During the seventeenth century, four European countries—France, England, Netherlands, and Spain–established permanent colonies in the Americas. The European colonists invaded North America driven by dreams of wealth: wealth from gold, silver, and perhaps rare gems; wealth from farmlands; wealth from trade with the indigenous nations; and, finally, wealth from slaves. As the European colonies expanded, the conflicts with the Native Americans over land increased in frequency and intensity. Very briefly described below are some of the brutalities Spanish colonists used in their quest for wealth.
In general, Spanish exploration and colonization in North America was from south to north. From the Spanish colonies in Mexico and Cuba, the Spanish invasion spread north in four fingers described in current-day geographic terms: (1) Florida and the Southeast; (2) Texas; (3) New Mexico and Arizona; and (4) California. In their chapter on the Spanish entrada into North America in North American Exploration. Volume 1: A New World Disclosed, Dennis Reinhartz and Oakah Jones write:
“Spanish exploration and eventual settlement of North America followed two distinct geographical routes: the expansion from the Caribbean Islands to the Florida peninsula, Guale (Georgia), the Carolina coast, and briefly into Chesapeake Bay; and the advance of the frontier northward from Mexico City into the northern kingdoms and provinces of New Spain.”
The classic stereotype of the Spanish invasions brings up an image of the Conquistador—a warrior in shining armor mounted on a stallion. There are, however, some different views. Cherokee historian Robert Conley, in his book The Cherokee Nation: A History, describes the early Spanish explorers as
“…roving bands of ruffians, murderers, and thieves, operating with the blessing of their monarch back in Spain.”
On the other hand, the Spanish also engaged in an active intellectual, religious, and ideological debate regarding Indians and their place in the Spanish concept of the universe. Anthropologist Edward Spicer, in his chapter on Spanish-Indian relations in Attitudes of Colonial Powers Toward the American Indian, writes:
“Specifically, Spaniards split over the issue of what was a just war against the Indians, what was a just basis for title to land, and what were the right techniques for bringing Indians to accept the Spanish variety of civilization.”
One of the first Spanish expeditions into what was to become the United States was led by Hernando de Soto. Anthropologist Samuel Wilson, in his book The Emperor’s Giraffe and Other Stories of Cultures in Contact, reports:
“In three years, de Soto’s expedition traveled more than 3,000 miles through territories that now make up eleven states, crossing the Mississippi and going as far west as Texas.”
Dennis Reinhartz and Oakah Jones report:
“It has been estimated that the Soto entrada killed outright some four thousand Indians, approximately ten for every one of its eventual survivors.”
Throughout their travels, they depended upon the Indians for food. To frighten the Indians into submission, the Spanish often used acts of terror, including torture, hanging, cutting off hands and noses, setting their dogs on leaders. They left behind a legacy of European diseases that depopulated the Native Americans of the region for the Spanish explorers that followed.
The Spanish approach in North America focused on conquest and colonialization. In an article in American Archaeology, Diane Clay reports:
“Consequently, the Spanish were troubled by the thought of natives armed with guns on the periphery of their expanding empire.”
They generally prohibited trading guns and horses to the Indians.
The Spanish Missions
One part of the Spanish conquest of the Americas focused on religion: on their need to convert Native Americans to the “one, true religion”. The Spanish viewed Indians as heathen savages who worshipped devils. Therefore, Indians would spend eternity suffering the tortures of hell unless they were saved. In his book Intruders Within: Pueblo Resistance to Spanish Rule and the Revolt of 1680, Louis Baldwin writes:
“Baptizing someone in the true faith, even forcibly, was considered an incomparable act of love, because it could save that soul from an eternity of excruciating torment and provide, instead, an opportunity for everlasting ecstasy.”
Louis Baldwin goes on to report that--
“…any native resistance to conversion was considered the work of Satan’s devils, the friars’ tireless adversaries in the ceaseless competition for souls. Such resistance therefore had to be exorcised by any means available, and this led to a perpetual pitched battle between the forces of good and evil.”
In their chapter in History of Utah’s American Indians, Nancy Maryboy and David Begay write:
“Along with military colonization came forced Christianization. The native inhabitants were coerced into accepting Christianity, while their own religious practices were forbidden. Spanish records show that many thousands of Indians were baptized. Some reportedly were killed soon after the baptismal ceremony.”
The Spanish sought to Christianize the Indians by enslaving them. The Spanish could then force the Indians to adopt not only the Spanish religion, but also other Spanish cultural attributes. In their work on the Hopi, anthropologists Scott Rushforth and Steadman Upham, in their book A Hopi Social History: Anthropological Perspectives on Sociocultural Persistence and Change, write:
“The Spanish intended to expropriate Indian lands, resources, and labor and to obliterate all features of Native American culture and society.”
In her work on Santa Ana Pueblo, Laura Bayer, in her book Santa Ana: The People, the Pueblo, and the History of Tamaya, writes:
“The new arrivals brought Spain’s laws, Spain’s religion, and Spain’s customs, and they expected the pueblos to welcome them.”
Writing about the Spanish in New Mexico, ethnohistorian Nancy Parrott Hickerson, in her book The Jumanos: Hunters and Traders of the South Plains, says:
“The church’s position was evangelical and paternalistic; the friars considered the Indians to be childlike but sinful beings. They were to be saved from perdition through baptism and, that accomplished, their way of life was to be transformed.”
