Lecture 6: Iberian Exploration and Colonization

Viking Exploration

Vikings were the first Europeans in the Americas, not Columbus.
In the late 9th century, Norsemen settled in Iceland.
Erik the Red, exiled from Iceland for manslaughter, sailed to Greenland in the late 10th century.
Archeologists have found remains of Norse settlements in Greenland.
Leif Ericsson, Erik the Red’s son, sailed west from Greenland around 1000 and landed in North America.
- He named the lands Helluland (land of flat stones, likely Labrador), Markland (woodland, likely Newfoundland), and Vinland (land of vines/pastures, location unknown).
- Some speculate Vinland was as far south as Maine or Cape Cod.
A Viking settlement was found at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland in the 1960s, likely Ericsson’s Vinland.
Sagas mention a voyage to Vinland in 1009 with 250 settlers.
Vikings called Native Americans "skraelings," expressing ethnocentrism.
- They described them as "small ill-favored men who had ugly hair on their heads."
Frequent warfare occurred between Vikings and indigenous peoples.
- Skraelings killed Leif Ericsson’s brother, Thorvald.
Climactic changes (tundra transformation) likely forced Norsemen out of Vinland by the 14th century.

Portuguese exploration

15th-century explorers knew of Portuguese explorations in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean.
Portugal sailed south along Africa, claiming Atlantic sugar islands and accessing Malian gold.
By 1498, they reached India, becoming a navigation leader.
Christopher Columbus, an Italian sailor, dreamed of sailing west to reach Asia in Portugal.

Christopher Columbus

Born in Genoa in 1451 as Cristoforo Colombo, he was originally a weaver and later a sailor.
He was described as tall with blue eyes and prematurely grey red hair.
Shipwrecked in Portugal in 1476, he married a Portuguese navigator's daughter.
He engaged in lucrative voyages to Ireland, Madeira, and West Africa.
In 1484, Columbus proposed sailing west to Asia to King John II of Portugal.
- Portuguese navigators rejected his plan because Columbus underestimated the earth’s circumference.
  - Columbus estimated 3,000 miles from Europe to Asia, while the Portuguese estimated closer to 10,000 miles.
  - The Portuguese feared ships would run out of supplies.
- Navigators knew the world was round; disagreement was on the size of the globe.
- Portuguese preferred sailing south around Africa to Asia.
Columbus was persistent and believed he was chosen by God to find a new path to the East.
- He signed his name as “Christ Bearer” and ended letters with “Jesus and Mary be with us on our way.”
By 1491, multiple monarchs rejected Columbus, but Spain funded him with three ships.
- Ferdinand and Isabella sought to compete with Portugal and gave Columbus a chance given Reconquista completion.
Columbus left Spain on August 3 with the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.
- He was granted sweeping powers over discovered lands and a share of wealth.
- On the same day the last Jews, expelled by the Alhambra Decree, left Spain.
  - The Reconquista was complete and Spain sought new conquests in Asia.

Columbus's Voyage and Encounters

Columbus sailed south and west to the Canary Islands for repairs and supplies.
He then sailed westward into the open ocean.
He suppressed two mutinies during the five-week voyage.
The ships traveled up to 182 miles in one day.
Columbus spotted migratory birds heading from North America to the Caribbean.
On October 12, land was spotted, and Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas, which he named San Salvador.
- He believed he had reached Asia.
The local Taino people called their island Guanahani.
Columbus renamed places with Spanish names to fit them into a European and Christian context.
Over the next twelve years, Columbus named islands, cities, and harbors throughout the Caribbean after Christian saints and Spanish cities.
The Taino people treated Columbus kindly, sharing what they possessed.
- Columbus wrote of their love and generosity.
Europeans compared Native American societies to the Garden of Eden.
- Peter Martyr noted their simple and innocent lives.
This marked the birth of the concept of the "noble savage."
Columbus focused on transforming Native American life from the start.
- He wrote it would be easy to convert them and make them work.
- He saw them as fit to be ordered about and made to work.
He looked for the Chinese, convinced he was near Asia.
On Cuba, he sent Luis de Torres to meet a Native leader mistakenly believed to be the Great Khan.
- Torres was treated kindly but did not find the expected Asian capital.
Columbus named the locals "Indians" due to his belief he was in the East Indies.
Columbus encountered Natives wearing gold jewelry and sought the source of the gold.
Natives directed him to supposed gold deposits far from their homelands, a common strategy used later across the Americas.
Columbus returned to Spain in 1493.
- The return voyage was more dangerous, with severe winter storms.
- After grounding the Santa Maria in the Caribbean, crossed the ocean in two small caravels.
- In the Azores, the Portuguese governor imprisoned half of his crew.
- Columbus threatened to open fire to get his crew back.
- He arrived in Spain with native flora and kidnapped Taino Natives.
- Ferdinand and Isabella were impressed and gave him the titles "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" and Viceroy.
Columbus returned to the Caribbean in 1493 with 17 ships and 1,500 men.
- This second voyage initiated the European invasion of the Americas.
- Unlike the first voyage, the Spanish came to stay.

