The Spanish conquerors known as conquistadors were hardy individuals motivated by a typical sixteenth-century blend of glory, greed, and religious crusading zeal. Although authorized by the Castilian crown, these groups were financed and outfitted privately, not by the government. Their superior weapons, organizational skills, and determination brought the conquistadors incredible success. They also benefited from rivalries among the native peoples and the decimation of the native peoples by European diseases (see “Disease in the New World” later in this chapter).
EARLY CIVILIZATIONS IN MESOAMERICA Before the Spaniards arrived in the New World, Mesoamerica (modern Mexico and Central America) had already hosted a number of flourishing civilizations. Beginning around 300 C.E., on the Yucatan peninsula a people known as the Maya (MY-uh) had built one of the most sophisticated civilizations in the Americas. The Maya built splendid temples and pyramids, were accomplished artists, and developed a sophisticated calendar, as accurate as any in existence in the world at that time. The Maya were an agrarian people who cleared the dense rain forests, developed farming, and built a patchwork of city-states. Mayan civilization came to include much of Central America and southern Mexico. For unknown reasons, Mayan civilization began to decline around 800 and had collapsed less than a hundred years later.
Sometime during the early twelfth century C.E., a people known as the Aztecs began a long migration that brought them to the Valley of Mexico. They established their capital at Tenochtitlan (tay-nawch-teet-LAHN), on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco (now the location of Mexico City). For the next hundred years, the Aztecs built their city, constructing temples, other public buildings, houses, and causeways of stone across Lake Texcoco to the north, south, and west, linking the many islands to the mainland. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, they built an aqueduct to bring fresh water from a spring 4 miles away.
The Aztecs were outstanding warriors, and while they were building their capital city, they also set out to bring the entire area around the city under their control. By the early fifteenth century, they had become the leading city-state in the lake region. For the remainder of the fifteenth century, the Aztecs consolidated their rule over much of what is modern Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and as far south as the Guatemalan border. The new kingdom was not a centralized state but a collection of semi-independent territories governed by local lords. These rulers were confirmed in their authority by the Aztec ruler in return for the payment of tribute. This loose political organization would later contribute to the downfall of the Aztec Empire.
SPANISH CONQUEST OF THE AZTEC EMPIRE In 1519, a Spanish expedition under the command of Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) landed at Veracruz, on the Gulf of Mexico. He marched to the city of Tenochtitlan (see the box on p. 413) at the head of a small contingent of troops (550 soldiers and 16 horses); as he went, he made alliances with city-states that had tired of the oppressive rule of the Aztecs. Especially important was Tlaxcala (tuhlah- SKAH-lah), a state that the Aztecs had not been able to conquer. In November, Cortés arrived at Tenochtitlan, where he received a friendly welcome from the Aztec monarch Moctezuma (mahk-tuh-ZOO- muh) (often called Montezuma). At first, Moctezuma believed that his visitor was a representative of Quetzalcoatl (KWET-sul-koh-AHT-ul), the god who had departed from his homeland centuries before and had promised that he would return. Riddled with fears, Moctezuma offered gifts of gold to the foreigners and gave them a palace to use while they were in the city.
But the Spaniards quickly wore out their welcome. They took Moctezuma hostage and proceeded to pillage the city. In the fall of 1520, one year after Cortés had arrived, the local population revolted and drove the invaders from the city. Many of the Spaniards were killed, but the Aztecs soon experienced new disasters. As one Aztec related, “At about the time that the Spaniards had fled from Mexico, there came a great sickness, a pestilence, the smallpox.” With no natural immunity to the diseases of the Europeans, many Aztecs fell sick and died (see “Disease in the New World” later in this chapter). Meanwhile, Cortés received fresh soldiers from his new allies; the state of Tlaxcala alone provided 50,000 warriors. After four months, the city capitulated.
The Spaniards then embarked on a new wave of destruction. The pyramids, temples, and palaces were leveled, and the stones were used to build Spanish government buildings and churches. The rivers and canals were filled in. The mighty Aztec Empire on mainland Mexico was no more. Between 1531 and 1550, the Spanish gained control of northern Mexico.
