Early Colonial Outposts in the Americas

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Early Colonial Outposts in the Americas

• The Spanish Experience

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P1Christian Iberia

• Christendom
• Rome
• The Holy Trinity
• Reconquista
• Prince Ferdinand Queen Isabella
• Granada, 1492

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Early Atlantic World

• Iberia
• natives
• Azores, Canary, and Madeira Islands
• African Gold
• Sugar plantations
• Genocide
• 1478
• Ecological Imperialism

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Maritime Technology

• Caravel
• Lateen sail (triangular)
• Portuguese maritime college
• Prince Henry the Navigator
• The Volta
• Circumvent Muslims

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Cruising the Caribbean

• Columbus 1492
• the Indies
• Hispaniola
• 2nd voyage, 1493
• 1000 men, animals,
• Columbian Exchange
• Harvest of gold, souls

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Taino (Arawaks) Caribs

• Greater and Lesser Antilles
• 6 million people
• Disease forced labor
• Caciques encomiendas
• Genocide

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Spanish colonial structures

• Adelantado- a man who successfully petitioned
  the Crown to lead an expedition
• Assumed financial risk, raised capital
• Joint efforts between Crown and adelantado
• Quinto- one-fifth reserved for Crown

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Encomienda

• Method of settlement
• Apportion of Indian labor to conquerors
• Finite of Indians
• Competition
• Economic base of conquest
• Tributary system
• Responsibility spiritual leadership of natives

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Sexual Encounters

• Spanish male explorers
• Caribbean encounters
• Nudity
• Sexual violence

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Michele de Cuneo

• When I was in the boat I captured a very
  beautiful Carib woman, whom Columbus gave to
  me. Having taken her into my cabin, she being
  naked according to their custom I conceived
  desire to take pleasure. I wanted to put my
  desire into execution but she did not want it and
  treated me with her finger nails in such a manner
  that I wished I had never begun. But seeing
  that, I took a rope and thrashed her well, for
  which she raised such unheard of screams that you
  would not have believed your ears. Finally we
  came to an agreement that I can tell you that she
  seemed to have been brought up in a school of
  harlots.

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The Moral Debate

• What to do with the natives?
• Enslave or convert?
• 1500 Spanish Crown decision conversion
• Exception enslavement for warfare, cannibalism

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Fray Bartolomé de las Casas

• Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las
  Indias), published in 1552
• A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies
• Documented Spanish atrocities
• Black legend
• Document 3, Voices of Freedom

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P2The World of Cortés

• Spanish world established on the Atlantic Sea
  Board
• Enmity with Governor Velasquez of Cuba
• Cortes wanted to establish his own colony
• To be governor

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Yucatán

• Expeditions before Cortes
• Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba- February to April
  1517
• 55 men killed by Mayas on the Yucatán
• May 1518- Juan de Grijalva
• Bought news of promising lands inland
• Alerted Aztecs
• Spanish weapons

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Contingency Conquest

• Translators
• Geronimo de Aguilar
• Marina (La Malinche)
• Marina spoke Nahuatl and Mayan
• Aguilar spoke Mayan and Spanish

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Tlaxcala Cortés

• City-state
• Independence from Tenochtitlán
• Formidable warriors
• Battle
• Eventual alliance
• Indispensable allies

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Mexica (Aztec)

• Chinampas floating gardens
• Advanced horticulture
• Each farmer produced enough to support dozens of
  artisans, priests, warriors, administrators
• High productivity
• Dense population

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Mexica Aztec

• The term Aztec is a political name the Mexica
  peoples took after their ascension to power
• Aztec derived from Aztlán, the mythical area of
  the groups origin in northwest Mexico

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November 8, 1519

• Moctezuma greets Spaniard and Indian allies
• Why would Moctezuma invite Spaniards?
• To kill? Deify?

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Conquest, from National Geographic Series,
Guns, Germs, and Steel (2005)

• Francisco Pizarro
• Inca Empire (Peru)
• The Andes
• Jineta riding style
• Ataxalpa (Inca ruler)
• Spanish rapier
• Cajamarca

• European writing system vs. writing in the
  Americas
• tilted axes cultural diffusion
• smallpox
• domesticated animals