\u00a0<em>La Malinche<\/em>, Cortes gathered information and allies in preparation for conquest. Through intrigue, brutality, and the exploitation of existing political divisions, he enlisted the aid of thousands of Native allies, defeated Spanish rivals, and marched on Tenochtitlan.\r\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\r\n<h3>The Aztec Predict the Coming of the Spanish<\/h3>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm65242592\">The following is an excerpt from the sixteenth-century Florentine Codex of the writings of Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, a priest and early chronicler of Aztec history. When an old man from Xochimilco first saw the Spanish in Veracruz, he recounted an earlier dream to Moctezuma, the ruler of the Aztec.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<blockquote id=\"fs-idm44401712\">Said Quzatli to the sovereign, \u201cOh mighty lord, if because I tell you the truth I am to die, nevertheless I am here in your presence and you may do what you wish to me!\u201d He narrated that mounted men would come to this land in a great wooden house [ships] this structure was to lodge many men, serving them as a home; within they would eat and sleep. On the surface of this house they would cook their food, walk and play as if they were on firm land. They were to be white, bearded men, dressed in different colors and on their heads they would wear round coverings.<\/blockquote>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm21191008\">Ten years before the arrival of the Spanish, Moctezuma received several omens which at the time he could not interpret. A fiery object appeared in the night sky, a spontaneous fire broke out in a religious temple and could not be extinguished with water, a water spout appeared in Lake Texcoco, and a woman could be heard wailing, \u201cO my children we are about to go forever.\u201d Moctezuma also had dreams and premonitions of impending disaster. These foretellings were recorded after the Aztecs\u2019 destruction. They do, however, give us insight into the importance placed upon signs and omens in the pre-Columbian world.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nPossibly because some Aztec mistook Cortes for the god Quetzalcoatl, the Spaniards managed to enter Tenochtitl\u00e1n peacefully. Cortes then captured the emperor Montezuma and used him to gain control of the empire's gold and silver reserves and its network of mines. Eventually, the Aztec revolted. Montezuma was branded a traitor and uprising ignited the city. Montezuma was killed along with a third of Cortes\u2019s men in\u00a0<em>la noche triste,\u00a0<\/em>the \u201cnight of sorrows.\u201d The Spanish fought through thousands of indigenous insurgents and across canals to flee the city, where they regrouped, enlisted more Native allies, captured Spanish reinforcements, and, in 1521, besieged the island city. The Spaniards' eighty-five day siege cut off food and fresh water. Meanwhile, smallpox swept through the city. One Spanish observer said it \u201cspread over the people as great destruction. Some it covered on all parts\u2014their faces, their heads, their breasts, and so on. There was great havoc. Very many died of it \u2026 They could not move; they could not stir.\u201d[footnote]28. Bernardino de Sahag\u00fan, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain (New York: 1955), as quoted in the American Yawp, Ch. 1.[\/footnote]\u00a0Cortes, the Spaniards, and their Native allies then sacked the city, including its temples. About 15,000 died. After two years of conflict, the Aztec Empire was toppled by disease, dissension, and less than a thousand European conquerors.\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp19324656\">Spain\u2019s acquisitiveness seemingly knew no bounds as groups of its explorers searched for the next trove of instant riches. One such explorer, Francisco Pizarro, made his way to the Spanish Caribbean in 1509, drawn by the promise of wealth and titles. He participated in successful expeditions in Panama before following rumors of Inca wealth to the south. Although his first efforts against the Inca Empire in the 1520s failed, Pizarro captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa in 1532 and executed him one year later. In 1533, Pizarro founded Lima, Peru.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<section class=\" focusable\">\r\n<h1>INROADS IN NORTH AMERICA<\/h1>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm48487488\">Hoping to replicate the successes of Cort\u00e9s and Pizarro, other aspiring conquistadors pushed northward into North America. Hernando de Soto had participated in Pizarro\u2019s conquest of the Inca, and from 1539 to 1542 he led expeditions to what is today the southeastern United States, looking for gold. He and his followers explored what is now Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas. After de Soto perished from illness in 1542, the surviving members of the expedition, numbering a little over three hundred, returned to Mexico City without finding the much-anticipated mountains of gold and silver.<\/p>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp15806544\">Francisco V\u00e1squez de Coronado was born into a noble family and went to Mexico, then called New Spain, in 1535. He presided as governor over the province of Nueva Galicia, where he heard rumors of wealth to the north: a golden city called Quivira. Between 1540 and 1542, Coronado led a large expedition of Spaniards and native allies to the lands north of Mexico City, and for the next several years, they explored the area that is now the southwestern United States. During the winter of 1540\u201341, the explorers waged war against the Tiwa in present-day New Mexico. Rather than leading to the discovery of gold and silver, however, the expedition simply left Coronado bankrupt.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure id=\"CNX_History_02_01_Coronado\">\r\n<div class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\">\r\n\r\n<img src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/883\/2015\/08\/23202102\/CNX_History_02_01_Coronado.jpg\" alt=\"A map shows Coronado\u2019s path through the American Southwest and the Great Plains. Notes indicate the \u201csupposed location of Quivira\u201d as well as that \u201cCoronado\u2019s route across the plains is speculative\u201d and \u201cWhile Coronado was in Kansas, de Soto\u2019s expedition was a few hundred miles to the southeast.\u201d\" width=\"780\" height=\"376\" \/>\r\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">This map traces Coronado\u2019s path through the American Southwest and the Great Plains. The regions through which he traveled were not empty areas waiting to be \u201cdiscovered\u201d: rather, they were populated and controlled by groups of native peoples. (credit: modification of work by National Park Service)<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div><\/figure>\r\n<\/section><section id=\"fs-idm84399120\" class=\" focusable\">\r\n<h1>THE IMPACT OF CONQUEST<\/h1>\r\n<\/section>Although multiple factors deterred the Spanish in North America, the empire's greater challenge on the whole was in obtaining the necessary labor to translate land into profit. Early in the Spanish conquest, the Spanish crown instituted a legal system known as the\u00a0<em>encomienda <\/em>to manage labor needs and reward the conquistadors and colonizers who helped expand Spain's holdings. The encomienda system was an\u00a0exploitive feudal arrangement in which Spain tied Indian laborers to vast estates. The monarchy granted\u00a0<em>encomenderos <\/em>(encomienda recipients) not only land but also the right to collect tribute from a specified number of native inhabitants. Typically this tribute included an oppressive labor obligation. The system reflected the Spanish view of colonization: the king rewarded those who served him and the empire. Meanwhile, the Spanish believed native peoples would work for them by right of conquest. In return, the Spanish would bring them Catholicism. In theory the relationship consisted of reciprocal obligations, but in practice the Spaniards ruthlessly exploited it, seeing native people as little more than beasts of burden. Convinced of their right to the land and its peoples, they sought both to control native labor and to impose what they viewed as correct religious beliefs upon the land\u2019s inhabitants. Native peoples everywhere resisted both the labor obligations and the effort to change their ancient belief systems. Indeed, many retained their religion or incorporated only the parts of Catholicism that made sense to them.