THE INCA In the late fourteenth century, the Inca were a small community in the area of Cuzco (KOOS-koh), a city located at an altitude of 10,000 feet in the mountains of southern Peru. In the 1440s, however, under the leadership of their powerful ruler Pachakuti (pah-chah-KOO-tee), the Inca launched a campaign of conquest that eventually brought the entire region under their control. Pachakuti created a highly centralized state. Cuzco, the capital, was transformed from a city of mud and thatch into an imposing city of stone. Under Pachakuti and his immediate successors, Topa Inca and Huayna Inca (the word Inca means “ruler”), the boundaries of the Inca Empire were extended as far as Ecuador, central Chile, and the edge of the Amazon basin. The empire included perhaps 12 million people.
Pachakuti divided his realm into four quarters, each ruled by a governor. The quarters were in turn divided into provinces, each also ruled by a governor. The governors were usually chosen from relatives of the royal family. Each province was supposed to contain about 10,000 residents. At the top of the entire system was the emperor, who was believed to be descended from the sun god.
The Inca were great builders. One major project was a system of 24,800 miles of roads that extended from the border of modern-day Colombia to a point south of modern-day Santiago, Chile. Two major roadways extended in a north-south direction, one through the Andes Mountains and the other along the coast, with connecting routes between them. Rest houses, located a day’s walk apart, and storage depots were placed along the roads. The Inca also built various types of bridges, including some of the finest examples of suspension bridges in premodern times, over the ravines and waterways.
SPANISH CONQUEST OF THE INCA EMPIRE The Inca Empire was still flourishing when the Spanish expeditions arrived in the area. In December 1530, Francisco Pizarro (frahn-CHESS-koh puh-ZAHR-oh) (c. 1475-1541) landed on the Pacific coast of South America with a band of about 180 men, but like Cortes, he had steel weapons, gun- powder, and horses, none of which were familiar to his hosts. Pizarro was also lucky because the Inca Empire had already succumbed to an epidemic of smallpox. Like the Aztecs, the Inca had no immunities to European diseases, and all too soon, smallpox was devastating entire villages. In another stroke of good fortune for Pizarro, even the Inca emperor was a victim. Upon the emperor's death, two sons claimed the throne, setting off a civil war. Pizarro took advantage of the situation by seizing Atahualpa (ah-tuh-WAHL-puh), whose forces had just defeated his brother's. Armed only with stones, arrows, and light spears, Incan soldiers were no match for the charging horses of the Spanish, let alone their guns and cannons. After executing Atahualpa, Pizarro and his soldiers, aided by their Incan allies, marched on Cuzco and captured the Incan capital. By 1535, Pizarro had established a capital at Lima for a new colony of the Spanish Empire.
ADMINISTRATION OF THE SPANISH EMPIRE Spanish policy toward the Indians of the New World was a combination of confusion, misguided paternalism, and cruel exploitation. Whereas the conquistadors made decisions based on expediency and their own interests, Queen Isabella declared the native peoples to be subjects of Castile and instituted the Spanish encomienda (en-koh-MYEN- dah), an economic and social system that permitted the conquering Spaniards to collect tribute from the Indians and use them as laborers. In return, the holders of an encomienda were supposed to protect the Indians, pay them wages, and supervise their spiritual needs. In practice, this meant that the settlers were free to implement the paternalistic system of the government as they pleased. Three thousand miles from Spain, Spanish settlers largely ignored their government and brutally used the Indians to pursue their own economic interests. Indians were put to work on plantations and in the lucrative gold and silver mines. In Peru, the Spanish made use of the mita, a system that allowed authorities to draft native labor to work in the silver mines.
Forced labor, starvation, and especially disease took a fearful toll of Indian lives.
Voices were raised to protest the harsh treatment of the Indians, especially by Dominican friars. In a 1510 sermon, Anton Montecino startled churchgoers in Santo Domingo by saying:
And you are heading for damnation ... for you are destroying an innocent people. For they are God’s people, these innocents, whom you destroyed. By what right do you make them die? Mining gold for you in your mines or working for you in your fields, by what right do you unleash enslaving wars upon them? They lived in peace in this land before you came, in peace in their own homes. They did nothing to harm you to cause you to slaughter them wholesale.
