MEXICO: HERNANDO CORTES is greeted by Montezuma’s … · 2019. 2. 20. · MEXICO: HERNANDO CORTES...

MEXICO: HERNANDO CORTES is greeted by Montezuma’s messenger in 1519: Mexican Indian painting,16th century.

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1WORLDS APART

C h a p t e r O u t l i n e

Na ti ve American Societies before 1492

Paleo-Indians and the Archaic PeriodThe Development of AgricultureN onfarming Societies

M esoamerican CivilizationsNorth America’s Diverse CulturesThe Caribbean Islanders

West African SocietiesGeographical and PoliticalDifferences

F amily Structure and ReligionEuropean Merchants in West Africa

and the Slave Trade

Western Europe on the Eve of ExplorationThe Consolidation of Political andMilitary Authority

Religious Conflict and the ProtestantR eformation

Co ntactThe Lure of DiscoveryChristopher Columbus and the

Westward Route to AsiaThe Spanish Conquest and

ColonizationThe Columbian ExchangeCultural Perceptions and

Misperceptions

Competition for a ContinentEarly French Efforts in NorthAmerica

English Attempts in the New World

Co nclusion

After a difficult journey of over two hundred miles, theexhausted man arrived at the royal palace in the grand cityof Tenochtitlán. He had hurried all the way from the GulfCoast with important news for the Aztec leader, Moctezuma.

Our lord and king, forgive my boldness. I amfrom Mictlancuauhtla. When I went to the

shores of the great sea, there was a mountain range orsmall mountain floating in the midst of the water, andmoving here and there without touching the shore. Mylord, we have never seen the like of this, although weguard the coast and are always on watch.

[When Moctezuma sent some officials to check on themessenger’s story, they confirmed his report.]

Our lord and king, it is true that strange people havecome to the shores of the great sea. They were fishingfrom a small boat, some with rods and others with a net.They fished until late and then they went back to their

two great towers and climbed up into them. . . . Theyhave very light skin, much lighter than ours. They allhave long beards, and their hair comes only to their ears.

Miguel Leon–Portilla, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest ofMexico(Boston, 1962).


2 Chapter 1 Worlds Apart

Native American, West African, and European societieson the eve of contact

The reasons for Europe’s impulse to global exploration

The Spanish, French, and English experiences in Amer-ica in the sixteenth century

Consequences of contact between the Old and NewWorlds

Moctezuma was filled with foreboding when hereceived the messenger’s initial report. Aztec religionplaced great emphasis on omens and prophecies, whichwere thought to foreshadow coming events. Several un-usual omens had recently occurred—blazing lights in thesky, one temple struck by lightning and another that spon-taneously burst into flames, monstrous beings that ap-peared and then vanished. Now light-skinned strangerssuddenly appeared offshore. Aztec spiritual leaders re-garded all these signs as unfavorable and warned that trou-ble lay ahead.

The messenger’s journey to Tenochtitlán occurred in1519. The “mountains” he saw were in fact the sails of Eu-ropean ships, and the strange men were Spanish soldiersunder the command of Hernán Cortés. Like Columbus’svoyage to the Caribbean in 1492, Cortés’s arrival in Mexicois considered a key episode in the European discovery ofthe “New World.” But we might just as accurately view themessenger’s entry into the Aztec capital as announcing thenative Mexicans’ discovery of a New World to the east,from which the strangers must have come. Neither the

Aztecs nor the Spaniards could have foreseen the far-reaching consequences of these twin discoveries. Beforelong, a variety of peoples—Native Americans, Africans,and Europeans—who had previously lived worlds apartwould come together to create a world that was new to allof them.

This new world reflected the diverse experiences ofthe many peoples who built it. Improving economic condi-tions in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries pro-pelled Europeans overseas to seek new opportunities fortrade and settlement. Spain, Portugal, France, and Englandcompeted for political, economic, and religious domina-tion within Europe, and their conflict carried over into theAmericas. Native Americans drew upon their familiaritywith the land and its resources, patterns of political and re-ligious authority, and systems of trade and warfare to dealwith the European newcomers. Africans did not come vol-untarily to the Americas but were brought by the Euro-peans to work as slaves. They too would draw on theircultural heritage to cope with both a new land and a new,harsh condition of life.

guage or dialect, history, and way of life. In their own lan-guages, many native groups called themselves “the originalpeople” or “the true men.” Europeans came to call them“Indians,” following Columbus’s mistaken first impressionthat he had arrived in the East Indies when his shipsreached an island in the Bahamas.

From the start, the original inhabitants of the Ameri-cas were peoples in motion. The first migrants may havearrived over forty thousand years ago, traveling from cen-

NATIVE AMERICANSOCIETIES BEFORE 1492In 1492, the year Columbus landed on a tiny Caribbean is-land, perhaps 70 million people—nearly equal to the popu-lation of Europe at that time—lived on the continents ofNorth and South America, most of them south of the pres-ent border between the United States and Mexico. Theybelonged to hundreds of groups, each with its own lan-


tral Siberia and slowly making their way to southern SouthAmerica. These people, and subsequent migrants fromEurasia, probably traveled across a land bridge thatemerged across what is now the Bering Strait. During thelast Ice Age, much of the earth’s water was frozen in hugeglaciers. This process lowered ocean levels, exposing a600-mile-wide land bridge between Asia and America. Re-cent research examining genetic and linguistic similaritiesbetween Asian and Native American populations suggeststhat there may have been later migrations as well. Asianseafarers may have crossed the Pacific to settle portions ofwestern North and South America, while as recently aseight thousand years ago, a final migration may havebrought Siberians to what is now Alaska and northernCanada.

Paleo-Indians and the Archaic PeriodThe earliest Americans, called Paleo-Indians by archaeolo-gists, traveled in small bands, tracking and killing mam-moths, bison, and other large game. These animals wereoften easy prey, for they had never before encounteredhuman hunters. Archaeologists working near present-dayClovis, New Mexico, have found numerous carefullycrafted spear points—some of which may be over thirteenthousand years old—that testify to Paleo-Indians’ exper-tise. Such efficient tools possibly contributed to overhunt-ing, for by about 9000 B.C., mammoths, mastodons, andother large game had become extinct in the Americas. Cli-matic change also hastened the animals’ disappearance.Around twelve thousand years ago, the world’s climatebegan to grow warmer, turning grasslands into deserts andreducing the animals’ food supply. This meant that humanstoo had to find other food sources.

Between roughly 8000 B.C. and 1500 B.C.—what ar-chaeologists call the Archaic period—the Native Ameri-can population grew and people began living in largercommunities. Men and women assumed more specializedroles. Men did most of the hunting and fishing, activitiesthat required travel. Women remained closer to home,gathering and preparing wild plant foods and caring forchildren. Each group made the tools it used, with mencarving fishhooks and arrowheads, and women makingsuch items as bone needles and baskets.

Across the continent, native communities participatedin a complex trade network. Trade was not limited to ma-terial goods, but also included exchanges of marriage part-ners, laborers, ideas, and religious practices. Tradenetworks sometimes extended over great distances. Valu-able goods, such as copper from the Great Lakes area andshells from the Gulf of Mexico, have been discovered at ar-chaeological sites far from their places of origin. Ideasabout death and the afterlife also passed between groups.So too did certain burial practices, such as the placing of

Worlds Apart Chapter 1 3

c. 40,000– Ancestors of Native Americans cross 8000 B.C. Bering land bridge.c. 10,000– Paleo-Indians expand through the 9000 B.C. Americas.c. 9000 B.C. Extinction of large land mammals in

North America.c. 8000– Archaic Indian era.1500 B.C.c. 3000 B.C. Beginnings of agriculture in Mesoamerica.c. 1500 B.C. Earliest mound-building culture begins.c. 500 B.C.– Adena-Hopewell mound-building culture.A.D. 400c. A.D. 700– Rise of West African empires.1600c. 900 First mounds built at Cahokia.

Ancestral Puebloan expansion.c. 1000 Spread of Islam in West Africa.c. 1000–1015 First Viking voyages to North America.c. 1000–1500 Last mound-building culture, the

Mississippian.c. 1290s Ancestral Puebloan dispersal into smaller

villages.1400–1600 Renaissance in Europe.1430s Beginnings of Portuguese slave trade in

West Africa.1492 End of reconquista in Spain.

Columbus’s first voyage.1494 Treaty of Tordesillas.1497 John Cabot visits Nova Scotia and

Newfoundland.1497–1499 Vasco da Gama sails around Africa to

reach India.1517 Protestant Reformation begins in

Germany.1519–1521 Hernán Cortés conquers the Aztec empire.1532–1533 Francisco Pizarro conquers the Inca

empire.1534–1542 Jacques Cartier explores eastern Canada

for France.1540–1542 Coronado explores southwestern North

America.1542–1543 Roberval’s failed colony in Canada.1558 Elizabeth I becomes queen of England.1565 Spanish establish outpost at

St. Augustine in Florida.1560s–1580s English renew attempts to conquer

Ireland.1587 Founding of “Lost Colony” of Roanoke.1598 Spanish found colony at New Mexico.


valued possessions in the grave along with the deceasedperson’s body. In some areas, the increasing complexity ofexchange networks, as well as competition for resources,encouraged concentrations of political power. Chiefsmight manage trade relations and conduct diplomacy forgroups of villages rather than for a single community.

The Development of AgricultureIn the latter half of the Archaic period, some NativeAmericans made a momentous social and economic adap-tation when they began farming. Agriculture in the Ameri-cas began around 3000 B.C., when the people of centralMexico started raising an ancient type of maize, or corn.Farming had already appeared independently in otherparts of the world, including the Middle East, SoutheastAsia, China, and India. Archaeologists speculate that agri-culture first developed in areas where population growththreatened to outrun the wild food supply. Women, withtheir knowledge of wild plants, probably discovered howto save seeds and cultivate them, becoming the world’sfirst farmers.

Farming in the Americas initially supplemented a dietstill largely dependent on hunting and gathering, but grad-ually assumed a greater role. In addition to maize, the maincrop in both South and North America, farmers in Mex-ico, Central America, and the Peruvian Andes learned tocultivate peppers, beans, pumpkins, squash, avocados,sweet and white potatoes (native to the Peruvian high-


lands), and tomatoes. Mexican farmersalso grew cotton. Maize and bean culti-vation spread from Mexico in a wide arcto the north and east. Peoples in what isnow the southwestern United Statesbegan farming between 1500 and 500B.C., and by A.D. 200, farmers were tillingthe soil in present-day Georgia andFlorida.

Wherever agriculture took hold, im-portant social changes followed. Popula-tions grew, because farming produced amore secure food supply than did hunt-ing and gathering. Permanent villages ap-peared as farmers settled near theirfields. In central Mexico, agricultureeventually sustained the populations oflarge cities. Trade in agricultural sur-pluses flowed through networks of ex-change. In many Indian societies,women’s status improved because oftheir role as the principal farmers. Spe-cialized craft workers produced potteryand baskets to store harvested grains.Even religious beliefs adapted to the in-

creasing importance of farming. In describing the originsof their people, Pueblo Indians of the Southwest com-pared their emergence from the underworld to a maizeplant sprouting from the earth.

The development of agriculture further enhanced thediversity of Native American peoples. Even so, certaingeneralizations can be made about societies that devel-oped within broad regions, or culture areas (see Map 1–1).Within each area, inhabitants shared basic patterns of sub-sistence and social organization, largely reflecting the nat-ural environment to which they had adapted.

Nonfarming SocietiesThroughout the North and West, Indians prospered with-out adopting agriculture. In the challenging environmentof the Arctic and Subarctic, small nomadic bands movedseasonally to fish, follow game, and, in the brief summers,gather wild berries. Far to the north, Eskimos and Aleutshunted whales, seals, and other sea mammals. Farther in-land, the Crees and other peoples followed migratingherds of caribou and moose. Northern peoples fashionedtools and weapons of bone and ivory, clothing and boatsfrom animal skins, and houses of whalebones and hides orblocks of sod or snow. Many of their rituals and songs cele-brated the hunt and the spiritual connection between hu-mans and the animals on which they depended.

