Chapter 1: The Collision of Cultures
A.K.A. The causes and consequences of the cultural car wreck that started in the late 15h
century in the Caribbean and spread to North and South America during the 16th
century.
TIME PERIOD: 40,000 years ago to today . . . with a special focus on the late 15th and the 16th century.
SUMMARY STATEMENTS/A.K.A.S
1. From Mesoamerica to the Ohio Valley, North American Indian civilizations emerged
that were interconnected through trade and had important similarities, but were as
diverse as the landscapes upon which they depended for survival. They were also more
human (in some disappointing ways) and more sophisticated (in some impressive
ways) than we assume.
A.K.A. Don’t sell Native Americans short (or tall).
Over 400 languages
Frequent warfare (against the stereotypes of a peaceful American Indian)
2000 BCE = permanent settlements
By 300 BCE = city centers, math, astronomy (better than Europe)
Environmental hardships
Central America more developed than North American Indians (Adena-Hopewell (mounds),
Mississippian (peak in 14th and 15th centuries), Puebloe-Hohokam) due to environment.
Anasazis-adobe structures (5 stories high), warfare as a means of self-defense, eventually lost to
Navajos and then the Spanish.
2. Long before Renaissance-era innovations and pressures propelled Europe into an era
of exploration and conquest, America had other “first” settlers.
A.K.A. Wayward Asian fisherman and the Vikings were indeed first (and maybe even a few
stragglers from SW Europe), but they weren’t actually first and didn’t conquer anyone so we
apparently don’t care.
OTHER FIRST SETTLERS
Norse expeditions in the 10 and 11th centuries. 985 CE Vikings settle Greenland and than New Foundland.
Colonies vanish
INNOVATIONS/REDISCOVERIES
Printing press spreads ancient texts and ideas about geography (sphere of earth)
New instruments to sight stars
PRESSURES/OPPORTUNITIES
Want goods—from India: foreign trade is costly, risky, taxs, from many princes and leaders, Muslim
world poised a threat to them and also refused to convert to Chrisitniy.
Growth of nations and towns who want goods---feudalism declining
Merchant class wanted uniform rules and regulations
Spain forces out Muslims and has unity.
England reunites. France unifies.
GREED
3. The arrival of Europeans in America resulted in exchanges and interactions of foods,
animals, diseases, people, and elements of culture that forever changed life all over
the planet; Europeans generally came out ahead, but not without considerable
resistance and adaptation on the part of American Indians.
A.K.A. There’s a reason the people who didn’t know about horses, sheep, goats, cattle and pigs
also didn’t know about smallpox, diphtheria, typhus, cholera, malaria, yellow fever and the
bubonic plague.
FOODS:
New World Contributes
 Corn
 Beans
 Squash (incl. pumpkin)
 Potato
 Sweet Potato (Yam)
 Manioc/Cassava (Tapioca)
 Tomato
 Chili Pepper
 Chocolate
 Peanut
 Sunflower (& seeds)
 Pineapple
 Avocado
 Turkey
Old World Contributes
 Wheat (bread, pasta)
 Rice
 Barley
 Oats
 Coffee
 Sugar Cane
 Wine/grapes
 Citrus Fruits
 Banana
 Olives
 Pigs
 Cattle
 Chickens
(not (just) food: horses, sheep, dogs,
rats, dandelions, “Kentucky” bluegrass—
not the music)
Some Foods (_____potatoes, corn, beans _____________________________________) especially led
to major population explosion in Old World, which fueled competition and increased pressure on New
World peoples.
ANIMALS:
Horse—travel the great plains for the Sioux
Cattle to do work
DISEASES:
Smallpox, tallow fever, malaria, cholera, bubonic plague, typhus,
PEOPLE:
Conquistadros
Those seeking new wealth in he new world-Pizarro, Cortes
CULTURE:
Europeans adopt canoes, hammocks, kayaks, lacrosee, words: tepee, chipmunk, woodchuck, moose, skunk,
Europeans seek to displace aganism, believed god to be on their side
RESISTANCE:
Pueblo Revolt pg 32. Present Day Santa Fe—killing several soldiers, Juan De Onate is the leader—he is
angry. Attacks and kills 500 Puebelo men and 300 women and children. Surviros were inslaved. Men
over 25 had one foot severed in public.
Cathlic missionaries help them
ADAPTATION
Quarantine the sick, develop resistence, elaborate rituats develop
Horses to attack bison, grazed easily in the plains-become nomadic hunters that follow the
bison—with horses they could bring along larger camps
Balance between horses, land and bison cannot be maintained---eetually leads to intense war,
polygamy to get more hides bec it meant more power—mixed blessing.
4. Spain’s American empire, a true study in contrasts, was at first a land of individual
initiative but was ultimately characterized by remarkably centralized rule; it was
founded on greed as well as religious devotion; it was the basis of Spain’s great power
and prestige but eventually a liability; and it had a very different character in the
Northern borderlands than in the heart of the empire in the South.
A.K.A You can cover a lot of history with a list of opposites!
GREED
RELIGIOUS DEVOTION
MONEY, GOLD, NEW LAND, POWER
Econmiendas—poverty for Native Americans, power
for spaniards
Displace pagan culture
Ecomiendas support missionary priests
Catholic missionaries support the people like
Bartolome De Las Casas
1ST: INDIVIDUAL INITIATIVE
Local leaders rule their land
LATER: CENTRALIZED RULE
Ecomenda system
Heavily regulated by the Spanish: Council of the
Indies, issue dlaws, served an appellate court for
civil cases
NORTH
Use religion as means to pacify
Give full citizenship to settlers once they were
Chrstian
After 10 years the land is secularized and the mission
church becomes a parish church
Pay taxes
Rarely flourised
SOUTH
Overlay without uprooting deeply planting cultures.