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"260\"]<img src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/883\/2015\/08\/23202115\/CNX_History_02_04_Encomienda.jpg\" alt=\"A drawing shows a Spaniard, wearing a beard and European clothing and holding a stick or sword, pulling the hair of a much smaller Indian who is wearing a loincloth and has blood flowing from his face and body.\" width=\"260\" height=\"339\" \/> In this startling image from the Kingsborough Codex (a book written and drawn by native Mesoamericans), a well-dressed Spaniard is shown pulling the hair of a bleeding, severely injured native. The drawing was part of a complaint about Spanish abuses of their encomiendas.[\/caption]\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp37695520\">The system of <em>encomiendas<\/em> was accompanied by a great deal of violence. One Spaniard, Bartolom\u00e9 de Las Casas, denounced the brutality of Spanish rule. A Dominican friar, Las Casas had been one of the earliest Spanish settlers in the Spanish Caribbean. In his early life in the Americas, he owned Indian slaves and was the recipient of an <em>encomienda<\/em>. However, after witnessing the savagery with which <em>encomenderos<\/em> (recipients of <em>encomiendas<\/em>) treated the native people, he reversed his views. In 1515, Las Casas released his native slaves, gave up his <em>encomienda<\/em>, and began to advocate for humane treatment of native peoples.<span style=\"background-color: #ffffff\"> He lobbied for new legislation, eventually known as the New Laws, which would eliminate the <em>encomienda<\/em> system.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp24713680\">Las Casas\u2019s writing about the Spaniards\u2019 horrific treatment of Indians helped inspire the so-called Black Legend, the idea that the Spanish were bloodthirsty conquerors with no regard for human life. Perhaps not surprisingly, those who held this view of the Spanish were Spain\u2019s imperial rivals. English writers and others seized on the idea of Spain\u2019s ruthlessness to support their own colonization projects. By demonizing the Spanish, they justified their own efforts as more humane. All European colonizers, however, shared a disregard for Indians.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div id=\"fs-idm1336496\" class=\"history my-story\">\r\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\r\n<h3>Bartolom\u00e9 de Las Casas on the Mistreatment of Native Peoples<\/h3>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp50769376\">Bartolom\u00e9 de Las Casas\u2019s <em>A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies<\/em>, written in 1542 and published ten years later, detailed for Prince Philip II of Spain how Spanish colonists had been mistreating natives.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<blockquote id=\"fs-idp19863088\">\r\n<div>\r\n\r\nInto and among these gentle sheep, endowed by their Maker and Creator with all the qualities aforesaid, did creep the Spaniards, who no sooner had knowledge of these people than they became like fierce wolves and tigers and lions who have gone many days without food or nourishment. And no other thing have they done for forty years until this day, and still today see fit to do, but dismember, slay, perturb, afflict, torment, and destroy the Indians by all manner of cruelty\u2014new and divers and most singular manners such as never before seen or read or heard of\u2014some few of which shall be recounted below, and they do this to such a degree that on the Island of Hispaniola, of the above three millions souls that we once saw, today there be no more than two hundred of those native people remaining. . . .\r\n\r\nTwo principal and general customs have been employed by those, calling themselves Christians, who have passed this way, in extirpating and striking from the face of the earth those suffering nations. The first being unjust, cruel, bloody, and tyrannical warfare. The other\u2014after having slain all those who might yearn toward or suspire after or think of freedom, or consider escaping from the torments that they are made to suffer, by which I mean all the native-born lords and adult males, for it is the Spaniards\u2019 custom in their wars to allow only young boys and females to live\u2014being to oppress them with the hardest, harshest, and most heinous bondage to which men or beasts might ever be bound into.\r\n\r\n<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp53146576\">How might these writings have been used to promote the \u201cblack legend\u201d against Spain as well as subsequent English exploration and colonization?<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<span style=\"font-size: 1rem;text-align: initial\">Native peoples were not the only source of cheap labor in the Americas. Indeed, the existence of another labor solution contributed to the Spanish crown's decision to phase out the maligned encomienda system. By the middle of the sixteenth century, Africans formed an important element of the American labor landscape, producing cash crops of sugar and tobacco for European markets. Europeans viewed Africans as non-Christians, which they used as a justification for enslavement. The Portuguese presence in West Africa, meanwhile, produced a ready supply of slaves. The Portuguese led the way in the evolving transport of enslaved African men and women across the Atlantic; slave \u201cfactories\u201d on the west coast of Africa, like Elmina Castle in Ghana, served as holding pens for slaves brought from Africa\u2019s interior. From these points of departure, t<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;text-align: initial\">he Portuguese loaded the slaves onto ships and traded or sold them to Spanish, Dutch, and English colonists in the Americas, particularly in South America and the Caribbean, where sugar was a primary export. Thousands of African slaves found themselves growing, harvesting, and processing sugarcane in an arduous routine of physical labor. They had to cut the long cane stalks by hand and then bring them to a mill, where the cane juice was extracted. They boiled the extracted cane juice down to a brown, crystalline sugar, which then had to be cured in special curing houses to have the molasses drained from it. The result was refined sugar, while the leftover molasses could be distilled into rum. Every step was labor-intensive and often dangerous.<\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm9315152\">Las Casas estimated that by 1550, there were fifty thousand slaves on Hispaniola. However, it is a mistake to assume that during the very early years of European exploration all Africans came to America as slaves; some were free men who took part in expeditions, for example, serving as conquistadors alongside Cort\u00e9s in his assault on Tenochtitl\u00e1n. Nonetheless, African slavery was one of the most tragic outcomes in the emerging Atlantic World.<\/p>\r\n<span style=\"font-size: 1rem;font-weight: normal;text-align: initial;color: #373d3f\">The greatest tragedy of Columbus's \"discovery\" of the Americas, however, was the unintentional holocaust of disease unleashed on native peoples. Everywhere the Spanish traveled, they brought European pathogens that claimed thousands of native lives. For millennia, the New World's isolation from the old, together with its lack of disease-prone domesticated livestock, had protected the inhabitants of this side of the Atlantic from the illnesses that routinely swept through Europe. After 1492, the isolation that had served to keep them healthy now put Native Americans at grave risk. Having no immunity to illnesses as benign as the flu, they perished <\/span>on a scale never before seen in human history.