The American Promise A Compact History 3rd Edition Vol 1: To 1877 Chapter 2 Summary: Europeans Encounter the New

World, 1492 1600, pp 27-53 Introduction This chapter opens with a description of Christopher Columbus's encounter with the Tainos, the native people on the island of San Salvador, in October of 1492. Columbus's landfall

in the Caribbean signaled the beginning of the transformative impact European cultures would have on the New World and its inhabitants. But that impact cut both ways the encounter changed the history of Europe and the rest of the world as well. Europeans slowly began to understand that what Columbus had found was a whole New World (as they called it)

separated from their own by vast oceans. After 1492, neither of these worlds would be the same again. Europe in the Age of Exploration, pp. 28-31 Despite the brief settlement of Newfoundland by Norsemen around the year 1000, historically, Europeans had generally turned to the East to pursue an expanding trade with Asia and Africa. Although

risky, trading ventures could and did reveal rich new information, opportunities, and land. Mediterranean Trade and European Expansion The Mediterranean trade in exotic goods carried overland by traders from the East was dominated by Italian bankers and merchants from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. By the fifteenth century, various factors impeded and stimulated further European

expansion. The bubonic plague the Black Death had wiped out about a third of the European population, causing great hardship and distress. While the insecurity and dislocation caused by the plague led some to avoid taking risks, paradoxically it encouraged others to venture out on voyages of exploration, especially those who sought to better their position within European society. This

desire for overseas expansion was heightened further by advances in geographic knowledge and navigational aids. In the end, it was the Portuguese who took the lead in venturing out beyond the borders of the known world. A Century of Portuguese Exploration Portugal was a small and relatively poor nation located on the fringes of the thriving

Mediterranean trade. It had participated in zealous crusades against Muslims in the Reconquest. Prince Henry the Navigator was an influential advocate of Portuguese exploration. From 1415 to 1460, he amassed information about sailing techniques and geography and encouraged fresh sources of trade, pushing explorers to go farther than ever before. A key development in this quest was the Portuguese invention

of a sturdier seagoing vessel: the caravel. By 1480, the Portuguese were trading with Africans, obtaining gold, slaves, and ivory, and venturing farther down the African coast. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa the Cape of Good Hope and ten years later, Vasco da Gama led the first

Portuguese fleet to India. By the early sixteenth century, the Portuguese had established trading posts throughout the East Indies and controlled a widespread empire. The sea route they discovered to the East destroyed the monopoly of the old Mediterranean trade, eliminating the need for overland travel and allowing Portuguese merchants to charge much lower prices for the eastern goods

they imported. A Surprising New World in the Western Atlantic, pp. 31-34 Inspired by the example of the Portuguese, other Europeans reasoned that alternative routes to the Indies might be possible. One such European was Christopher Columbus. The Explorations of Columbus An Italian born in Genoa in 1451, Christopher Columbus spent years

as a sailor and learned from Portuguese maritime innovations. He became obsessed with the possibility that by sailing west instead of east, one could eventually reach Asia. Although Columbus, like most other Europeans, believed that the earth was spherical, he parted company with many of his fellow mariners in his certainty that the circumference of the earth was much smaller

than commonly believed and thus that an expedition west was feasible. In 1492, after years of seeking a sponsor, he persuaded King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to provide financial backing for such an expedition. Columbus's initial voyage to the New World and his reports of the new land's abundance excited the overseas ambitions of the Spanish monarchs. Soon

after Columbus returned to Spain, Portuguese and Spanish monarchs negotiated the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which established that all lands discovered east of an imaginary line belonged to Portugal, whereas all lands west of that line were the province of Spain. Columbus returned to the New World three more times, convinced that the East Indies were there, someplace. He died

in 1506, still believing that what he had explored was part of Asia. But his voyages proved that lands entirely unknown to Europeans lay beyond the west coast of Europe, and that they were accessible. The Geographic Revolution and the Columbian Exchange Within thirty years of Columbus's landfall at San Salvador, European perceptions of world geography

underwent a revolution. Journeys of other explorers in the wake of Columbus's voyage confirmed the presence of several large landmasses in the western Atlantic, but gradually it became clear that these were not parts of Asia. Discoveries by Vasco Nez de Balboa and Ferdinand Magellan provided conclusive geographic evidence that Columbus had stumbled on a whole new world but

they also demonstrated the enormous dangers and the impracticalities of sailing west to gain access to Asia. Columbus's arrival in the Caribbean had other revolutionary effects as well. The reconnection of the two hemispheres initiated the "Columbian exchange," a transatlantic exchange of goods, peoples, and ideas. New items and technologies were introduced into the New World, including iron, sailing ships,

and horses, as well as deadly diseases that caused epidemics among Indian tribes. American goods made the reverse trip, introducing Europeans to pineapples, corn, and potatoes. However, it took another generation for the Spanish to locate the material wealth for which they longed.

