1-4 Indirect Discoverers of the New World

- Europeans were for the most part unaware of the existence of the Americas

- Norse seafarers from Scandinavia had arrived on the Northeastern shoulder of North

America in about 1000 C.E

→ Landed at L’Anse aux Meadows

- These settlements were constantly abandoned and their discovery was forgotten,

except in Scandinavian saga and song

- European discovery of the New World was “accidental”

- Christian Crusaders → protecting holy land from Muslim Control

→ Became accustomed to Asian goods such as Silk, perfumes, and spices

(especially sugar)

- Eastern luxuries were expensive route to the riches of Asia or develop alternative

sources of supplies in Europe

- → Eager to find a lly

1-5 Europeans Enter Africa

- Marco Polo returned to Europe after 22 years in China

→ Indirect Discoverer of the New World

→ His descriptions of goods from Asia stimulated a desire for a cheaper route to

the east

- Pressures eventually caused a breakthrough for European Expansion

 - 1450 : Portuguese mariners developed a caravel ( a ship that could sail more closely into

the wind)

- ⅔ of Europe’s supply of gold crossed the Sahara on camelback

- Europeans had no direct access to sub Saharan Africa until the Portuguese navigations

began to creep down the West African Coast in the middle of the fifteenth century

- Portuguese set up trading posts along the African coast

→ Purchases of gold and slaves

- Portuguese adopted Arab and African practices

→ Slaves worked on sugar plantations

- Plantation System - large scale commercial agriculture in which slave labor is exploited

- Portuguese were still in search of the African coast

→ Bartholomeu Dias reached Índia in 1488

- Spain became united in the late fifteenth century

- Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabelle of Castile came together and strengthened Spain

→ Spaniards were eager to outstrip portuguese rivals to tap the wealth of the Indies

In Class Video 8/30

- Horses changed the lives of Native Americans

- 1690s used by tribes of Southern Plains

- Tribes stole from each other

→ Created huge herds

 - Conquered greatest enemy → distance

- Horse became a symbol of prestige and class

- Within each tribe warrior societies flourished

- How am I going to feed my family?

Columbian Exchange - The Columbian Exchange is the international and unintentional transfer

of biology and ideology. Technology in Europe, Africa, and the Americas as a result of contact

flourished in the years after the historic voyage of Christopher Columbus

The Horse

- Old World → World

- Used for reaching destinations faster

- Increased intertribal war

The Potato

- New World - Old World

- Staple Crop

- Plentiful among poor

The Rat

- Old World → New World

- Invasive Species
1-6 Columbus Comes Upon a New World

- The stage was set for a cataclysmic shift in the course of history for the entire world

- Europeans clamored for more cheap products beyond the Mediterranean

- Africa was used as a source for slave labor

- In Spain a modern nation state was taking shape

- Printing presses facilities the distribution of scientific knowledge (1450)

- Christopher Columbus was failing for 6 weeks until October 12, 1492

→ The crew saw an island in the Bahamas

→ Allowed the opportunity to create an interdependent global economy system that

emerged on a scale that was unexpected.

- This new economic system touched every shore washed by the Atlantic Ocean

- Europe provided markets, capital, and technology

- Africa furnished the labor

- And the New World provided the raw materials → precious metals and soil for

cultivating sugarcane

1-7 When Worlds Collide

- The reverberations of when Columbus waded ashore is often referred to as the

Columbian Exchange → echoed for centuries after 1492

- Flora and Fauna as well as the people of the Old and New Worlds had been separated

for thousands of years

- European explorers were marveled at new sights and crops

→ Potatoes, Maize, Beans, Tomatoes, Tobacco

- Potatoes became an essential part of the European diet and helped feed the growing

population of the Old World

- These crops were the most important gift from the Native Americans to Europeans and

the rest of the world

- ⅗ of the crops cultivated internationally today originated in America

- In exchange for New World crops the Europeans introduced the Native Americans to

horses and Old World crops

- Columbus returned to Hispaniola (present day Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in

1493 with 17 ships that unloaded 1200 men and a virtual Noah’s Ark of cattle, swine,

and horses.

- Horses reached the North American mainland through Mexico.

→ Spread as far as Canada over the next 2 centuries

→ Southwestern Native American tribes like the Comanche, Apache, and Navajo

adopted the horse

→ Northern tribes like the Lakpta, Shoshone, and Blackfeet adopted it later

- Horses transformed newly mounted cultures into highly mobile, wide ranging hunter-

warrior societies that roamed the Great Plains in pursuit of the shaggy buffalo and the

suppressed unmounted people like the Paiute.

