The Collision of Cultures

Native America & Europe

From Pre-Contact…
to Contact in 1492…
to 1607

Foner _Give Me Liberty_ chapters 1-2

1
 Approximate Native American
Population at Contact
• About 90 Million!!!
– 10 million in what would become the U.S.
(Good scholars place the number closer to 18 million)
– 30 million in ‘Mexico’
– 11 million in Central America
– 1.5 million in the Caribbean
– 30 million in the Andes of South America
– 9 million in the rest of South America
The continent was populated ~ not a ‘virgin
soil’ or empty wilderness 2
Migration Routes from Asia to America During the Ice Age, Asia and North
America were joined where the Bering Straits are today, forming a migration
route for hunting peoples. Either by boat along the coast, or through a narrow
corridor between the huge northern glaciers, these migrants began as much as
40,000 years ago. The 1st major migration was 12-14 thousand years ago,
followed by migrations in 5000 BCE, and 3000 BCE .
3
 Populous, Highly Organized, &
Advanced Societies of the Americas

• Mayans in the Yucatan

• Aztecs in Mexico

• Incas in the Andes

4
This map of Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, published in 1524, shows
the city before its destruction, with the principal Aztec temples in
the main square, cause-ways connecting the city to the mainland,
and an aqueduct supplying fresh water. Tenotchtitlan easily
compared to the largest cities of Europe in size & complexity.
5
Native North American Trade Networks, ca. 1400 CE By determining the
origin of artifacts found at ancient sites, historians have devised a conjectural
map of Indian trade networks. Trade connected Indian peoples of many
different communities and regions.
6
Mesoamerican maize
cultivation; peoples of
Mesoamerica
developed a great
variety of important
crops.
Maize diffused from
Mexico north into
Indian farming regions
including the Pueblo
Southwest,
Mississippian Midwest,
Cherokee and
Choctaw Southeast,
and Iroquois of the
Northeast.

7
Cliff Palace, at Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado, was
created 900 years ago when the Anasazis left the mesa tops & moved
into more secure and inaccessible cliff dwellings. The numerous round
kivas, each covered with a flat roof originally, suggest that Cliff Palace
may have had a ceremonial importance.

Advanced
irrigation &
terraced
agriculture
helped the
Anasazi &
Pueblo
survive in
the arid
southwest

8
A modern aerial photograph of the ruins
of Pueblo Bonita
9
The City of Cahokia, with a population of @ 40,000, was the center of a
farming society that arose on the Mississippi bottomlands near present-
day St. Louis in the tenth century CE. Cahokians built dozens of vast
earthen mounds covering six square miles, evidence of their complex
social organization & advanced intense agriculture. 10
 A note on numbers…
• Numbers in history…
– Often approximations
– Play it safe, “about” or “around”
– For example, “Some scholars estimate the
population of Cahokia at 30,000, but others
think 40,000 lived in the city.”

(Me 40,000)

11
The Great Serpent Mound in southern Ohio, the shape of an uncoiling
snake more than 1,300 feet long, is the largest effigy earthwork in the
world. Monumental public works like these suggest the high degree of
social organization of the Mississippian people.
12
This bottle in the shape of a
nursing mother (dated about
1300 BCE) was found at a
Mississippian site. Historians
can only speculate about the
thoughts and feelings of the
Mississippians, but such
works of art are testimonials
to the universal human
emotion of maternal
affection.

Further evidence – beyond

monumental architecture - of
the socially advanced
society of the Mississippians

13
Indian women planting crops
14
Engraving from a drawing by an early French colonist of Florida. The
aboriginal communities of Florida were hierarchical, with classes &
hereditary chiefs, some of whom were women. A “queen” being carried
on an ornamental litter by men of rank.

Further
evidence of
diversity &
burgeoning
social
structures of
Native
America

15
Engraving based on a drawing by Champlain depicting in 1609 a
battle between Iroquois and Algonquian tribes
16
Clark’s journal drawing of Chinook ‘Flatheads’
17
Great Basin – an
enormous desert.

