verona high school department of history and social

Verona High School

Department of History and Social Sciences

United States History I – Honors Summer Assignment

1.) Read the attached Digital History packet for background information. Answer the provided guided reading and critical thinking questions. The packet is available on line on the summer assignment website, and those of your teachers. You may also access by digitalhistory.uh.edu.

2.) Read the following excerpts from primary and secondary sources, and answer all of the corresponding questions.

Once you have done this, you will take a position on the issue. Your answers should be thorough, insightful, and include specific evidence. You should bring two typed copies to the first day of class – one to submit and one for your reference. Upon your return, (first or second day of class) you will write an in-class essay using these sources as well as examples from the background information from the digital history packet. (Attached) You are required to synthesize information with at least 8 of the 10 DBQ documents. Do not write the DBQ essay over the summer. Teacher Contact Information: Ms. Wallerstein: [email protected] Mr. Tamburro: [email protected]

To receive the timeliest responses, it is recommended that you send any queries to both teachers! DUE: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2014 Academic Integrity: It is expected that students will complete this task independently and in their own words.

Digital History Packet Questions

These readings can be found in PDF on the VHS summer assignment webpage, or by visiting the sites of Mr. Tamburro and/or Ms. Wallerstein. You may also find the sections at digitalhistory.uh.edu.

The Significance of 1492 1. Why is Columbus’ legacy debated? 2. What were the most important effects of the contact between the eastern and western hemispheres that began with

Columbus’s journey? 3. How did Columbus’s voyage contribute to the development of the modern idea of progress?

European Commercial and Financial Expansion

4. Why did Portugal lead the revolution of sea travel during the 15th century? 5. What were Columbus’s motivations for exploration?

Slavery and Spanish Colonization

6. Why were West African slaves imported to the New World?

The Black Legend 7. What were the 18th century French criticisms of the European discovery of America? 8. What was the “Black Legend” and how did other European countries use it to disparage Spain? 9. Who was Bartolome de las Casas and what was his connection to the “Black Legend”?

European Colonization North of Mexico

10. What were the obstacles Europeans faced in trying to establish permanent colonies north of Mexico? 11. How were English migrations to and settlements in America different from that of other European countries? 12. How were the British colonies different from Britain itself?

Spanish Colonization

13. What were the defining characteristics of Spanish American colonies? 14. What was ‘mercantilism’ and what was its role in Spanish colonization? 15. How was the Spanish view of race and class different from the English?

English Colonization Begins

16. What were the benefits of North American colonies for England? 17. What were the obstacles facing English settlers in Jamestown? 18. Why was Captain John Smith important to the Jamestown colony? 19. Why do people question the accuracy of Smith’s story about Pocahontas? 20. What was the basis of the economic success of the Jamestown colony?

Age of Exploration DBQ

Context: The time period from 1400 to 1700 C.E. is commonly referred to as the Age of Exploration. Many of the individuals who accomplished these feats of adventure and exploration, including Columbus, Magellan, and Cortes, have names that are as recognizable as any in the history of the world. Continents, countries, and cities are named after many of these men whose actions changed the world permanently. While their efforts and successes are still celebrated by modern society, the overall impact of those voyages, contacts, and conflicts have created a divided view of their cultural and historical legacy.

Prompt Should the European explorers, conquistadors, and settlers from the Age of Exploration still be glorified and celebrated in modern times? Those who celebrate these explorers tend to point to the benefits of cultural diffusion in terms of knowledge, skills, and technology, as well as ideas and religion.

The opposing viewpoint tends to argue that the benefits of exploration were one-sided and came at a heavy cost, that the explorers/conquerors were greedy and cruel, andthat European settlement led to the destruction of native culture and populations.or is assignmen, write your essay as a letter to your g

Document A: Bernal Diaz, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain.

Let us state how most of the Indian natives have successfully learned all the Spanish trades…There are gold and silversmiths…and carvers also do the most beautiful work with iron tools…Many sons of chieftains know how to read and write, and to compose books…Now they breed cattle of all sorts, and break in oxen, and plough the land, and sow wheat, and thresh harvest, and sell it, and make bread, and they have planted their lands with all the trees and fruits, such as apples and pears which they hold in higher regard than their native plants, which we have brought from Spain. 1.) To what extent does this passage portray the concept of cultural diffusion? 2.) What was the effect of European conquest on native populations?