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"390\"]<img src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/883\/2015\/08\/23202118\/CNX_History_02_04_Smallpox.jpg\" alt=\"A drawing shows five depictions of an Aztec smallpox victim. The victim, who is covered with spots, is shown sleeping, vomiting, and being examined by a healer.\" width=\"390\" height=\"284\" \/> This sixteenth-century Aztec drawing shows the suffering of a typical victim of smallpox. Smallpox and other contagious diseases brought by European explorers decimated native populations in the Americas.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nEstimates of the population of pre-Columbian America range wildly. Some argue for as much as 100 million, some as low as 2 million. Whatever the precise estimates, nearly all scholars tell of the utter devastation wrought by European disease. In 1983, Henry Dobyns estimated that in the first 130 years following European contact, 95 percent of Native Americans perished.[footnote]31. Henry F. Dobyns, Their Number Become Thinned: Native American Population Dynamics in Eastern North America (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983), as stated in the American Yawp, Ch. 1.[\/footnote]\u00a0(At its worst, Europe\u2019s Black Death peaked at death rates of 25 to 33 percent.) A 10,000-year history of disease crashed upon the New World in an instant. Epidemics of smallpox, typhus, the bubonic plague, influenza, mumps, and measles decimated populations up and down the continents. Wave after wave of disease crashed relentlessly and flung whole communities into chaos.\r\n\r\nThe epidemics were the most terrible result of a broader, cross-hemispheric, biological transformation that affected other life on earth. After Columbus\u2019s landfall in 1492, continued interaction between the Old and New Worlds allowed for the transfer of various plants, animals, and microbes across the Atlantic in a process known as the Columbian Exchange. Whether it occurred through happenstance, trade, or migration, this biological transfer affected peoples and ecosystems around the world. Some of the effects were positive. Global diets, for instance, were transformed. The Americas\u2019 calorie-rich crops revolutionized Old World agriculture and spawned a worldwide population boom. Many modern associations between food and geography are but products of the Columbian Exchange: potatoes in Ireland, tomatoes in Italy, chocolate in Switzerland, peppers in Thailand, and oranges\u00a0in Florida are all manifestations of the transatlantic process.\r\n\r\nEuropeans, for their part, introduced their domesticated animals to the New World.\u00a0On his second voyage, Christopher Columbus brought pigs, horses, cows, and chickens to the islands of the Caribbean. Later explorers followed suit, introducing new animals or reintroducing ones that had died out (like horses). With less vulnerability to disease, these animals often fared better than humans in their new home, thriving both in the wild and in domestication.<span style=\"font-size: 1rem;font-weight: normal;text-align: initial;color: #373d3f\">\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n<\/section><section id=\"fs-idm19349632\">\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"780\"]<img src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/883\/2015\/08\/23202116\/CNX_History_02_04_Columbian.jpg\" alt=\"A map shows the \u201cColumbian Exchange\u201d of goods and diseases. Goods include crops such as maize, potatoes, tobacco, beans, squash, peppers, cacao, cassava, and manioc traveling east as well as rye, wheat, rice, sugar, and tea traveling west. Animals such as cattle, horses, and pigs traveled westward. Diseases include syphilis, malaria, smallpox, yellow fever, and plague.\" width=\"780\" height=\"617\" \/> With European exploration and settlement of the New World, goods and diseases began crossing the Atlantic Ocean in both directions. This \u201cColumbian Exchange\u201d soon had global implications.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThe arrival of Europeans also introduced the process of commodification to the New World. American silver, tobacco, and other items, which were used by native peoples for ritual purposes, became European commodities with a monetary value that could be bought and sold. Before the arrival of the Spanish, for example, the <span class=\"no-emphasis\">Inca<\/span> people of the Andes consumed <em>chicha<\/em>, a corn beer, for ritual purposes only. When the Spanish discovered chicha, they bought and traded for it, turning it into a commodity instead of a ritual substance. Commodification thus recast native economies and spurred the process of early commercial capitalism. New World resources, from plants to animal pelts, held the promise of wealth for European imperial powers.\r\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">Visit <a href=\"http:\/\/nationalhumanitiescenter.org\/tserve\/nattrans\/nattrans.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nature Transformed<\/a> for a collection of scholarly essays on the environment in American history.<\/div>\r\nBy the later 1500s, other European powers looked to challenge Spain's control of New World wealth by founding colonies of their own. Their interest stemmed in large part from the presiding economic philosophy of the time: mercantilism.\u00a0Mercantilism held that only a limited amount of wealth existed in the world and it was measured in gold and silver. In order to gain power, nations had to amass wealth by mining these precious raw materials from their colonial possessions. Under\u00a0this view, colonies existed to strengthen the colonizing nation and the colonizing nation needed to maintain strict control over colonial resources. As the age of European exploration ensued, these principles shaped the actions of all the major European powers in the Americas. But as much as dreams of gold and silver had them eyeing the other side of the world, events at home in Europe kept these other European nations, especially England and France, from establishing any dominant presence in the New World. Most distracting were the upheavals of religion that rocked Europe throughout the 1500s.\r\n\r\n<\/section><section id=\"fs-idm49584352\" class=\"summary\">\r\n<div class=\"textbox\">\r\n<h1>Section Summary<\/h1>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp6423904\"><span style=\"background-color: #ffffff\">Although Portugal opened the door to exploration of the Atlantic World, Spanish explorers quickly made inroads into the Americas. Spurred by Christopher Columbus\u2019s glowing reports of the riches to be found in the New World, throngs of Spanish conquistadors set off to find and conquer new lands. They accomplished this through a combination of military strength and strategic alliances with native peoples. Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella promoted the acquisition of these new lands in order to strengthen and glorify their own empire.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\nIn the minds of European rulers, colonies existed to create wealth for imperial powers. Guided by mercantilist ideas, European rulers and investors hoped to enrich their own nations and themselves, in order to gain the greatest share of what was believed to be a limited amount of wealth. In their own individual quest for riches and preeminence, European colonizers who traveled to the Americas blazed new and disturbing paths, such as the <em>encomienda<\/em> system of forced labor and the use of tens of thousands of Africans as slaves.\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm49284704\">All native inhabitants of the Americas who came into contact with Europeans found their worlds turned upside down as the new arrivals introduced their religions and ideas about property and goods. Europeans gained new foods, plants, and animals in the Columbian Exchange, turning whatever they could into a commodity to be bought and sold, and Indians were introduced to diseases that nearly destroyed them. At every turn, however, Native Americans placed limits on European colonization and resisted the newcomers\u2019 ways.