If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.
You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!
Devils in the Desert: Spanish Exploration and Conquest [1500-1620]
Rich in resources and natural beauty, the Americas became irresistible to gold-hungry Spanish Conquistadors seeking to harvest souls and extract gold.
The Columbian Exchange and development of the Spanish Empire in the Western Hemisphere resulted in extensive demographic, economic, and social changes.
Spain secured its claim to Columbus’s discovery in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), dividing with Portugal the “heathen lands” of the New World. The lion’s share went to Spain, but Portugal received compensating territory in Africa and Asia, as well as title to lands that one day would be Brazil
Spanish Conquistadors The Renaissance and Elizabethan Age of Exploration to the New World was dominated by the Spanish Conquistadors. The success of the Spanish Conquistadors in acquiring monopolies on much of the Eastern spice trade and their expeditions to the New World brought great wealth and power to Spain.
The new discoveries made by the Spanish Conquistadors brought untold riches in terms of gold and silver and spices and it also brought power and influence.
The Motives of the Spanish Conquistadors "Profitable Havoc" The motives of the Spanish Conquistadors and their patrons were prompted by:
Wealth - gold, silver and spices
Power
Prestige
Increasing opportunities for Spanish trade
SPANISH EXTRACTION of MINERAL RESOURCES
Much of Spain's exploration of the Americas centered on the desire to find gold and silver. These precious metals were valuable because they were used to make coins, which were the basis of most of Europe's monetary systems.
RESULTS OF EXTRACTION
From the 16th to the 18th century, Spanish mines in Mexico and South America produced roughly 80 percent of the world's silver production and 70 percent of gold at a time when these precious metals were the most widely accepted international currency.
Too much gold is like too much birthday cake!!!
New World wealth in Spain drives prices up 300 to 500% Part of this reason was the rapid increase in money (then silver and gold) chasing a fixed amount of goods.
Getting gold to Europe was not easy
Conquistadores such as Pizzaro and Cortes used advanced weapons, horses, ruthless tactics, and disease to topple the Inca and Aztec Empires.
Context: Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés arrived in Tenochtitlan on November 8, 1519. At this time it is believed that the city was amongst the largest in the world alongside Paris and Constantinople. Some of the conquistadors had traveled as widely as Venice and Constantinople, and many said that Tenochtitlan was as large and fine a city as any they had seen. The most common estimates put the population at around 200,000 to 300,000 people. Aztec ruler Moctezuma II, thinking Cortés to be the returning god Quetzalcoatl, welcomed him with great pomp and ceremony.
Conquest: Cortez utilized a Mexican enslaved woman and interpreter named La Malinche for intel for the overthrow. Lacking food and ravaged by smallpox disease earlier introduced by one of the Spaniards, the Aztecs empire , finally collapsed after (93 days of resistance) August, 1521 CE. Tenochtitlan was sacked and its monuments destroyed.
"Although Aztecs were apparently flourishing culturally and economically, as well as being militarily and politically strong, their dominance was declining on the eve of Spanish intrusion. Being pressed for tribute through violent attacks, peasants rebelled and there were uprisings all over Mexico. Montezuma II, who came to power in 1530, might have succeeded in his attempt to reform the regime, but the Spanish overthrew him before he had the opportunity. The Mexican state was crushed and it's cities leveled in Cortes's three-year genocidal war. Cortes's recruitment of resistant communities all over Mexico as allies aided in toppling the central regime. Cortes and his two hundred European mercenaries could never overthrown the Mexican state without the Indigenous insurgency he co-opted. The resistant peoples allied with Cortes to overthrow the oppressive Aztec regime could not yet have known the goals of the gold-obsessed Spanish colonizers or the European institutions that backed them."
Source: An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, Chapter One - Follow the Corn, pp. 21
Spanish efforts to extract wealth from the land led them to develop institutions based on subjugating native populations, converting them to Christianity, and incorporating them, along with enslaved and free Africans, into the Spanish colonial society.
The need for formal government was eventually necessary and they imposed the old order (Viceroys) and a caste system developed
THE COLONIAL CASTE SYSTEM Peninsulares ( People born in Spain)
Creoles (People of Spanish decent born in the colonies)
In the encomienda system, Spanish colonial economies marshaled Native American labor to support plantation-based agriculture and extract precious metals and other resources.