Document B: Hernán Cortés. Excerpt of Letter to Charles V

They have a custom, horrible, and abominable, and deserving punishment…Whenever they ask anything of their gods, in order for their request to be fulfilled, they take many boys, girls, men, and women, and in the presence of the statues of their gods they cut open their chests. While they are still alive they take out their hearts and entrails. Then they burn the organs, offering the smoke as a sacrifice to their gods…No year passes in which they do not kill and sacrifice 50 souls at each temple in their kingdom… I did everything I could to steer them away from their false gods and to draw them to our Lord God. Montezuma agreed that I probably knew best…He said that as long as I taught the Aztecs our religion they would follow my directions. Therefore, I removed the statues of the false gods, cleaned the temples, and taught the people our religion. The rest of the Aztecs did not accept the new religion that I was giving them. They did make sure, though, that they did not sacrifice any more humans while I was in the city… 3.) What was the purpose of human sacrifice in the Aztec religion? 4.) What did Cortes do to end the practice of human sacrifice?

Document C: William Duiker and Jackson Spielvogel, “The Columbian Exchange” as found in World History. The European expansion into the Americas began the exchange of plant and animal species that have ultimately been of widespread benefit to peoples throughout the globe. The introduction of the horse, cow, and various grains vastly increased food productivity in the Americas. The cultivation of corn, manioc, and the potato, all products of the Americas, have had the same effect in Asia, Africa, and Europe. The “Columbian Exchange,” as it is sometimes called, was a process that ultimately brought benefits to all peoples.

From the Western Hemisphere From the Eastern Hemisphere Corn Potatoes Beans Manioc Squash Peanuts Cocoa Turkeys Silver Quinine (a drug for malaria)

5. How did Europeans and Native Americans benefit from the Columbian Exchange?

Wheat Rice Oats

Sugar Coffee Horses

Cows Pigs Chickens Smallpox

Document D: Christopher Farman, “The Ocean Adventurers, found in Voyages of Discovery Portugal was the first country in which the new spirit of curiosity had practical results in terms of exploration. The Portuguese had many motivations to explore. They certainly had a desire for knowledge, but they were also searching for wealth through trade. A nobler purpose was the belief that it was their duty to bring Christianity to distant lands. One Portuguese who stands out for his accomplishments is Magellan. Magellan achieved what Columbus first suggested: connecting Europe with Asia by sailing west. The last great unknown ocean had been crossed. The world itself stood revealed. Much remained to be mapped, but an outline was in place for future generations to fill in. The explorers of the fifteenth century and early sixteenth centuries did not set out to make a revolution in knowledge, but that is what they achieved. The Portuguese not only ended the isolation of Europe; they also set it on the path to worldwide expansion. Their voyages of discovery stand at the very beginning of the world’s first global culture. 6. To what extent did the Portuguese reflect Western values associated with the Renaissance spirit?

Document E: Arthur M. Schlesinger in Columbus on Trial

European culture, like any other large-scale civilization, has produced its share of monsters and atrocities, but other civilizations in their conquests did not show anything like the concern for moral behavior and treatment of others that Europe did in theory if not always in fact. As Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., has rightly pointed out: Whatever the particular crimes of Europe, that continent is also the source—the unique source—of the liberating ideas of the individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and cultural freedom that constitute our most precious legacy and to which most of the world today aspires. In fact, it was precisely the contact with Americas that stimulated Europe to develop further some of the principles we take for granted today as constituting the basic minimum of human rights and proper international conduct. 7.) What is the connection between exploration and the development of human rights both in Europe and the Americas?

Document F: Geoffrey Cowley in the Great Disease Migration

Many experts now believe that the New World was home to 40 million to 50 million people before Columbus arrived and that most of them died within decades. In Mexico alone, the native population fell from roughly 30 million in 1519 to 3 million in 1568. There was similar devastation throughout the Caribbean islands, Central America and Peru. The eminent Yale historian David Brion Davis says this was “the greatest genocide in the history of man.” Yet it’s increasingly clear that most of the carnage had nothing to do with European barbarism. The worst of the suffering was caused not by swords or guns but by germs. By the time Columbus set sail, the people of the Old World held the distinction of being thoroughly diseased. By domesticating pigs, horses, sheep and cattle, they had infected themselves with a wide array of germs. And through centuries of war, exploration, and city-building, they had kept those agents in constant circulation. Virtually any European who crossed the Atlantic during the 16th century had battled such illness as smallpox and

