New Spain
Est. 1565
• Do Now: Talk to your neighbor about:
–Some of the struggles the colonists faced
–Why are there so many Spanish influences in
North and South America?
• Read
–New Spain article
–Yellow text p. 110-115
• Complete Chart
• Enrichment
–Cranky Colonials
• Spain and France in First p.14-39
• http://teacher.ocps.net/kerry.hancock/medi
a/chapter4lesson3.pdf
The Most Powerful Country
in the World!!!
• Spain dominated the lands and peoples
– around the Caribbean
– deep into both North and South America
– 1492 -1550
• What did other European counties think?
– Fearful of the Spanish growing in strength and wealth
– Believed the Spanish were unusually cruel to the
natives
• All Europeans were arrogant and cruel in their treatment of
natives—the Spanish simply got a head start on them
Conquests
• Slavery
– replacement workers for the Taino
– to toil in their gold mines, cattle ranches, and
sugar plantations
– raided the mainland of Central America
• seizing natives to sell to miners and planters
– later expanded their slave raiding to the
villages from the Gulf Coast to Venezuela to
South Carolina and later to Africa
Aztec Empire
• Aztec empire in Central America
– had cities with stone temples and palaces,
and fields of maize, squashes, and beans
– demanded tributes from their people for
sacrifices to their gods
Hernán Cortéz
• Invaded the Aztec empire
– on his own authority and defied his superior
the governor of Cuba
• Killed the emperor and took over the Aztec
capitol city
– fighting lasted over four months
• How did he defeat the Aztecs?
– won the support of the people who were
tired of giving tributes to the Aztecs
– his army had cannons, muskets, steel
armor, swords, and horses
Francisco Pizarro
• conquered the Inca
empire of Peru
– in the 1530s
– 180 men
• Found more gold than
any other
conquistador
Wasn’t it against their religion?
• Disease spread and wiped out/weakened
natives
– confirmation that God favored their triumph
• Forcing pagans to accept Christianity and
Spanish rule
– Plunder, death, abuse, and slavery were necessary
evils
– Indians who failed to accept Spanish rule and
Christian conversion deserved the deaths and/or
harsh punishments they received from a “just” war
Disagreement among Missionaries
• The Indians should entirely
surrender their traditional
culture to adopt the
uncompromising ways and
beliefs of their conquerors.
• Priests oversaw the
destruction of native temples,
prohibited most traditional
dances, and obligated natives
to build new churches and
adopt the rituals of the Catholic
faith
• Many Indians did so in public,
but continued to venerate their
old idols in secret
• Friars argued that peaceful
persuasion would be more
effective in converting the
natives to Christianity and
Hispanic civilization
• Some wrote letters asking to
King to write laws protecting
the natives and punishing
those who disobeyed.
Native Point of View
• Mexican Indians privately nurtured a mythic
understanding of the Spanish conquest as
cosmically insignificant and ephemeral—of no more
enduring significance that the many previous cycles
of rising and falling native powers
• Having experienced the Aztecs and Toltecs
previously, the natives of Mexico expected to outlast
their Spanish masters
• Because of the internal nature of native resistance,
the missionaries could achieve no more than a
compromise in matters of faith and practice
Colonists
• During the 16th century, the New World drew
about 250,000 Spanish emigrants
• Early in the 16th century almost all emigrants
were young single men
• By the 1570s the number of women
increased but remained less than a third of
the total
• Male emigrants usually took wives among the
Indian population which created mixed
offspring known as mestizos
• The increasing racial and cultural
complexity of New Spain challenged the
stark and simple dualities of the conquest:
– Spaniard and Indian
– Christian and pagan
– Conqueror and conquered
• The colonial authorities developed a complex
new racial hierarchy known as the castas
which ranked people from the pure African
and Indian at the bottom, through multiple
gradations of mixtures to the pinnacle of the
pure Spaniard.