- Columbus also brought back seedlings of Sugar Cane which thrived in the Caribbean

climate
 → Led to a “sugar revolution” in the European Diet, fueled by the force

migration of millions of Africans to work the canefields and sugar mills of the

New World

- Europeans brought seeds such as Kentucky bluegrass, dandelions and daisies

- Most ominous of all their bodies carried the germs that caused smallpox, yellow fever,

and malaria

→ Devastated the Native Americans

→ Population of Taino Natives dwindled from 1 million to 200

- Although enslavement and armed aggression took their toll the deadliest killers were

microbes

- Most of the Native Americans who were affected had never seen a European in their

lives

- 90% of the Native American population perished from disease, violence, and

enslavement

- Not intentional but entire cultures and ancient ways of life were extinguished

- Indians unintentionally introduced Syphilis to Europeans

1-8 The Conquest of Mexico and Peru

- Europeans eventually realized that the American continents held rich prizes, especially

gold and silver of the advanced civilizations of Native Americans in Mexico and Peru
- Spain secured its claim to Columbus’s discovery through the Treaty of Tordesillas

→ Divided with Portugal the “heathen lands” of the New World

- Lion's share went to Spain

- Portugal received compensating territory in Africa and Asia as well as title to lands that

one day would be Brazil

- Islands of the Caribbean Sea, and the West Indies as they came to be called served as

offshore bases for staging the Spanish invasion of the mainland Americas

→ Supplies could be stored, and men and horses could be rested and acclimated

- The loosely organized and vulnerable native communities of the West Indies also

provided laboratories for testing the techniques that would eventually subdue the

advanced Indian Civilizations of Mexico and Peru

- Ecomienda was one such technique that allowed the government to commend or give

Indians to certain colonists in return for the promise to Christianize them

→ Basically Slavery

- Spanish missionary Bartolome de Las Casas was appalled by the system in Hispaniola,

and referred to it as a “moral pestilence invented by Satan”

- In 1519 Hernan Cortes set sail from Cuba with sixteen fresh horses and several hundred

men aboard eleven ships, bound for Mexico and for the records of history.

- Picked up two interpreters one Spanish and one who knew both Mayan and Nahuatl
- In addition to his superior firepower, Cortes now had the advantage through the two

interpreters, understanding the speech of the native people whom he was about to

encounter including the Aztecs

- Near present-day Veracruz, Cortes made his final landfall

→ Wanted the gold from the Aztecs' main city Tenochtitlan

- Burned all of his ships, cutting off any hope for retreat

- Cortes gathered some 20k Indian allies and marched on Tenochtitlan

- The Aztec chieftain Moctezuma sent ambassadors bearing fabulous gifts

→ Moctezuma also believed that Cortes was the god Quetzalcoatl, whose return from

The eastern sea was predicted in Aztec Legends

- 300k inhabitants in Tenochtitlan over 10 square miles

- Rivaled in size and pomp any city in contemporary Europe

- Rose from an island in the center of a lake

- On June 30, 1520 the Aztecs attacked, driving the Spanish down the causeways from

Tenochtitlan in a frantic, bloody retreat

- Cortes then laid siege to the city and it surrendered on August 13, 1521

- Combo of conquest and disease took a grisly toll

- Temples destroyed to make Cathedrals

- Native Population went down from disease and slavery 20 million → 2 million in a

century
 - Shortly after in South America, Francisco Pizzeria crushed the Incas of Peru in 1532

- By 1600 Spain was swimming in New World silver

→ Potosi in present day bolivia (silver mines)

→ Enslaved Native Americans labored under Spanish control

- This metal touched off a price revolution increasing costs by 500%

- Some scholars say this fuel fed the growth of Capitalism

- New World helped transform the economy

→ Filled the vaults of bankers from Spain to Italy

→ Laid the foundations of the modern banking system

→ Stimulated the spread of commerce and manufacturing

- The invaders brought more than conquest and death they brought crops and animals,

language and laws, customs and religion, all of which provide adaptable to the peoples

of the Americas

- In Mexico they intermarried with the surviving indians creating a culture of Mestizos