measles during childhood and emerged fully immune. By contrast, the people of the Americas had spent thousands of years in biological isolation. By the time Columbus had arrived, groups like the Aztecs and Maya of Central America and Peru’s Incas had built cities large enough to sustain major epidemics. Archeological evidence suggests they suffered from syphilis, tuberculosis, a few intestinal parasites and some types of influenza. Yet they remained untouched by the diseases that had raged for centuries in the Old World. When the newcomers arrived carrying mumps, measles, whooping cough, smallpox, cholera, gonorrhea and yellow fever, the Indians were immunologically defenseless. 8.) Why were the Native Americans particularly vulnerable to European diseases? Document G: Miguel Léon-Portilla, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico [After the Spaniards fled Tenochtitlan after La Noche Triste, a great plague broke out here in Tenochtitlan.] It began to spread during [the month of October] and lasted for seventy days, striking everywhere in the city and killing a vast number of our people. Sores erupted on our faces, our breasts, our bellies; we were covered with agonizing sores from head to foot. The illness was so dreadful that no one could walk or move. The sick were so utterly helpless, they could only lie on their beds like corpses, unable to move their limbs or even their heads. They could not lie face down or roll from one side to the other. If they did move their bodies, they screamed with pain. A great many died from this plague and many others died of hunger. They could not get to search for food and everyone else was too sick to care for them, so they starved to death in their own beds. … Their looks were ravaged, for wherever a sore broke out, it gouged an ugly pockmark in the skin. And a few of the survivors were left completely blind. The first cases were reported outside of the city. By the time the danger was recognized, the plague was so well established that nothing could halt it and spread to all of the region around Lake Texcoco. Then its virulence diminished considerably, though there were many isolated cases for many months after. The very first victims were stricken during [early September] and the faces of our warriors were not clean and free of sores until [the end of November]. 9.) What were the effects of smallpox on the population of Tenochtitlan? 10.) What was the effect of conquest and settlement on the total population of native civilizations? 11.) To what extent did these effects impact the society and culture of Native Americans?

Document H: “Indians in Latin America,” found in The World Book During the early 1500’s, Spain established the encomienda system in Latin America. Under this system, the Spanish king granted colonists the right to collect payments from Indians living in certain areas of land. The Spanish landowners forced the Indians to farm the land or work in mines. Eventually, the colonists claimed to own the land. Thousands of Indians died from overwork and harsh treatment. Spanish threats to Indian ways of life were not limited to forcing them to work for the colonists’ benefit. The Spaniards also weakened traditional tribal bonds by resettling individual members of tribes far apart so that they would have little contact with one another. In some cases, Indians were moved to specially designed villages where they would be forced to give up their customs so they could be taught Christianity and European customs and manners. During their rule in Latin America, the Spaniards also created a class structure based on race. In general, the Spaniards and their children were the highest class. Mestizos (people of Indian and Spanish descent) and mulattoes (people of African and Spanish ancestry) formed the next class. The lowest class was made up of African slaves and Indians. 12.) Explain how the Spanish benefitted from the encomienda system? 13.) What was Spanish colonization like for the natives and other non-Europeans? Document I: The Oral History of Chief Hatuey As a witness of the atrocities of the Spanish conquistadors against the Taino Indians, Chief Hatuey rounded up his people and fled to another island. He was finally captured and sentenced to burn at the stake for having organized an uprising against the Spanish. A Spanish monk who was present on the day of the execution attempted to convert him to Christianity. The friar explained to the chief about conversion, baptism, and the Catholic concept of heaven and hell. He offered to baptize Chief Hatuey. The chief requested some time to think about the offer. After a few moments he gave his legendary response. Hatuey first asked the monk, "After being baptized, where does one go after death?" The monk responded, "To Heaven." The chief then asked, "And where do the Spanish go after death?" The monk replied, "If they are baptized, they will also go to heaven like all Christians.” Then the chief bravely responded "If the Spaniards go to heaven, then I certainly do not want to go there. Do not baptize me, I would prefer to go to hell!" 14.) What was Chief Hatuey’s attitude toward the Spanish?

Document J: Bartolomé de las Casas, A Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies Of all the people of the world, the Indians are naturally the most patient and peaceful. They hold no grudges and do not start fights. Because they are so weak and willing to please others, though, they are unable to endure heavy labor and soon die of some disease. They are also poor, possess very little, and have no desire to own more. For this reason they are not greedy. They are very clean, with intelligent minds. They are ready and willing to learn, so it is very likely they will accept our Catholic religion and our virtuous customs. Yet into these sheep came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like wild wolves. The Spaniards killed and terrorized the native peoples in order to gain more gold and to make themselves richer. With their horses and metal weapons, the Spaniards began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against Indians. For example, they made bets as to who could split a man in half or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single swing of a sword or pike. They took infants by the legs and pitched them headfirst against rocks or by the arms and threw them into the river, roaring with laughter the whole time. They made some gallows where they hanged victims with their feet almost touching the ground … then set burning wood just under their feet and burned them alive. The few survivors, if there were any, would then be divided up by the conquistadors to be slaves. 15.) How did de las Casas view the Native Americans? 16.) Why does he use the phrase “wild wolves” to describe the Spanish?