Along the Northwest Coast and the Columbia RiverPlateau, abundant resources supported one of the most

Women were the principal farmers in most Native American societies, growing corn,beans, and other crops that made up most of their food supply. This sixteenth-centuryFrench engraving shows Indian men preparing the soil for cultivation and Indianwomen sowing seeds in neat rows.



densely populated areas of North America. With riversteeming with salmon and other fish, and forests full ofgame and edible plants, people prospered without resort-ing to farming. Among such groups as the Kwakiutls andChinooks, extended families lived in large communalhouses located in villages of up to several hundred resi-dents. Local rulers displayed their prominence most con-spicuously during potlatches, or ceremonies in whichwealth was distributed among guests in order to celebrate

the power of the hosts. Artisans used the region’s plentifulwood supply to make many items, including distinctive re-ligious masks and memorial poles carved with images ofsupernatural beings.

Farther south, in present-day California, hunter-gatherers lived in smaller villages, several of which mightbe led by the same chief. These settlements usually ad-joined oak groves, where Indians gathered acorns. To pro-tect their access to this important food, chiefs and villagers

VIKING TRADE ROUTESOne summer day in 1957, two archaeologists working near the Maine coast made a remarkablediscovery. The men dug up a small coin buried about five inches deep in the soil. There was asmall hole drilled at one edge, which suggested that the coin had been worn as an ornament.When experts examined it closely, they were astonished to learn that it was a silver penny thathad been minted in Norway in the eleventh century. How had such an ancient penny made itsway to Maine?

Archaeologists now believe that the penny arrived in Maine via a massive intercontinentaltrade network that linked the Old and New Worlds centuries before Columbus’s arrival. Thekey figures in this long-distance commerce were Viking voyagers from Scandinavia. Betweenthe ninth and eleventh centuries, magnificent ships carried the Vikings over vast distances,from the northernmost reaches of Norway to continental Europe, and westward to Iceland,Greenland, and Canada. Viking expeditions to the British Isles and throughout Europe includedviolent raids that brought widespread destruction to local populations. In the New World, tradeand settlement were the Vikings’ main goals. Evidence of Viking settlements has been found invarious sites in Labrador and Newfoundland. An inhabitant from one of those outposts was thelikely source of the penny found in Maine. A Viking settler may have accidentally dropped it, ortraded it to one of the local native people. From there the coin made its way as much as a thou-sand miles southward to Maine, passed along through the Native Americans’ own channels oftrade.

In the Old World, the geographical extent of Viking trade connections was equally impres-sive. Archaeologists working at an eighth-century site in Sweden, for instance, have unearthed asmall bronze statue of Buddha that was cast in northern India. It made its way to the Scandina-vian village via trade networks that traversed vast distances, from Russia to the Middle East tothe Indian subcontinent. Exotic items like this one discovered in surprising locations offerstriking testimony that global trade connections are by no means an invention of the modernera. A thousand years before our own time, people had already found ways to exchange goodsacross oceans and continents.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES



vigorously defended their territorial claims to the oakgroves. Elsewhere, in the foothills of the Sierras, Indians pe-riodically set fire to thick underbrush to hasten the growthof new shoots that would attract deer and other game.

Small nomadic bands in the Great Basin, where theclimate was warm and dry, learned to survive on the re-gion’s limited resources. Shoshone hunters captured ante-lope in corrals and trapped small game, such as squirrelsand rabbits. In what is now Utah and western Colorado,Utes hunted elk, bison, and mountain sheep and fished inmountain streams. Women gathered pinyon nuts, seeds,and wild berries. In hard times, people ate rattlesnakes,horned toads, and insects.

Mesoamerican CivilizationsMesoamerica, the birthplace of agriculture in NorthAmerica, extends from central Mexico into Central Amer-ica. A series of complex, literate, urban cultures emerged inthis region beginning around 1200 B.C. Among the earliestwas that of the Olmecs, who flourished on Mexico’s GulfCoast from about 1200 to 400 B.C. The Olmecs and otherearly Mesoamerican peoples built cities featuring largepyramids, developed religious practices that includedhuman sacrifice, and devised calendars and writing sys-tems. Two of the most prominent Mesoamerican civiliza-tions that followed the Olmecs were those of the Mayansin the Yucatán and Guatemala and the Aztecs of Teoti-huacán in central Mexico.

The Mayans. Mayan civilization reached its greatestglory between about A.D. 150 and 900 in the southern Yu-catán, creating Mesoamerica’s most advanced writing andcalendrical systems and developing a sophisticated mathe-matics that included the concept of zero. The Mayans ofthe southern Yucatán suffered a decline after 900, butthere were still many thriving Mayan centers in the north-ern Yucatán when Europeans arrived in the Americas. Thegreat city of Teotihuacán dominated central Mexico fromthe first century to the eighth century A.D. and influencedmuch of the rest of Mesoamerica through trade and con-quest.

The Aztecs. Some two hundred years after the fall ofTeotihuacán, the Toltecs, a warrior people, rose to promi-nence, dominating central Mexico from about 900 to1100. In the wake of the Toltec collapse, the Aztecs, an-other warrior people, migrated from the north into theValley of Mexico and built a great empire that soon con-trolled much of Mesoamerica. The magnificent Aztec cap-ital, Tenochtitlán, was a city of great plazas, broad avenues,magnificent temples and palaces, and busy marketplaces.Built on islands in the middle of Lake Texcoco, it was con-nected to the mainland by four broad causeways. In 1492,

Tenochtitlán was home to some 200,000 people, makingit one of the largest cities in the world at the time.

The great pyramid in Tenochtitlán’s principal templecomplex was the center of Aztec religious life. Here Aztecpriests sacrificed human victims—by cutting open theirchests and removing their still-beating hearts—to offer tothe gods. Human sacrifice had been part of Mesoamericanreligion since the time of the Olmecs. People believed thatsuch ceremonies pleased the gods and prevented themfrom destroying the earth. The Aztecs, however, practicedsacrifice on a much larger scale than 0.2197 Twcanores. Hne-


Acoma Pueblo has perched atop this 300-foot-tall mesa since the twelfth century. Now used mainly forceremonial purposes, Acoma was once a thriving Ancestral Puebloan village.

800 rooms and numerous kivas, or ceremonial centers,served as one of several centers of production and ex-change throughout the area. But after about 1200, villagersbegan carving multistoried stone houses into steep canyonwalls, dwellings that could only be reached by difficultclimbs up steep cliffs and along narrow ledges. Archaeolo-gists suspect that warfare and climate change worked to-gether to force the Puebloans into these precarious homes.

Around 1200, the climate of the Southwest grewcolder, making it more difficult to grow enough to feed thelarge population. Food scarcity, in turn, may have set vil-lage against village and encouraged attacks by outsiders.Villagers probably resorted to cliff dwellings for defensivepurposes as violence spread in the region. By 1300, sur-vivors abandoned the cliff dwellings and dispersed intomuch smaller villages along the Rio Grande. Their descen-dants include the Hopis and Zunis, as well as otherPuebloan peoples in the desert Southwest. In many pueb-los dispersed throughout the region , men farmed—in con-trast to the predominant pattern of women farmerselsewhere in Native America—and raised corn, beans,squash, and sunflowers. They established new patterns ofexchange with nomadic hunting peoples, such as theApaches and Navajos, who brought buffalo meat and hidesto trade for Pueblo corn, cotton blankets, pottery, andother goods.

Plains Indians. The Great Plains of the continent’s in-terior were much less densely settled than the desertSouthwest. Mandans, Pawnees, and other groups settledalong river valleys, where women farmed and men hunted

bison, whose skin and bones were used for clothing, shel-ter, and tools. Plains Indians moved frequently, seekingmore fertile land or better hunting. Wherever they went,they traded skins, food, and obsidian (a volcanic glass usedfor tools and weapons) with other native peoples.

Mound-building cultures. The gradual spread of agri-culture transformed native societies in the Eastern Wood-lands, a vast territory extending from the MississippiValley to the Atlantic seaboard. Although the processbegan around 2500 B.C., farming was not firmly establisheduntil about A.D. 700. As agriculture spread, several“mound-building” societies—named for the large earth-works their members constructed—developed in the Ohioand Mississippi Valleys. The oldest flourished in Louisianabetween 1500 and 700 B.C. The members of the Adena-Hopewell culture, which appeared in the Ohio Valley be-tween 500 B.C. and A.D. 400, lived in small villages spreadover a wide area. They built hundreds of mounds, often inthe shapes of humans, birds, and serpents. Most weregrave sites, where people were buried with valuable goods.Many burial objects were made from materials obtainedthrough long-distance trade, including Wyoming obsidian,Lake Superior copper, and Florida conch shells.

The last mound-building culture, the Mississippian,emerged between 1000 and 1500 in the Mississippi Valley.Mississippian farmers raised enough food to support siz-able populations and major urban centers. One of thelargest of these was Cahokia, located near present-day St.Louis in a fertile floodplain with access to the major riversystems of the continent’s interior. By 1250, Cahokia had



perhaps twenty thousand residents, making it nearly aslarge as medieval London and the largest American citynorth of Mexico. Its political leaders—who were worshipedas deities—collected tribute, redistributed goods, coordi-nated trade and diplomacy, and mobilized laborers to buildlarge structures and earthworks. Cahokia dominated theMississippi Valley, linked by trade in food and other prod-ucts to dozens of villages in the Midwestern region.

Mississippian culture began to decline in the thir-teenth century. Archaeologists suspect that an ecologicalcrisis led to Cahokia’s fall. Population may have out-stripped the food supply, and a series of hot, dry summerscreated further hardship. By 1400, most of Cahokia’s resi-dents were dispersed into scattered farming villages.

What followed in the eastern Woodlands region was acentury or more of warfare and political instability. In thevacuum left by Cahokia’s decline, other groups sought toexert more power. In the northeast, the Iroquois andHurons moved from dispersed settlements into fortifiedvillages. The Hurons, who farmed in the Great Lakes area,formed new exchange networks with hunter-gatherers tothe north, while the Iroquois limited their ties with out-siders. Both the Hurons and the Iroquois formed confed-eracies that were intended to diminish internal conflictsand increase spiritual strength. Among the Iroquois, fiveseparate nations—the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas,Cayugas, and Senecas—joined to create the GreatLeague of Peace and Power around the year 1450. Simi-lar developments occurred in the southeast, where

chronic instability led to regional alliances and the peri-odic emergence of centers of trade and political power.One such center at Etowah, in northwestern Georgia,prospered until about 1400, at which point it gave way toa new chiefdom at Coosa.

Eastern Woodlands peoples were the first to en-counter English explorers, and later, English settlers, at thestart of the seventeenth century. By that point these nativepeoples relied on a mixture of agriculture and hunting,fishing, and gathering for their subsistence. They lived invillages with a few hundred residents, with greater densi-ties of settlement in the south (where a warmer climateand longer growing season prevailed) than in the north. Al-though early colonists sometimes described these Indiangroups as nomadic, they in fact inhabited semipermanentvillages and moved only when declining soil fertility or, insome instances, warfare compelled them to shift location.For the most part, their principal villages were near thecoast or along rivers, where the greatest diversity of nat-ural resources could be found.

The Caribbean IslandersThe Caribbean islands were peopled by mainland dwellerswho began moving to the islands around 5000 B.C. Ances-tors of the Tainos probably came from what is nowVenezuela. The Guanahatabeys of western Cuba origi-nated in Florida, and the Caribs of the easternmost islandsmoved from Brazil’s Orinoco Valley. Surviving at first by

hunting and gathering, island peoplesbegan farming perhaps in the first cen-tury A.D. They raised manioc, sweetpotatoes, maize, squash, beans, peppers,peanuts, and pineapple on clearings madein the tropical forests. Canoes carriedtrade goods throughout the Caribbean,as well as to Mesoamerica and coastalSouth America.

