AP World 19.2

The various American peoples responded in many different ways to the invasion of their lands and the transformation of their societies. All of them suffered a severe decline of population-a demographic catastrophe. On the main islands of the Caribbean, the indigenous population had nearly disap- peared by 1540 as the result of slaving, mistreatment, and disease. In Peru a similar process brought a loss from 10 million to 1.5 million between 1530 and 1590. Elsewhere in the Americas a similar but less well-documented process took place. Smallpox, influenza, and measles wreaked havoc on the American Indian population, which had developed no immunities against these diseases. In central Mexico, war, destruction, and above all disease brought the popula- tion from an estimated 25 million in 1519 to less than 2 million in 1580. That decline was matched by the rapid increase in European livestock, cattle, sheep, and horses that flourished on newly created Spanish farms or in previously unusable lands. In a shocking way, European livestock were replacing an indigenous population on the land (Figure 19.5). 

Although epidemic was the major cause of depopulation, the con- quest and the weakening of indigenous societies contributed to the losses. Population declines of this size disrupted native societies in many ways. For example, in central Mexico the contraction of the indigenous popula- tions led the Spanish to concentrate the remaining population in fewer towns, and this led in turn to the seizure of former communal farming lands by Spanish landowners. Demographic collapse made maintaining traditional social and economic structures very difficult. 

Exploitation of the Indians 

The Spaniards did not interfere with aspects of Native American life that served colonial goals or at least did not openly conflict with Spanish author- ity or religion. Thus, in Mexico and Peru, while the old religions and its priestly class were eliminated, the traditional indigenous nobility remained in place, supported by Spanish authority, as middlemen between the tax and labor demands of the new rulers and the majority of the population.

The enslavement of Indians (a term the Spaniards applied to all the native peoples of the Ameri- cas), except those taken in war, was prohibited by the mid-16th century in most of Spanish America. Instead, different forms of labor or taxation were imposed. At first, encomiendas were given to the individual conquerors of a region. The holders of these grants were able to use their dependents as workers and servants or to tax them. Whereas commoners had owed tribute or labor to the state in the Inca and Aztec empires, the new demands were arbitrary, often excessive, and usually without the reciprocal obligation and protection characteristic of the indigenous societies. In general, the enco- miendas were destructive. The Spanish crown, unwilling to see a new nobility arise in the New World among the conquerors with their grants of Indian serfs, moved to end the institution in the 1540s. The crown limited the inheritability of encomiendas and prohibited the right to demand certain kinds of labor from the Indians. Although encomiendas continued to exist in marginal regions at the fringes of the empire, they were all but gone by the 1620s in the central areas of Mexico and Peru. Colonists increasingly sought grants of land rather than Indians as the basis of wealth. 

Meanwhile, the colonial government increasingly extracted labor and taxes from native peoples. In many places, communities were required to send groups of laborers to work on state projects, such as church construction or road building, or in labor gangs for mining or agriculture. This forced labor, called the mita in Peru where it was adapted from indigenous precedents, mobilized thousands of workers for the mines and on other projects. Although they were paid a wage for this work, there were many abuses of the system by the local officials, and community labor require- ments often were disruptive and destructive. By the 17th century, many Indians left their villages to avoid the labor and tax obligations, preferring instead to work for Spanish landowners or to seek employment in the cities. This process eventually led to the growth of a wage labor system in which native peoples, no longer resident in their villages, worked for wages on Spanish-owned mines and farms or in the cities. 

In the wake of this disruption, Native American culture also demonstrated great resiliency in the face of Spanish institutions and forms, adapting and modifying them to indigenous ways. In Peru and Mexico, native peoples learned to use the Spanish legal system and the law courts so that litigation became a way of life. At the local level, many aspects of indigenous life remained, and Native Ameri- cans proved to be selective in their adaptation of European foods, technology, and culture.