Chapter 1: New World Beginnings Part 2

Resuming from pg. 17, the Spanish Conquistadores

Bartolome de Las Casa was appalled by the encomienda system in Hispaniola.

THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO
In 1519, Hernan Cortes sailed from Cuba with horses and men towards mexico. He picked up two interpreters and learned of unrest withing the Aztec empire. He also heard tales of wealth and lusted to tear up the Aztec kingdom. With inidan allies, he marched on Tenchtitlan. As Cortes was approaching, the cheiftain Moctezuma sent ambassadors bearing gifts to welcome the Spaniards who was believed to be the god Quetzcoatl. He allowed the conquistadores to approached the capital unopposed.

However, the Aztecs soon became sick of the Spanish's lust for gold and on the noche triste, they attacked the Spanish. Cortes laid siege to the city and it was capitulated on Aug 13, 1521. A smallpox epidemic burned through Mexico and the Aztec empire gave way to Spanish rule. Temples of Tenochtitlan were destroyed to make way for Christian cathedrals and the native population shrank from 20 million to 2 million.

The spanish also brought corps, animals, language, laws, customs, and religion to Mexico. They intermarried with the surviving Indians creating mestizos.

THE SPREAD OF SPANISH AMERICA
Hundreds of spnaish cities and towns flourished in the americas especially in the silver producing centers of peru and mexico. Millions of indians were subjugated. The first college was established in 1551. However, many powers were eager to bite off their share of promised wealth of the new lands. John Cabot of England explored the northeastern coast of North America in 1497 and 1498. The french king dispatched giovanni a Verrazano to probe the eastern seaboard in 1524. Jacques Carier journeyed up the St. Lawrence River.

The Spanish began to fortify and settle their North American borderlands to secure the northern periphery of their New World domain against encroachments and to convert Indians to christianity. The Roman Catholic mission became the central institution in colonial New Mexico but its efforts to suppress native religious customs provoked an indian uprising called Pope's Rebellion in 1680. The pueblo rebels destroyed every catholic church and killed priests and spnaish settlers. They rebuilt a kiva, or cermonial religious chamber on the ruins but the spanish later reclaimed New mexico from the Indians

Meanwhile, the everthreatening French had sent an expedition under Robert de La Salle down the Mississippi River in the 1680s, the Spanish began to establish some settlements in Texas in around 1716, including San Antonion also known as the Alamo but Spanish presence still remained weak in the distant northeastern outpost of Spain's mexican empire.

Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo explored the California coast in 1542 but failed to find San Francisco bay or anythign else of interest. Two centuries thereafter, California was undisturbed. However in 1769, Spanish missionaries led by Father Junipero Serra founded San Diego and established a chain of 21 missions that wound up as far Sonoma, north of San Francisco Bay. Franciscan friars toiled with devotion to christianize 300,000 native Californians. They gathered the indians into missions and taught horticulture and basic crafts. These indians adopted christianity and lost contact with native cultures. They were also killed by disease.

Their misdeeds gave birth to a misconception called the "black legend" which held that the conquerors tortured and butchered the indians, stole their gold, infected them w/ smallpox, and left little but misery behind. This was party true but they also erected a empire that sprawled from California to Florida to Tierra del Fuego.

Clearly the Spaniards, who had more than a century's head s tart over the english, were genuine empire builders and cultural innovators in the New world. Compared w/ the English, their colonial establishment was larger and richer and destined to endure more than a quarter of a century longer. They paid the Native Americans the high compliment of fusing with them through marriage and incorporating indigenous culture into their own rather than shunning and isolating the indians as their english adversaries would do.

END of Chapter 1