Rubric for DBQ Guiding Questions 4: Student successfully responds to question using specific documentary evidence that is relevant to the essay prompt. 3: Student answers question correctly, but response is vague or fails to include all necessary evidence. 2: Student fails to answer question correctly but does include some relevant evidence OR student answers question with no evidence 1: Response is not related to the question, but approaches critical thinking 0: No response

5/28/2014 Display Content Printable Version

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook_print.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3567 1/2

The Significance of 1492 Next

Digital History ID 3567

[Close this Window]

Exploration and Discovery

The four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of the New World wascommemorated with a massive "Columbian Exhibition" in Chicago in 1893. The exhibitioncelebrated Columbus as a man of mythic stature, an explorer and discoverer who carriedChristian civilization across the Atlantic Ocean and initiated the modern age.

The five hundredth anniversary of Columbus's first voyage of discovery was treated quitedifferently. Many peoples of indigenous and African descent identified Columbus withimperialism, colonialism, and conquest. The National Council of Churches adopted a resolutioncalling October 12th a day of mourning for millions of indigenous people who died as a result ofEuropean colonization.

More than five hundred years after the first Spaniards arrived in the Caribbean, historians andthe general public still debate Columbus's legacy. Should he be remembered as a greatdiscoverer who brought European culture to a previously unknown world? Or should he becondemned as a man responsible for an "American Holocaust," a man who brought devastatingEuropean and Asian diseases to unprotected native peoples, who disrupted the Americanecosystem, and who initiated the Atlantic slave trade? What is Columbus's legacy--discoveryand progress or slavery, disease, and racial antagonism?

To confront such questions, one must first recognize that the encounter that began in 1492among the peoples of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres was one of the truly epochalevents in world history. This cultural collision not only produced an extraordinary transformationof the natural environment and human cultures in the New World, it also initiated far-reachingchanges in the Old World as well.

New foods reshaped the diets of people in both hemispheres. Tomatoes, chocolate, potatoes,corn, green beans, peanuts, vanilla, pineapple, and turkey transformed the European diet, whileEuropeans introduced sugar, cattle, pigs, cloves, ginger, cardamon, and almonds to theAmericas. Global patterns of trade were overturned, as crops grown in the New World--including tobacco, rice, and vastly expanded production of sugar--fed growing consumermarkets in Europe.

Even the natural environment was transformed. Europeans cleared vast tracks of forested landand inadvertently introduced Old World weeds. The introduction of cattle, goats, horses,sheep, and swine also transformed the ecology as grazing animals ate up many native plantsand disrupted indigenous systems of agriculture. The horse, extinct in the New World for10,000 years, transformed the daily existence of many indigenous peoples. The introduction ofthe horse encouraged many farming peoples to become hunters and herders. Hunters mountedon horses were also much more adept at killing game.

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook_print.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3568

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/

javascript:window.close();



Death and disease - these too were consequences of contact. Diseases against which Indianpeoples had no natural immunities caused the greatest mass deaths in human history. Within acentury of contact, smallpox, measles, mumps, and whooping cough had reduced indigenouspopulations by 50 to 90 percent. From Peru to Canada, disease reduced the resistance thatNative Americans were able to offer to European intruders.

With the Indian population decimated by disease, Europeans gradually introduced a new laborforce into the New World: enslaved Africans. Between 1502 and 1870, when the Atlantic slavetrade was finally suppressed, ten to fifteen million Africans were shipped to the Americas.

Columbus's voyage of discovery also had another important result; it contributed to thedevelopment of the modern concept of progress. To many Europeans, the New World seemedto be a place of innocence, freedom, and eternal youth. Columbus himself believed that he hadlanded near the Biblical Garden of Eden. The perception of the New World as an environmentfree from the corruptions and injustices of European life would provide a vantage point forcriticizing all social evils. So while the collision of three worlds resulted in death andenslavement in unprecedented numbers, it also encouraged visions of a more perfect future.

The European voyages of discovery of the late fifteenth century played a critical role in thedevelopment of modern conceptions of progress. From the ancient Greeks onward, westernculture tended to emphasize certain unchanging and universal ideas about human society. Butthe discovery of the New World threw many supposedly universal ideals into doubt. TheIndians, who seemingly lived free from all the traditional constraints of civilized life--such asprivate property or family bonds--offered a vehicle for criticizing the corruptions, abuses, andrestrictions of European society.