In 1542, largely in response to the publications of Bartolomé de Las Casas (bahr-toh-Ioh-MAY day lahs KAH-sahs), a Dominican friar who championed the Indians (see the box on p . 415), the government abolished the encomienda system and provided more protection for the natives.
In the New World, the Spanish developed an administrative system based on viceroys. Spanish possessions were initially divided into two major administrative units: New Spain (Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean islands), with its center in Mexico City, and Peru (western South America), governed by a viceroy in Lima. According to legislation of 1542, “the kingdoms of New Spain and Peru are to be ruled and governed by viceroys, who shall represent our royal person, hold the superior government, do and administer justice equally to all our subjects and vassals, and concern themselves with everything that will promote the calm, peace, ennoblement and pacification of those provinces... Each viceroy served as the king’s chief civil and military officer and was aided by advisory groups called audiencias (ow-dee-en-SEE-uss), which also functioned as supreme judicial bodies.
By papal agreement, the Catholic monarchs of Spain were given extensive rights over ecclesiastical affairs in the New World. They could appoint all bishops and clergy, build churches, collect fees, and supervise the various religious orders that sought to convert the heathen. Catholic missionaries converted and baptized hundreds of thousands of Indians in the early years of the conquest.
The mass conversion of the Indians brought the organizational and institutional structures of Catholicism to the New World. Dioceses, parishes, cathedrals, schools, and hospitals - all the trappings of civilized European society - soon appeared in the Spanish Empire. So, too, did the Spanish Inquisition, established first in Peru in 1570 and in Mexico the following year.
When Columbus reached the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in 1492, he brought more than gunpowder, horses, attack dogs, and soldiers to the shores of the New World. With no natural resistance to European diseases, the Indians of America were ravaged by smallpox, influenza, measles, and pneumonic plague, and later by typhus, yellow fever, and cholera. Smallpox, a highly contagious disease, was spread through droplets in the air or direct contact with contaminated objects, such as clothing. In 1518, a smallpox epidemic erupted and quickly spread along trade routes from the Caribbean to Mesoamerica, killing a third of the Indian population. The disease ultimately reached Tenochtitlan and helped make possible its conquest by Hernán Cortés. When the Spaniards reentered the city in 1521, they found an appalling scene, as reported by Bernal Diaz (ber-NAHL DEE-ass), who accompanied Cortés:
We could not walk without treading on the bodies and heads of dead Indians. I have read about the destruction of Jerusalem, but I do not think the mortality was greater there than here in Mexico, where most of the warriors who had crowded in from all the provinces and subject towns had died. As I have said, the dry land and the stockades were piled with corpses. Indeed, the stench was so bad that no one could endure it.... Even Cortés was ill from the odors which assailed his nostrils.
Smallpox ravaged the Aztecs. The Inca suffered a similar fate from smallpox and measles as well.
Throughout the sixteenth century, outbreaks of Old World diseases continued to spark epidemics that killed off large proportions of the local populations. By 1630, smallpox had reached New England. The ferocity of the epidemics left few survivors to tend the crops, leading to widespread starvation and higher mortality rates. Although scholarly estimates vary drastically, a reasonable guess is that 30 to 40 percent of the local populations died. On Hispaniola alone, out of an initial population of 100,000 Indians when Columbus arrived in 1492, only 300 survived by 1570. The population of central Mexico, estimated at roughly 11 million in 1519, had declined to 6.5 million by 1540 and 2.5 million by the end of the sixteenth century.
The high mortality rates among the native populations resulted in a shortage of workers for the Europeans, which led them to turn to Africa for the labor needed for the silver mines and sugar plantations (see “Africa: The Slave Trade” later in this chapter). Despite the Europeans’ technological advantages, the biological weapons that they brought with them from the Old World proved to have an even greater impact on the Americas.
