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Chapter 1 |
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During the sixteenth century the Spanish, French, and English explored the Americas, displaced Native American cultures, and established colonies in the Western Hemisphere. These changes forced both cultures to adapt and change, though Native American cultures often suffered the most in these early exchanges.
Native American Histories Before Conquest
Humans occupied part of the Western Hemisphere thousands of years before the European “discovery” of America. The Mayans, Toltecs, and Aztecs in Central and South America created societies at least as sophisticated as that of the Europeans while along the Atlantic Coast, Native Americans formed diverse and mobile communities of hunters and gatherers. The arrival of Europeans in the “New World” brought into contact the three very different worlds of Europe, Africa, and America. The clashes that arose between the many Native American cultures and European cultures after 1492 often resulted in individual and tribal extermination. Many Native Americans who were not killed in battle died as a result of deadly diseases brought to the Americas by the European newcomers.
The Environmental Challenge: Food, Climate, and Culture
Environmental conditions played a monumental role in the story of America and her original settlers. Global warming ended the Ice Age, allowing Native American cultures to expand their populations and territorial habitations. As populations expanded, food sources changed forcing Native Americans’ cultures to adapt as well. Soon they developed semi-agricultural societies of considerable sophistication and technological development. Though scholars are not in total agreement, most acknowledge that at least four million Native Americans lived north of Mexico at the time of initial encounters with the Europeans.
Mysterious Disappearances
There remains today powerful evidence of the cultural and social achievements of native peoples before European contact, though many of them, especially in the Southwest and the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys in North America, had disappeared just before the arrival of the Europeans. Archeological data of the Anasazi culture that was concentrated in Chaco Canyon on the San Juan River in present-day New Mexico reveals a highly developed society possessing an intricate highway system, a technologically sophisticated network of irrigation canals, and complex apartment-like housing structures. Cahokia, a Native American city in the Mississippian culture near present-day St. Louis, rivaled European cities in size and sophistication.
Aztec Dominance
The Aztecs, an aggressive, warlike people, conquered the other peoples of central Mexico developing a complex and successful empire shortly before Columbus began his first journey across the Atlantic. In 1519 Tenochtitlàn, the center of Aztec culture, contained as many as 250,000 inhabitants.
Eastern Woodland Cultures
Along the Northeast Atlantic Coast and into the Eastern Great Lakes region, Native Americans formed diverse and relatively mobile communities who subsisted by supplementing farming with seasonal hunting and gathering. Despite sharing similar cultural values and assumptions and common linguistic roots, these Native Americans developed varied dialects, making communication difficult and alliances uncommon.
A World Transformed
Native Americans were profoundly changed by the arrival of the Europeans, though such change occurred at different rates across the continent. As their daily lives changed, Native Americans found they had to develop new ways to survive. They often participated in mutually beneficial trading arrangements with the Europeans, who typically misunderstood native ways, sparking social conflict that was often violent. While some adopted European religion, others tenaciously held onto their own world views.
Cultural Negotiations
Early Native American and European encounters had to overcome communication problems as well as cultural conflicts, but Native people were not passive victims of forces beyond their control. They made choices that suited their needs and desires, resisting most aspects of European culture, but readily accepting certain European material goods. The benefits of iron tools were easily seen while for most Native Americans, Christianity was irrelevant to their needs. Native people’s resistance to European efforts at “civilizing” them caused many settlers to perceive Indians as mostly obstacles to settlement.
Threats to Survival: Trade and Disease
European trade goods quickly became part of Native American material culture, and their efforts to gather furs for trade for these goods altered the ecological balance in much of the New World. This dependence also caused increasing conflicts between Indians and Europeans, as well as between different tribal groups. Despite the problems caused by the Native Americans’ increasing dependency on European trade goods, it was disease that ultimately destroyed the cultural integrity of many tribes. Some areas suffered a 90 to 95 percent population loss within the first century of European contact. The death of so many Natives resulted in a loss of indigenous cultural traditions and set in motion the search for a substitute labor force in Africa.
West Africa: Ancient and Complex Societies
A variety of intricate and sophisticated cultures dominated sub-Saharan West Africa at the time of the European colonization of the New World. Complicated trade routes stretched across the African continent, tying together diverse cultures. The Portuguese explored the coast of West Africa and began trading in slaves, beginning the massive forced migration of Black Africans to the Americas.
Europe on the Eve of Conquest
Except for a brief settlement by the Vikings in 984, Europe was unprepared to tackle transatlantic exploration until the sixteenth century when rapidly changing conditions led to the discovery, exploration, and conquest of the Americas.