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section>[embed]\r\nhttps:\/\/assessments.lumenlearning.com\/assessments\/25657\r\n[\/embed]\r\n\r\n<section id=\"fs-idm23375984\" class=\"review-questions\"><\/section><section id=\"fs-idp18444800\" class=\"critical-thinking\">\r\n<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-info\">\r\n<h3>CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS<\/h3>\r\n<section>\r\n<div id=\"fs-idp58535984\">\r\n<div id=\"fs-idp31533936\">\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li id=\"fs-idp27096272\">What were the consequences of the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>What types of labor systems were used in the Americas? Did systems of unfree labor serve more than an economic function?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>What is meant by the Columbian Exchange? Who was affected the most by the exchange?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>What were the various goals of the colonial European powers in the expansion of their empires? To what extent were they able to achieve these goals? Where did they fail?<\/li>\r\n \t<li>On the whole, what was the impact of early European explorations on the New World? What was the impact of the New World on Europeans?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section><\/div>\r\n<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-success\"><section>\r\n<h3>Glossary<\/h3>\r\n<div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<strong>Black Legend\u00a0<\/strong>Spain\u2019s reputation as bloodthirsty conquistadors\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<strong>Columbian Exchange\u00a0<\/strong>the movement of plants, animals, and diseases across the Atlantic due to European exploration of the Americas\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<strong>commodification\u00a0<\/strong>the transformation of something\u2014for example, an item of ritual significance\u2014into a commodity with monetary value\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<strong><em>encomienda <\/em><\/strong>a system awarding landowners\u00a0legal rights to native labor, as granted by the Spanish crown\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<strong>mercantilism<\/strong> the protectionist economic principle that nations should control trade with their colonies to ensure a favorable balance of trade\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<strong style=\"font-size: 1rem;text-align: initial\">smallpox<\/strong><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;text-align: initial\"> a disease that Europeans accidentally brought to the New World, killing millions of Indians, who had no immunity to the disease<\/span>\r\n<div>\r\n\r\n<strong>sugarcane<\/strong> one of the primary crops of the Americas, which required a tremendous amount of labor to cultivate\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section><\/div>\r\n<\/section>","rendered":"<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-highlight\">\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\n<p>By the end of this section, you will be able to:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"im_orderedlist\">\n<li>Explain the factors that enabled the Spanish to defeat the Aztec and take control over the Aztec Empire<\/li>\n<li>Evaluate the impact of the Spanish conquest on native peoples<\/li>\n<li>Analyze the effects of the Columbian Exchange<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<section id=\"fs-idp30350448\" class=\"focusable\">As news of the Spanish conquest spread, wealth-hungry Spaniards poured into the New World seeking land and gold and titles. A New World empire spread from Spain\u2019s Caribbean foothold. Motives were plain: said one soldier, \u201cwe came here to serve God and the king, and also to ge<span style=\"background-color: #ffffff\">t rich.\u201d<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469\u20131716 (London: Edward Arnold, 1963), 53, as stated in the American Yawp, Ch. 1.\" id=\"return-footnote-91-1\" href=\"#footnote-91-1\" aria-label=\"Footnote 1\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>Mercenaries joined the conquest and raced to capture the wealth of the New World. When\u00a0material wealth proved slow in coming, the Spanish embarked upon a vicious campaign that extracted wealth through the labor of native peoples. Adding to the devastation inflicted upon native populations were the germs the Spaniards spread, often ravaging entire communities.<\/section>\n<section><\/section>\n<section><\/section>\n<section><\/section>\n<p class=\"focusable no-indent\">Indications of what was to come were already visible in the wake of Columbus&#8217;s arrival in the Caribbean.\u00a0The indigenous Arawaks, or Taino, of the Caribbean islands were an agricultural people. They fished and grew corn, yams, and cassava. Columbus described them as innocents. \u201cThey are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor the sins of murder or theft,\u201d he reported to the Spanish crown. Their innocence, he continued, came with vulnerability. He insisted, \u201cwith fifty men they [the native Arawaks] can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them.\u201d It was God\u2019s will, he said.<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"Clements R. Markham, ed. and trans., The Journal of Christopher Columbus (During His First Voyage), and Documents Relating to the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real (London: Hakluyt Society, 1893), 73, 135, 41, as quoted in the American Yawp, Ch. 1.\" id=\"return-footnote-91-2\" href=\"#footnote-91-2\" aria-label=\"Footnote 2\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[2]<\/sup><\/a> When he first returned to Europe he brought with him a dozen captured and branded Arawaks to prove his point. The 39 Spaniards he left behind on Hispaniola, meanwhile, were to secure a source of gold and enlist the natives to extract it.\u00a0When the gold reserves proved meager, the Spaniards forced the Arawaks to labor on their huge new estates.\u00a0By presuming the natives had no humanity, the Spaniards abandoned their own. Within a few generations the whole island of Hispaniola\u00a0had been depopulated and a whole people exterminated. Historians\u2019 estimates of the death toll range from fewer than 1 million to as many as 8 million. Spaniard Bartolom\u00e9 de las Casas, who arrived in the New World in 1502 and witnessed the impact of his countrymen&#8217;s actions, later reflected, \u201cWho in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n<section><\/section>\n<section><\/section>\n<section><\/section>\n<section class=\"focusable\">\n<h1>SUBDUING tHE AZTEC<\/h1>\n<p>As Spain\u2019s New World empire expanded, Spanish conquerors, or conquistadors, met the massive empires of Central and South America. The Spanish arrival coincided with the height of the Aztec Empire.\u00a0Militaristic migrants from northern Mexico, the Aztec had moved south into the Valley of Mexico, conquered their way to dominance, and built the largest empire in the New World.<\/p>\n<p>When the Spaniards arrived in Mexico they found a sprawling Aztec civilization centered around Tenochtitlan, an awe-inspiring city built on a series of natural and man-made islands in the middle of Lake Texcoco, located today within modern-day Mexico City. Tenochtitlan, founded in 1325, rivaled the world\u2019s largest cities in size and grandeur. Much of the city was built on large artificial islands called\u00a0<em>chinampas<\/em>\u00a0which the Aztec constructed by dredging mud and rich sediment from the bottom of the lake and depositing it over time to form new landscapes. A massive pyramid temple, the Templo Mayor, was located at the city center (its ruins can still be found in the center of Mexico City). When the Spaniards arrived they could scarcely believe what they saw: 70,000 buildings, housing perhaps 200,000 to 250,000 people, all built on a lake and connected by causeways and canals. Bernal D\u00edaz del Castillo, one of the Spanish soldiers, later recalled, \u201cWhen we saw so many cities and villages built in the water and other great towns on dry land, we were amazed and said that it was like the enchantments \u2026 Some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream? \u2026 I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about.\u201d<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"27. