the amerindians and european patterns of settlement

THE AMERINDIANS AND EUROPEAN PATTERNS OF

SETTLEMENT

Groups Members: Dannah Smart Kristal Sookdeo Rachael John Rachel Friday Suresh Bedasee Tiffany Ragoobir

LECTURER: ANSEL ST. HILAIRE, BA, MSc.

Caribbean History

OBJECTIVES

• The Groups of Caribbean Indians• Christopher Columbus 1st & 2nd Voyages • Tainos• European Colonies in the Eastern Caribbean

CARIBS Tainos

Ciboney

• It was said that there were Two main groups of Indians even though there was Three.

• The third group the Ciboney had all but disappeared from the Caribbean• Therefore today we will look at the Two main groups of Indians that existed in

the Caribbean.• The Tainos and the Caribs:

THE GROUPS OF CARIBBEAN INDIANS

THE TWO MAIN GROUPS OF INDIANS IN THE CARIBBEAN CON’T.

• The Tainos1. Predominated the Greater

Antilles.2. Where the first group of Indian

the Spanish encountered.3. They had sophisticated

agricultural techniques.

• The Caribs 1.Predominated the Lesser Antilles.2.Was believed to have practiced Cannibalism. Which could have been a largely ritualistic function3.Raided other villages for food.

CARIBBEAN INDIANS CON’T.

• The Tainos 4. Produced various crops like manioc, cassava, sweet potatoes, yams, peanuts, beans, guavas and pineapple.5. Hunted small games and fished to provide sufficient food for their tribe.

• The Caribs4. Produced no fruits, vegetables or beans, they were a warlike tribe, which focused more on raiding other tribes villages.5.Raid villages for their brides rather than making payments or doing services for them.

CARIBBEAN INDIANS CON’T.

• The Tainos 6. Had an inherited chief called the Cacique.7. Had houses made out of wood and thatch and were generally arranged in central plazas8. Villages were organized in districts and regional chiefdom and separated into classes.9.And men and women had different roles

• The Caribs6. Had a temporary war chief with no official name found for them.7. Did not have plazas and other public structures.8. Therefore there was no need to have districts or different classes in society.9. Were to busy raiding villages to study the different roles of men and women.

Christopher Columbus 1st & 2nd Voyages

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS 1ST & 2ND VOYAGES

• 1492 – First voyage of Columbus occurred in the Age of Discovery of Bahamas, Hispaniola, San Salvador, Cuba and Turks.

• 1493 - Second voyage of Columbus, he discovered Dominica, Guadeloupe, Montserrat and back to Hispaniola in which some of the Spanish settlers had remained from the first voyage.

• The king and Queen of Spain had instructed Columbus to establish the gold mines, trade with the Indians of the New World and to convert them to Christianity. Ferdinand and Isabella funded adventure by providing him with a fleet of 17 ships and 1500 Spanish male settlers.

• The Spanish settlers were interested only in seeking for gold and they became dependent on the Tainos for their food supplies.


• The Spanish developed the forced labour system for the Indians and it interfered with their production of food. The Indians were forced to work on the gold producing areas, cotton and other fields.

• 1497 – The Repartimento system had developed by Columbus, it meant that whole groups of Indians were allocated to the Spaniards for their service.

• Forced labour of the Indians did not produce enough yield from the gold mines and that same time the Tainos were treated poorly and they protested against the harsh treatment from the Spanish settlers.

• The Indians abandoned their field of agriculture, which lead to scarcity of food supplies for both the European settlers and the Indians.


• The Tainos population decreased not only by the scarcity of food but also by the diseases the European brought to the New World, which the Indians had no immunity for these diseases example small pox, measles, influenza and they also committed suicide due the failure of their economy and social structure of life.

• Because of all this serious problems Columbus had proved that he was unable to govern Hispaniola successfully.

• The Spanish settlers relied on food supplies sent from Spain while Columbus had to returned to Spain to answer questions about his leadership.

• 1498 – By the third voyage Columbus tried desperately to improve the situation but yet still he could not have controlled the Indians along with Spanish colonist and he had to return to Spain.


• 1502 - The Queen appointed Nicolás de Ovando to rescue Hispaniola. Nicholas de Ovando set sailed with 2500 settlers including trained agriculturalist.

• Nicolás was given extensive powers over the Indians, he removed all leaders of the Tainos by brutal action massacred.