1-9 Exploration and Imperial Rivalry

- Spanish conquistadors (conquerors) continued to fan out across the New World and

beyond in the service of god, as well as in search of gold and glory

 - Vasco Nunez Balboa hailed as the European discoverer of the Pacific Ocean, waded into

the foaming waves off Panama in 1513 and boldly claimed for his king all the lands

washed by the sea

- Ferdinand Mulligan started from Spain in 1519 with five tiny ships. After beating through

the storm lashed strait off the tip of South America that still bears his name

→ Slain by the inhabitants of the Philippines

→ His one remaining vessel creaked home in 1522 completing the first

circumnavigation of the globe

Makers of America - The Spanish Conquistadors

- In 1492 the Moorish city of Granada, in Spain, fell after a ten-year siege. For five

centuries the Christian Kingdoms of Spain had been trying to drive the North African

Muslim Moors (“The Dark Ones” in Spanish) off the Iberian Peninsula

→ Succeeded with the fall of Granada

- Lengthy Reconquista had left its mark on Spanish society

→ Religious obsession and confrontation created an obsession with status and honor,

religious zealotry and intolerance

→ Created a large class of men who regarded manual labor and commerce

contemptuously
 - With the Reconquista ended, some of these men turned their restless gaze to Spain’s

New World Frontier

1.8 Conquistadores, ca. 1534

- At first the Spanish were focused on the Caribbean and finding a sea route to Asia

- Between 1519 and 1540, Spanish conquistadores swept across the Americans in two

wider arcs of conquest

1. Driving from Cuba through Mexico into what is now the southwestern

United States

2. Starting from Panama and pushing south into Peru

- Within half a century of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, the conquistadors had

extinguished the Incas and Aztecs and claimed for church and crown a territory that

extended from Colorado to Argentina, including much of what is now the United States

- The military conquest was achieved by just 10,000 men organized into a series of private

expeditions

- Hernan Cortes, Francisco Pizzaro, and other aspiring conquerors signed contracts with

the Spanish monarchy, raised money from investors, and then went about recruiting an

Army

- Small minority of conquistadores were leaders of followers, ½ were professional

soldiers and sailors, and the rest consisted of peasants, artisans, and members of the
 middling classes. Most wee in their twenties and early thirties and all knew how to wield

a sword

- Diverse motives spurred these adventurers. Some hoped to win royal titles and favors

by bringing people under the Spanish flag. Others sought to ensure God’s favor by

spreading Christianity. Some men hoped to escape dubious pasts, and others sought the

kind of historical adventure experienced by heroes of classical antiquity.

→ All of the men lusted for gold

1.9 An Aztec View of the Conquest 1531

- Armed with horses and gunpowder and preceded by disease, the conquistadors

capitalized on local Indian Rivalries, as cortes had in central Mexico, to overpower the

Indians

→ Most never received their dreams of glory, few received titles of nobility, and many

of the rank and file remained permanently indebted to the absentee investor who paid

for the equipment

- Even when an expedition captured exceptionally rich goods, they were often divided

unequally

- The conquistadores lost still more power as the crown gradually tightened its control in

the New World. By the 1530s in Mexico and 1550s in Peru, colorless colonial

administrators had replaced the the freebooting conquistadores

Other ambitious Spaniards ventured into North America

- Juan Ponce de Leon explored Florida, in 1513 and 1521, which he first thought was an

island

- → Met with death by an Indian Arrow looking for Gold

- In 1540-1542 Francisco Coronado, was on a quest to find golden cities that turned out

to be adobe pueblos, wandered with a clanking cavalcade through Arizona and New

Mexico, penetrating as far east as Kansa

- Hernando de Soto, with six hundred armed men, undertook a fantastic gold-seeking

expedition during 15239-1542. Floundering through marshes and pine barrens from

Florida westward, he discovered and crossed the Mississippi River after brutally

mistreating the Native Americans with iron collars and fierce dogs

→ Died of fever and wounds

- Spain’s colonial empire grew swiftly and impressively. Within about half a century of

Columbus’s landfall, hundreds of Spanish cities and towns flourished in the Americas,

especially in the great silver producing centers of Peru and Mexico

- 16,000 Spaniards, mostly men, had subjugated millions of Native Americans

- Cathedrals were built across the land. Printing presses were established, and scholars

had founded distinguished universities including those at Mexico City and Lima, Peru,

both established in 1551. Eighty years before Harvard

How secure were these imperial possessions?