In 1516 the English humanist Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) published Utopia, his description ofan ideal society where crime, injustice, and poverty did not exist. Writing just twenty-fouryears after Columbus's first voyage to the Caribbean, More located his perfect society in theWestern Hemisphere. More's book, which is written in the form of a dialogue, pointedlycontrasts the simplicity of life in Utopia with contemporary Europe's class divisions. In Utopia,property is held in common, gold is scorned, and all inhabitants eat the same food and wearthe same clothes. And yet several features of More's Utopia strike a jarring note. For onething, his book justifies taking land from the indigenous people because, in European eyes, theydid not cultivate it. And secondly, the prosperity and well-being of More's ideal societyultimately rests on slave labor.

Copyright 2012 Digital History



European Commercial and Financial Expansion Previous Next


[Close this Window]


Christopher Columbus's voyages of discovery were part of a much broader pattern of Europeancommercial and financial expansion during the fifteenth century. In the span of less than fourdecades, European countries revolutionized sea travel. Led by tiny Portugal, fifteenth-centuryEuropean mariners adapted from the Arabs a small sturdy ship--known as the caravel--thatwas capable of sailing against the wind. They also refined such navigational aids as theastrolabe and quadrants, allowing sailors to accurately chart their latitude, while mapmakersand geographers greatly improved the quality of maps. In just a decade, from 1488 to 1498,European sailors mastered the winds and currents of the south Atlantic, making it possible forthe first time to sail from Western Europe to West Africa and into the Indian Ocean.

With financial support from German and Italian bankers and merchants, Portugal was able toexploit these discoveries and create a system of long-distance trade and commerce based onsugar and slavery. As early as 1420, the Portuguese began to settle islands off the WestAfrican coast. In Madeira, the Azores, the Canary Islands, and other islands, the Portugueseintroduced sugar cane. Beginning in 1443, Portugal established a string of trading posts alongthe West African coast, which soon became major sources of slave labor for the IberianPeninsula and especially for the Atlantic island sugar plantations.

Christopher Columbus was very familiar with this network of Atlantic trade. Born in Genoa in1451, the son of an Italian wool weaver, Columbus was pushed by his father into trade. In1476 he settled in a Genoese trading community in Portugal. There, he met his wife, whosefather was the Portuguese governor of an island off Africa's Atlantic coast. For ten yearsColumbus lived in Madeira and made voyages to the Azores, the Canary Islands, and westernAfrica. Forty-one years old at the time he made his first voyage of discovery, Columbus wasobsessed with the idea of finding a new route to the Far East, which would provide him withenough wealth to pay for the liberation of the Holy Land from Islamic rule. Personally familiarwith slavery and sugar production when he arrived in the Caribbean, he quickly saw theopportunity to extract riches from this new land.

Within days of his arrival in the New World, Columbus regarded the Indian population as apotential labor source. As he and other Europeans would soon discover, the Indians, especiallythe Caribs, were not as timid or as easily dominated as Columbus originally thought.








Slavery and Spanish Colonization Previous Next


[Close this Window]


Christopher Columbus believed that Indians would serve as a slave labor force for Europeans,especially on the sugar cane plantations off the western coast of north Africa. Convinced thatthe Taino Indians of the Caribbean would make ideal slaves, he transported 500 to Spain in1495. Some 200 died during the overseas voyage. Thus Columbus initiated the African slavetrade, which originally moved from the New World to the Old, rather than the reverse.

By the beginning of the sixteenth century, Spain's experiments in enslaving Indians were failing.To meet the mounting demand for labor in mining and agriculture, the Spanish began to exploita new labor force: slaves from western Africa.

Slavery was a familiar institution to many sixteenth-century Europeans. Although slavery hadgradually died out in northwestern Europe, it continued to flourish around the MediterraneanSea. Ongoing warfare between Christianity and Islam produced thousands of slave laborers,who were put to work in heavy agriculture in Italy, southern France, eastern Spain, Sicily, andeastern Europe near the Black Sea. Most slaves in this area were "white"--either Arabs ornatives of Russia and eastern Europe. But by the mid-fifteenth century, the expansion of theOttoman Empire cut off the supply of white slaves. It was during the mid-fifteenth centurythat Portugal established trading relations along the West African coast, and discovered that itwas able to purchase huge numbers of black slaves at a low cost.

Several factors made African slaves the cheapest and most expedient labor source. Theprevailing ocean currents made it relatively easy to transport Africans to the Caribbean.Further, because Africans came from developed agricultural societies, they were alreadyfamiliar with highly organized tropical agriculture. The first African slaves were brought to theNew World as early as 1502, where they would mine precious metals and raise sugar, coffee,and tobacco--the first goods sold to a mass consumer market.