• Ovando decided that the Indians had to be brought under tight control by the Repartimento system which allowed the Spanish to assign the Indian community to work in the gold mine or in agriculture

• This allow the Indians to spend six months at work and then the other six months in their own villages to recover


• Another system was introduced the Encomienda system. Each Spanish settler was given one or more of the group of Indians as their encomienda and they would work on field an in return their master ( Spanish settlers) is responsible for protecting them and converting them to Christianity

• 1511 – In Santa Domingo, Antonio de Montesinos preached a sermon to safeguard the rights of the Indian population in Spain

• 1516 – Bartolome de Las Casas was another defender of the Indians in the Spanish Empire and he was appointed to the office of Protector of the Indians.

ANTONIO DE MONTESINOS

BARTOLOME DE LAS CASAS

TAINOS

• Tanios lived in unsanitary conditions, especially in the gold mines, overworked, undernourished and vulnerable to European diseases, the Indians died in increasing numbers.

• It seemed likely that there were between 500,000 and 750,00 Tanios on Hispaniola in 1492, however, the brutality of the Ovando’s regime reduced the size of this population dramatically

• At the same time, the size of the Spanish population on the island was growing, partly because of a short-lived gold rush during Ovando’s tenure of office

• The reality was that an island densely populated by Indians before 1492 was transformed into one consisting primarily of Spaniards in the early sixteenth century.

TAINOS

• In 1519, a smallpox epidemic effectively wiped out the reaming Taino population • Even after all the work the Tainos did, it wasn’t good enough. The Gold supply on

Hispaniola did not last and the output of gold reached it’s peak in 1510 and thereafter declined significantly.

• After 1519, gold mining effectively ceased on Hispaniola. Since there was also a continuing labor shortage, the Spanish searched elsewhere for laborers. For example they raided the Bahamian Islands for Indians

• In 1509 they occupied Jamaica where thy encountered Tanios but found no gold. • The Spanish colonized Cuba and Puerto Rico. There they found some gold

SMALL POX BRUTALITY

TAINOS• The brief gold rush in each island was followed by the decimation of the Indian

population. • Hawana’s location on the route back to Spain from the mainland colonies

guaranteed its continuing importance but many Spanish settlers left the island to seek their fortune in Mexico in the 1520’s and in Peru a decade later, leaving the Spanish Caribbean an imperial backwater.

• There was another source of wealth for the Spanish on Hispaniola, which would have its own highly significant history in the region; Sugar, The Spanish introduced the cultivation of sugar cane from the Canary Islands in 1515 and by the late 1530’s -34 sugar mills had been constructed on the island.

• Although the first slaves from Africa had been imported to work in the gold mines, significant numbers of Africans were brought to work on the sugar plantations form the 1520’s

EUROPEAN COLONIES IN THE EASTERN CARIBBEAN


• During the 16th century the Spanish aimed to get control of the Caribbean . • They had lots of difficulties to keep interlopers from trading illicitly in the region

and stopping privateers from attacking their treasure fleets and their colonies.• Up until 1540 the French were most active in stealing the Spanish as they sailed

through the Caribbean on their way back to Spain.• John Hawkins’s idea was to trade directly with the Spanish colonists in Hispaniola,

undermining and undercutting the Spanish- authorized trade agreements.• In 1562 Hawkins succeeded, even though he was careful to avoid the capital of

Hispaniola and trading with colonists in the northern side of the island.


• Francis Drake had different aims than John Haokins • Drake was interested in substantial prizes and had a better strategy against the

Spanish• His most daring exploits was to attack the mule trains carrying gold & sliver from

Peru to Central America for their rendezvous with the Spanish fleet.• Drake sacked Santo Domingo in 1585 before moving on to Carlagena on the

mainland of Latin America • Years later, Drake and Hawkins were repulsed in an attack on Puerto Rico.• El Dorado remained hidden but the buccaneers and pirate sought their own rewards

in attacking ships and settlements

FRANCIS DRAKE


• Unlike Drake and other privateers, they operates independently of European governments and were made up of a mixture of disaffected sailors, religious and refugees.

• In the 17th century they escaped European indentured servants

• Living on the margins of Caribbean society often in remote small island communities, they terrorized settlers and shipping across the region.

• The buccaneers helped glamorize the Caribbean.


• The Spanish grip on the settlement could not last. • The Spanish could no longer prevent rival settlements in the 1700 (seventeenth

century), nor could they deter the Dutch from taking over many of their trade routes in the region all because they were weakened by the Anglo-Spanish wars.

• The French, British and Dutch started developing in the Caribbean countries in the 1700s (seventeenth century). Albeit at first in the eastern Caribbean, at some distance from the main Spanish colonies in the region.

• St Kitts was the first permanent non-Spanish colony in the region.• It was settled in 1624 by both French and British settlers, who shared the island

in a defensive alliance against attacks by the Spanish.