By 1492, as many as 4 million peoplemay have inhabited the Caribbean is-lands. Powerful chiefs ruled over villages,conducted war and diplomacy, and con-trolled the distribution of food andother goods obtained as tribute from vil-lagers. Island societies were divided intoseveral ranks. An elite group aided thechief and supplied religious leaders.Below them were a large class of ordi-nary farmers and fishermen and a lowerclass of servants who worked for theelites. Elite islanders were easily recog-nized by their fine clothing, brightfeather headdresses, and golden ear and

This artist’s rendering, based on archaeological evidence, suggests the size and magni-ficence of the Mississippian city of Cahokia. By the thirteenth century, it was as populousas medieval London, and served as a center of trade for the vast interior of NorthAmerica.



nose ornaments—items that eventually attracted the at-tention of European visitors.

Long before Europeans reached North America, thecontinent’s inhabitants had witnessed centuries of dynamicchange. Empires rose and fell, and new ones took theirplace. Large cities flourished and disappeared. Periods ofwarfare occasionally disrupted the lives of thousands of in-dividuals. The Europeans’ arrival, at the end of the fifteenthcentury, coincided with a period of particular instability, asvarious Native American groups competed for dominancein the wake of the collapse of the centralized societies atCahokia and Chaco Canyon. Yet at the same time, NativeAmerican societies experienced important continuities.These included an ability to adapt to widely varying envi-ronmental conditions, the preservation of religious and cer-emonial traditions, and an eagerness to forge relationshipsof exchange with neighboring peoples. Both continuitieswith past experience and more recent circumstances of po-litical change would shape the ways native peoples wouldeventually respond to the European newcomers.

WEST AFRICAN SOCIETIESIn the three centuries after 1492, fully six out of seven peo-ple who crossed the Atlantic to the Americas were not Eu-ropeans but Africans. They came from the world’ssecond-largest continent and the one with the longestrecord of human habitation, where the ancestors of mod-ern humans (Homo sapiens) appeared 130,000 or more yearsago. Like the Americas, Africa had witnessed the rise ofmany ancient and diverse cultures (see Map 1-2). Theyranged from the sophisticated Egyptian civilization thatdeveloped in the Nile Valley over 5000 years ago to thepowerful twelfth-century chiefdoms of Zimbabwe to theWest African empires that flourished in the time ofColumbus and Cortés. The vast majority of Africans whocame to the Americas after 1492 arrived as slaves, trans-ported by Europeans eager to exploit their labor. Althoughthey were involuntary immigrants, Africans could drawupon their ancient cultural heritages to help shape theNew World in which they found themselves.

Geographical and Political DifferencesMost African immigrants to the Americas came from thecontinent’s western regions. Extending from the southernedge of the Sahara Desert toward the equator and inlandfor nearly a thousand miles, West Africa was an area ofcontrasts. On the whole a sparsely settled region, WestAfrica nevertheless contained numerous more densely in-habited communities. Many of these settlements clung tothe coast, but several important cities lay well inland. Per-haps the greatest of these metropolises was Timbuktu,which had as many as 70,000 residents in the fifteenth

century. At that time, Timbuktu served as the seat of thepowerful Songhai empire, and was an important center oftrade and government.

The Songhai empire was only the latest in a series ofpowerful states to develop in the region. One of the earli-est, Ghana, rose to prominence in the eighth century anddominated West Africa for nearly three hundred years. Itssuccessor, Mali, emerged around 1200 and lasted anotherthree centuries. Songhai, larger and wealthier than itspredecessors, dominated the area from around 1450 untilit fell to a Moroccan invasion in 1591. Equivalently largeempires did not appear in coastal West Africa, althoughthe Asante, Dahomey, Oyo, and Bini kingdoms there grewto be quite powerful. Other coastal peoples, such as theMendes and Igbos, were decentralized, living in scatteredautonomous villages.

Craftsmen from the West African kingdom of Benin wererenowned for their remarkable bronze sculptures. This intricatebronze plaque depicts four African warriors in full militarydress. The two tiny figures in the background may be Portuguesesoldiers, who first arrived in Benin in the late fifteenth century.Benin bronze plaque. National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Insti-tution, Washington, DC, U.S.A. Aldo Tutino/Art Resource, NY.



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Boundaries of theHoly Roman Empire

MAP EXPLORATION To explore an interactive version of this map, go to http://www.prenhall.com/goldfield4/map1.2

MAP 1–2 West Africa and Europe in 1492Before Columbus’s voyage, Europeans knew little about the world beyond the Mediterranean basinand the coast of West Africa. Muslim merchants from North Africa largely controlled Europeantraders’ access to African gold and other materials.



Geographical as well as political differences marked theinland and coastal regions. In the vast grasslands of the inte-rior, people raised cattle and cultivated millet and sorghum.In the 1500s, European visitors introduced varieties of Asianrice, which soon became another important crop. On thecoast—where rain falls nearly every day—people grew yams,bananas, and various kinds of beans and peas in forest clear-ings. They also kept sheep, goats, and poultry.

Artisans and merchants. West Africans were skilled ar-tisans and particularly fine metalworkers. Smiths in Beninproduced intricate bronze sculptures, and Asante crafts-men designed distinctive miniature gold weights. WestAfrican smiths also used their skills to forge weapons, at-testing to the frequent warfare between West Africanstates.

Complex trade networks linked inland and coastalstates, and long-distance commercial connections tiedWest Africa to southern Europe and the Middle East.West African merchants exchanged locally mined goldwith traders from North Africa for salt, a commodity sorare in West Africa that it was sometimes literally worth itsweight in gold. North African merchants also bought WestAfrican pepper, leather, and ivory. The wealth generated bythis trans-Saharan trade contributed to the rise of theSonghai and earlier empires.

Farming and gender roles. Most West Africans werefarmers, not merchants. A daily round of work, family du-ties, and worship defined their lives. West African men andwomen shared agricultural tasks. Men prepared fields forplanting, while women cultivated the crops, harvestedthem, and dried grain for storage. Men also hunted and, inthe grassland regions, herded cattle. Women in the coastalareas owned and cared for other livestock, including goatsand sheep. West African women regularly traded goods, in-cluding the crops they grew, in local markets and were thusessential to the vitality of local economies.

Family Structure and ReligionFamily connections were exceedingly important to WestAfricans, helping to define each person’s place in society.Children were especially cherished; one Yoruba proverbstated that “Without children you are naked.” High ratesof infant and child mortality—attributable in good part toa harsh disease environment—made offspring all the moreprecious, for parents depended on their children for laborand for support in old age. In some regions, men whocould afford to do so had more than one wife, thus increas-ing their chances of having surviving offspring. While tiesbetween parents and children were of central importance,West Africans also emphasized their links with aunts, un-cles, cousins, and grandparents. Groups of families formed

clans that further extended an individual’s kin ties. Mostclans were patrilineal—tracing descent through the fa-ther’s line—but some, for instance among the Akans andIgbos, were matrilineal. These links enmeshed WestAfricans in a web of family ties.

Religious beliefs magnified the powerful influence offamily on African life. Ideas and practices focused onthemes of fertility, prosperity, health, and social harmony.Because many West Africans believed that their ancestorsacted as mediators between the worlds of the living andthe dead, they held elaborate funerals for deceased mem-bers and continued to perform public rituals at their gravesites. Such rituals helped keep the memory of ancestorsalive for younger generations.

Most West Africans believed in a supreme being andseveral subordinate deities. Like Native Americans, theyperformed ceremonies to ensure the goodwill of the spiri-tual forces that suffused the natural world. West Africanmedicine men and women used rituals to protect peoplefrom evil spirits and sorcerers. Religious ceremonies wereheld in sacred places—often near water—but not in build-ings that Europeans recognized as churches. And like theIndians, West Africans preserved their faith through oraltraditions, not written texts.

Islam began to take root in West Africa around theeleventh century, probably introduced by Muslim tradersfrom North Africa. By the fifteenth century, the cities ofTimbuktu and Djenné had become centers of Islamiclearning, attracting students from as far away as southernEurope. Urban dwellers, especially merchants, were morelikely to convert to the new religion, as were some rulers.Farmers, however, accustomed to religious rituals that fo-cused on agricultural fertility, were prone to resist Islamicinfluence more strongly.

European Merchants in West Africa and the Slave TradeBefore the fifteenth century, Europeans knew little aboutAfrica beyond its Mediterranean coast, which had beenpart of the Islamic world since the eighth century. Spain,much of which had been subject to Islamic rule before1492, had stronger ties to North Africa than did most ofEurope. But Christian merchants from other Europeanlands had also traded for centuries with Muslims in theNorth African ports. When stories of West African goldreached European traders, they tried to move deeper intothe continent. But they encountered powerful Muslimmerchants intent on monopolizing the gold trade.

In the early fifteenth century, the kingdom of Portugalsought to circumvent this Muslim monopoly. Portugueseforces conquered Ceuta in Morocco and gained a footholdon the continent in 1415. Because this outpost did not pro-



vide direct access to the sources of gold, Portuguesemariners gradually explored the West African coast. Theyestablished trading posts along the way, where they ex-changed horses, clothing, wine, lead, iron, and steel forAfrican gold, grain, animal skins, cotton, pepper, andcamels.

By the 1430s, the Portuguese had discovered perhapsthe greatest source of wealth they could extract fromAfrica—slaves. A vigorous market in African slaves had ex-isted in southern Europe since the middle of the four-teenth century. The expansion of this trade required notonly eager buyers of slaves, but also willing suppliers.Chronic underpopulation in many areas had led to the de-velopment of slavery within West Africa itself, as a way tomaintain control over scarce and valuable laborers. In fact,African law recognized slaves (not land, as in Europe) asthe only form of private, revenue-producing property.Most slaves within Africa lost their freedom because theywere captured in war, but others had been kidnapped orwere enslaved as punishment for a crime. African mer-chants, familiar with the slave trade at home, saw little rea-son not to sell unfree laborers to European buyers.

European visitors who observed African slaves in theirhomeland often described them as “slaves in name only”because they were subject to so little coercion. Africanslaves at work in the fields appeared little different fromother farmers. Slaves might also be employed as soldiers oradministrators, fulfilling important duties and enjoyingconsiderable freedom in their daily routines. Slavery inAfrica was not necessarily a permanent status and did notautomatically apply to the slaves’ children. African mer-chants who sold slaves to European purchasers had no rea-son to suspect that those slaves would be treated anydifferently by their new owners.

Africans caught in the web of the transatlantic slavetrade, however, entered a much harsher world. Separatedfrom the kinfolk who meant so much to them, isolatedfrom a familiar landscape, and hard-pressed to sustain spir-itual and cultural traditions in a wholly new environment,Africans faced daunting challenges as they entered intothe history of the New World.

WESTERN EUROPE ON THE EVE OFEXPLORATIONWhen Columbus sailed from Spain in 1492, he left a conti-nent recovering from the devastating warfare and diseaseof the fourteenth century and about to embark on the dev-astating religious conflicts of the sixteenth. Between 1337and 1453, England and France had exhausted each other in

a series of conflicts known as the Hundred Years’ War. Andbetween 1347 and 1351, an epidemic known as the BlackDeath (bubonic plague, and perhaps in some areas a pneu-monic form of the disease as well) wreaked havoc on a Eu-ropean population already suffering from persistentmalnutrition. Perhaps a third of all Europeans died, withresults that were felt for more than a century.