The African slave trade would be an indispensable part of European settlement anddevelopment of the New World. By the mid-eighteenth century, slaves could be foundeverywhere in the Americas from French Canada to Chile. Indeed, the number of Africansforcibly imported into the New World actually exceeded the number of whites who would cometo the Americas before the 1830s. Between 1492 and 1820, approximately ten to fifteen millionAfricans were forcibly brought to the New World, while only about two million Europeans hadmigrated.








The Meaning of America Previous Next


[Close this Window]


At the time of the first discoveries, Europeans tended to view the New World from one of twocontrasting perspectives. Many saw America as an earthly paradise, a land of riches andabundance, where the native peoples led lives of simplicity and freedom similar to thoseenjoyed by Adam and Eve in the Biblical Garden of Eden.

Other Europeans described America in a much more negative light: as a dangerous andforbidding wilderness, a place of cannibalism and human misery, where the population lackedChristian religion and the trappings of civilization. This latter view of America as a place ofsavagery, cannibalism, and death would grow more pronounced as the Indian populationdeclined precipitously in numbers as a result of harsh labor and the ravages of disease and asthe slave trade began transporting millions of Africans to the New World.

But it was the positive view of America as a land of liberty, liberation, and material wealth thatwould remain dominant. America would serve as a screen on which Europeans projected theirdeepest fantasies of a land where people could escape inherited privilege, corruption, andtradition. The discovery of America seemed to mark a new beginning for humanity, a placewhere all Old World laws, customs, and doctrines were removed, and where scarcity gave wayto abundance.








The Black Legend Previous


[Close this Window]


Late in the eighteenth century, around the time of the three hundredth anniversary ofColumbus's voyage of discovery, the Abbé Raynal (1713-1796), a French philosopher, offered aprize for the best answer to the question: "Has the discovery of America been beneficial orharmful to the human race?"

Eight responses to the question survive. Of these, four argued that Columbus's voyage hadharmed human happiness. The European discovery of the New World had a devastating impacton the Indian peoples of the Americas. Oppressive labor, disruption of the Indian food supply,deliberate campaigns of extermination, and especially disease decimated the Indian population.Isolated from such diseases as smallpox, influenza, and measles, the indigenous populationproved to be extraordinarily susceptible. Within a century of contact, the Indian population inthe Caribbean and Mexico had shrunk by over 90 percent.

During the sixteenth century, when the House of Habsburg presided over an empire thatincluded Spain, Austria, Italy, Holland, and much of the New World, Spain's enemies created anenduring set of ideas known as the "Black Legend." Propagandists from England, France,Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands vilified the Spanish as a corrupt and cruel people whosubjugated and exploited the New World Indians, stole their gold and silver, infected them withdisease, and killed them in numbers without precedent. In 1580, William I, Prince of Orange(1533-1584), who led Dutch Protestants in rebellion against Spanish rule, declared that Spain"committed such horrible excesses that all the barbarities, cruelties and tyrannies everperpetrated before are only games in comparison to what happened to the poor Indians."

Ironically, the Black Legend drew upon criticisms first voiced by the Spanish themselves. Duringthe sixteenth century, observers like Bartolomé de las Casas (1474-1566), the bishop ofChiapas, condemned maltreatment of the Indians. As a way to protect Indians from utterdestruction, las Casas proposed an alternative labor force: slaves from Africa. Given the drasticdecline of the Indian population and the reluctance of Europeans to perform heavy agriculturallabor, African slaves would raise the staple crops that provided the basis for New Worldprosperity: sugar, coffee, rice, and indigo.

Las Casas would come to regret his role in encouraging the slave trade. Although he rejectedthe idea that slavery itself was a crime or sin, he did begin to see African slavery as a sourceof evil. Unfortunately, las Casas's apology was not published for more than 300 years.

The Black Legend provided powerful ideological sanction for English involvement in the NewWorld. By seizing treasure from Spanish ships, staging raids on Spanish ports and cities in theAmericas, and enlisting runaway slaves known as Cimarons to prey on the Spanish, ProtestantEngland would strike a blow against Spain's aggressive Catholicism and rescue the Indians fromSpanish slavery. But it is a pointed historical irony that the very English seamen, like Drake and






Hawkins, who promised to rescue the Indians from Spanish bondage, also bought and enslavedAfricans along the West African coast and transported them to Spanish America, where theysold them to Spanish colonists.




European Colonization North of Mexico Next


[Close this Window]

17th Century

Prior to the seventeenth century, all European attempts to plant permanent colonies north ofMexico--with the exception of a Spanish fortress at St. Augustine in Florida and a smallSpanish settlement in New Mexico--failed. Unprepared for the harsh and demandingenvironment, facing staunch resistance from the indigenous population, and lacking adequatefinancing and supplies, sixteenth-century French and English efforts to establish permanentNorth American settlements in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, the St. Lawrence Valley, Florida,and Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina were short-lived failures.