Home of the Ute’s

They foraged &

hunted
nomadically,
formed small
kinship bands
lived a largely
Paleolithic
lifestyle holding
few possessions
remaining
egalitarian.

18
The spirit of the Renaissance
encouraged experimentation;
the printing press spread
innovations.

At Sagres Point Portuguese

Prince Henry “the Navigator”
established a naval academy.
His research aimed to get to
India & China by sea. Euros
borrowed the compass from
Muslims that had taken it from
the Chinese.
They improved the astrolabe
(see image) and quadrant to
ship worthy versions.

19
This ship, like Columbus’s Niña, is a caravel, developed at Henry
the Navigator’s institute in Portugal. Euros added the “lateen” sail
of the Arabs, which
permitted much greater
maneuverability, to the
traditional Mediterranean
ship. Combined with Asian
improvements, such as the
stern-post rudder and
multiple masting, it allowed
caravels to travel farther &
faster than any earlier
ships & made possible the
invasion of the Americas.

Square-rigged galleon is
another example of tech.
20
 Causes of Euro Exploration
Political Economic Social / Cultural
Nation States Asian Trade vital as Religion:
path to wealth & Islam v Christianity.
Divine Right to path to power.
Protestant v Catholic.
Rule Muslims controlled
Asian Trade routes. Christian rivalries
Reconquista due to Protestant
Monarchs Reformation.
sponsored Trade.

Renaissance
Learning
Scientific Revolution
21
Christopher
Columbus
convinced the
Spanish monarchs
Ferdinand &
Isabella to pay to
outfit three ships.
They promised
Columbus the titles
of admiral, viceroy,
& governor of lands
he might claim for
Spain. He sailed
west and landed on
the Bahamas in
1492.

Columbus’s
Landfall
22
 The Columbian Exchange
• Europeans after their ‘discovery’ of the
Americas initiated:
– migration (voluntary & coerced)
– spread of diseases
– Movement of resources by force & trade
(Silver & Gold & labor)
– transfers plants & animals
• These processes described collectively as
“The Columbian Exchange”
• Via migration Europeans created new
combo societies including Native
Americans, Europeans & Africans
23
 The ‘Great’ Dying
• The demographic collapse of Native Americans
represented a major global significance of the
European Empires in the Americas
• Lots of people in the Americas; about 90 million
• Indigenous Americans had no immunities to
smallpox, measles, mumps, chicken pox, typhus,
influenza, malaria, cholera, or yellow fever
• Often 90% of people died in waves of diseases;
what has been called ‘The Great Dying’
• Massive disease also led to starvation as the sick
couldn’t farm & trade broke down

24
 The ‘Columbian
Exchange’ caused
far more deaths
than violence
Depiction of the
smallpox epidemic
in Tenochtitlán in
1520 from the
Florentine Codex,
a postconquest
history written &
illustrated by Aztec
scribes.
“There came amongst us a great sickness, a general plague,” reads the
account, “killing vast numbers of people. It covered many all over with
sores: on the face, on the head, on the chest, everywhere. . . . The sores
were so terrible that the victims could not lie face down, nor on their backs,
nor move from one side to the other. And when they tried to move even a
little, they cried out in agony.” 25
 North America’s Indian and Colonial Populations in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries

The primary factor in the decimation of native peoples was epidemic disease,
brought to the New World from the Old. In the eighteenth century, the colonial
population overtook North America’s Indian populations.
26
 The Great Dying in a Real Sense
Year Population of Arawak Indians
1495 250,000
1497 125,000
1515 50,000
1550 500
1650 0

90% of 25 million Aztecs died within 50 years of contact!