The plague left Europe with far fewer workers, a resultthat contributed to southern Europeans’ interest in theAfrican slave trade. To help the economy recover, the sur-vivors learned to be more efficient and rely on technologi-cal improvements. Farmers selected the most fertile landto till, and artisans adopted labor-saving techniques to in-crease productivity. Metalworkers built larger furnaceswith huge bellows driven by water power. Shipbuilders re-designed vessels with steering mechanisms that could bemanaged by smaller crews. Innovations in banking, ac-counting, and insurance also fostered economic recovery.Prosperity was distributed unevenly among social classes,however. In parts of England, France, Sweden, and theGerman states, peasants and workers protested risingrents and taxes that threatened to absorb most of theirwages. Yet on the whole, Europe had a stronger, more pro-ductive economy in 1500 than ever before.

In much of Western Europe, economic improvementencouraged an extraordinary cultural movement known asthe Renaissance, a “rebirth” of interest in the classical civi-lizations of ancient Greece and Rome. The Renaissanceoriginated in the city-states of Italy, where a prosperousand educated urban class promoted learning and artisticexpression. Wealthy townspeople joined princes in becom-ing patrons of the arts, offering financial support topainters, sculptors, architects, writers, and musicians.

The daily lives of most Europeans, however, remaineduntouched by intellectual and artistic developments. MostEuropeans were peasants living in agricultural communi-ties that often differed in important ways from NativeAmerican and West African societies. In European soci-eties, men performed most of the heavy work of farming,while women’s labors focused on caring for the family anddomestic duties. Europeans lived in states organized intomore rigid hierarchies than could be found in many(though not all) parts of North America or West Africa,with the population divided into distinct classes. At thetop were the monarchs who, along with the next rank ofaristocrats, dominated government and owned most of theland, receiving rents and labor services from peasants andrural artisans. Next, in descending order, came prosperousgentry families, independent landowners, and, at the bot-tom, landless peasants and laborers.

European society was also patriarchal, with men domi-nating political and economic life. Europe’s rulers were,with few exceptions, men, and men controlled the



Catholic Church. Inheritance was patrilineal, and onlymen could own property. According to an ideal not alwaysupheld, Europeans thought that even the poorest manshould be “as a king in his own house,” ruling over his wife,children, and servants.

The Consolidation of Political and Military AuthorityBy the end of the fifteenth century, after more than a hun-dred years of incessant conflict, a measure of stability re-turned to the countries about to embark on overseasexpansion. Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Louis XI ofFrance, and Henry VII of England successfully assertedroyal authority over their previously fragmented realms,creating strong state bureaucracies to control political ri-vals. They gave special trading privileges to merchants togain their support, creating links that would later proveimportant in financing overseas expeditions. At the sametime, Spain and Portugal negotiated an end to a long-running dispute about the succession to the throne ofCastile, one of Spain’s largest kingdoms.

The consolidation of military power went hand inhand with the strengthening of political authority. Portu-gal developed a strong navy to defend its seaborne mer-chants. Louis XI of France commanded a standing army,and Ferdinand of Spain created a palace guard to use

against potential opponents. Before overseas expansionbegan, European monarchs exerted military force to ex-tend their authority closer to home. Louis XI and his suc-cessors used warfare and intermarriage with the rulingfamilies of nearby provinces to extend French influence. Inthe early sixteenth century, England’s Henry VIII sent sol-diers to conquer Ireland. And the Spain of 1492 was forgedfrom the successful conclusion of the reconquista (“recon-quest”) of territory from Muslim control.

Muslim invaders from North Africa first entered Spainin 711 and ruled much of the Iberian peninsula (which in-cludes Spain and Portugal) for centuries. Beginning in themid-eleventh century, Christian armies embarked on along effort to reclaim the region. By 1450, only the south-ern tip of Spain remained under Muslim control. After themarriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in1469 united Spain’s two principal kingdoms, their com-bined forces completed the reconquista. Granada, the lastMuslim stronghold, fell in 1492, shortly before Columbusset out on his first voyage.

Religious Conflict and the Protestant ReformationEven as these rulers sought to unify their realms, religiousconflicts began to tear Europe apart. For more than athousand years, Catholic Christianity had united Western

Europeans in one faith. All Christiansbelieved that God had sent his only son,Jesus Christ, to suffer crucifixion, die,and rise from the dead in order to re-deem humans from sin and give themeternal life. The Catholic Church builton this faith included an elaborate hier-archy of clergy, ranging upward fromparish priests to bishops, archbishops,and cardinals, culminating in Christ’srepresentative on earth, the pope.

By the sixteenth century, the Catho-lic Church had accumulated enormouswealth and power. The pope wieldedinfluence not only as a spiritual leaderbut also as the political ruler of parts ofItaly. The church owned considerableproperty throughout Europe. In reactionto this growing influence, many Chris-tians, especially in Northern Europe,began to criticize the popes and thechurch itself for worldliness, abuse ofpower, and betrayal of the legacy ofChrist.

In 1517, a German monk, MartinLuther, invited open debate on a set of

This illustration from a 13th-century Spanish manuscript depicts a clash betweenChristian and Muslim armies, part of the long struggle known as the reconquista.


gary. The new religious ideas particularly interested literatecity-dwellers, such as merchants and skilled artisans, whowere attracted to Protestant writings as well as the ser-mons of Protestant preachers. Peasants adopted the newideas more slowly, although German peasants, claimingLuther as inspiration, staged an unsuccessful revolt againsttheir masters in 1524. Luther disavowed them, however,and supported the German princes in their brutal suppres-sion of the revolt.

The Reformation fractured the religious unity ofWestern Europe and spawned a century of warfare un-precedented in its bloody destructiveness. Protestantsfought Catholics in France and the German states. Popesinitiated a “Counter-Reformation” to strengthen theCatholic Church—in part by internal reform and in partby persecuting its opponents and reimposing religiousconformity. Europe thus fragmented into warring campsjust at the moment when Europeans were coming to termswith their discovery of America. Some of the key partici-pants in exploration, such as Spain and Portugal, rejected


propositions critical of church practices and doctrines.Luther believed that the church had become too insistenton the performance of good works, such as charitable do-nations or other actions intended to please God. He calledfor a return to what he understood to be the purer prac-tices and beliefs of the early church, emphasizing that sal-vation came not by good deeds but only by faith in God.With the help of the newly invented printing press, hisideas spread widely, inspiring a challenge to the CatholicChurch that came to be known as the Reformation.

When the Catholic Church refused to compromise,Luther and other critics withdrew to form their own reli-gious organizations. Luther emphasized the direct, per-sonal relationship of God to the individual believer. Heurged people to take responsibility for their own spiritualgrowth by reading the Bible, which he translated for thefirst time into German. What started as a religious move-ment, however, quickly acquired an important political di-mension.

Sixteenth-century Germany was a fragmented regionof small kingdoms and principalities jealous of their inde-pendence. They were officially part of a larger Catholic po-litical entity known as the Holy Roman Empire, but manyGerman princes were discontented with imperial author-ity. Realizing that religious protest reinforced their claimsto independence, many princes supported Luther for spiri-tual and secular reasons. When the Holy Roman Empireunder Charles V (who was also king of Spain) tried to si-lence them, the reformist princes protested. From thatpoint on, these princes—and all Europeans who supportedreligious reform—became known as Protestants.

The Protestant movement took a more radical turnunder the influence of the French reformer John Calvin,who emphasized the doctrine of predestination. Calvinmaintained that an all-powerful and all-knowing Godchose at the moment of creation which humans would besaved and which would be damned. Each person’s fate isthus foreordained, or predestined, by God, although wecannot know our fate during our lifetimes. Good Calvin-ists struggled to behave as God’s chosen, continuallysearching their souls for evidence of divine grace.

Calvin founded a religious community consistent withhis principles in Geneva, a Swiss city-state near the Frenchborder. Men who claimed to be “saints,” or God’s chosenpeople, led the city’s government. They drove out nonbe-lievers, subjected all citizens to a rigid discipline, and madeGeneva the center of Protestant reform in Europe. Butneither Lutherans nor Calvinists could contain the power-ful Protestant impulse. In succeeding years, other groupsformed, split, and split again, increasing Europe’s religiousfragmentation.

From Germany and Geneva the Protestant Reforma-tion spread to France, the Netherlands, England, and Hun-

This 1568 woodcut of a European print shop shows workerssetting type in the background, while the men in front printpages for a book. The invention of the printing press revolu-tionized European society, making information accessibleto anyone who could read. During the Reformation, bothProtestants and Catholics used the press to spread theirviews and attack their opponents.

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Protestantism, while others, including England and theNetherlands, embraced religious reform.

CONTACTReligious fervor, political ambition, and the desire forwealth propelled European nations into overseas expan-sion as well as conflict at home. Portugal, Spain, France,and England competed to establish footholds on othercontinents in an intense scramble for riches and domi-nance. The success of these early endeavors was a reflec-tion of Europe’s prosperity and of a series of technologicalbreakthroughs that enabled its mariners to navigate be-yond familiar waters.

By 1600, Spain had emerged as the apparent winneramong the European competitors for New World domi-nance. Its astonishingly wealthy empire included vast terri-tories in Central and South America. The conquerors ofthis empire attributed their success to their military supe-riority and God’s approval of their imperial ambitions. Inreality, it was the result of a complex set of interactionswith native peoples as well as an unanticipated demo-graphic catastrophe.

The Lure of DiscoveryThe potential rewards of overseas exploration captured theimaginations of a small but powerful segment of Europeansociety. Most people, busy making a living, cared little aboutdistant lands. But certain princes and merchants anticipatedspiritual and material benefits from voyages of discovery.The spiritual advantages included making new Christianconverts and blocking Islam’s expansion—a Christian goalthat dated back to the eleventh-century Crusades againstthe Muslims in the Middle East and continued with thereconquista. On the material side, the voyages would con-tribute to Europe’s prosperity by increasing trade.

Merchants especially sought access to Asian spices likepepper, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg that added interestto an otherwise monotonous diet and helped preserve cer-tain foods. Wealthy Europeans paid handsomely for smallquantities of spices, making it worthwhile to transportthem great distances. But the overland spice trade—andthe trade in other luxury goods such as silk and furs—spanned thousands of miles, involved many middlemen,and was controlled at key points by Muslim merchants.One critical center was Constantinople, the bastion ofChristianity in the eastern Mediterranean. When that cityfell to the Ottomans—the Muslim rulers of Turkey—in1453, Europeans feared that caravan routes to Asia wouldbe disrupted. This encouraged merchants to turn west-ward and seek alternative routes.

The reorientation of European trade benefited west-ern Italian cities such as Genoa as well as Portugal and

Spain, whose ports gave access to the Mediterranean andthe Atlantic Ocean. Mariners ventured farther into oceanwaters, seeking direct access to the African gold trade and,eventually, a sea route around Africa to Asia. Had it notbeen for a set of technological developments that reducedthe risks of ocean sailing, such lengthy voyages into unex-plored areas would have been impossible.

Advances in navigation and shipbuilding. Ocean voy-ages required sturdier ships than those that plied theMediterranean. Because oceangoing mariners traveled be-yond sight of coastal features, they also needed reliablenavigational tools. In the early fifteenth century, PrinceHenry of Portugal, excited by the idea of overseas discov-ery, sponsored the efforts of shipbuilders, mapmakers, andother workers to solve these practical problems. By 1500,enterprising artisans had made several important ad-vances. Iberian shipbuilders perfected the caravel, a shipwhose narrow shape and steering rudder suited it for oceantravel. Ship designers combined square sails (good forspeed) with triangular lateen sails, which increased maneu-verability. European mariners eagerly adopted two impor-tant navigational devices—the magnetic compass (firstdeveloped in China) and the astrolabe (introduced to Eu-rope by Muslims from Spain), which allowed mariners todetermine their position in relation to a star’s known loca-tion in the sky. As sailors acquired practical experience onthe high seas, mapmakers recorded their observations oflandfalls, wind patterns, and ocean currents.