During the early seventeenth century, however, national and religious rivalries and the growthof a merchant class eager to invest in overseas expansion and commerce encouraged renewedefforts at colonization. England established its first enduring settlement in Jamestown in 1607;France in Quebec in 1608; the Dutch in what would become Albany in 1614; and the Swedes afur-trading colony in the lower Delaware Valley in 1638. As early as 1625, nearly 10,000Europeans had migrated to the North American coast. But only about eighteen hundred wereactually living on the continent in that year, due mainly to the staggering number of deathsfrom disease during the initial stages of settlement.

Seventeenth-century European settlement took sharply contrasting forms. Perhaps the mostobvious difference was demographic. The English migration was far larger and more gender-balanced than that of the Dutch, the French, or the Spanish. The explanation for the rapidgrowth of England's North American colonies lies in the existence of a large "surplus"population. Early seventeenth-century England contained a large number of migrant farmhandsand unemployed and under-employed workers. Most English migrants to North America wererecruited from the lower working population--farm workers, urban laborers, and artisans--whowere suffering from economic distress, including sharply falling wages (which declined by halfbetween 1550 and 1650) and a series of failed harvests. Outside of New England, most Englishimmigrants--perhaps as many as 70 percent or more--were indentured servants, who agreed toserve a term of service in exchange for transportation across the Atlantic.

Religious persecution was a particularly powerful force motivating English colonization. Englandallowed religious dissidents to migrate to the New World. Some 30,000 English Puritans migratedto New England, while Maryland became a refuge for Roman Catholics and Pennsylvania,southern New Jersey, and Rhode Island, havens for Quakers. The refugees from religiouspersecution included Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and a small number ofCatholics, to say nothing of religious minorities from continental Europe, including Huguenotsand members of the Dutch and German Reformed churches.

Europe's North American settlements differed markedly in their economies. While the Dutch,French, and Swedish settlements relied mainly on trade in fish and furs, English settlement tooka variety of forms. In New England, the economy was organized largely around small family






farms and urban communities engaged in fishing, handicrafts, and Atlantic commerce, withmost of the population living in small compact towns. In the Chesapeake colonies of Marylandand Virginia, the economy was structured largely around larger and much more isolated farmsand plantations raising tobacco, with an average of only about two dozen families living in atwenty-five square mile area. In the Carolinas and the British West Indies, economic life wasorganized around larger but less isolated plantations growing rice, indigo, coffee, cotton, andsugar.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the population in Britain's North American colonieswas growing at an unprecedented rate. At a time when Europe's population was increasing just1 percent a year, New England's growth rate was 2.6 or 2.7 percent annually. By the earlyeighteenth century, the population was also growing extremely rapidly in the middle Atlanticand southern colonies, largely as a result of a low death rate and a sex ratio that was morebalanced than in Europe itself.

By 1700, Britain's North American colonies offered an unprecedented degree of social equalityand political liberty for white men. The colonies differed from England itself in the proportion ofwhite men who owned property and were able to vote, as well as in the population's ethnic andreligious diversity. Yet by the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was also clear thatcolonial expansion involved the displacement of the indigenous population and that the colonialeconomy depended heavily on various forms of unfree labor, of which the most rapidly growingform consisted of black and sometimes Indian slaves, who could be found in every one ofBritain's North American colonies.




Spanish Colonization Previous Next


[Close this Window]

17th Century

Spain grew rich from the gold and silver it found after conquering native civilizations in Mexicoand South America. However, conflict with Indians and the failure to find major silver or golddeposits made it difficult to persuade settlers to colonize there. Spanish settlement in thatregion was largely confined to religious missions, a few small civilian towns, and military postsintended to prevent encroachment by Russia, France, and England. It was not until 1749 thatSpain established the first civilian town in Texas, a town that eventually became Laredo; andnot before 1769 did Spain establish permanent settlements in California.

Fixated on religious conversion and military control, Spain inhibited economic development in itsAmerican colonies. Following the dictates of an economic philosophy known as mercantilism,aimed at protecting its own manufacturers, Spain restricted trade, prohibited manufacturing,stifled local industry and handicrafts, impeded the growth of towns, and prevented civiliansfrom selling to soldiers. The government required all trade to be conducted through Veracruzand levied high excise taxes that greatly increased the cost of transportation. It exercised amonopoly over tobacco and gunpowder and prohibited the capture of wild horses. Still, Spainleft a lasting imprint on the Southwest.