27
 The Impact of Columbian Exchange in Europe

Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Asia

Urbanization Rates, Weighted by Population, 1300-1850
28
The Impact of Columbian Exchange in Europe

Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Asia

GDP Per Capita, Weighted by Population, 1500-1870
29
 The Impact of Columbian Exchange in Europe

Atlantic Traders, W. Euro Countries Not Atlantic Trading,

and Eastern Europe:
GDP Per Capita, Weighted by Population, 1500-1870
30
 The Atlantic World
• Columbian Exchange led to the concept of an
‘Atlantic World’
• Lands bordering the Atlantic–Africa, the Americas,
and Western Europe–were knit together
– first by the Portuguese & Spanish
– later by French, Dutch, & English
• Atlantic World contacts created new syncretic
cultures
• Free & forced migrations from Europe and Africa
created new societies & social systems
• Euros used the labor of poor Europeans, American
Indians & Africans to extract resources such as
silver/gold & wealth from staple crops such as sugar
& tobacco making an ‘Atlantic World’ economy
31
 The Columbian Exchange
• Highly Important American foods included:
Maize (Corn), Potato, Manioc & Tomato
• Other American offerings to Eurasia:
Bell & Chili peppers, Cocoa, Peanut, Squash,
Sweet Potato, Tomato, Vanilla
And non-foods Rubber & Tobacco

• Eurasian animals to the America’s included:

Chicken, Cow, Pig, Sheep, Horse, Goat & Goose
• Eurasian Foods sent to the Americas:
Apple, Coffee, Citrus, Rice, Soybean, Sugarcane,
& Wheat

32
Impacts of Mercantilism & Columbian Exchange
• Mercantilism ~ economic system increasing the
power & monetary wealth of a nation through
regulation of the economy amassing gold & silver,
and foreign trading monopolies
• Impacts of mercantilism: Euro nations concentrated
the profits of the Columbian Exchange into the
pockets of royalty, new nation states, & merchant
elites

• Impacts of Columbian Exchange:

– End of feudalism in Europe
– Rise of capitalism in the Atlantic World
– Creation of new Atlantic World Societies
– First Great Divergence in Western Europe 33
 Dominican Antonio de Montesinos
(brutality wasn’t of ALL Europeans;
pre-cursor to archetypical de las Casas)
Preaching in the colonial New Spain in 1511, “Tell me by
what right of justice do you hold these Indians in such a cruel
and horrible servitude? On what authority have you waged
such detestable wars against these people who dealt quietly
and peacefully on their own lands? Wars in which you have
destroyed such an infinite number of them by homicides and
slaughters never heard of before. Why do you keep them so
oppressed and exhausted, without giving them enough to eat
or curing them of the sicknesses they incur from the
excessive labor you give them, and they die, or rather you kill
them, in order to extract and acquire gold every day." 34
 Bartolomé de las Casas
• Arrived in the Americas in 1502
• Slave raids and military expeditions against the native Taíno
population of Hispaniola committing violent atrocities
• Ordained a Roman Catholic priest; owned plantation & slaves
• In 1514 Las Casas gave up his encomienda and slaves
• In Spain, lobbied the monarchy to end the encomienda system
• Advocated importing African slaves; viewed their enslavement
as resulting from just wars
• Joined the Dominicans as a monk in 1523
• Dominicans & Las Casas chastised encomenderos; refused
confession to slave owners
• In 1550 Vallodolid Controversy Las Casa Defended Indians
• In 1552, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies 35
 Native Americans died in large numbers from violence during
the European conquests