Columbian Exchange and its Consequences

Columbus’ second voyage is a clear demonstration of the Columbian exchange.
- The Columbian exchange refers to the exchange of materials between the Old World and the New.
- Europeans encountered new plants and animals, such as tomatoes, potatoes, beans, corn, and tobacco.
- Native Americans encountered horses, cattle, and other domestic animals.
- This exchange benefited both peoples.
The Columbian exchange also had a detrimental effect upon Native populations.
- Spanish brought domestic animals, including pigs, which escaped into the wild and spread diseases.
- Influenza, smallpox (by 1518), and measles (by 1519) decimated native populations due to their lack of immunity.
  - The Taino population decreased from over a million to a few thousand by 1540.
  - Entire cultures, including the Taino and Arawak, were wiped out within a century.
  - Historians estimate that diseases killed 90% to 95% of all Native peoples in the New World.
    - Entire villages were covered in bones and skulls.
  - Diseases spread wherever Europeans and Natives came into contact.

Devastation and Trade

Devastation of Native populations had several consequences:
- The fabric of traditional culture unraveled.
- Survivors created new bands and tribes.
- Depopulation enabled European colonists to establish settlements with limited opposition.
Columbus’ second voyage also started regular trade between Spain and the Americas.
- Columbus returned with spices, 60 parrots, a small amount of gold, and 26 Indian slaves.
- The amount of gold and slaves crossing the Atlantic would increase in the future.
Near the end of Columbus’ second voyage, he imprisoned 1,500 Natives and sent 500 of them to Spain to be sold into slavery; one Spanish commentator that almost all of them died.
Columbus made Hispaniola his base of operations, using it to initiate the repartimiento system.
- In 1495, Taino people attempted to resist the Spanish in the first pitched battle between Native Americans and the Spanish.
- The Spaniards soundly defeated the Taino with their muskets, horses, and war dogs.
- By 1496, the island was thoroughly subdued.
- A Spaniard could safely go wherever he pleased and help himself to the Indians’ food, women, and gold.
As governor of Hispaniola, Columbus instituted the repartimiento system, granting land and Native labor to Spanish colonists.
- This policy resulted in genocide.
- The native population of Hispaniola declined from approximately 250,000 in 1492 to less than 500 in 1538.

Columbus' Later Voyages and Legacy

Columbus made four voyages to the New World, venturing as far south as the Orinoco River.
Columbus was marooned on Jamaica for a year before paddling to Hispaniola.
Columbus never found enough gold and fell from favor in the Spanish court.
He was replaced as governor of Hispaniola in 1501 and mocked as the "Admiral of Mosquitos."
Columbus died in 1506, believing he had discovered a sea route to Asia.
Amerigo Vespucci's writings about his expeditions to the New World were more popular than Columbus'.
A German geographer, Martin Waldseemuller, named the continent America after Vespucci on his 1507 map.
- Recent historians have argued that the name America may be less European than we think.
Terms similar to "America" were already in use by Native groups to refer to places in the New World. Examples include Amaracao, Maracaibo, Emeria, and Amaricocapana.
- Variations of “America” were also used by Native Americans to describe Europeans.
  Here, variations include: Tamaraca,
  Tamerka, and Maraca.
Columbus' voyages initiated a Spanish invasion of the New World.

Spanish Conquest and Exploitation

Conquistadors spread across Central and South America, bringing violence and suffering.
The repartimiento system awarded conquistadors land and enslaved labor of Natives.
- Bartolome de las Casas described the distribution of Native slaves.
Columbus' voyages caused diplomatic problems with Portugal.
- Portugal claimed Columbus' possessions were within their territory.
In 1493, Spain asked the Pope to intervene.
The Treaty of Tordesillas divided the world between Spain and Portugal.
- The Pope drew a line 1,175 miles west of the Azores.
- Spain got territory west of the line, Portugal got territory east.
- Brazil, being east of the line, was claimed by Portugal.
In 1499, the crown attempted to reform the repartimiento system with the encomienda.
- The encomienda continued to distribute land but required conquistadors to convert Native Americans to Christianity.
- Conquistadors were "commended" to care for Natives' spiritual and physical wellbeing.
- Native Americans were technically free but traded labor for humane treatment and Catholic conversion.
- The system resembled a feudal system of tribute labor.
- In practice, encomenderos disregarded Native freedom and spirituality.
- Native Americans were bought and sold, worked to death, and forced into virtual slavery.
The exploitation and enslavement of Native populations continued on a massive scale.