After Portugal’s conquest of the Moroccan city ofCeuta in 1415, its mariners slowly worked their way alongAfrica’s western coast, establishing trading posts wherethey exchanged European goods for gold, ivory, and slaves(see Map 1–3). Bartolomeu Días reached the southern tipof Africa in 1488. Eleven years later, Vasco da Gamabrought a Portuguese fleet around Africa to India, openinga sea route to Asia. These initiatives gave Portugal a virtualmonopoly on Far Eastern trade for some time.

The Atlantic islands and the slave trade. The newtrade routes gave strategic importance to the islands thatlie in the Atlantic off the west coast of Africa and Europe.Spain and Portugal vied for control of the Canary Islands,located 800 miles southwest of the Iberian peninsula.Spain eventually prevailed in 1496 by defeating the islands’inhabitants. Portugal acquired Madeira and the CapeVerde Islands, along with a group of tiny islands off Africa’sGuinea Coast.

Sugar, like Asian spices, commanded high prices in Eu-rope, so the conquerors of the Atlantic islands began tocultivate sugar cane on them, on large plantations workedby slave labor. In the Canaries, the Spanish first enslavedthe native inhabitants. When disease and exhaustion



reduced their numbers, the Spanish brought in Africanslaves, often purchased from Portuguese traders. On unin-habited islands, the Europeans imported African slavesfrom the start. São Tomé and the other small islands offthe Guinea Coast eventually became important way sta-tions in the transatlantic slave trade.

Christopher Columbus and the Westward Route to AsiaChristopher Columbus was but one of many Europeanmariners excited by the prospect of tapping into thewealth of Asia. Born in Genoa in 1451, he later lived in Por-tugal and Spain, where he read widely in geographical trea-tises and listened closely to the stories and rumors thatcirculated among mariners. As a young man Columbusgained considerable experience with ocean travel, visitingAfrica’s Guinea Coast and Madeira, and perhaps even voy-aging to Iceland.

He was not, however, the first European to believethat he could reach Asia by sailing westward. The idea de-veloped logically during the fifteenth century as mariners

gained knowledge and experience from their exploits inthe Atlantic and around Africa. Most Europeans knew thatthe world was round, but scoffed at the idea of a westwardvoyage to Asia in the belief that no ship could carryenough provisions for such a long trip. Columbus’s confi-dence that he could succeed grew from a mathematicalerror. He mistakenly calculated the earth’s circumferenceas 18,000 (rather than 24,000) miles and so concluded thatAsia lay just 3,500 miles west of the Canary Islands.Columbus first sought financial support for a westwardvoyage from the king of Portugal, whose advisers disputedhis calculations and warned him that he would starve at seabefore reaching Asia. Undaunted, he turned to Portugal’srival, Spain.

Columbus tried to convince Ferdinand and Isabellathat his plan suited Spain’s national goals. If he succeeded,Spain could grow rich from Asian trade, send Christianmissionaries to Asia (a goal in keeping with the religiousideals of the reconquista), and perhaps enlist the GreatKhan of China as an ally in the long struggle with Islam. Ifhe failed, the “enterprise of the Indies” would cost little.The Spanish monarchs nonetheless kept Columbus wait-ing nearly seven years—until 1492, when the last Muslimstronghold at Granada fell to Spanish forces—before theygave him their support.

After thirty-three days at sea, Columbus and his menreached the Bahamas, probably landing on what is nowcalled Watling Island. They spent four months exploringthe Caribbean and visiting several islands, including His-paniola (now the site of Haiti and the Dominican Repub-lic) and Cuba. Although puzzled by his failure to find thefabled cities of China and Japan, Columbus believed thathe had reached Asia. Three more voyages, between 1493and 1504, however, failed to yield clear evidence of anAsian landfall or samples of Asian riches. Columbus re-ported that the islands he encountered contained “greatmines of gold and other metals” and spices in abundance,yet all he brought back to Isabella and Ferdinand werestrange plants and animals, some gold ornaments, and sev-eral kidnapped Taino Indians.

Obsessed with the wealth he had promised himselfand others, Columbus and his men turned violent, sackingthe villages of the Tainos and Caribs and demanding trib-ute in gold. The Spanish forced gangs of Indians to panrivers for the precious nuggets. But Caribbean gold re-serves, found mainly on Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, andCuba, were not extensive. Dissatisfied with the meager re-sults, Columbus sought other sources of wealth.

In 1494, Columbus suggested to Ferdinand and Is-abella of Spain that the Indies could yield a profit if is-landers were sold as slaves. The Tainos and other nativepeoples, he wrote, were “very savage and suitable for thepurpose.” His plan earned him a sharp rebuke from Queen

Advances in ship design, including the development of thecaravel pictured in this fifteenth-century woodcut, madetransoceanic voyages possible. The arrangement of sails allowedthe caravel to catch the trade winds and move more quicklyacross the high seas.


tury. Spanish soldiers then ventured to the mainland. JuanPonce de León led an expedition to Florida in 1513. In thatsame year, Vasco Núñez de Balboa arrived in Central Amer-ica, crossing the isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean.

The end of the Aztec Empire. In 1519, Hernán Cortésand six hundred soldiers—the light-skinned strangers whoinspired the Indian messenger to rush to Moctezuma—landed on the coast of Mexico. Their subsequent actionsmore than fulfilled the Aztec king’s belief that the

Spaniards’ arrival was an evil omen. “Iand my companions,” Cortés announced,“suffer from a disease of the heart whichcan be cured only with gold.” By 1521,Cortés and his men had conquered thepowerful Aztec empire. The Spanish sol-diers also discovered riches beyond theirwildest dreams. They “picked up thegold and fingered it like monkeys,” re-ported one Aztec witness. They were“transported by joy, as if their heartswere illumined and made new.”

The swift, decisive Spanish victorydepended on several factors. In part, theSpanish enjoyed certain technologicaladvantages. Their guns and horses oftenenabled them to overwhelm larger

First published in 1535, this woodcut shows Taino Indians panning for gold. Columbusand his men, desperate for riches to bring back to Spain but unaware that gold reserves onmost Caribbean islands were quite small, compelled the Indians to search for the preciousmetal. After only a few decades of forced labor and harsh treatment, the nativepopulations of the islands had all but disappeared.


Isabella, who opposed enslaving people she considered tobe new Spanish subjects. This royal fastidiousness wasshort-lived, however. Within a year, the queen agreed thatnative war captives could be enslaved. In succeedingdecades, the Spanish government periodically called forfair treatment of Indians and prohibited their enslave-ment, but such measures were easily ignored by colonistson the other side of the Atlantic.

Columbus died in Spain in 1506, still convinced he hadfound Asia. What he had done was to set in motion aprocess that would transform both sides of the Atlantic. Itwould eventually bring wealth to many Europeans and im-mense suffering to Native Americans and Africans.

The Spanish Conquest and ColonizationOf all European nations, Spain was best suited to take ad-vantage of Columbus’s discovery. Its experience with thereconquista gave it both a religious justification for con-quest (bringing Christianity to nonbelievers) and an armyof seasoned soldiers—conquistadores—eager to seek theirfortunes in America now that the last Muslims had beenexpelled from Spain. In addition, during the reconquistaand the conquest of the Canary Islands, Spain’s rulers haddeveloped efficient techniques for controlling newly con-quered lands that could be applied to New World colonies.

The Spanish first consolidated their control of theCaribbean, establishing outposts on Cuba, Puerto Rico,and Jamaica (see Map 1–4). The conquistadores were more in-terested in finding gold and slaves than in creating perma-nent settlements. Leaving a trail of destruction, theyattacked native villages and killed or captured the inhabi-tants. By 1524, the Tainos had all but died out; the Caribssurvived on more isolated islands until the eighteenth cen-

A decidedly European view of Columbus’s landing appears inthis late sixteenth-century print. Columbus and his men, armedwith guns and swords, are resplendent in European attire, whilenearly naked Indians offer them gifts. To the left, Spaniardserect a cross to claim the land for Christianity. In the upperright, frightened natives flee into the woods.



groups of Aztec foot soldiers armed with spears andwooden swords edged with obsidian. But technology alonecannot account for the conquest of a vastly more numer-ous enemy, capable of absorbing far higher losses in com-bat.

Cortés benefited from two other factors. First, he ex-ploited divisions within the Aztec empire. The Spanish ac-quired indispensable allies among subject Indians who

resented Aztec domination, tribute demands, and seizureof captives for religious sacrifice. Cortés received invalu-able help in communicating with these peoples fromMalinche, a captive native woman who served as a transla-tor (and who also bore him a son). He eventually gained200,000 Indian allies eager to throw off Aztec rule.

A second and more important factor was disease. Oneof Cortés’s men was infected with smallpox, which soon


devastated the native population. European diseases hadbeen unknown in the Americas before 1492, and Indianslacked resistance to them. Historians estimate that nearly40 percent of the inhabitants of central Mexico died ofsmallpox within a year. Other diseases followed, includingtyphus, measles, and influenza. By 1600, the population ofMexico may have declined from over 15 million to less thana million people.

Aztec society and culture collapsed in the face of ap-palling mortality. “The illness was so dreadful,” one sur-vivor recalled, “that no one could walk or move. The sickwere so utterly helpless that they could only lie on theirbeds like corpses, unable to move their limbs or even theirheads. . . . If they did move their bodies, they screamedwith pain.” The epidemic ravaged families, wiped outwhole villages, and destroyed traditional political author-ity. Early in their bid to gain control of the Aztec empire,the Spanish seized Moctezuma, and eventually put him to

death. They did not have to kill his successor, however, forhe died of disease less than three months after gaining thethrone.

The fall of the Inca Empire. In 1532, Francisco Pizarroand 180 men, following rumors of even greater riches thanthose of Mexico, discovered the Inca empire high in thePeruvian Andes. It was the largest empire in the Americas,stretching more than 2,000 miles from what is nowEcuador to Chile. An excellent network of roads andbridges linked this extensive territory to the imperial capi-tal of Cuzco. Economically prosperous from trade andagricultural production based on complex irrigation sys-tems, the empire was also prone to political division. TheSpaniards arrived at a moment of weakness for the empire.A few years before, the Inca ruler had died, probably fromsmallpox, and civil war had broken out between two of hissons. The victor, Atahualpa, was on his way from the

In this illustration from a Spanish monk’s history of the Aztecs, Moctezuma observes a cometplummeting toward the earth, an omen that he believed presaged disaster for his people. Theappearance of the comet coincided with the first reports of white-skinned strangers arriving on the coast of Mexico.



empire’s northern provinces to claim his throne in Cuzcowhen Pizarro intercepted him. Pizarro took Atahualpahostage and despite receiving a colossal ransom—a room-ful of gold and silver—had him killed. The Spaniards thencaptured Cuzco, eventually extended control over thewhole empire, and established a new capital at Lima.

By 1550, Spain’s New World empire stretched from theCaribbean through Mexico to Peru. It was administeredfrom Spain by the Council of the Indies, which enactedlaws for the empire and supervised an elaborate bureauc-racy charged with their enforcement. The council aimed toproject royal authority into every village in New Spain inorder to maintain political control and extract as muchwealth as possible from the land and its people.

For more than a century, Spanish ships crossed the At-lantic carrying seemingly limitless amounts of treasurefrom the colonies. To extract this wealth, the colonialrulers subjected the native inhabitants of New Spain tocompulsory tribute payments and forced labor. Tens ofthousands of Indians toiled in silver mines in Peru and Bo-livia and on sugar plantations in the Caribbean. When nec-essary, Spaniards imported African slaves to supplement anative labor force ravaged by disease and exhaustion.

Spanish incursions to the north. The desire for goldeventually lured Spaniards farther into North America. In1528, an expedition to Florida ended in disaster when theSpanish intruders provoked an attack by Apalachee Indi-ans. Most of the Spanish survivors eventually perished, butÁlvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and three other men (includ-ing an African slave) escaped from their captors and man-aged to reach Mexico after a grueling eight-year journey. Ina published account of his ordeal, Cabeza de Vaca insistedthat the interior of North America contained a fabulouslywealthy empire (see “American Views: Cabeza de Vacaamong the Indians”).