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, A. P. Maudslay, trans. The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517-1521 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 190-191, as quoted in the American Yawp, Ch. 1.\" id=\"return-footnote-91-3\" href=\"#footnote-91-3\" aria-label=\"Footnote 3\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[3]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<section id=\"fs-idm73887824\">\n<figure id=\"CNX_History_01_01_Tenochtitl\">\n<div style=\"width: 740px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/883\/2015\/08\/23202039\/CNX_History_01_01_Tenochtitl.jpg\" alt=\"A map shows the city of Tenochtitl\u00e1n. The rendering depicts waterways, sophisticated buildings, ships, and flags. Numerous causeways connect the central city to the surrounding land.\" width=\"730\" height=\"461\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">This sixteenth-century rendering of Tenochtitlan shows the causeways that connected the island city to the surrounding land.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<div id=\"fs-idm50516160\" class=\"history my-story\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<p id=\"fs-idm21191008\"><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;text-align: initial\">From their island city the Aztec dominated an enormous swath of central and southern Mesoamerica. They ruled their empire through a decentralized network of subject peoples that paid regular tribute\u2014including everything from the most basic items, such as corn, beans, and other foodstuffs, to luxury goods such as jade, cacao, and gold\u2014and provided troops for the empire. But unrest festered beneath the surface.\u00a0Aztec dominance rested upon fragile foundations and many of the region\u2019s semi-independent city-states yearned to break from Aztec rule. Meanwhile, European conquerors lusted after the empire&#8217;s vast wealth.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p>Hern\u00e1n Cortes, an ambitious, thirty-four year old Spaniard who had won riches in the conquest of Cuba, organized an invasion of Mexico in 1519. Sailing with 600 men, horses, and cannon, he landed on the coast of Mexico. Relying on a Native translator, whom he called Do\u00f1a Marina, and whom Mexican folklore denounces as\u00a0<em>La Malinche<\/em>, Cortes gathered information and allies in preparation for conquest. Through intrigue, brutality, and the exploitation of existing political divisions, he enlisted the aid of thousands of Native allies, defeated Spanish rivals, and marched on Tenochtitlan.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\n<h3>The Aztec Predict the Coming of the Spanish<\/h3>\n<p id=\"fs-idm65242592\">The following is an excerpt from the sixteenth-century Florentine Codex of the writings of Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, a priest and early chronicler of Aztec history. When an old man from Xochimilco first saw the Spanish in Veracruz, he recounted an earlier dream to Moctezuma, the ruler of the Aztec.<\/p>\n<blockquote id=\"fs-idm44401712\"><p>Said Quzatli to the sovereign, \u201cOh mighty lord, if because I tell you the truth I am to die, nevertheless I am here in your presence and you may do what you wish to me!\u201d He narrated that mounted men would come to this land in a great wooden house [ships] this structure was to lodge many men, serving them as a home; within they would eat and sleep. On the surface of this house they would cook their food, walk and play as if they were on firm land. They were to be white, bearded men, dressed in different colors and on their heads they would wear round coverings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p id=\"fs-idm21191008\">Ten years before the arrival of the Spanish, Moctezuma received several omens which at the time he could not interpret. A fiery object appeared in the night sky, a spontaneous fire broke out in a religious temple and could not be extinguished with water, a water spout appeared in Lake Texcoco, and a woman could be heard wailing, \u201cO my children we are about to go forever.\u201d Moctezuma also had dreams and premonitions of impending disaster. These foretellings were recorded after the Aztecs\u2019 destruction. They do, however, give us insight into the importance placed upon signs and omens in the pre-Columbian world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Possibly because some Aztec mistook Cortes for the god Quetzalcoatl, the Spaniards managed to enter Tenochtitl\u00e1n peacefully. Cortes then captured the emperor Montezuma and used him to gain control of the empire&#8217;s gold and silver reserves and its network of mines. Eventually, the Aztec revolted. Montezuma was branded a traitor and uprising ignited the city. Montezuma was killed along with a third of Cortes\u2019s men in\u00a0<em>la noche triste,\u00a0<\/em>the \u201cnight of sorrows.\u201d The Spanish fought through thousands of indigenous insurgents and across canals to flee the city, where they regrouped, enlisted more Native allies, captured Spanish reinforcements, and, in 1521, besieged the island city. The Spaniards&#8217; eighty-five day siege cut off food and fresh water. Meanwhile, smallpox swept through the city. One Spanish observer said it \u201cspread over the people as great destruction. Some it covered on all parts\u2014their faces, their heads, their breasts, and so on. There was great havoc. Very many died of it \u2026 They could not move; they could not stir.\u201d<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"28. Bernardino de Sahag\u00fan, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain (New York: 1955), as quoted in the American Yawp, Ch. 1.\" id=\"return-footnote-91-4\" href=\"#footnote-91-4\" aria-label=\"Footnote 4\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[4]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Cortes, the Spaniards, and their Native allies then sacked the city, including its temples. About 15,000 died. After two years of conflict, the Aztec Empire was toppled by disease, dissension, and less than a thousand European conquerors.<\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idp19324656\">Spain\u2019s acquisitiveness seemingly knew no bounds as groups of its explorers searched for the next trove of instant riches. One such explorer, Francisco Pizarro, made his way to the Spanish Caribbean in 1509, drawn by the promise of wealth and titles. He participated in successful expeditions in Panama before following rumors of Inca wealth to the south. Although his first efforts against the Inca Empire in the 1520s failed, Pizarro captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa in 1532 and executed him one year later. In 1533, Pizarro founded Lima, Peru.<\/p>\n<section class=\"focusable\">\n<h1>INROADS IN NORTH AMERICA<\/h1>\n<p id=\"fs-idm48487488\">Hoping to replicate the successes of Cort\u00e9s and Pizarro, other aspiring conquistadors pushed northward into North America. Hernando de Soto had participated in Pizarro\u2019s conquest of the Inca, and from 1539 to 1542 he led expeditions to what is today the southeastern United States, looking for gold. He and his followers explored what is now Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas. After de Soto perished from illness in 1542, the surviving members of the expedition, numbering a little over three hundred, returned to Mexico City without finding the much-anticipated mountains of gold and silver.<\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idp15806544\">Francisco V\u00e1squez de Coronado was born into a noble family and went to Mexico, then called New Spain, in 1535. He presided as governor over the province of Nueva Galicia, where he heard rumors of wealth to the north: a golden city called Quivira. Between 1540 and 1542, Coronado led a large expedition of Spaniards and native allies to the lands north of Mexico City, and for the next several years, they explored the area that is now the southwestern United States. During the winter of 1540\u201341, the explorers waged war against the Tiwa in present-day New Mexico. Rather than leading to the discovery of gold and silver, however, the expedition simply left Coronado bankrupt.