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Impacts of colonialism on the Native americans
Effects of colonialism on native americans
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First of all Hernan Cortes was searching for the New World and happened to find Central America. Second of all he had no choice, Hernan Cortes feared an attack forcing him to take Montezuma hostage. Some might also argue that Hernan Cortes was a villain because he brought many diseases with him killing many people. But Hernan Cortes didn’t know he was carrying any diseases. Therefore the spread of diseases isn’t Cortes’ fault he didn’t know what would come of his
It raises the question of how the Spanish viewed the natives: as people standing in the way of their gold, or fascinating and interesting people with rich culture and
With quotations from Columbus himself, it is impossible to get a more intimate look at Columbus’s actions in the Americas. While the majority of Zinn's sources seem veritable, Las Casas, reputed as a heated critic of the Spanish forces, seems to be of questionable validity. Las Casas’s claim of 3 million native deaths following the Spaniard's arrival seems grossly inflated, especially when compared to the 250,000 deaths calculated by historians. Such a large variance threatens the validity of Las Casas’s accounts. However, since Las Casas was the only eyewitness to many events regarding the Spanish conquest in North America it seems that including such bias is unavoidable.
The first Europeans set foot on the New World was by a complete accident. Despite their differences, the Spanish was fed and sheltered by a group of Indians. The Spanish’s warm welcome was cut short when they began to spread diseases to the Indian group, killing over half of them. I can understand how the indigenous people would be enraged at these strangers, however in the Spanish’s defense they were not aware of the threat they posed to the Indian tribe. Eventually, the leader of this Spanish expedition escaped the clutches of the angry tribe and trekked onto Mexico.
The interactions between the Europeans and the Native Americans were far from peaceful. For example, when Hernando de Soto came to the Americas with his 200 horses, 600 soldiers, and 300 pigs, he devastated the Indian villages in the four years that he was on American soil. It was hardly fair for the Indians, because they were not used to the violent techniques used by Soto and his men, and they had never seen an army with guns and horses. However, despite all the violence that Soto caused, the worst the he did was not killing the Indians, it was bringing his pigs. The pigs that Soto brought were disease-ridden and it only took a couple pigs that escapes the clutches of Soto and his army to wreak havoc for the Indians.
¨There came among us a great sickness,a general plague. It raged among us, killing vast numbers of people¨ (Doc.2). The Spaniards brought smallpox
The lines which separated men of Europe and men of the New World were blurring for de Vaca. When a time presented itself, Cabeza de Vaca and his fellow compadres escaped and set on foot to reach Mexico City. Traveling across Texas on the Comanche Trail, de Vaca saw many civilized Indian tribes and eventually came across other Spaniards who brought him back into the land and rule of Spain. To his horror, the natives who had traveled with de Vaca were enslaved despite his efforts to help them. He could have stood by while the natives were imprisoned and would have been justified in the eyes of Spain, yet this is not what he did.
After the Natchez killed off De Soto’s men in the 1640’s they had an encounter with the Natchez and smoked a peace pipe. That had lasted for a few days. The soldiers wrote down their experience with the Natchez Indians, describing it as they stayed three days and each day was interesting. They each found how unique the Natchez were in the areas that they learned about them.
The treatment of the native inhabitants varied among the three explorers. The worst treatment of the natives was seen in great detail through the perspective of De Las Casas. During his expedition in the Indies, he and his comrades killed millions of the natives to take everything and anything they wanted. He stated, “And thus they have deprived the Indians of their lives and souls, for the millions I mentioned have died without the Faith and without the benefit of the sacraments. This is a well-known and proven fact which even the tyrant Governors, themselves killers, know and admit.
The exploration era, from 1519-1684, of Spanish rule in Texas was both a failure and a success. The early Spanish exploration of Texas was a failure because they went in expecting to find gold and silver anywhere they looked, but found little to none. Another failure during this era was their inability to uphold their other goal of following the will of God. On page 24, a conqueror said that the reasons they were going to Mexico were because “We came to Serve God and get rich”. However, they were not able to get rich because of the lack of fine substances like gold and silver, but they also were not very Godly when it came to dealing with the Indians.
1000 and 1500.Hornando de Soto was the first European explorer to come into contact with the Cherokees, when he arrived in their territory in 1540. Modern scholars and champions of human rights have described this event as one of the most notorious genocides during the 19th Century. Unfortunately, the Native Americans were treated very poorly when the white man arrived. As time went on it only got worse for them. In the 1830’s America was highly influenced by the Manifest Destiny which was the territorial expansion of the United States across North America towards the Pacific Ocean.
From 1540 to 1600 the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico were subjected to seven consecutive waves of soldiers, missionaries, and settlers. These encounters, referred to as the Entradas, were characterized by violent actions between Spanish colonists and Pueblo Indians. The Tiguex War, fought in the winter of 1540-41 by the expedition of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado against the twelve pueblos of Tiwa Indians, was particularly catastrophic to Pueblo and Spanish relations. (Handbook of North American Indians. pg.
In the 16th Century, Spain became one of the European forces to reckon with. To expand even further globally, Spanish conquistadors were sent abroad to discover lands, riches, and North America and its civilizations. When the Spanish and Native American groups met one another, they judged each other, as they were both unfamiliar with the people that stood before them. The Native American and Spanish views and opinions of one another are more similar than different because when meeting and getting to know each other, neither the Spaniards nor the Native Americans saw the other group of people as human. Both groups of people thought of one another as barbaric monsters and were confused and amazed by each other’s cultures.
This power imbalance and these payments are key in the subjugation of the natives. Furthermore, the paternalism of the Spanish toward the Indigenous peoples is obvious: “Captain [Cortes] stared at him [Cuauhtemoc]…then patted him on the head” (p.117). Post-conquest, and still today, “difficult relations” between the descendants of the Indigenous peoples and the “others” (p.117) still exist. The European view of the natives “as idolatrous savages” or, on the contrary, as “models of natural virtue” (p.175) demonstrate the versatile and often contradictory views held. Similarly, the Aztecs at times saw the Spaniards as gods, and other times as gold-hungry savages who “fingered it like monkeys” (p.51).
“1491” Questions 1. Two scholars, Erikson and William Balée believe that almost all aspects of Native American life have been perceived wrong. Although some refuse to believe this, it has been proven to be the truth. Throughout Charles C. Mann’s article from The Atlantic, “1491”, he discusses three main points: how many things that are viewed as facts about the natives are actually not true, the dispute between the high and low counters, and the importance of the role disease played in the history of the Americas. When the term “Native American” is heard, the average person tends to often relate that to a savage hunter who tries to minimize their impact on their surrounding environment.