The Requerimiento and its Consequences

The requerimiento was implemented to emphasize converting Native Americans.
A 1513 Spanish law required conquistadors to read a statement to Natives upon first encounter.
The requerimiento stated that if Natives accepted Spanish sovereignty and converted to Catholicism, they would be treated well and remain free.
If Natives welcomed the Spanish and Christian instruction, the requerimiento promised love, charity, freedom, and land.
However, if Natives did not accept Spanish domination and the Catholic faith, they would be legally attacked and enslaved.
Specifically, the requerimiento threatened war, enslavement, and all possible mischief and damage.
In practice, the Spanish read the requerimiento hurriedly and in Spanish, which Natives could not understand.
This led to numerous atrocities.

Bartolome de las Casas and the Black Legend

Bartolome de las Casas was an early encomendero who later became a Dominican missionary and defender of Native rights.
His book, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, published in 1542, contained graphic accounts of Spanish brutality toward Native Americans.
Las Casas witnessed Spaniards cutting off the noses and ears of Indians and burning captured rulers.
He described conquistadors attacking towns, sparing no one, and butchering people as if dealing with sheep in a slaughterhouse.
Las Casas spoke out against the violence, oppression, despotism, killing, plunder, depopulation, outrages, agonies, and calamities inflicted upon Native peoples.
He considered these offenses among the most unpardonable ever committed against God and mankind.
He questioned whom the conquistadors would spare and what cruelty they would not commit.
The conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo remembered only Spanish glory and the salvation of Native souls.
Some in Spain theorized that Native Americans were semi-human.
Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes claimed their understanding was bestial and evilly inclined.
These arguments persisted even after Pope Paul III proclaimed that "Indians are truly men . . . and capable of understanding the Catholic faith."
Juan Gines de Sepulveda argued that Native Americans were naturally suited to lives of enslaved labor.

Las Casas's Response and the New Laws

Las Casas wrote his book to refute Sepulveda's ideas.
He intended to expose the abuses of the encomienda system and force the king to reform colonial policy.
His book vividly portrayed Spanish atrocities in New Spain.
In response, the crown passed its 1542 New Laws, attempting to limit the power of encomenderos.
However, the New Laws were largely ineffective.
Conquistadors continued to use the requerimiento until 1556.
Las Casas' book popularized a "black legend" that depicted the Spanish as uniquely depraved and cruel conquerors.
Especially in England, the Black Legend animated early exploration efforts, portraying Native Americans as needing rescue from Spanish tyranny.

Hernan Cortes and the Conquest of Mexico

Hernan Cortes was a rapacious conquistador who sailed for Mexico in 1518 without governmental permission.
He scrapped his ships to prevent retreat.
Cortes gained Native support from groups eager to be free from Aztec rule.
Upon arriving at Tenochtitlan, a city of 200,000 people, Emperor Montezuma hesitated, possibly assessing Spanish military strengths.
Instead of attacking, Montezuma received them diplomatically.
Cortes kidnapped Montezuma and separated him from his people.
The Spanish and their Native allies laid siege to Tenochtitlan.
Smallpox played a central role in the Spanish victory, decimating Mesoamerican cities.
By 1521, Cortes had conquered the most powerful empire in Mesoamerica and destroyed what was likely the most populous city on earth at that time.
On the foundations of Tenochtitlan, Cortes erected a new colonial capital, Mexico City.

Cortes' Justification and Impact

Cortes used Aztec cannibalism and human sacrifice to justify his destruction of their culture.
The Aztecs were a war-like people who demanded tribute, often in the form of human captives, from satellite groups.
They killed the captives in elaborate rituals celebrating their sun god.
Cortes explained his actions as a just war on the enemies of Christianity.
The king condoned Cortes' actions and made him viceroy of Mexico.
Cortes did not believe in the complete eradication of the Aztecs.
He had Montezuma's daughter baptized and married to one of his officers.
He granted her a sizeable encomienda.
Her children and grandchildren belonged to a mixed-race aristocracy that assimilated into Spanish culture.
Cortes himself took a Native American lover, Dona Marina (Malinche), who later married one of his officers.
Cortes' conquest of Mexico had an important impact on the future of Spanish colonization.
Wherever conquistadors went, they carried the memory of Cortes' victory with them.
When conquistadors encountered new groups of Native Americans in New Mexico, they put on plays celebrating Cortes' victory over Montezuma.