• The higher castas enjoyed greater legal
privileges at the expense of the lower
• By 1574, there were 121 chartered towns
in the Americas
• Charters entrusted local power to cabildos
or town councils where all power is vested
in a few persons or in a dominant class—
the wealthy
• Towns were arranged around a central
plaza where the wealthiest lived
Wealth
• The quickest way to obtain American
wealth was to steal it on the high seas
• The Dutch, English, and French all
encouraged private investors to attack and
plunder Spanish ships
• In the 1550s, French pirates extended
their raids into the Caribbean
• Spanish developed galleons in response
Sir Francis Drake
Spanish Armada
• Wanted to seize control of the English
Channel and permit an invasion by
Spanish troops posted in the Netherlands
• Consisted of 130 warships carrying 2,431
cannon and 22,000 sailors and soldiers
• The smaller English ships were faster and
more mobile
• This win emboldened the English to
escalte their maritime predator activities
Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca
• 1527—Vaca left Spain as a part of a royal
expedition intended to occupy the
mainland of North America
• After a hurricane off Cuba, they secured a
new boat and departed for Florida.
• The expedition landed near Tampa Bay is
March 1538 and claimed the land as the
lawful possession of the Spanish empire
• The expedition was a disaster
• The party overstayed its welcome with the
Apalachee Indians of northern Florida
when they took their leader hostage
• After being pursued by the natives, the
surviving members were reduced to living
in a coastal swamp and living off the flesh
of their horses
• In late 1528, they built several rafts from
trees and horse hides and set sail for
Cuba
• A hurricane dumped the 80 survivors close
to what is now Galveston, Texas
• Initially welcomed, the Indians blamed
them when half the natives died from
disease
• Over the next four years he transformed
himself from a conquistador into a trader
and a healer
• By 1532 only four of the original expedition
were still alive
• They headed west and south hoping to
reach an outpost of the Spanish Empire in
Mexico
• In July 1536 they finally encountered a
group of fellow Spaniards—who were
amazed at the sight of Cabeza de Vaca in
the company of Indians
• Appalled by the Spanish treatment of
Indians, he returned to Spain to publish an
account of his experiences and to urge a
more generous policy upon the crown
• He served as a Mexican territorial
governor but was accused or corruption—
probably because of his enlightened
treatment toward Indians
• He returned to Spain and, after a pardon,
served as a judge in Seville until his death
Hernando de Soto
• Led 600 in 1539 through the heartland of
the Mississippian culture which is now
Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North
Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama,
Mississippi, Arkansas, and east Texas
• They carried little food with them—they
expected to take maize, beans, and
squash from the Indians
• Soto brought along 300 sets of iron collars
and chains to enslave Indians as his
porters
• He seized local chiefs to hold as hostages
to extort ransoms of maize, women,
porters, and guides
• They were unable to find great resources
of gold and silver
• They left a trail of corpses, mutilations,
ravaged fields, emptied storehouses, and
charred towns in their wakes
• Soto died in 1542 and because he had
told Indians he was immoral, the men tried
to hide his death
• The remaining men built boats in 1543 to
descend the Mississippi and sail southwest
• Soto’s expedition introduced diseases that
decimated the natives
• By 1600 the region’s population had
collapsed to a small fraction of its former
numbers
• When the French explorers arrived in the
1670s, they found few Indians
• The only group that survived the Soto
expedition were the Natchez people—they
would later be known at the Choctaw,
Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee
Florida
• French stole half of the Spanish royal
revenue from the new world in the late
1550s
• They focused on the channel that ran
between Florida and the Bahamas
• Ships were also wrecked by treacherous
shoals and storms
• Calusa Indians scavenged the wrecks for
metals and took castaways as slaves
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés
• Spanish crown established a fortified
colony along the Atlantic coast of Florida
• Avilés was known as a resourceful and
ruthless naval officer
• Spanish learned in 1565 that the French
had established a small base in Florida—
Ft. Caroline at the mouth of the St. Johns
River
• The Spanish, horrified by the fact the
French were Protestant, attacked and
killed all the French
• Avilés founded St. Augustine on the coast
40 miles south of the former Ft. Caroline
• In 1570 he established a short-lived Jesuit
mission on the Chesapeake Bay; he also
settled other towns in Florida which failed
due to attacks by the French and the
Indians
• The Spanish finally established towns in
Florida by using the Franciscan mode of
pacification
New Mexico
• Spanish returned to
the Rio Grande to
practice a similar
program of
pacification as used in
Florida
• Spanish were afraid
of other countries
taking over
• Secular colonists
were hoping to find
silver
Canada and Iroquoia
• English, French, & Dutch
needed their own
colonies
• Northern America offered
a safer setting
• Jacques Cartier colonized
along St. Lawrence River
• Fur trade and fishing
became valuable
northern commodities