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"CNX_History_02_01_Coronado\">\n<div class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\">\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/883\/2015\/08\/23202102\/CNX_History_02_01_Coronado.jpg\" alt=\"A map shows Coronado\u2019s path through the American Southwest and the Great Plains. Notes indicate the \u201csupposed location of Quivira\u201d as well as that \u201cCoronado\u2019s route across the plains is speculative\u201d and \u201cWhile Coronado was in Kansas, de Soto\u2019s expedition was a few hundred miles to the southeast.\u201d\" width=\"780\" height=\"376\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">This map traces Coronado\u2019s path through the American Southwest and the Great Plains. The regions through which he traveled were not empty areas waiting to be \u201cdiscovered\u201d: rather, they were populated and controlled by groups of native peoples. (credit: modification of work by National Park Service)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"fs-idm84399120\" class=\"focusable\">\n<h1>THE IMPACT OF CONQUEST<\/h1>\n<\/section>\n<p>Although multiple factors deterred the Spanish in North America, the empire&#8217;s greater challenge on the whole was in obtaining the necessary labor to translate land into profit. Early in the Spanish conquest, the Spanish crown instituted a legal system known as the\u00a0<em>encomienda <\/em>to manage labor needs and reward the conquistadors and colonizers who helped expand Spain&#8217;s holdings. The encomienda system was an\u00a0exploitive feudal arrangement in which Spain tied Indian laborers to vast estates. The monarchy granted\u00a0<em>encomenderos <\/em>(encomienda recipients) not only land but also the right to collect tribute from a specified number of native inhabitants. Typically this tribute included an oppressive labor obligation. The system reflected the Spanish view of colonization: the king rewarded those who served him and the empire. Meanwhile, the Spanish believed native peoples would work for them by right of conquest. In return, the Spanish would bring them Catholicism. In theory the relationship consisted of reciprocal obligations, but in practice the Spaniards ruthlessly exploited it, seeing native people as little more than beasts of burden. Convinced of their right to the land and its peoples, they sought both to control native labor and to impose what they viewed as correct religious beliefs upon the land\u2019s inhabitants. Native peoples everywhere resisted both the labor obligations and the effort to change their ancient belief systems. Indeed, many retained their religion or incorporated only the parts of Catholicism that made sense to them.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 270px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/883\/2015\/08\/23202115\/CNX_History_02_04_Encomienda.jpg\" alt=\"A drawing shows a Spaniard, wearing a beard and European clothing and holding a stick or sword, pulling the hair of a much smaller Indian who is wearing a loincloth and has blood flowing from his face and body.\" width=\"260\" height=\"339\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">In this startling image from the Kingsborough Codex (a book written and drawn by native Mesoamericans), a well-dressed Spaniard is shown pulling the hair of a bleeding, severely injured native. The drawing was part of a complaint about Spanish abuses of their encomiendas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"fs-idp37695520\">The system of <em>encomiendas<\/em> was accompanied by a great deal of violence. One Spaniard, Bartolom\u00e9 de Las Casas, denounced the brutality of Spanish rule. A Dominican friar, Las Casas had been one of the earliest Spanish settlers in the Spanish Caribbean. In his early life in the Americas, he owned Indian slaves and was the recipient of an <em>encomienda<\/em>. However, after witnessing the savagery with which <em>encomenderos<\/em> (recipients of <em>encomiendas<\/em>) treated the native people, he reversed his views. In 1515, Las Casas released his native slaves, gave up his <em>encomienda<\/em>, and began to advocate for humane treatment of native peoples.<span style=\"background-color: #ffffff\"> He lobbied for new legislation, eventually known as the New Laws, which would eliminate the <em>encomienda<\/em> system.<\/span><\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idp24713680\">Las Casas\u2019s writing about the Spaniards\u2019 horrific treatment of Indians helped inspire the so-called Black Legend, the idea that the Spanish were bloodthirsty conquerors with no regard for human life. Perhaps not surprisingly, those who held this view of the Spanish were Spain\u2019s imperial rivals. English writers and others seized on the idea of Spain\u2019s ruthlessness to support their own colonization projects. By demonizing the Spanish, they justified their own efforts as more humane. All European colonizers, however, shared a disregard for Indians.<\/p>\n<div id=\"fs-idm1336496\" class=\"history my-story\">\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\n<h3>Bartolom\u00e9 de Las Casas on the Mistreatment of Native Peoples<\/h3>\n<p id=\"fs-idp50769376\">Bartolom\u00e9 de Las Casas\u2019s <em>A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies<\/em>, written in 1542 and published ten years later, detailed for Prince Philip II of Spain how Spanish colonists had been mistreating natives.<\/p>\n<blockquote id=\"fs-idp19863088\">\n<div>\n<p>Into and among these gentle sheep, endowed by their Maker and Creator with all the qualities aforesaid, did creep the Spaniards, who no sooner had knowledge of these people than they became like fierce wolves and tigers and lions who have gone many days without food or nourishment. And no other thing have they done for forty years until this day, and still today see fit to do, but dismember, slay, perturb, afflict, torment, and destroy the Indians by all manner of cruelty\u2014new and divers and most singular manners such as never before seen or read or heard of\u2014some few of which shall be recounted below, and they do this to such a degree that on the Island of Hispaniola, of the above three millions souls that we once saw, today there be no more than two hundred of those native people remaining. . . .<\/p>\n<p>Two principal and general customs have been employed by those, calling themselves Christians, who have passed this way, in extirpating and striking from the face of the earth those suffering nations. The first being unjust, cruel, bloody, and tyrannical warfare. The other\u2014after having slain all those who might yearn toward or suspire after or think of freedom, or consider escaping from the torments that they are made to suffer, by which I mean all the native-born lords and adult males, for it is the Spaniards\u2019 custom in their wars to allow only young boys and females to live\u2014being to oppress them with the hardest, harshest, and most heinous bondage to which men or beasts might ever be bound into.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p id=\"fs-idp53146576\">How might these writings have been used to promote the \u201cblack legend\u201d against Spain as well as subsequent English exploration and colonization?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;text-align: initial\">Native peoples were not the only source of cheap labor in the Americas. Indeed, the existence of another labor solution contributed to the Spanish crown&#8217;s decision to phase out the maligned encomienda system. By the middle of the sixteenth century, Africans formed an important element of the American labor landscape, producing cash crops of sugar and tobacco for European markets. Europeans viewed Africans as non-Christians, which they used as a justification for enslavement. The Portuguese presence in West Africa, meanwhile, produced a ready supply of slaves. The Portuguese led the way in the evolving transport of enslaved African men and women across the Atlantic; slave \u201cfactories\u201d on the west coast of Africa, like Elmina Castle in Ghana, served as holding pens for slaves brought from Africa\u2019s interior. From these points of departure, t<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;text-align: initial\">he Portuguese loaded the slaves onto ships and traded or sold them to Spanish, Dutch, and English colonists in the Americas, particularly in South America and the Caribbean, where sugar was a primary export. Thousands of African slaves found themselves growing, harvesting, and processing sugarcane in an arduous routine of physical labor. They had to cut the long cane stalks by hand and then bring them to a mill, where the cane juice was extracted. They boiled the extracted cane juice down to a brown, crystalline sugar, which then had to be cured in special curing houses to have the molasses drained from it. The result was refined sugar, while the leftover molasses could be distilled into rum. Every step was labor-intensive and often dangerous.