Under the encomienda system, conquistadors and other leaders (encomenderos) received grants of a number of Indians, from whom they could exact “tribute” in the form of gold or labor. The encomenderos were supposed to protect and Christianize the Indians granted to them, but they most often used the system to effectively enslave the Indians and take their lands.
The Spanish Mission System – “A Wealth of Souls to Harvest”
The Spanish clergy, particularly Jesuits and Franciscans, played a critical role in settling the Southwest using the mission system.Over the centuries, this became the most effective means of “civilizing” natives.
Their missions were designed to spread Christianity among, and establish control over, native populations. In some areas, they forced Indians to live in mission communities, where the priests taught them weaving, blacksmithing, candle-making, and leather-working, and forced them to work in orchards, workshops, and fields for long hours.
The missions were most successful in New Mexico (despite an Indian revolt in 1680) and California and far less successful in Arizona and Texas
In addition, as Indians converted, a form of Catholicism that was unique to the Americas developed to accommodate the converts.
Current Events: Canonization of Spanish missionary Junipero Serra
Native Reaction to Spanish Policy Disease crippled the Native American populations – No defense/immunity build up to small pox, measles, typhoid, whopping cough, dysentery, Cholera, and self inflicted Alcoholism
Bartolomé de Las Casas later attributed the following speech to Hatuey. He showed the Taíno of Caobana a basket of gold and jewels, saying:
The Pueblo Revolt [1680]
Context: The seeds of the rebellion started long before 1680 with the Spanish settlers and Franciscan friars who, after conquering New Mexico, imposed forced labor, evangelism and demands for tribute on Native peoples in the frontier province throughout much of the 17th century.
Confrontation:Pueblo Indians mounted one rebellion after another, as did Indigenous peoples elsewhere in Spanish-occupied lands, but it took a visionary shaman named Popé to orchestrate the mother of all revolts. Popé, from the Tewa-speaking Ohkay Owingeh nation that endures in northern New Mexico to this day, did so by secretly piecing together a web of alliances among Pueblo peoples speaking languages as varied as Hopi, Keres and Zuñi. Before the revolt, the Spanish prohibited Indians in New Mexico from riding horses. So Popé sent long-distance runners hundreds of miles to Pueblos around the province with knotted cords of what is thought to be yucca or perhaps strips of deer hide.
Consequence: The Pueblo Revolt of 1680, or Popé's Rebellion, was an uprising of most of the Pueblo Indians against the Spanish colonizers in present day New Mexico. The Pueblo killed 400 Spanish and drove the remaining 2,000 settlers out of the province. Twelve years later the Spanish returned and were able to reoccupy New Mexico with little opposition.
Did you know that New Mexico has a statue in the U.S. Capitol complex honoring Po'pay? @IndianCountry has a great article to learn more about the Pueblo Revolt. #PuebloRevoltDay
Indigenous groups in the Southwest are imbuing their activism this year with commemorations of the 340-year-old Pueblo Revolt, one of Spain’s bloodiest defeats in its colonial empire.
Depiction of Spanish atrocities in the New World, as recounted by Bartolomé de las Casas in Narratio Regionum indicarum
per Hispanos Quosdam devastatarum verissima, illustrations designed by Joos van Winghe.
The misdeeds of the Spanish in the New World led to the birth of the “Black Legend.” This false concept stated that the conquerors just tortured and killed the Indians, stole their gold, infected them with smallpox, and left little but misery behind.
By the numbers: Due to Spanish rule, the Indian population in Mexico went from 20 million to 2 million in less than a century!!!!
The Spanish employed fewer resources in farming and more resources into science and engineering, writing and improved military technology.
Non-Military Technology -Iron tipped plow, windmill, and water wheel freed up more people to pursue other things.
The Spanish, who had more than a century’s head start over the English, were genuine empire builders and cultural innovators in the New Word.
The Spanish paid the Native Americans the high compliment of fusing with them through marriage and incorporating indigenous culture into their own, rather than shunning and eventually isolating the Indians as their English adversaries would do.
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.