This report inspired other Spaniards to seek the trea-sures that had eluded its author. In 1539, Hernán de Soto—who tried unsuccessfully to get Cabeza de Vaca to serve asa guide—led an expedition from Florida to the MississippiRiver. Along the way, the Spaniards harassed the nativepeoples, demanding provisions, burning villages, and cap-turing women to be servants and concubines. De Soto,who reportedly enjoyed “the sport of hunting Indians onhorseback,” ordered natives who resisted him to be muti-lated, thrown to dogs, or burned alive. He and his men alsoexposed the Indians to deadly European diseases. Al-though weakened by native resistance, the expedition keptup its rampage for three years, turning toward Mexico onlyafter de Soto died in 1542. In these same years, FranciscoVásquez de Coronado led three hundred troops on anequally destructive expedition through present-day Ari-zona, New Mexico, and Colorado on a futile search for the

mythical Seven Cities of Cíbola, rumored to containhoards of gold and precious stones.

The failure to find gold and silver halted Spain’s at-tempt to extend its empire to the north. By the end of thesixteenth century, the Spanish maintained just two precar-ious footholds north of Mexico. One was at St. Augustine,on Florida’s Atlantic coast. Founded in 1565, this fortifiedoutpost served as a naval base to defend Spanish treasurefleets from raids by English and French privateers. Theother settlement was located far to the west in what is nowNew Mexico. Juan de Oñate, on a futile search for silvermines, claimed the region for Spain in 1598. He and hismen proceeded to antagonize the area’s inhabitants. Inone surprise attack, the Spaniards destroyed the ancienttown of Acoma, killing or enslaving most of the residents.Having earned the enmity of the Pueblo people—aston-ishing even his own superiors with his brutality—Oñatebarely managed to keep his tiny colony together.

Almost from the start of the conquest, the bloody tac-tics of men such as Oñate aroused protest back in Spain.The Indians’ most eloquent advocate was Bartolomé deLas Casas, a Dominican priest shamed by his own role (as alayman) in the conquest of Hispaniola. In 1516, the Spanishking appointed him to the newly created office of Protec-tor of the Indians, but his efforts had little effect. To pub-licize the horrors he saw, Las Casas wrote In Defense of theIndians, including graphic descriptions of native sufferings.Instead of eliciting Spanish reforms, however, his work in-spired Protestant Europeans to create the “Black Legend,”an exaggerated story according to which a fanaticalCatholic Spain sought to spread its control at any cost.

The seeds of economic decline. Meanwhile, the vastriches of Central and South America glutted Spain’s trea-sury. Between 1500 and 1650, an estimated 181 tons of goldand 16,000 tons of silver were shipped from the NewWorld to Spain, making it the richest and most powerfulstate in Europe (see Figure 1–1). But this influx of Ameri-can treasure had unforeseen consequences that wouldsoon undermine Spanish predominance.

In 1492, the Spanish crown, determined to impose reli-gious conformity after the reconquista, expelled from Spainall Jews who refused to become Christians. The refugeesincluded many leading merchants who had contributedsignificantly to Spain’s economy. The remaining Christianmerchants, now awash in American riches, saw little rea-son to invest in new trade or productive enterprises thatmight have sustained the economy once the flow of NewWorld treasure diminished. As a result, Spain’s economyeventually stagnated.

Compounding the problem, the flood of Americangold and silver inflated prices throughout Europe, hurtingboth workers, whose wages failed to rise as fast, and aristo-


developed some immunity to them. Na-tive Americans, lacking such contact,had not. The Black Death of 1347–1351,Europe’s worst epidemic, killed perhapsa third of its population. Epidemics ofsmallpox, measles, typhus, and influenzastruck Native Americans with fargreater force, killing half, and sometimesas many as 90 percent, of the people incommunities exposed to them. The onlyAmerican disease that may have in-fected Old World populations was a sex-ually transmitted form of syphilis, whichappeared in Spain just after Columbusreturned from his first voyage.

Another important aspect of theColumbian exchange was the introduc-tion of Old World livestock to the NewWorld, which began when Columbusbrought horses, sheep, cattle, pigs, andgoats with him on his second voyage in1493. Native Americans had few domes-ticated animals of their own (mainlydogs, and, in the Peruvian Andes, llamasand alpacas). The large European beastscreated problems as well as opportuni-ties for native peoples. With few naturalpredators to limit their numbers, live-stock populations boomed in the NewWorld, competing with native mammalsfor grazing. At least at first, the Indians’unfamiliarity with the use of horses inwarfare often gave mounted European

soldiers a decisive military advantage. But some nativegroups adopted these animals for their own purposes.Yaquis, Pueblos, and other peoples in the Southwest beganto raise cattle and sheep. By the eighteenth century, PlainsIndians had reoriented their culture around the use ofhorses, which had become essential for travel, hunting buf-falo, and carrying burdens. Horses also became a primaryobject for trading and raiding among Plains peoples.

European ships carried unintentional passengers aswell. The black rat, a carrier of disease, arrived on the firstvoyages. So did insects, including honeybees, previouslyunknown in the New World. Ships also brought weedssuch as thistles and dandelions, whose seeds were oftenembedded in hay for animal fodder.

Europeans brought a variety of seeds and plants inorder to grow familiar foods. Columbus’s men plantedwheat, chickpeas, melons, onions, and fruit trees onCaribbean islands. Europeans also learned to cultivate na-tive foods, such as corn, tomatoes, squash, beans, andpotatoes, as well as nonfood plants such as tobacco and

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FIGURE 1–1 Value of New World Treasure Imported into Spain, 1506–1655During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Spain was the only Europeanpower to reap great wealth from North America. The influx of New World treasure,however, slowed the development of Spain’s economy in the long run. [Note: A ducatwas a gold coin.]Data Source: J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (1964), p. 175.

crats, who were dependent on fixed rents from their es-tates. Most damaging of all, Spain’s monarchs wasted theirAmerican wealth fighting expensive wars against their Eu-ropean enemies that ultimately only weakened the nation.By 1600, some disillusioned Spaniards were arguing thatthe conquest had brought more problems than benefits totheir country.

The Columbian ExchangeSpain’s long-term economic decline was just one of manyconsequences of the conquest of the New World. The ar-rival of Europeans in America set in motion a whole seriesof changes. In the long run, the biological consequences ofcontact—what one historian has called the Columbianexchange—proved to be the most momentous (see theOverview table, The Columbian Exchange).

The most catastrophic result of the exchange was theexposure of Native Americans to Old World diseases. Eu-ropeans and Africans, long exposed to these diseases, had



CABEZA DE VACA AMONG THE INDIANS (1530)Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca came to the New World in 1527 in search of riches, notsuffering. But the Spanish expedition of which he was a member met disaster shortlyafter it arrived in Florida on a mission to conquer the region north of the Gulf ofMexico. Of an original group of three hundred soldiers, only Cabeza de Vaca andthree other men (including one African slave) survived. They did so by walking thou-sands of miles overland from the Gulf Coast to northern Mexico, an eight-year-longordeal that tested the men’s wits and physical endurance. Instead of entering Indianvillages as proud conquistadors, Cabeza de Vaca and his companions encountered na-tive peoples from a position of weakness. In order to survive, they had to adapt tothe ways of the peoples across whose land they passed. After Cabeza de Vaca made itback to Mexico City, he described his experiences in an official report to the king ofSpain. This remarkable document offers vivid descriptions of the territory extendingfrom northern Florida to northern Mexico and the many peoples who inhabited it.It is equally interesting, as this extract suggests, for what it reveals about Cabeza deVaca himself and the changes he made in the interest of survival.

❑ While living among the Capoques, what sort of work did Cabeza de Vaca haveto do, and why?

❑ Why did Cabeza de Vaca decide to become a merchant? What advantages didthis way of life offer him?

❑ Why did the Indians welcome Cabeza de Vaca into their communities eventhough he was a stranger?

AMERICAN VIEWS

[I remained with the Capoques] for more than a year,and because of the great labors they forced me to per-form and the bad treatment they gave me, I resolved toflee from them and go to those who live in the forests andon the mainland, who are called those of Charruco, be-cause I was unable to endure the life that I had withthese others; because among many other tasks, I had todig the roots to eat out from under the water and amongthe rushes where they grew in the ground. And becauseof this, my fingers were so worn that when a reedtouched them it caused them to bleed, and the reeds cutme in many places. . . . And because of this, I set to thetask of going over to the others, and with them thingswere somewhat better for me. And because I became amerchant, I tried to exercise the vocation as best I knewhow. And because of this they gave me food to eat andtreated me well, and they importuned me to go from oneplace to another to obtain the things they needed, be-cause on account of the continual warfare in the land,there is little traffic or communication among them. Andwith my dealings and wares I entered inland as far as Idesired, and I went along the coast for forty or fifty

leagues. The mainstay of my trade was pieces of snailshell and the hearts of them; and conch shells with whichthey cut a fruit that is like frijoles [beans], with whichthey perform cures and do their dances and make cele-brations. . . . And in exchange and as barter for it, Ibrought forth hides and red ocher with which they smearthemselves and dye their faces and hair, flints to make thepoints of arrows, paste, and stiff canes to make them, andsome tassels made from deer hair which they dye red.And this occupation served me well, because practicingit, I had the freedom to go wherever I wanted, and I wasnot constrained in any way nor enslaved, and wherever Iwent they treated me well and gave me food out of wantfor my wares, and most importantly because doing that, Iwas able to seek out the way by which I would go for-ward. And among them I was very well known; when theysaw me and I brought them the things they needed, theywere greatly pleased.

Source: Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz, eds., The Narrative ofCabeza de Vaca, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), pp. 96–97.


through ceremonies that often involved exchanging giftsand performing certain rituals. North of Mexico, Indianspassed on religious beliefs through oral traditions, not inwriting. To Europeans accustomed to worshiping one Godin an organized church and preserving their beliefs in awritten Bible, Indian traditions were incomprehensible.When Columbus noted that the Tainos had no churches,he concluded that “I do not detect in them any religion.”Some Europeans, including Cortés, went further, assumingthat Indians worshiped the Devil. Indians, in turn, oftenfound Christianity confusing and at first rejected Euro-pean pressure to convert. As some Iroquois explained tocolonists, “We do not know that God, we have never seenhim, we know not who he is.”

Different understandings of the roles of men andwomen provided another source of confusion. Europeansassumed that men were naturally superior to women andshould dominate them and rule society. They disapprovedof the less rigid gender divisions among Native Americanpeoples. Wampanoags and Powhatans sometimes ac-cepted female leaders, for instance, and Huron womenhelped to select male chiefs. Many Indian societies, in-cluding the Pueblos, Hurons, and Iroquois, were matrilin-eal, tracing descent through the mother’s family insteadof the father’s, as Europeans did. In matrilineal societies,married couples lived with the wife’s family, children in-herited property from their mother’s brother, and rulerssucceeded to their positions through their mother’s fam-ily line. Europeans, accustomed to societies in which mendid most agricultural work, also objected to Indianwomen’s dominant role in farming and assumed thatmen’s hunting was more for recreation than subsistence.They often concluded that Indian women lived “a mostslavish life.” Indians, in turn, sometimes thought that Eu-ropean men failed to make good use of their wives. InMassachusetts, some native men ridiculed colonists “forspoiling good working creatures” by not making theirwomen work in the fields.

These were some of the many cultural differences thatseparated Indian and European societies. In order for na-tives and newcomers to get along peaceably with eachother, each side would have to adapt to the new circum-stances under which both groups now lived. At first, suchharmony seemed possible. Columbus initially reportedthat the Taino Indians “became so much our friends that itwas a marvel.” But it soon became clear that Europeans in-tended to dominate the lands they discovered. Only threedays after he arrived in America, Columbus announced hisintention “not to pass by any island of which I did not takepossession” and soon speculated on the possibility of en-slaving Indians. Such claims to dominance sparked vigor-ous resistance from native peoples everywhere who stroveto maintain their autonomy in a changed world.

