The Impact of Spanish Colonization on Native Americans: Administration, Labor, and Cultural Change

1. Impact of Colonization

2. Colonial Administration • Spain: four viceroyalties • Intendant System • Official exercises broad powers • Reports to monarchy

3. Plantation and Encomienda System • Spanish men move and create haciendas • Import livestock • Plantations in tropical areas; sugar • Used natives as labor • Encomienda • Used natives as labor, or demand tribute

4. Effects on Native Americans • 1492: est. 50 million Native Americans • Disease decimates population (small pox, typhus, flu, etc.) • Overwork kills many • Forced work leads to malnutrition • Violence and warfare

5. Bartolome de Las Casas • Franciscan friar • Fiercest critic of Spanish actions • Convinced Charles V to tone down enconmienda system

6. Writing of Las Casas Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides…they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7,000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation…In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk… and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile…was depopulated…

7. Spread of Christianity • Jesuit missionaries followed conquistadors • Converted natives to Christianity • Taught loyalty to colonial masters

8. Colonial life

9. Colonial Cultures • First explorers maintain relationships with native women • Colonies with women take on European culture • England: strict line drawn between natives and English • France: encouraged relationships with natives • Most women were of African origin • Mixing creates complex identities • Mestizo: mixed Native American and Spanish decent

10. SOCIAL HIERARCHY Viceroys Penisulares: Native Spaniards Creoles: People of pure European blood But born in the New World V Mulattos: African + European blood C Mestizos: Indian + European blood M & M I & A Indians and Africans

11. Columbian Exchange • Trade of goods, food, culture, disease between New World and Old.

12. Columbian Exchange: Food New World Old World Rice Wheat Barley Oats Rye Turnips Onions Cabbage Lettuce Peaches Pears sugar • Maize (corn) • White potatoes • Sweet potatoes • Peanuts • Tomatoes • Squash • Pumpkin • Pineapples • Papaya • avocados

13. Columbian Exchange: Domesticated Animals New world Old World Dogs Horses Donkeys Pigs Cattle Goats Sheep Barnyard fowl • Dogs • Llamas • Guinea pigs • Fowl (some species)

14. Columbian Exchange: Disease New World Old World Small pox Flu Mumps Measles Bubonic Plague Dysentery Cholera Malaria Typhoid • Syphilis???