Building New Nation-States
At the end of the latter Middle Ages, strong monarchs centralized power, forming modern nation-states; the Renaissance fostered a more expansive outlook inspiring bold and creative thinking; and the invention of the printing press aided in the spread of new ideas and new technologies in Europe.
Imagining a New World
By 1500 Spain had become the leading world power. The marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella led to the unification of Spain through a holy war known as the Reconquista. Not long after unification and well before the Spanish reached the New World, conquistadors -- men motivated by their desire for personal glory and gain and their loyalty to God and Spain -- conquered the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, setting a precedent of subjugation they would replicate in the Americas.
Myths and Realities
Though his goal was to establish a western route to Asia, Christopher Columbus led the way for Spain to “discover” and establish the largest colonial empire in the New World.
The Conquistadores: Faith and Greed
Once in the New World, the strong and independent conquistadores led the Spanish in securing their colonial empire by first concentrating on the major islands of the Americas and finally conquering Montezuma and the Aztec Empire in Mexico.
From Plunder to Settlement
Spanish government officials soon realized the need for order and control in New Spain, establishing the encomienda system as a means of settlement. More than 400,000 Spaniards migrated to the New World by 1650. The establishment of Spanish authority brought some organization, class and caste distinctions, and Catholicism to the empire of New Spain at a considerable cost to the Native peoples. By the end of the sixteenth century, Spain had pushed the frontiers of their empire north into the lands of present-day Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California – a great deal more territory than they could effectively manage. The gold and silver from the New World was a mixed blessing for Spain and the rest of Europe.
The French Claim Canada
More than thirty years after Columbus’s “discovery” of the New World, the French began to settle parts of North America, primarily exploiting the valuable fur trade. With little support from the crown, the French population in the New World colony of Canada grew very slowly, necessitating a different kind of colonial relationship to develop between the French and the Native Americans than had evolved in New Spain. The French often worked and lived more closely and cooperatively with the Native Americans, both trading with them and working to convert them to Christianity.
The English Enter the Competition
Though England began to venture out into the North Atlantic in the latter fifteenth century in search of better fishing areas and, possibly, a short route to Asia, English interest in the New World did not fully develop until the late sixteenth century. Between these first forays and the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the English people were preoccupied with domestic political and religious issues.
The Birth of English Protestantism
The Protestant Reformation permanently shattered English and European religious unity as the desire of Henry VIII for a male heir prompted a break with the Catholic Church and the establishment of the Church of England. The resulting turmoil, though it delayed England’s entry into the New World, also motivated it when it did happen.
Militant Protestantism
The teachings of Martin Luther and other Protestant theologians permanently shattered Europe’s religious unity and led to centuries of religious conflict. In particular the teachings of John Calvin, including the doctrine of predestination, would influence the colonization of North America through individuals known as the Puritans.
Woman in Power
Elizabeth I settled the religious debates in England and established in the nation as a stronghold of Protestantism.
Religion, War, and Nationalism
As Protestantism became increasingly associated with English nationalism, the English longed for victories over Catholic Spain and vice versa.
Irish Background for American Settlement
In the latter sixteenth century, the English established a pattern for colonization in Ireland.
English Conquest of Ireland
The English used Ireland as a testing ground for their theories of colonial rule. Irish cultural differences justified their theories of English superiority and led to social conflict between the colonizers and the colonized.
English Brutality
Governors of the Irish colonies often used brutal means to bring the Irish under English rule. So long as the Irish accepted their subservience and inferiority, English rule was benign, but when they rebelled, they were met with unprecedented brutality and wanton abuse. The behavior of the English in Ireland set the stage for English behavior in the New World. The Native Americans, like the Irish, were believed to be inferior beings destined to be conquered and controlled by the English.
An Unpromising Beginning: Mystery at Roanoke
By the mid-1570s, the English became actively interested in North America. An English pioneer of colonization, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, tried unsuccessfully to plant an outpost of the English nation in North America. Later, Sir Walter Raleigh similarly tried and failed to establish a settlement on Roanoke Island, Virginia. The fate of the “lost” colonists at Roanoke remains unknown even today.
Conclusion: Marketing Strategies
Richard Hakluyt popularized exploration by collecting and publishing explorers’ accounts of the New World, inspiring the English belief that it was necessary to England’s prosperity and independence to establish and settle New World colonies. In Hakluyt’s version of the New World, America was a paradise on earth just waiting for the arrival of the English.
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