Such institutions as the rodeo and the cowboy (the vaquero) had their roots in Spanishculture. Place names, too, bear witness to the region's Spanish heritage. Los Angeles, SanAntonio, Santa Fe, and Tucson were all founded by the Spanish. To this day, the Spanishpattern of organizing towns around a central plaza bordered by churches and official buildingsis found throughout the region. Spanish architectural styles--adobe walls, tile roofs, woodenbeams, and intricate mosaics--continue to characterize the Southwest.

By introducing European livestock and vegetation, Spanish colonists transformed theSouthwest's economy, environment, and physical appearance. The Spanish introduced horses,cows, sheep, and goats, as well tomatoes, chilies, Kentucky bluegrass, and a variety of weeds.As livestock devoured the region's tall native grasses, a new and distinctly southwesternenvironment arose, one of cactus, sagebrush, and mesquite. The Spanish also introducedtemperate and tropical diseases, which reduced the Indian population by fifty to ninetypercent.

It is equally important that in attitudes toward class and race Spanish possessions differedfrom the English colonies. Most colonists were of mixed racial backgrounds and racial mixturecontinued throughout the Spanish colonial period. In general, mestizos (people of mixed Indianand Spanish ancestry) and Indians were concentrated in the lower levels of the socialstructure.

Even in the colonial period, the New Spain's northern frontier served as a beacon ofopportunity for poorer Mexicans. The earliest Hispanic settlers forged pathways that would







draw Mexican immigrants in the future.




English Colonization Begins Previous Next


[Close this Window]

17th Century

During the early and mid-sixteenth century, the English tended to conceive of North America asa base for piracy and harassment of the Spanish. But by the end of the century, the Englishbegan to think more seriously about North America as a place to colonize: as a market forEnglish goods and a source of raw materials and commodities such as furs. English promotersclaimed that New World colonization offered England many advantages. Not only would it serveas a bulwark against Catholic Spain, it would supply England with raw materials and provide amarket for finished products. America would also provide a place to send the English poor andensure that they would contribute to the nation's wealth.

During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the English poor increased rapidly innumber. As a result of the enclosure of traditional common lands (which were increasingly usedto raise sheep), many common people were forced to become wage laborers or else to supportthemselves hand-to-mouth or simply as beggars.

After unsuccessful attempts to establish settlements in Newfoundland and at Roanoke, thefamous "Lost Colony," off the coast of present-day North Carolina, England established its firstpermanent North American settlement, Jamestown, in 1607. Located in swampy marshlandsalong Virginia's James River, Jamestown's residents suffered horrendous mortality rates duringits first years. Immigrants had just a fifty-fifty chance of surviving five years.

The Jamestown expedition was financed by the Virginia Company of London, which believedthat precious metals were to be found in the area. From the outset, however, Jamestownsuffered from disease and conflict with Indians. Approximately 30,000 Algonquian Indians livedin the region, divided into about 40 tribes. About 30 tribes belonged to a confederacy led byPowhatan.

Food was an initial source of conflict. More interested in finding gold and silver than in farming,Jamestown's residents (many of whom were either aristocrats or their servants) were unable orunwilling to work. When the English began to seize Indian food stocks, Powhatan cut offsupplies, forcing the colonists to subsist on frogs, snakes, and even decaying corpses.

Captain John Smith (1580?-1631) was twenty-six years old when the first expedition landed. Afarmer's son, Smith had already led an adventurous life before arriving in Virginia. He had foughtwith the Dutch army against the Spanish and in eastern Europe against the Ottoman Turks,when he was taken captive and enslaved. He later escaped to Russia before returning toEngland.

Smith, serving as president of the Jamestown colony from 1608 to 1609, required the coloniststo work and traded with the Indians for food. In 1609, after being wounded in a gunpowderaccident, Smith returned to England. After his departure, conflict between the English and the







Powhatan confederacy intensified, especially after the colonists began to clear land in order toplant tobacco.

In a volume recounting the history of the English colony in Virginia, Smith describes a famousincident in which Powhatan's 12-year-old daughter, Pocahontas (1595?-1617), saved him fromexecution. Although some have questioned whether this incident took place (since Smith failedto mention it in his Historie's first edition), it may well have been a "staged event," anelaborate adoption ceremony by which Powhatan symbolically made Smith his vassal orservant. Through similar ceremonies, the Powhatan people incorporated outsiders into theirsociety. Pocahontas reappears in the colonial records in 1613, when she was lured aboard anEnglish ship and held captive. Negotiations for her release failed, and in 1614, she married JohnRolfe, the colonist who introduced tobacco to Virginia. Whether this marriage represented anattempt to forge an alliance between the English and the Powhatan remains uncertain.


verona high school department of history and social

Documents