The Cruelties Used by the Spaniards on the Indians, from a 1599

English edition of The Destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de
Las Casas. And yet, the violence of conquest was not the primary
cause of the “Great Dying”…
36
 Juan Gines de Sepúlveda
• Against Las Casas in the Valladolid Controversy; debate
organized by Spanish King Charles V in 1550
• Wrote On the Just Causes of War Against the Indians
• Argued for natural inferiority of American Indians,
conquest of Indians & their perpetual servitude to Christian
Europeans
• Sepúlveda on American Indians:
“…as children to parents, as women are to men, as cruel people are from mild
people…. Subjugation of the Indians was warranted because of their sins as
pagans; that their low level of civilization required civilized masters to maintain
social order; that they required Christianity and that this in turn required them to
be pacified.”
• Las Casas countered that Indians built civilized societies &
peaceful mission was the way to convert Indians. 37
 Spanish Rule in the Americas
• Absolute monarchs ruled Spain
• Via conquistadors, the Council of the Indies &
Viceroyalties, they ruled the vast Americas
• Decrees of the monarchs represented the law
• Spanish Monarchs granted Columbus &
conquistadores extensive authority to rule the lands
they conquered
• In 1503 Casa de Contratación in Seville set up to
supervise colonial commerce & emigration
• The Spanish Crown collected the ‘quinto real’ or ‘royal
fifth’ – a tax of 20% on American trade
38
 Spanish Rule in the Americas
• By 1524 the monarchs withdrew authority from
conquistadores & established more extensive direct royal
influence through a Council of the Indies
• They appointed a minister for the Indies who governed on
the advice of a council of eight advisors
• The Council of the Indies ruled the colonies & the Casa de
Contratación
• In 1492 Spanish fleets, variously called the Spanish
Treasure Fleet or West Indies Fleet left Havana heading
for Seville
• After 1560, due to pirates, the Spanish used a convoy
system called Flota de Indias to bring the wealth stolen
from the America’s to Europe 39
 Spanish Rule in the Americas
• Absolutist kings of Spain appointed Viceroys to rule
the vast Spanish Empire
• They set up Two large administrative territories
– Viceroyalty of New Spain centered in Mexico City
– Viceroyalty of Peru centered in Lima
• The Spanish Crown subdivided rule of each
Viceroyalty into:
– Audencias with judicial, legislative, and
administrative functions
– Captaincies General which were military districts
holding political powers
40
 Spanish Colonial Economic & Social Systems

• In 1503, the crown started granting encomiendas to

conquistadors
• These encomenderos exacted tribute from the Indians
in gold, commodities, or in labor
• The Spanish Crown required the encomenderos to
instruct Indians in Roman Catholic Christianity
• The Encomienda system was harsh forced labor & an
exploitative tribute system enforced violently

41
 Spanish Colonial Economic & Social Systems
• Given protest by Dominicans such as Las Casas, the
Crown issued ‘New Laws of 1542’ replacing encomienda
with repartimiento
• Repartimiento was a system of forced labor that required
Indians to do unpaid or low-paid labor for the Spanish
• encomenderos resisted the New Laws rioting &
threatening to kill Las Casas
• A full fifth of American Indians enslaved in Spanish
conquests in the 1540s came under Crown control
• Perhaps realizing economic interests, the New Laws
repealed in 1545; in practice, encomienda & repartimiento
persisted for centuries
42
 Spanish Colonial Economic & Social Systems
• The Crown supported extension of Roman Catholic
Christianity to American Indians in the Mission System
• The Missions established rule over the conquered
lands & served as justifications for conquest &
economic exploitation
• Various orders sent priests; they demanded taxes &/or
labor from the American Indians & used varying levels
of violence to achieve control
• The Spanish imported slaves under the Asiento
system
• Spain used most slave labor on Caribbean plantations
producing valuable commodities of sugar and tobacco
43
 Spanish Colonial Economic & Social Systems
• Via Encomienda, Repartimiento, Mission, and Asiento Indians
& Africans owed work or tribute to Spanish colonial elites
• Casta developed (aka the Spanish Caste System) to define &
record which people owed how much labor or tax to Spanish
authorities
• Casta categorized people by the degrees of their racial
ancestry into a social hierarchy
• In theory, racial ancestry determined caste; given mixing
ancestry & skin color blurred
• In practice, the Caste System considered qualities such as
education & wealth when placing people into Casta
– e.g. a darker skinned educated landowner might be perceived as
of higher class than a lighter skinned landless craftsman. Passing
into a higher caste meant lower taxes, or escaping forced labor for
elites, in addition to other social benefits
44
 Spanish Colonial Economic & Social Systems
• The Spanish Caste System in descending order of
rank included:
– Peninsulares ~ those born in Spain
– Criollos ~ born of Spanish parents, but in the colonies
– Mestizos ~ shared Spanish and Indian parentage
– Mulattos ~ mixed Spanish and African parentage
– Africans ~ normally enslaved or a free descendant
– Indians