The Spanish Franciscans in the Southeast prohibited aboriginal dances, celebrations, games, and feasts. They called native shamans “devils.” Archaeologist Jerald Milanich, in his book Laboring in the Fields of the Lord: Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians, writes:
“Friars worked hard to eradicate those aspects of Indian life they saw as morally corrupt, superstitious, or at odds with Catholic beliefs.”
Indians who skipped services or religious schooling were whipped by the friars.
Congregación
The Spanish followed a policy of congregación, the forced resettlement of Indian populations in nucleated settlements. According to ethnohistorian Robert H. Jackson, in his book Indian Population Decline: The Missions of Northwestern New Spain, 1687-1840:
“The formation of large nucleated communities facilitated the conversion to Catholicism of the Indians, because many priests felt it a burden to have to visit many small dispersed communities in a large parish. Moreover, it was also easier for royal officials to collect tribute and organize labor drafts in the new larger communities.”
On the negative side, the congregation placed large populations in fairly spatially compact communities which contributed to problems of sanitation and water pollution. It also facilitated the spread of disease.
Repartimiento
From the viewpoint of the Spanish, Indians were a form of labor which could be exploited and the success of the Spanish colonies in the Americas was based on this exploitation. In their book Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization: The Impact of the Mission System on California Indians, Robert H. Jackson and Edward Castillo write:
“To maximize the profits of the colonial enterprise, the Spaniards created institutions that siphoned off surplus production for mines, commercial agriculture, and major building projects: the institutions of repartimiento and mita provided Indian labor, while tribute was the most important means of taxing the Indian communities.”
Repartimiento was the Spanish policy which gave the Spanish colonists the right to use native labor for religious education. Repartimiento functioned as a part of the Spanish mission system in both the Southwest and in the Southeast. Under this system, labor quotas and the conscription of people to serve on labor gangs were organized through the villages served by the missions (or, from an Indian viewpoint, the villages which served the missions).
Encomienda
Another important part of the Spanish policy was encomienda. In his book Indians, William Brandon explains encomienda this way:
“villages of Indians were ‘commended’ to the care and protection of an encomendero, who could exact their labor, but as free men (technically) and for pay (technically).”
In fact. the Indians were slaves and the encomenderos spoke of owning their Indians. Historians Robert Utley and Wilcomb Washburn, in their book Indian Wars, put it this way:
“It was little more than slavery; women murdered their own children rather than have them live under the conquistadors.”
In the southwest, the Spanish encomienda system involved land grants. Spain would grant a colonist a certain amount of land which gave the recipient the right to work the land and to collect tribute in the form of goods and services from the Indians who lived within the boundaries of the grants. Writer Louis Baldwin describes it this way:
“…each hacienda had its corps of Indian serfs to till the fields, maintain the livestock, tend the house, and make whatever the master wanted to eat, to wear, or to sell in the growing trade with Mexico.”
In return for the grant, the colonist was expected to help convert the Indians to Christianity.
There were some problems with the encomienda system from an Indian viewpoint. First, the Spanish required that the Indians tend to the Spanish needs and then, if there was any time left in the day, they could tend to their own fields and houses. Consequently, the Indians were reduced to a state of destitution. Working for the Spanish and trying to maintain their own fields depleted their energies, injured their health, and destroyed their independence.
Impact on Indian Life
In noting the restrictive and oppressive institutions of encomienda, repartimiento, and reducción, anthropologist Charles Cobb, in his introduction to Stone Tool Traditions in the Contact Era, writes:
“Missions served a crucial role by forcing Indians to live on compounds and to work field or other enterprises in order to produce surpluses that were intended to keep the local colony afloat as well as to enrich the Spanish Crown.”
Through the Spanish missions, the Indians gained items of material culture, such as iron tools, as well as European ideas regarding marriage and social relations. The Indians began using the Spanish language and adopting Christian names as well as their traditional clan names.
Writing about the Southwest in his chapter in I Am Here: Two Thousand Years of Southwest Indian Arts and Culture, John Ware reports:
“The Spanish introduced new domesticated plants and animals, along with metal tools, wheeled vehicles, the plow, firearms, and a new and powerful religion. They introduced, also, European diseases that decimated the indigenous populations, and institutions of economic and religious oppression that resulted in widespread discontent and, eventually, in open revolt against Spanish authority.”
From the European viewpoint, and particularly from the Spanish viewpoint, the changes in American Indian cultures were beneficial and an indication of progress. Historian Richard Flint, in an article in the New Mexico Historical Review, writes:
“To be sure, all but the most skeptical of sixteenth-century Spaniards sincerely believed that the Catholic rite and Spanish culture they sought to impart to the natives of the New World were positive goods of universal value, necessary for the ultimate salvation and commodious existence in this life. In exchange for such inestimable benefits, it was beyond doubting that the peoples of the New World ought to be grateful and express that gratitude, in part, by paying tribute or tax to their generous benefactors.”
The impact of the Spanish on the Indian nations of the Southwest and California is clearly seen today: Indian pueblos which had been founded centuries prior to the Spanish entrada now carry the names of Spanish Catholic saints, and many of the tribes which were congregated around the California missions now carry the names of the missions.
Indians 101
Twice each week—on Tuesday and Thursday—this series presents American Indian topics. More seventeenth-century American Indian histories from this series—
Indians 101: Early Spanish Invasions of the Great Plains
Indians 101: The Hopi and the Spanish
Indians 101: The Search for Cibola
Indians 101: The Timucua and the Spanish
Indians 201: The Pueblo Revolt of 1680
Indians 101: The 17th Century Wampanoag
Indians 101: New Sweden and the Indians
Indians 101: Virginia and the Indians, 1606 to 1608