Spanish Exploration and Conquest, pp. 34-45 The early period of Spanish colonization in the New World (1492-1519) took place primarily in the Caribbean islands, where Spanish settlers enslaved local tribes and forced them to grow crops and mine the limited gold available. Far more enticing to the Spanish monarchs was the possibility of great wealth in the

interiors of Mexico and Central and South America. The mainland phase of exploration, which began with Hernn Corts's expedition into Mexico in 1519, lasted until about 1545. The Conquest of Mexico In 1519, Hernn Corts, who would become the most famous conquistador of all, led an expedition of Spaniards from Cuba into Mexico in search of

a rumored kingdom of fabulous wealth. His guide and interpreter was Malinali, called Marina by the Spanish, a multilingual fourteen-year-old girl he had received as a gift from a Tobasco chief. Montezuma, the emperor of the Mexica, heard of Corts's approach and sent emissaries bearing gifts to meet the intruders. When the Spaniards finally reached Tenochtitln in November of 1519,

they took Montezuma hostage, hoping to use him as a puppet through whom they could rule. However, after the Spanish massacred some Mexican nobles, the population revolted, killed Montezuma, and launched a ferocious assault against the Spaniards. Corts and his men fought their way out of the city, but they were determined to return to conquer Tenochtitln. In the spring

of 1521, with the support of tens of thousands of Indian allies bitter at Mexican treatment, Corts and his men besieged the city. Within months, they had completed the systematic looting and destruction of Tenochtitln and the total subjugation of the Mexican people. The Search for Other Mexicos Urged on by an insatiable lust for gold,

conquistadors moved out to search for other Mexicos. In the following few years, Francisco Pizarro brutally conquered the vast Incan empire in Peru, capturing a huge treasure of gold and silver. In the 1520s, Juan Ponce de Len and Lucas Vzquez de Aylln explored the Atlantic coast north of Florida to present-day South Carolina; both died in their efforts. In

the 1540s, Hernando de Soto and Francisco Vsquez de Coronado separately explored parts of the North American interior in search of gold. De Soto led his men on a brutal three-year march through the southeastern United States in search of riches but perished empty-handed in 1542. Coronado moved northward out of Mexico, traveling as far as Kansas in search of

the legendary Seven Cities of Cbola. After several years of wandering through the Southwest and Great Plains, he gave up, having concluded that the cities were just a myth. Juan Rodrguez Cabrillo sailed along the coast of California; his men made it as far as Oregon but were forced to turn back by a storm. The expeditions of conquistadors like

de Len, de Aylln, de Soto, Coronado, and many others convinced Spaniards that, although extensive land stretched northward from Mexico and Peru, its inhabitants had few riches worth pursuing. New Spain in the Sixteenth Century Spain dominated the Western Hemisphere in the sixteenth century and created a colonial society that exploited the New World to serve

the purposes of the Old. One-fifth of all plunder went to the crown, and leaders like Corts took the rest, leaving common soldiers without a share of the loot. After the conquest of Tenochtitln in 1521, Corts and the Spanish monarchy compensated Corts's men by giving them Mexican towns under the system of encomienda. The encomenderos often mistreated the

Indians, abusing and overworking them. Many Catholic missionaries who sought to convert the Indians were guilty of similar maltreatment. The Spanish crown itself sought to make amends, in part through a reform of 1549 known as the repartimiento, which limited the amount of labor an encomendero could require from his Indians. Despite these reforms, Indian labor had replaced gold

as the most important New World treasure. Spaniards used Indian labor for silver mining, which created immense profits for the crown. New Spain had a rigid class and caste system comprised of peninsulares, creoles, mestizos, and Indians, who made up the bulk of the population. This type of strict social stratification by race and country of origin would become commonplace

in European colonies throughout the New World. The Toll of Spanish Conquest and Colonization The conquest and colonization of New Spain devastated Indian cultures. By 1560, the main centers of Indian civilization had been destroyed and the remaining peoples completely subjugated. Adding to the culture shock of conquest was the deadly devastation wrought by European diseases,

such as smallpox and measles, against which the Indians had no immunity. By 1570, the Indian population of New Spain had fallen about 90 percent from what it had been prior to Columbus's arrival. Because the Indian deaths left New Spain with a shortage of laborers, the colonists began to import African slaves, but due to their expense relatively few

(fifty thousand or so) were imported in the sixteenth century. Spanish Outposts in Florida and New Mexico After the explorations of de Soto, Coronado, and others, North America attracted little interest from Spanish officials. In the mid-sixteenth century, however, the Spanish monarchy ordered the establishment of a few settlements in North America to give credence to

its claim over the area. Thus, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, the Spanish established an outpost on the Atlantic coastline St. Augustine, founded in Florida in 1565. Sixteen hundred miles west of St. Augustine, another Spanish outpost was founded (in 1598) by Juan de Oate in New Mexico. However, Indian revolts against Spanish rule saw Oate slaughter eight

hundred men, women, and children. Many disillusioned settlers returned to Mexico after a second Indian revolt. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the few scattered, decrepit settlers in New Mexico were no more than a dusty reminder of Spanish claims to the North American Southwest.