COMPETITION FOR A CONTINENTSpain’s New World bonanza attracted the attention ofother European states eager to share in the wealth. Portu-gal soon acquired its own profitable piece of South Amer-ica. In 1494, the conflicting claims of Portugal and Spainwere resolved by the Treaty of Tordesillas. The treatydrew a north–south line approximately 1,100 miles west ofthe Cape Verde Islands. Spain received all lands west of theline, while Portugal held sway to the east. This limited Por-tugal’s New World empire to Brazil, where settlers fol-lowed the precedent of the Atlantic island colonies andestablished sugar plantations worked by slave labor. Butthe treaty also protected Portugal’s claims in Africa andAsia, which lay east of the line.

France and England, of course, rejected the granting ofthe Western Hemisphere to Spain and Portugal. Their ini-tial challenges to Spanish dominance in the New World,however, proved quite feeble. Domestic troubles—largelysparked by the Protestant Reformation—distracted thetwo countries from the pursuit of empire. By the close ofthe sixteenth century, both France and England insisted ontheir rights to New World lands, but neither had created apermanent settlement to support its claim.

Early French Efforts in North AmericaFrance was a relative latecomer to New World explo-ration. In 1494, French troops invaded Italy, beginning along and ultimately unsuccessful war with the HolyRoman Empire. Preoccupied with European affairs,France’s rulers paid little attention to America. But whennews of Cortés’s exploits in Mexico arrived in the 1520s,King Francis I wanted his own New World empire to en-rich France and block further Spanish expansion. In 1524,Francis sponsored a voyage by Giovanni da Verrazano, anItalian navigator, who mapped the North American coastfrom present-day South Carolina to Maine. During the1530s and 1540s, the French mariner Jacques Cartier madethree voyages in search of rich mines to rival those ofMexico and Peru. He explored the St. Lawrence River upto what is now Montreal, hoping to discover a water routethrough the continent to Asia (the so-called NorthwestPassage).

On his third voyage, in 1541, Cartier was to serve underthe command of a nobleman, Jean-François de la Rocque,Sieur de Roberval, who was commissioned by the king toestablish a permanent settlement in Canada. Troubles inrecruiting colonists delayed Roberval, who—when he fi-nally set sail in 1542—ended up taking convicts as his set-tlers. Cartier sailed ahead, gathered samples of what hethought were gold and diamonds, and returned to Francewithout Roberval’s permission.




This first attempt to found a permanent Frenchcolony failed miserably. Roberval’s expedition was poorlyorganized, and his cruel treatment of the convicts pro-voked several uprisings. The Iroquois, suspicious of re-peated French intrusions on their lands, saw no reason tohelp them. A year after they arrived in Canada, Robervaland the surviving colonists were back in France. Their re-turn coincided with news that the gold brought back byCartier was iron pyrite (“fool’s gold”) and the diamondswere worthless quartz crystals.

Disappointed with their Canadian expeditions, theFrench made a few brief forays to the south, establishingoutposts in what is now South Carolina in 1562 and Floridain 1564. They soon abandoned the Carolina colony, andSpanish forces captured the Florida fort. Then, back inFrance, a prolonged civil war broke out between Catholicsand Protestants. Renewed interest in colonization wouldhave to await the return of peace at home.

English Attempts in the New WorldThe English were quicker than the French to stake a claimto the New World but no more successful at colonization.In 1497, King Henry VII sent John Cabot, an Italianmariner, to explore eastern Canada on England’s behalf.But neither Henry nor any of his wealthy subjects wouldinvest the funds necessary to follow up on Cabot’s discov-eries. For nearly half a century, English contact with Amer-ica was limited to the seasonal voyages of fishermen wholived each summer in Newfoundland, fished offshore, andreturned in autumn with ships full of cod.

The lapse in English activity in the New Worldstemmed from religious troubles at home. Between 1534and 1558, England changed its official religion severaltimes. King Henry VIII, who had once defended theCatholic Church against its critics, took up the Protestantcause when the pope refused to annul his marriage toCatherine of Aragon. In 1534, Henry declared himself thehead of a separate Church of England and seized theCatholic Church’s English property. Because many Englishpeople sympathized with the Protestant cause, there wasrelatively little opposition to Henry’s actions. But in 1553,Mary—daughter of the spurned Catherine of Aragon—be-came queen and tried to bring England back to Catholi-cism. She had nearly three hundred Protestants burned atthe stake for their beliefs (earning her the nickname“Bloody Mary”), and many others went into exile in Eu-rope.

After Mary’s brief but destructive reign, which endedwith her death in 1558, her half-sister Elizabeth, a commit-ted Protestant, became queen. Elizabeth ruled for forty-five years (1558–1603), restoring Protestantism as the state

religion, bringing stability to the nation, and renewingEngland’s interest in the New World. She and her subjectssaw colonization not only as a way to gain wealth and po-litical advantage but also as a Protestant crusade againstCatholic domination.

The Colonization of Ireland. England’s first target forcolonization, however, was not America but Ireland. Lo-cated less than 60 miles west of England and populated byCatholics, Ireland threatened to become a base fromwhich Spain or another Catholic power might invade Eng-land. Henry VIII had tried, with limited success, to bringthe island under English control in the 1530s and 1540s.Elizabeth renewed the attempt in the 1560s with a seriesof brutal expeditions that destroyed Irish villages andslaughtered the inhabitants. Several veterans of these cam-paigns later took part in New World colonization and drewon their Irish experience for guidance.

Two aspects of that experience were particularly im-portant. First, the English transferred their assumptionsabout Irish “savages” to Native Americans. Englishmen inAmerica frequently observed similarities between Indiansand the Irish. “When they [the Indians] have their apparelon they look like Irish,” noted one Englishman. “The na-tives of New England,” he added, “are accustomed to buildtheir houses much like the wild Irish.” Because the Englishheld the “wild Irish” in contempt, these observations en-couraged them to scorn the Indians. When Indians re-sisted their attempts at conquest, the English recalled theIrish example, claiming that native “savagery” requiredbrutal suppression.

Second, the Irish experience influenced English ideasabout colonial settlement. English conquerors set up“plantations” surrounded by palisades on seized Irishlands. These plantations were meant to be civilized out-posts in a savage land. Their aristocratic owners importedProtestant tenants from England and Scotland to farm theland. Native Irish people, considered too wild to joinproper Christian communities, were excluded. Englishcolonists in America followed this precedent when theyestablished plantations that separated English and nativepeoples.

Expeditions to the New World. Sir Humphrey Gilbert,a notoriously cruel veteran of the Irish campaigns, becamefascinated with the idea of New World colonization. Hecomposed a treatise to persuade Queen Elizabeth to sup-port such an endeavor. The queen, who counted Gilbertamong her favorite courtiers, authorized several ex-ploratory voyages, including Martin Frobisher’s three tripsin 1576–1578 in search of the Northwest Passage to Asia.Frobisher failed to find the elusive passage and sent backshiploads of glittering ore that proved to be fool’s gold.


F ROM THEN TO NOWThe Kennewick Man Controversy

In late July 1996, two men watching a boat race near Kennewick, Washington, discovered a human skull lying at thebottom of the Columbia River. Subsequent searches in the area resulted in the excavation of a nearly complete maleskeleton with what appeared to be European features. At first, officials wondered if the remains belonged to a missingperson or perhaps a nineteenth-century settler. When investigators found a stone spearpoint embedded in the skele-ton’s pelvis, however, they knew that the bones were far older than that. DNA analysis revealed that the skeleton wasperhaps as much as 9,500 years old, and must have belonged to an ancient Native American.

Kennewick Man, as the skeleton was named, had lived inthe early Archaic Period. The land bridge across the BeringStrait—the route his ancestors presumably followed in com-ing to North America—had long since disappeared underrising ocean waters. Like his fellow Archaic Indians, he sur-vived by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants. Nativepeoples in the region also obtained such goods as acorns,salt, and obsidian through trade with Indians living else-where in North America. But conflict as well as peaceful ex-change marked Kennewick Man’s life, as revealed by the grimevidence of the spearpoint in his hipbone.

Archaeologists generally believe that all Native Americanpeoples descended from Asian ancestors. Yet the shape ofKennewick Man’s skull and face bones bears closer resem-blance to European models and differs from known charac-teristics of other ancient Americans. This presents anunexpected puzzle. Some people have suggested that Ken-newick Man was in fact an ancient European who somehowended up in North America. Others detect similarities be-tween Kennewick Man and the Ainu people, who once livedin coastal Asia but now can be found only in northernJapan—an observation that preserves the theory of Asian de-scent. Not long after the skeleton was found, controversyarose not only over the origins of the remains, but also howthey ought to be treated. Archaeologists and other scientistswanted to subject the bones to further analysis in order to

This undated photo shows a sculpture of theKennewick Man reconstructed by sculptor ThomasMcClelland with the assistance of anthropologistJames Chatters, giving a face to one of the oldest andmost complete sets of human remains found in theUnited States.

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solve the puzzle of their origins. But inSeptember, 1996, a group of five NativeAmerican tribes claimed the skeletonunder the provisions of the NativeAmerican Graves Protection andRepatriation Act (NAGPRA). They in-tended to rebury it, out of respect fortheir ancestor and in accordance withspiritual traditions. For many years,Native Americans have objected to theway in which archaeologists and ama-teur scavengers have treated Indian re-mains as objects to be collected orshipped to museums.

For nine years Kennewick Man has been the subjectof a prolonged legal battle, with some people even raisingdoubts about the skeleton’s Native American ancestry as away of preventing its reburial. The bones currently lie inthe Thomas Burke Museum of Natural History and Cul-ture at the University of Washington in Seattle, pendingthe outcome of a final court decision. It appears that thescientists may have their way. In February 2005, the ArmyCorps of Engineers embarked on a review of a projectedthree-phase study of the remains. At the same time, a fed-eral judge denied a request by four Northwest NativeAmerican tribes to participate in the project. Althoughsome people regard these latest developments as the tri-umph of modern science over tradition, the controversysurrounding Kennewick Man cannot be reduced to suchsimple terms. It instead represents a complex mixture ofcultural, ethical, and historical issues. Many Native Amer-icans regard further analysis of Kennewick Man’s remainsas desecration. They also worry that political rather thanscientific motives lie behind efforts to establish the skele-ton’s possible European origins. Some people might usethis hypothesis to argue that Native American claims forhistorical precedence can be ignored. The KennewickMan controversy thus opens up a much larger debate onthe peopling of the Americas.

Aerial view of where Kennewick man bones were found.

A plastic casting of the skull from the bones known as KennewickMan is shown in this July 24, 1997 photo taken in Richland,Washington.

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Elizabeth had better luck in allowing pri-vateers, such as John Hawkins and Fran-cis Drake, to raid Spanish ships and NewWorld ports for gold and silver. The plun-der taken during these raids enrichedboth the sailors and their investors—oneof whom was the queen herself.

Meanwhile, Gilbert continued topromote New World settlement, arguingthat it would increase England’s tradeand provide a place for the nation’s un-employed people. Like many of his con-temporaries, Gilbert believed thatEngland’s “surplus” population threat-ened social order. The population was in-deed growing, and economic changesoften made it difficult for people to sup-port themselves. Many landlords, for in-stance, had been converting farmlandinto sheep pastures. They profited fromthe wool trade, but their decision threwtenant families off the land. Gilbert sug-gested offering free land in America toEnglish families willing to emigrate.

In 1578, Gilbert received permissionto set up a colony along the North Amer-ican coast. It took him five years to orga-nize an expedition to Newfoundland,which he claimed for England. After sail-ing southward seeking a more favorablesite for a colony, Gilbert headed home,only to be lost at sea during an Atlanticstorm. The impetus for English coloniza-tion did not die with him, however, forhis half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh (an-other veteran of the Irish wars), took upthe cause.