EUROPEAN COLONIES IN THE EASTERN CARIBBEAN CON’T

• Another English colonists established a colony on Barbados three years later. Barbados had significant advantages over St. Kitts.

• They had significant advantage over St. Kitts as there was no Amerindians on the island at that time, and its position on the eastern fringe of the Caribbean and against the prevailing trade winds made it difficult for colonists on other islands to attack.

• Barbados was the ONLY British island in the Caribbean to escape invasion by another European power.

• Over a number of years the British settled the islands of Nevis, Antigua, and Montserrat.


• In 1635 the French colonized two larger islands of the Caribbean which was Guadeloupe and Martinique.

• However they were slow to settle due to the high population of Caribs within the islands.

• The Dutch primary interest was trade, so they colonized Curacao, close to the mainland of South America and therefore close to trading opportunities with the Spanish. There were also salt deposits nearby which they needed for their fishing industry.

• The Dutch settled smaller islands, sharing St Martin with the French, and occupying the tiny islands of Saba and St Eustatius, which was also useful as trading bases with the neighboring French and British colonies.


• Colonies in the eastern Caribbean were largely organized by private enterprise unlike the Spanish patterns of colonization.

• The Spanish Crown in financing Columbus and his successors saw no equivalence in the colonies, instead merchants and commercial syndicates took lead in backing these colonies.

• In Barbados the colonization expedition was financed by a London merchant, William Courteen, who lost out to James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, who became Lord Proprietor of the Caribbean Islands.

• Carlisle put in place some land policies which had significant implications for the development of Barbados such as: initiating a system of sizeable land grants to planters in return for payment of an annual rent, payable to Tobacco, which meant that landholding on the island was restricted to those with capital or access to credit.


• It is likely that Carlisle encouraged the importation of white servants to provide the labor for these plantations, however his policies helped to ensure the development of Barbados as a plantation colony.

• White servants provided the main labor force on the island of Barbados as well of that of the other English and French colonies.

• Indentured servitude was a common feature of the 1700 (seventeenth century) which did not come as a surprise to the Englishmen as it was a way of socializing the offspring of the middling classes as well as making use of the laboring poor.

• Indentured servants also known as Engages, immigrated to the colonies for a period of between three to ten years, their fare was paid, and in return for their passage and their upkeep, they agreed to work for a master for a specific period of time.


• At the end of their period servants would get approximately 10 acres of land, however the land was soon parceled out causing the servants to migrate elsewhere to receive land or payment in some form of tobacco or sugar as their freedom dues.

• Voluntary servants weren’t the only European laborers in the colonies, many whites were sent to the Caribbean as a consequence of political developments in Europe. The prisoners of war during the English Civil War in the 1640s were often sent to the islands.

• Cromwell’s campaigns in Ireland made a significant number of Irish prisoners of war whom found themselves shipped to the Caribbean frequently to work on the plantations instead of serving their prison terms in England.

• White indentured servants were often treated harshly, their housing was frequently rudimentary, their food inadequate and there punishments severe.


• There were little females on the islands, and these servants had no family ties which meant a longer term of servitude.

• Richard Ligon a contemporary observer of Barbados complained about overseers beating their servants mercilessly. Due to the treatment many servants tried to escape, either to settle in other colonies or join the buccaneers and pirates.

• Whites and black slaves usually joined together to organize conspiracies and to rebel against their masters, however they usually got caught before they implemented their plan, but it indicated the depth of the servant’s conditions.

• Indentured servants were required to do demanding tasks on the plantations such as: cleat the forest lands, prepare the land for farming and crops.


• The first major export crop in the Caribbean was tobacco which was successful but still could not compete with the quantity and quality of the tobacco being produced in Virginia.

• Tobacco prices fell drastically in the 1630s which led to planers turning to cotton but that proved difficult to grow and required a significant number of capital and labor.

• Barbados planters grew Indigo which was used in the manufacture of dye for the textile industry, but this too also proved unprofitable in the early 1640s.

• Tobacco, cotton, nor indigo could transform the Caribbean colonies from their situation as small scale export economies.

• Sugar however dramatically changed the fortune for Barbados and then the other English and French colonies in the region.

INDIGO

TOBACCO

COTTON


• Sugar and Slavery would provide the basis of an agricultural and a demographic transformation in the 1700s (seventeenth century) Caribbean.

REFERENCES Heuman, G. (2014). The Amerindians and European patterns of settlement. In The Caribbean: A Brief History (2nd ed., p. 1,12,13,14,15,16). Broadway,New York, USA: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

the amerindians and european patterns of settlement

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