• The Spanish considered Indios child-like wards in need of

parenting by Spanish elites to enforce civilized behavior
• Similarly, the Spanish enforced a lower status on Africans
through law prohibiting them from many government
positions & the priesthood 45
Andres de Islas, "Four Racial Groups"
Andres de Islas, "Four Racial Groups"
Andres de Islas, "Four Racial Groups"
 African Syncretic Religion in New Spain
• When possible, Africans in Spanish colonies
preserved African cultural practices
• Santería, a syncretic religion, presents easiest
example of African cultural persistence
• Santería syncretized West African Yorùbá beliefs with
Roman Catholicism
• Santería preserved African religious customs such as
a trance for communicating with ancestors and deities,
animal sacrifice and sacred drumming and dance
while emphasizing the importance of Roman Catholic
Saints in religious rituals

50
 Spanish Conquest of Pueblo
• Pueblo Indians lived in settled agricultural villages in
permanent stone or adobe buildings
• “Pueblo” is a broad cultural classification including tribes
speaking different languages that lived in similar ways
• Pueblo farming harvested beans, maize, pumpkins, cotton,
and tobacco
• Spanish conquest & rule of the Pueblos started in 1598
when conquistador Juan de Oñate led the invasion of the
Rio Grande valley with 400 soldiers 10 Franciscans
• Oñate founded Santa Fe as a province of New Mexico &
ruled as governor
• He assigned a priest to each district of the colonial
government to control approximately 8,000 Indians
51
Acoma Pueblo, the “sky city,” was founded in the thirteenth
century and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in the
United States. Looking for gold in 1598, Juan de Oñate attacked
and laid waste to the pueblo, killing some 800 inhabitants and
enslaving another 500. No gold so Onate left disgraced…
52
de Villagrá Critiques Spanish Conquest of Pueblo
(another de las Casas)
• Spanish captain Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá published a
history of New Mexico in 1610
– The Spanish stole Pueblo food supplies, women & children
– Franciscan priests wanted the kids to raise as Catholics
• Pueblo Indians at Acoma rose to resistance killing 11
Spaniards including Juan Oñate’s nephew
• Oñate’s responses to Pueblo self-defense:
– Acoma Massacre killing 800 villagers (women, & children)
– Enslaved the remaining 500
– Amputated the left foot of every Acoma man over 25
– Sent many Pueblo women from Acoma to work in other
colonial regions as slaves 53
 Spanish Rule After Acoma Massacre
• Seized Pueblo food & required tribute of cotton cloth &
maize
• Pueblo society produced limited surpluses, given arid
desert conditions & historically they stored surpluses
to wisely protect against drought
• Tribute to the Spanish, enforced violently,
impoverished the Pueblo & consumed emergency
stores of grains leading to starvation of Indians during
the fairly frequent droughts
• Spanish attempts to extract wealth ruined Pueblo
societies’ longstanding, delicate, ecologically-
balanced agriculture.
54
 Spanish Rule of Pueblo
• Spanish missionary efforts sought conversion of
Indians
• To survive Indians converted to Roman Catholicism
– Forced tribute left them without enough food or clothing
– Conversion secured access to food & clothing distributed by
the priests controlling the missions
– Only ‘loyal’ ‘Catholic’ Indians would ‘deserve’ charity
• Pueblos still practiced their traditional religion secretly
• The resistance of Indians seen in:
– The fighting at Acoma
– The secret practice of native religion
– Periodic violent rebellions often aimed at the missionaries
55
 Oñate’s Recall, Trial, & Return to Spain
• In 1606, Spanish authorities recalled Oñate to
Mexico City for a judicial hearing questioning
his conduct
• He resigned his governorship
• He was tried and convicted of cruelty to natives
& colonists & banished from New Mexico
• His appeal cleared him of charges
• He returned to Spain as a government
inspector of mines, dying in 1626
56
 Franciscan priest Francisco de Zamora
(yet another de las Casas…)
Explained Pueblo Indian resistance writing that the
Spanish:
“…took away from them by force all the food that they
had gathered for many years, without leaving them any
for the support of themselves and their children, robbed
them of the scanty clothing they had to protect
themselves…causing the natives much harm and
wounding their feelings. This brought great discredit to
our teaching, for they said that if we who are Christians
caused so much harm and violence, why should they
become Christians?” 57