The Roanoke Colony. In 1584, Raleigh sent an expedi-tion to find a suitable location for a colony. Learning thatthe Carolina coast seemed promising, Raleigh sent men in1585 to build a settlement on Roanoke Island. Most of thecolonists were soldiers fresh from Ireland who refused togrow their own food, insisting that the Roanoke Indiansshould feed them. When the local chief, Wingina, orga-nized native resistance, they killed him. Eventually, thecolonists, disappointed not to have found any treasureand exhausted by a harsh winter, returned to England in1586.

Two members of these early expeditions, however, lefta more positive legacy. Thomas Hariot studied the Roanokeand Croatoan Indians and identified plants and animals inthe area, hoping that some might prove to be profitable

commodities. John White drew maps and painted a seriesof watercolors depicting the natives and the coastal land-scape. When Raleigh tried once more, in 1587, to found acolony, he chose White to be its leader. This attempt alsofailed. The ship captain dumped the settlers—who, for thefirst time, included women and children—on Roanoke Is-land so that he could pursue Spanish treasure ships. Whitewaited until his granddaughter, Virginia Dare (the first Eng-lish child born in America), was safely born and then sailedto England for supplies. But the outbreak of war with Spaindelayed his return for three years. Spain had gathered animmense fleet to invade England, and all English ships wereneeded for defense. Although England defeated the Ar-mada in 1588, White could not obtain a relief ship forRoanoke until 1590.

John White’s picture of the village of Pomeiooc offers a rare glimpse of a sixteenth-century Eastern Woodlands Indian community. The village is surrounded by a palisadewith two entrances; evidence suggests that White exaggerated the spacing of the poles inorder to depict the houses inside. Eighteen dwellings constructed of poles and mats areclustered around the village circumference; inside some of them raised sleeping platformscan be seen. Many of the villagers are clustered around a central fire, while others areworking or conversing.Algonquian Indian village of Pomeiooc, North Carolina: Watercolor, c. 1585 by John White.



White found the colony deserted. Digging throughthe ruins of the village, he found “my books torn from thecovers, the frames of some of my pictures and Maps rottenand spoiled with rain.” He also saw the word CROATOANcarved on a post and assumed that the colonists hadmoved to nearby Croatoan Island. But bad weather pre-vented him from searching there. For years, English andSpanish mariners reported seeing white people along thecoast of Chesapeake Bay. But no Roanoke colonists wereever found. They may have moved to the mainland and in-termarried with local Indians. One historian has specu-lated that they survived until 1607 when PowhatanIndians, angered by the appearance of more English set-tlers, killed them. The actual fate of the “Lost Colony” atRoanoke will probably never be known.

At this point, Raleigh gave up on North America andturned his attention to his Irish plantations. But England’sinterest in colonization did not wane. In 1584, RichardHakluyt had aroused enthusiasm for America by writingthe Discourse on the Western Planting for the queen and heradvisers. He argued that England would prosper fromtrade and the sale of New World commodities. Once theIndians were civilized, Hakluyt added, they would eagerlypurchase English goods. Equally important, England couldplant “sincere religion” (that is, Protestant Christianity) inthe New World and block Spanish expansion. Hakluyt’s ar-guments fired the imaginations of many people, and thedefeat of the Spanish Armada emboldened England tochallenge Spain’s New World dominance. The experienceof Roanoke should have tempered that enthusiasm, illus-trating the difficulty of establishing colonies. Roanoke’sfate underscored the need for adequate funding, the un-suitability of soldiers as colonists, and the need to main-

tain good relations with the Indians. But the English wereslow to learn these lessons; when they resumed coloniza-tion efforts in 1607, they repeated Roanoke’s mistakes,with disastrous results for the people involved. As it was,the sixteenth century ended with no permanent Englishsettlement in the New World.

CONCLUSIONDramatic changes occurred in North America during thecentury after Moctezuma’s messenger spotted the Spanishships. Europeans, eager for wealth and power, set out toclaim a continent that just a hundred years earlier they hadnot dreamed existed. African slaves were brought to theCaribbean, Mexico, and Brazil, and forced to labor underextremely harsh conditions for white masters. The Aztecand Incan empires collapsed in the wake of the Spanishconquest. In the Caribbean and parts of Mexico and Peru,untold numbers of native peoples succumbed to Europeandiseases they had never before encountered.

And yet conditions in 1600 bore clearer witness to thepast than to the future. Despite all that had happened,North America was still Indian country. Only Spain had es-tablished North American colonies, and even its soldiersstruggled to expand north of Mexico. Spain’s outposts inFlorida and New Mexico staked claims to territory that itdid not really control. Except in Mexico and theCaribbean, Europeans had merely touched the continent’sshores. In 1600, despite the virulent epidemics, nativepeoples (even in Mexico) still greatly outnumbered Euro-pean and African immigrants. The next century, however,brought many powerful challenges both to native controland to the Spanish monopoly of settlement.

Review Questions1. How did the Aztecs who first glimpsed Spanish ships

off the coast of Mexico describe to Moctezuma whatthey had seen? What details most captured their atten-tion?

2. Compare men’s and women’s roles in Native American,West African, and European societies. What were thesimilarities and differences? How did differences be-tween European and Native American gender roles leadto misunderstandings?

3. Many of the first European colonizers in North Amer-ica were military veterans. What impact did this haveon their relations with Indian peoples?

4. Why did Spain so quickly become the dominant colo-nial power in North America? What advantages did itenjoy over France and England?

5. What role did religion play in early European efforts atoverseas colonization? Did religious factors always en-courage colonization, or did they occasionally interferewith European expansion?

6. In what ways were trade networks important in linkingdifferent groups of people in the Old and New Worlds?



Key TermsArchaic Period (p. 3)Aztecs (p. 7)Cahokia (p. 8)Columbian Exchange (p. 23)Culture areas (p. 4)Great League of Peace and Power (p. 9)

Predestination (p. 15)Protestants (p. 15)Reconquista (p. 14)Reformation (p. 15)Songhai Empire (p. 10)Tordesillas, Treaty of (p. 26)

Recommended ReadingAdorno, Rolena and Patrick Charles Pautz, eds. The Narra-

tive of Cabeza de Vaca (2003). A remarkable account ofthe Spanish explorer’s harrowing eight-year-long jour-ney from Florida to Mexico.

Hassig, Ross. Mexico and the Spanish Conquest (1994). A briefaccount of Cortés’s expedition, focusing on the mili-tary aspects of the Spanish conquest.

Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. America in 1492: The World of the In-dian Peoples before the Arrival of Columbus (1991). A col-lection of essays describing the wide variety of Indiancultures in North America prior to contact with Euro-peans.

Leon-Portillo, Miguel. The Broken Spears: The Aztec Accountof the Conquest of Mexico (1962; new edition, 1992).

Reprints of translated Indian chronicles, providing amoving account of the Aztec experience of the Span-ish conquest.

Phillips, William D., Jr., and Carla Rahn Phillips. TheWorlds of Christopher Columbus (1992). A judicious biog-raphy of Columbus that places him firmly in the con-text of fifteenth-century European culture.

Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the At-lantic World, 1400–1680, 2nd ed. (1998). A thorough ex-amination of the causes and consequences of themovement of Africans throughout the Atlantic worldand the rise of the slave trade.

Additional SourcesNative American CulturesBragdon, Kathleen J. Native People of Southern New Eng-

land, 1500–1650 (1996).Clendinnen, Inga. Aztecs: An Interpretation (1991).Fagan, Brian M. Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a

Continent, 4th ed. (2005).Fiedel, Stuart J. Prehistory of the Americas, 2nd ed. (1992).Milner, George. The Cahokia Chiefdom: The Archaeology of a

Mississippian Society (1998).Rouse, Irving. The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who

Greeted Columbus (1992).

West African SocietyBohannan, Paul, and Philip Curtin. Africa and Africans, 3rd

ed. (1988).Iliffe, John. Africans: The History of a Continent (1995).Olaniyan, Richard, ed. African History and Culture (1982).

Reader, John. Africa: A Biography of the Continent (1998).

Europe in the Age of DiscoveryCanny, Nicholas. Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (2000).Cantor, Norman F. In the Wake of the Plague: The Black

Death and the World It Made (2001).Cipolla, Carlo M. Guns, Sails, and Empire: Technological In-

novation and the Early Phases of European Expansion,1400–1700 (1965).

Lewis, Bernard. Cultures in Conflict: Christians, Muslims, andJews in the Age of Discovery (1995).

Marty, Martin. Martin Luther: A Penguin Life (2004).McDermott, James. Martin Frobisher: Elizabethan Privateer

(2001).Scammell, G. V. The First Imperial Age: European Overseas

Expansion, c. 1400–1715 (1989).Turner, Jack. Spice: The History of a Temptation (2004).



Conquest and ColonizationAndrews, Kenneth R. Trade, Plunder, and Settlement: Mar-

itime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire,1480–1630 (1984).

Crosby, Alfred W., Jr. Ecological Imperialism: The BiologicalExpansion of Europe, 900–1900 (1986).

De Las Casas, Bartolomé. Short Account of the Destruction ofthe Indies (several editions).

Eccles, W. J. France in America, rev. ed. (1990).Elliott, J. H. The Old World and the New, 1492–1650 (1970).Hudson, Charles. Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Her-

nando de Soto and the South’s Ancient Chiefdoms (1997).

Kamen, Henry. Empire: How Spain Became a World Power,1492–1763 (2003).

Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony(1984).

Meinig, D. W. The Shaping of America, Vol. 1: Atlantic Amer-ica, 1492–1800 (1986).

Seed, Patricia. Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest ofthe New World 1492–1640 (1995).

Watts, Sheldon. Epidemics and History: Disease, Power andImperialism (1997).

Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America(1992).

Where to Learn More❑ Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, Collinsville,

Illinois. This site, occupied from A.D. 600 to 1500, wasthe largest Mississippian community in eastern NorthAmerica. It now includes numerous exhibits, and ar-chaeological excavations continue in the vicinity. Thewebsite, www.siue.edu/CAHOKIAMOUNDS, con-tains information and photos of archaeological excava-tions, as well as a link to a virtual tour.

❑ Mashantucket Pequot Museum, Mashantucket,Connecticut. This tribally owned and operated com-plex offers a view of eastern Woodlands Indian life, fo-cusing on the Pequots of eastern Connecticut.Exhibits include dioramas, films, interactive programs,and a reconstructed sixteenth-century Pequot village.The homepage for the Mashantucket Pequot Museumand Research Center is www.mashantucket.com.

❑ Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. Occupied byAncestral Puebloan peoples as early as A.D. 550, thearea contains a variety of sites, from early pithouses tospectacular cliff dwellings. The official National Parkwebpage for Mesa Verde is www.nps.gov/meve. Infor-mation on individual houses and sites within the park,plus travel and lodging information can be found atwww.mesa.verde.national-park.com.National Museum of the American Indian, Wash-ington, D.C. Part of the Smithsonian Institution in

the nation’s capital, this museum contains excellentexhibits on various aspects of Native American historyand culture. There is also a branch, the George Gus-tav Heye Museum, in New York City. The websitewww.nmai.si.edu offers a wealth of information onpast and current shows, as well as online exhibitions.

❑ St. Augustine, Florida. Founded in 1565, St. Augus-tine is the site of the first permanent Spanish set-tlement in North America. Today the restoredcommunity resembles a Spanish colonial town, withnarrow, winding streets and seventeenth- andeighteenth-century buildings. The site also containsthe restored Castillo de San Marcos, now a nationalpark. The official website for Historic St. Augustine,www.oldcity.com/his2.html, provides considerable in-formation about the origins and development of theSpanish settlement.

United States Documents CD-ROMFor primary sources related to this chapter, refer tothe document CD-ROM.

www.prenhall.com/goldfieldFor study resources related to this chapter, visit theCompanion Website.

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