Mixed paganism and christinait. Built on ruins of
the cultures they exterminated
BASIS OF POWER
Quickest profits based on where they would land
Intense unity could use the money for betterment of
Spain not for teligios wars
LIABILITY
Reliance on silver and gold tempted government ot
live beyond its means
Caused inflation in Europe
Never developed a viable Markey conomy
Too fcosued on conversion and search for gold and
silver
5. By the late 1500s, the religious disunity that had hindered England and France exploration
had ended and England’s tumultuous and often political drift towards Protestantism,
France’s on-and-off interest in New World exploration, and the independence of the
Netherlands, propelled these newly powerful nations to challenge Spanish supremacy in the
Americas, culminating with the defeat of the Spanish Armada and with significant, though
largely unsuccessful English plantings.
A.K.A. Less Religious Conflict, More looking for China!
A.K.A. Falling Spain, Rising England
Luteranism and Calvinsim challenges Pope and creates rivalries
England forms its own church of Henry the Viii can divorce his wife
National rivalries spur change
France Jacques Cartier found St. Kawernece river and gulf of St. Lawernce. Twice he got to
montreal and wintered in Quebec. France loses interest until Samel de Champlain.
England and Netherlands provide a greater threat than the French
Dutch Sea beggers plundered Spanish ships—secretly encouraged by Queeen Elizabeth of
England.
Plundering eventually leads to open war. Mary of Scotland flees to England and has claim to
throne, Elizabeth beheads her…Spain’s king seeks revenge with their Invincible armada and due
to a “Protestant wind” they are swept north nd crushed by quicker englih ships. Cleared the way
for English naval supremacy.
Raleigh = early settlement—a failure overall. Lost colnists . Drought? American Indians?
BOTTOM LINE
Because Native America was unable to match the force of Spain’s “men and microbes” not to
mention its guns, dogs and horses, and because England and France were preoccupied by wars of
religion and generally not the strong nations they would become a century later, the 16th century
was indeed Spain’s century.
NOTES ON “ZANINESS”
1.
2.
3.
4.
Too many microbes, not enough immunities . . .
Just when nations, guns and growing numbers put Europe on top . . . .
But their wars and religious conflicts distracted the English and the French
So the fifteen hundreds in America . . . belonged to Spain.
TERMS
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Toltec: warrior people who conquered the Maya but who “withdrew” before the rise of the
Aztecs.
Treaty of Tordesillas: 1494 treaty dividing the world between Portugal and Spain
Encomendia system:: feudal in feel, an arrangement in which “favored officers became
privileged landowners who controlled Indian villages or groups of villages.” Land grants came
with the respoisability of caring for the indians who lived on that land and rights to goods and
labor from those same indians . . . feudlaism transplanted.
Council of the Indies: Arm of Spanish government established in 1524 to manage the
Americas (very centralized control). Issued laws, served as the court and managed the
officials.
Pueblo Revolt of 1680: AKA Pope’s Rebellion “the greatest setback that the natives ever
inflicted on European efforts to conquer and colonize the New World.” (33)
Calvanism: a “stern” protestantism based on ideas of predestination and “the elect”
Roanoke Island: site of England’s lost colony (Outer Banks in North Carolina)
PEOPLE
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Las Casas: priest and advocate for Native Americans who wrote a Brief Relation of the
Destruction of the Indians
Cortes v. Montezuma: Fresh from the conquest of Cuba, Spanish conquistador who, along
with thousands of Indian allies defeated the Aztecs v. Aztec Emperor who lost the faith of his
people when he became Cortes’s puppet
Onate v. Pope: Brutal New Mexico governor ousted in revolt led by charasmatic American
Indian leader in 1680
Gilbert: England’s first settler . . . .in 1583 he sailed for America, landed in Newfoundland,
tried to return to England and was lost at sea.
Raleigh: founded Roanoke in 1587
EVENTS/CHRONOLOGY
between 13,000
and 10,000 B.C
Crossing from Siberia to Alaska (took about 500 years)
2000-1500 B.C.
Permanent farming towns in Mexico
800 B.C.–A.D. 600
Adena-Hopewell culture (Northeast)
400 B.C.–present
Pueblo-Hohokam (Southwest)
A.D. 300–900
Great city-centers surrounded by villages in Mesoamerica (Mayan collapse in 900)
600–1500
Mississippian culture (Southeast)
900–1200
Norse discoveries
1325-1519
Aztec empire (ends with Cortes’s conquest)
1490s
New World voyages of Columbus and Cabot
1513
Ponce de Leon’s exploration of Florida
1517
Martin Luther’s “Ninety-five Theses”
1565
St. Augustine established
1587
Settlement of Raleigh’s “Lost Colony” on Roanoke Island
1588
Defeat of the Spanish Armada
1680
Popé’s Indian rebellion in New Mexico
QUOTABLES, AH-HAH’S AND WOWS
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“No informed person at the time thought the earth was flat.” (13)
“Full awareness that a great land mass lay between Europe and Asia dawned on Europeans
very slowly.” (18)
“Santo Domingo boasted 4 million inhabitants in 1496; by 1570 the number of natives had
plummeted to 125.” (22)
“The onslaught of men and microbes perplexed and overwhelmed the Indians.” (24)
Dig this: Spanish America as a “land of superimposed pasts” (Paz on 28)
“The frontier world, while permeated by violence, coercion, and intolerance, also
produced a mutual accommodation that enable two living traditions to persist side by
side.” (29)
“The Spanish never understood the significance of developing a viable market economy . .
. [and] mistakenly assumed that developing a thriving trade in goods with the Native
Americans was less important than the conversion of ‘heathens’ and the relentless search
for gold and sliver.” (31)
Roanoke Island: where the soil seems fruitful and the natives friendly! (42)