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"fs-idm9315152\">Las Casas estimated that by 1550, there were fifty thousand slaves on Hispaniola. However, it is a mistake to assume that during the very early years of European exploration all Africans came to America as slaves; some were free men who took part in expeditions, for example, serving as conquistadors alongside Cort\u00e9s in his assault on Tenochtitl\u00e1n. Nonetheless, African slavery was one of the most tragic outcomes in the emerging Atlantic World.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;font-weight: normal;text-align: initial;color: #373d3f\">The greatest tragedy of Columbus&#8217;s &#8220;discovery&#8221; of the Americas, however, was the unintentional holocaust of disease unleashed on native peoples. Everywhere the Spanish traveled, they brought European pathogens that claimed thousands of native lives. For millennia, the New World&#8217;s isolation from the old, together with its lack of disease-prone domesticated livestock, had protected the inhabitants of this side of the Atlantic from the illnesses that routinely swept through Europe. After 1492, the isolation that had served to keep them healthy now put Native Americans at grave risk. Having no immunity to illnesses as benign as the flu, they perished <\/span>on a scale never before seen in human history.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/883\/2015\/08\/23202118\/CNX_History_02_04_Smallpox.jpg\" alt=\"A drawing shows five depictions of an Aztec smallpox victim. The victim, who is covered with spots, is shown sleeping, vomiting, and being examined by a healer.\" width=\"390\" height=\"284\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">This sixteenth-century Aztec drawing shows the suffering of a typical victim of smallpox. Smallpox and other contagious diseases brought by European explorers decimated native populations in the Americas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Estimates of the population of pre-Columbian America range wildly. Some argue for as much as 100 million, some as low as 2 million. Whatever the precise estimates, nearly all scholars tell of the utter devastation wrought by European disease. In 1983, Henry Dobyns estimated that in the first 130 years following European contact, 95 percent of Native Americans perished.<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"31. Henry F. Dobyns, Their Number Become Thinned: Native American Population Dynamics in Eastern North America (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983), as stated in the American Yawp, Ch. 1.\" id=\"return-footnote-91-5\" href=\"#footnote-91-5\" aria-label=\"Footnote 5\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[5]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0(At its worst, Europe\u2019s Black Death peaked at death rates of 25 to 33 percent.) A 10,000-year history of disease crashed upon the New World in an instant. Epidemics of smallpox, typhus, the bubonic plague, influenza, mumps, and measles decimated populations up and down the continents. Wave after wave of disease crashed relentlessly and flung whole communities into chaos.<\/p>\n<p>The epidemics were the most terrible result of a broader, cross-hemispheric, biological transformation that affected other life on earth. After Columbus\u2019s landfall in 1492, continued interaction between the Old and New Worlds allowed for the transfer of various plants, animals, and microbes across the Atlantic in a process known as the Columbian Exchange. Whether it occurred through happenstance, trade, or migration, this biological transfer affected peoples and ecosystems around the world. Some of the effects were positive. Global diets, for instance, were transformed. The Americas\u2019 calorie-rich crops revolutionized Old World agriculture and spawned a worldwide population boom. Many modern associations between food and geography are but products of the Columbian Exchange: potatoes in Ireland, tomatoes in Italy, chocolate in Switzerland, peppers in Thailand, and oranges\u00a0in Florida are all manifestations of the transatlantic process.<\/p>\n<p>Europeans, for their part, introduced their domesticated animals to the New World.\u00a0On his second voyage, Christopher Columbus brought pigs, horses, cows, and chickens to the islands of the Caribbean. Later explorers followed suit, introducing new animals or reintroducing ones that had died out (like horses). With less vulnerability to disease, these animals often fared better than humans in their new home, thriving both in the wild and in domestication.<span style=\"font-size: 1rem;font-weight: normal;text-align: initial;color: #373d3f\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"fs-idm19349632\">\n<div style=\"width: 790px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/883\/2015\/08\/23202116\/CNX_History_02_04_Columbian.jpg\" alt=\"A map shows the \u201cColumbian Exchange\u201d of goods and diseases. Goods include crops such as maize, potatoes, tobacco, beans, squash, peppers, cacao, cassava, and manioc traveling east as well as rye, wheat, rice, sugar, and tea traveling west. Animals such as cattle, horses, and pigs traveled westward. Diseases include syphilis, malaria, smallpox, yellow fever, and plague.\" width=\"780\" height=\"617\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">With European exploration and settlement of the New World, goods and diseases began crossing the Atlantic Ocean in both directions. This \u201cColumbian Exchange\u201d soon had global implications.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The arrival of Europeans also introduced the process of commodification to the New World. American silver, tobacco, and other items, which were used by native peoples for ritual purposes, became European commodities with a monetary value that could be bought and sold. Before the arrival of the Spanish, for example, the <span class=\"no-emphasis\">Inca<\/span> people of the Andes consumed <em>chicha<\/em>, a corn beer, for ritual purposes only. When the Spanish discovered chicha, they bought and traded for it, turning it into a commodity instead of a ritual substance. Commodification thus recast native economies and spurred the process of early commercial capitalism. New World resources, from plants to animal pelts, held the promise of wealth for European imperial powers.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">Visit <a href=\"http:\/\/nationalhumanitiescenter.org\/tserve\/nattrans\/nattrans.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nature Transformed<\/a> for a collection of scholarly essays on the environment in American history.<\/div>\n<p>By the later 1500s, other European powers looked to challenge Spain&#8217;s control of New World wealth by founding colonies of their own. Their interest stemmed in large part from the presiding economic philosophy of the time: mercantilism.\u00a0Mercantilism held that only a limited amount of wealth existed in the world and it was measured in gold and silver. In order to gain power, nations had to amass wealth by mining these precious raw materials from their colonial possessions. Under\u00a0this view, colonies existed to strengthen the colonizing nation and the colonizing nation needed to maintain strict control over colonial resources. As the age of European exploration ensued, these principles shaped the actions of all the major European powers in the Americas. But as much as dreams of gold and silver had them eyeing the other side of the world, events at home in Europe kept these other European nations, especially England and France, from establishing any dominant presence in the New World. Most distracting were the upheavals of religion that rocked Europe throughout the 1500s.