Pizarro and Further Conquests

In 1532, Francisco Pizarro led 168 soldiers into modern-day Peru.
Outnumbered by an Incan Army of 40,000, Pizarro captured the Incan Emperor and demanded a ransom.
When the Inca people delivered 13,000 pounds of gold and 26,000 pounds of silver, Pizarro killed the emperor.
Without leadership and facing superior technologies, the Inca fell to the Spanish.
Both the Inca and Aztec cases were assisted by Native groups eager to overthrow Aztec and Incan domination.
The combined wealth of the Inca and Aztec empires made Spain the wealthiest empire since the fall of Rome.
Even after stripping these civilizations of their wealth, rich silver and gold mines – worked with enslaved labor – brought great riches to both conquistadors and to the King of Spain.
Both the Aztec and Inca empires had relied extensively on the enslaved labor of tribute peoples.
Using the encomienda system, the Spanish merely replaced the Aztec and Inca in the use of forced labor.
At least in the large urban Inca Aztecs societies, new slaveholders took over from the old.

Exploration in North America

Conquistadors sought gold and riches in the territory that became the United States, but were less successful among smaller, semi-sedentary peoples.
Ponce de Leon came to Florida in 1513 seeking gold, silver, and slaves, but was repulsed by Native Americans.
- He died in 1521 after being injured in battle with the Calusa peoples.
Cabeza de Vaca survived a failed 1538 invasion of Florida and wandered across the south and southwest for 8 years before returning to Mexico.
Hernando de Soto invaded Florida in 1539 and marched north and west, seeking gold.
- He encountered Natives who directed him further on.
- De Soto's reputation for cruelty spread widely.
- He plundered crops, and attacked peaceful towns.
- Enslaving Natives to haul his supplies, De Soto would hunt and kill runaways on horseback.

Quests for the Seven Cities of Gold

Cabeza de Vaca brought stories of seven fabled cities of gold, collected from Native groups.
In 1539, Estevan, a survivor of De Vaca's expedition, went with Franciscan missionaries to find the golden cities but was killed by the Zuni.
In 1540, Francisco Vazquez de Coronado led a larger expedition, searching for three years as far as modern-day Kansas but found no wealth.
The quest for gold drove Spanish adventurers to the limits and caused conflict with native populations.
After Coronado's mission, Spanish exploration slowed in the American southwest.
In 1598, Juan de Onate led a group of 400 settlers into New Mexico.
Juan Cabrillo and Bartolome Ferrer sailed up the coast of California to the Oregon border, but settlement was slow.

Spanish Colonization Model

The Spanish arrived in the New World with a plan for colonization.
They planned to stay and gather Native groups into newly founded towns or pueblos.
Each pueblo had a church (mission) for converting Natives and a presidio (governmental complex) for housing Spanish soldiers.
Missions and presidios demonstrated the close connection between church and state.
Although permanent towns were established in the Caribbean beginning with Columbus' second voyage, the search for gold slowed the establishment of settlements in the territory that became the United States.
Permanent towns: St. Augustine, Florida (1565) and Santa Fe, New Mexico (1609).
Priests accompanied Spanish armies of conquest wherever they went.
These missionaries established schools and attempted to teach Natives, now gathered into villages around the Pueblo, both Christianity and European cultural values.

Cultural and Religious Conflicts

The Spanish arrived in the New World with a plan for colonization. More than draining the new lands of their wealth, the Spanish were planning to stay. The Spanish model for colonization, employed across New Spain, involved gathering Native groups together into newly founded towns or pueblos.
At the center of these new pueblos stood the two pillars of Spanish authority in the New World – a church, often called a mission because of its efforts to convert Natives, and the presidio or governmental complex housing a garrison of Spanish soldiers. At the center of every pueblo, the mission and the presidio demonstrated the close connection between church and state in Spanish colonization efforts.
Priests – usually barefoot Franciscan or Dominican missionaries – accompanied Spanish armies of conquest wherever they went. These missionaries established schools and attempted to teach Natives, now gathered into villages around the Pueblo, both Christianity and European cultural values. Especially in New Mexico, where Native American religion and culture extolled understandings of sexuality at odds with Catholic monogamy or celibacy, missionaries came into conflict with Native peoples. Among the Hopi, Zuni, and other pueblo peoples of the American Southwest, women actively used sexual favors to obtain a measure of economic security, cultural identity, and political power from men. The Spanish viewed such behavior as prostitution and insisted on strict celibacy, monogamy, and an end to nudity and sensuality. Everywhere, priests tried to radically transform Native society and religion. Spanish missionaries placed high demands upon Native peoples; old religious traditions and places were to be abandoned and the acceptance of Christianity was to be synonymous with an adoption of western dress, agricultural practices, and mores.
Judging the sincerity of Native American conversion to Catholicism, especially early conversions forced at sword point, is very difficult. Furthermore, the fact that the Spanish often built new Catholic churches on the ruins of older, Native shrines suggests the complexity of Native responses to Catholicism. More than one Spanish priest wondered to whom the natives were praying when they gathered in new Catholic churches built on the holy sites of their previous faiths. Native Americans often practiced a syncretic blending in their religious lives. For example, in 1531, a Native Christian convert, Juan Diego, reported seeing a dark-skinned vision of the Virgin Mary – now known as the Virgin of Guadalupe. Juan Diego’s vision reflected a creative blending of indigenous and Catholic religious ideas.