- Other powers were already sniffing around the edges of the Spanish domain, eager to

bite off their share of the promised wealth of the new lands

- The upstart English sent Giovanni Caboto (known as John Cabot in English) to explore

the northeastern coast of North America in 1497 and 1498

- The French king dispatched another Italian mariner, Giovanni de Verrazano, to probe

the eastern seaboard in 1524

- Ten years later the Frenchman Jacques Cartier journeyed hundreds of miles up the St

Lawrence River

- To safeguard the Northern periphery of their New World against such enemies and

convert more Native Americans to Christianity, the Spanish began fortifying and settling

their North American borderlands.

- In a move to block French ambitions and to protect the sea-lanes to the Caribbean, the

Spanish erected a fortress at St. Augustine, Florida in 1565, thus founding the oldest

continually inhabited European settlement in the future United States

- In Mexico the tales of Colorado’s expedition of the 1540s to the upper Rio Grande and

Colorado River regions continued to beckon the conquistadores northward. A dust

begrimed expeditionary column with 84 rumbling wagons and hundreds of grumbling

men traversed the bare Sonora Desert from Mexico into the Rio Grande in 1598

- Led by Don Juan de Onate, the Spaniards cruelly abused the Pueblo people they

encountered
 - In the Battle of Acoma in 1599, the victorious Spanish sentenced young Indian survivors

to twenty years servitude and severed one foot of males over 25 years of age

- The Victors proclaimed the area to be the province of New Mexico in 1609 and founded

its capital at Santa Fe the following year

Spain’s North American Frontier, 1542-1823

- The Spanish settlers in New Mexico found a few furs and precious gold, but they did

discover a wealth of souls to be harvested for the Christian religion. The Roman Catholic

mission became the central institution in colonial New Mexico until the missionaries

efforts to suppress native religious customs proved an Indian uprising called the Pueblo

Revolt of 1680
- Rebels destroyed every Catholic church and killed hundreds of spanish settlers and

priests

- In reversal of Cortes’s treatment the Indians rebuilt a Kiva, or a ceremonial religious

chamber, on the ruins of the Spanish plaza at Santa Fe

→ Took nearly half a century for the Spanish to fully reclaim New Mexico from

the insurrectionary Indians

- The Spanish began to establish settlements in Texas around 1716. Some refugees from

the Pueblo uprising trickled into Texas, and a few missions were established there,

including the one at San Antonio later known as the Alamo. But for at least another

century, the Spanish presence remained weak in Texas

- To the west, in California, no serious foreign threat loomed, and spain directed its

attention there only belatedly

- Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo had explored the California coast in 1542, but he failed to find

San Francisco Bay or anything else of much interest. For some two centuries thereafter,

California’s native people lived undisturbed by European Intruders

- In 1769 Spanish missionaries led by father Junipero Serra founded at San Diego the first

chain of 21 missions that wound off the coast as far as Sonoma, north of the San

Francisco Bay.

- Father Serra gathered semi-nomadic Indians into fortified missions and taught them

horticulture and basic crafts. These “mission indians” did adopt Christianity, but they
 also lost contact with their native cultures and often lost their lives as well, as the white

man’s diseases doomed these biologically vulnerable people

- As the Spanish pushed northward from Mexico, they were preceded by their horses

- By 1680 the Pueblo revolted and seized large numbers of Spanish horses, Indians as far

as north as present day Texas and New Mexico were already breeding and trading them.

Over the next century, traded as well as feral horses spread throughout the western half

of the continent forever altering many long-established native cultures

- Forest Dwellers moved to the plains; buffalo hunters revolutionized their techniques;

everywhere a new mobility suffused the lives of horse-breeding Indians. Most

importantly. Equine speed gave riders an enormous military advantage.

- Mounted Comanches in particular extended their dominion over a vast territory,

intimidating Indian and Spanish neighbors alike

 - The misdeeds of the Spanish in the New World concealed their substantial

achievements and helped give birth to the “Black Legend”

- Popularized by Spain’s protestant rivals held that the conquerors merely tortured and

butchered the Indians (“killing for christ”) stole their gold, infected them with smallpox,

and left little but misery behind

- The Spanish did indeed kill, enslave, and infect countless natives, but they also created

a colossal empire, sprawling from California and Florida to Tierra del Fuego

- They mingled their culture, laws, religion, and language with a wide array of native

societies, laying the foundations for a score Spanish speaking nations

“Clearly, the Spaniards, who had more than a century’s head

start over the English, were genuine empire builders and

cultural innovators in the New World. As compared with their

Anglo-Saxon rivals, their colonial establishment was larger and

richer, and it was destined to endure more than a quarter of a

century longer. And in the last analysis, 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.”