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"fs-idm49584352\" class=\"summary\">\n<div class=\"textbox\">\n<h1>Section Summary<\/h1>\n<p id=\"fs-idp6423904\"><span style=\"background-color: #ffffff\">Although Portugal opened the door to exploration of the Atlantic World, Spanish explorers quickly made inroads into the Americas. Spurred by Christopher Columbus\u2019s glowing reports of the riches to be found in the New World, throngs of Spanish conquistadors set off to find and conquer new lands. They accomplished this through a combination of military strength and strategic alliances with native peoples. Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella promoted the acquisition of these new lands in order to strengthen and glorify their own empire.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In the minds of European rulers, colonies existed to create wealth for imperial powers. Guided by mercantilist ideas, European rulers and investors hoped to enrich their own nations and themselves, in order to gain the greatest share of what was believed to be a limited amount of wealth. In their own individual quest for riches and preeminence, European colonizers who traveled to the Americas blazed new and disturbing paths, such as the <em>encomienda<\/em> system of forced labor and the use of tens of thousands of Africans as slaves.<\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idm49284704\">All native inhabitants of the Americas who came into contact with Europeans found their worlds turned upside down as the new arrivals introduced their religions and ideas about property and goods. Europeans gained new foods, plants, and animals in the Columbian Exchange, turning whatever they could into a commodity to be bought and sold, and Indians were introduced to diseases that nearly destroyed them. At every turn, however, Native Americans placed limits on European colonization and resisted the newcomers\u2019 ways.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"lumen_assessment_25657\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assessments.lumenlearning.com\/assessments\/load?assessment_id=25657&#38;embed=1&#38;external_user_id=&#38;external_context_id=&#38;iframe_resize_id=lumen_assessment_25657\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:400px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<section id=\"fs-idm23375984\" class=\"review-questions\"><\/section>\n<section id=\"fs-idp18444800\" class=\"critical-thinking\">\n<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-info\">\n<h3>CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS<\/h3>\n<section>\n<div id=\"fs-idp58535984\">\n<div id=\"fs-idp31533936\">\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fs-idp27096272\">What were the consequences of the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?<\/li>\n<li>What types of labor systems were used in the Americas? Did systems of unfree labor serve more than an economic function?<\/li>\n<li>What is meant by the Columbian Exchange? Who was affected the most by the exchange?<\/li>\n<li>What were the various goals of the colonial European powers in the expansion of their empires? To what extent were they able to achieve these goals? Where did they fail?<\/li>\n<li>On the whole, what was the impact of early European explorations on the New World? What was the impact of the New World on Europeans?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-success\">\n<section>\n<h3>Glossary<\/h3>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Black Legend\u00a0<\/strong>Spain\u2019s reputation as bloodthirsty conquistadors<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Columbian Exchange\u00a0<\/strong>the movement of plants, animals, and diseases across the Atlantic due to European exploration of the Americas<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>commodification\u00a0<\/strong>the transformation of something\u2014for example, an item of ritual significance\u2014into a commodity with monetary value<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong><em>encomienda <\/em><\/strong>a system awarding landowners\u00a0legal rights to native labor, as granted by the Spanish crown<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>mercantilism<\/strong> the protectionist economic principle that nations should control trade with their colonies to ensure a favorable balance of trade<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong style=\"font-size: 1rem;text-align: initial\">smallpox<\/strong><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;text-align: initial\"> a disease that Europeans accidentally brought to the New World, killing millions of Indians, who had no immunity to the disease<\/span><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>sugarcane<\/strong> one of the primary crops of the Americas, which required a tremendous amount of labor to cultivate<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\t\t\t <section class=\"citations-section\" role=\"contentinfo\">\n\t\t\t <h3>Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t <div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <div id=\"citation-list-91\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <div class=\"licensing\"><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Shared previously<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>US History. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: P. Scott Corbett, Volker  Janssen, John M. Lund,  Todd Pfannestiel, Paul Vickery, and Sylvie Waskiewicz. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: OpenStax College. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history\">http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Download for free at http:\/\/cnx.org\/content\/col11740\/latest\/<\/li><li>The American Yawp. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\">http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/<\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t <\/section><hr class=\"before-footnotes clear\" \/><div class=\"footnotes\"><ol><li id=\"footnote-91-1\">J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469\u20131716 (London: Edward Arnold, 1963), 53, as stated in the American Yawp, Ch. 1. <a href=\"#return-footnote-91-1\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 1\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><li id=\"footnote-91-2\">Clements R. Markham, ed. and trans., The Journal of Christopher Columbus (During His First Voyage), and Documents Relating to the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real (London: Hakluyt Society, 1893), 73, 135, 41, as quoted in the American Yawp, Ch. 1. <a href=\"#return-footnote-91-2\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 2\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><li id=\"footnote-91-3\">27. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, A. P. Maudslay, trans. The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517-1521 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 190-191, as quoted in the American Yawp, Ch. 1. <a href=\"#return-footnote-91-3\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 3\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><li id=\"footnote-91-4\">28. Bernardino de Sahag\u00fan, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain (New York: 1955), as quoted in the American Yawp, Ch. 1. <a href=\"#return-footnote-91-4\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 4\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><li id=\"footnote-91-5\">31. Henry F. Dobyns, Their Number Become Thinned: Native American Population Dynamics in Eastern North America (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983), as stated in the American Yawp, Ch. 1. <a href=\"#return-footnote-91-5\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 5\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"author":969,"menu_order":4,"template":"","meta":{"_candela_citation":"[{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"US History\",\"author\":\"P. Scott Corbett, Volker  Janssen, John M. 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