Racial Mixing and Colonial Administration

The cultural blending characteristic of the Virgin of Guadalupe was also apparent in the frequent sexual contact, inside and outside sanctioned marriages, between Native Americans and Spanish colonists.
About 450,000 Spanish colonists arrived in the New World before 1650. Because, especially in the 16th century, the vast majority of these colonists were single men, they routinely took Native American, and later, African wives and sexual partners. The result, from an early date, was a multiracial population.
Importantly, we should not view New Spain’s multiracial population as an early sign of racial equality. Racial laws, that stressed “Purity of the Blood,” continued to privilege whiteness. Nevertheless, racial mixing was more prevalent, and culturally accepted, in New Spain than it was in any other corner of the Atlantic world.
Standing alongside the church in Spanish pueblos, the presidio symbolized Spain’s political power in the New World.
Although far from the center of Spanish power in Madrid, the state was, nevertheless, visible and active on the far fringes of the Spanish empire.
The King sent out large numbers of colonial administrators and soldiers to administer and police an empire that stretched from the Caribbean across Mexico and into Central and South America.
Working from the presidios, Spanish officials administered justice, collected taxes, and imposed Spanish law on the far-flung empire.

Native Resistance and Spanish Decline

Despite the devastation of disease and conquest, Native Americans were not merely passive participants in Spanish colonization.
In New Mexico, drought, disease, and exploitation had greatly affected the Pueblo peoples, they staged a revolt in 1680.
In the months before the revolt, the Pueblo leader Pope organized more than 17,000 Native Americans against the Spanish.
Pope coordinated the date of the attack by sending outlying pueblos a rope with a series of knots in it. When the last knot was untied, the Natives would collectively revolt.
Led by Pope, the Pueblo rose up against Spanish culture and religion. They destroyed missions, churches, farms, and killed about 20% of Spaniards in the region.
Pope encouraged his followers to make a complete break with western, Christian society. Polygamy was restored. Baptisms were revoked through ritual washings. Kivas were rebuilt.
Within ten years, however, internal fighting and drought brought a resurgence of Spanish power.
Importantly, the returning Spanish moderated their policies to allow for traditional cultural practices.
The enormous wealth of Mexico, Central, and South America made Spain the wealthiest nation in Europe.
Treasure fleets laden with gold and silver from the world’s richest mines regularly crossed the Ocean.
This New World wealth benefited both New and Old Spain. Cities such as Havana and San Juan, in which gold and silver was processed and fleets prepared, grew in prestige.
Back in Spain, however, unprecedented wealth from the Americas had negative effects on economic and social life in the country. The massive amounts of gold and silver led to high inflation which ruined the Spanish economy. The great wealth also caused Spanish monarchs to spend lavishly on failed wars with the Dutch and English. Among the wars funded by Spanish gold was the failed invasion of England by the Spanish Armada in 1588.
By 1650, New World mines had begun to fail and, soon thereafter, the Spanish economy crumbled and the nation lost its international importance.
It retained, however, a vast colonial empire that stretched from Florida in the North, through Mexico and Central and South America.
Today reminders of Spain’s colonial empire surround us. In Texas and California, you can visit a series of missions, including the Alamo, established by Franciscan missionaries in the 18th century. The colonial ports of San Juan, PR and St. Augustine, FL still boast impressive Spanish forts. The fortress of San Marcos, in St. Augustine is constructed of coquina – a cement made from seashells that made it particularly impregnable to foreign invasion. St. Augustine, San Antonio, and Santa Fe all feature fascinating museums that explore Spain’s colonial history. In New Mexico, it is also possible to walk among the ruins of pueblo churches destroyed by Pope’s army in 1680.