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C HAPTER 1 9000 BC Agriculture developed in Mexico and Peru 5000 BC– Mound builders thrive 1000 AD in Mississippi Valley 900– Hopi and Zuni tribes 1200 establish towns 1000 Vikings sail to Newfoundland 1200 Cahokia city-empire along the Mississippi...

C HAPTER 1 9000 BC Agriculture developed in Mexico and Peru 5000 BC– Mound builders thrive 1000 AD in Mississippi Valley 900– Hopi and Zuni tribes 1200 establish towns 1000 Vikings sail to Newfoundland 1200 Cahokia city-empire along the Mississippi 1430– Chinese Admiral Zheng 1440 He explores coast of East Africa 1430s Gutenberg invents printing press 1434 Portuguese explore African coast below the Sahara 1487 Bartholomeu Dias reaches the Cape of Good Hope 1492 Columbus’s first voyage to the New World 1497 John Cabot reaches Newfoundland 1498 Vasco da Gama sails to the Indian Ocean 1500 Pedro Cabral claims Brazil for Portugal 1502 First African slaves trans- ported to Caribbean islands Nicolás de Ovando estab- lishes settlement on Hispaniola 1517 Martin Luther launches the Protestant Reformation with his Ninety-Five Theses 1519 Hernán Cortés arrives in Mexico 1528 History of the Indies 1530s Pizarro’s conquest of Peru 1542 Spain promulgates the New Laws 1608– Champlain establishes 1609 Quebec; Hudson claims New Netherland 1610 Santa Fe established 1680 Pueblo Revolt A New World THE FIRST AMERICANS THE SPANISH EMPIRE The Settling of the Americas Governing Spanish America Indian Societies of the Americas Colonists in Spanish America Mound Builders of the Colonists and Indians Mississippi River Valley Justifications for Conquest Western Indians Spreading the Faith Indians of Eastern North Piety and Profit America Las Casas’s Complaint Native American Religion Reforming the Empire Land and Property Exploring North America Gender Relations Spanish Florida European Views of the Indians Spain in the Southwest The Pueblo Revolt INDIAN FREEDOM, EUROPEAN FREEDOM THE FRENCH AND DUTCH Indian Freedom EMPIRES Christian Liberty French Colonization Freedom and Authority New France and the Indians Liberty and Liberties The Dutch Empire Dutch Freedom THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE Freedom in New Netherland Chinese and Portuguese Settling New Netherland Navigation New Netherland and the Portugal and West Africa Indians Freedom and Slavery in Africa The Voyages of Columbus CONTACT Columbus in the New World Exploration and Conquest The Demographic Disaster The Village of Secoton, by John White, an English artist who spent a year on the Outer Banks of North Carolina in 1585–1586 as part of an expedition sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh. A central street links houses surrounded by fields of corn. In the lower part, dancing Indians take part in a religious ceremony.  F OCUS Q UESTIONS © “ lT he discovery of America,” the British writer Adam Smith announced in his celebrated work The Wealth of Nations (1776), was one of “the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.” Historians no longer use the word “discovery” to What were the major pat- terns of Native American describe the European exploration, conquest, and colonization of life in North America a hemisphere already home to millions of people. But there can before Europeans arrived? be no doubt that when Christopher Columbus made landfall in the West Indian islands in 1492, he set in motion some of the most pivotal How did Indian and developments in human history. Immense changes soon followed in European ideas of freedom both the Old and New Worlds; the consequences of these changes are differ on the eve of contact? still with us today. What impelled European The peoples of the American continents and Europe, previously explorers to look west unaware of each other’s existence, were thrown into continuous across the Atlantic? interaction. Crops new to each hemisphere crossed the Atlantic, reshaping diets and transforming the natural environment. Because of What happened when their long isolation, the inhabitants of North and South America had the peoples of the Ameri- developed no immunity to the germs that also accompanied the cas came in contact with Europeans? colonizers. As a result, they suffered a series of devastating epidemics, the greatest population catastrophe in human history. Within a decade of What were the chief Columbus’s voyage, a fourth continent—Africa—found itself drawn into features of the Spanish the new Atlantic system of trade and population movement. In Africa, empire in America? Europeans found a supply of unfree labor that enabled them to exploit the fertile lands of the Western Hemisphere. Indeed, of approximately 10 What were the chief million men, women, and children who crossed from the Old World to features of the French and Dutch empires in North the New between 1492 and 1820, the vast majority, about 7.7 million, America? were African slaves. From the vantage point of 1776, the year the United States declared itself an independent nation, it seemed to Adam Smith that the “discovery” of America had produced both great “benefits” and great “misfortunes.” To the nations of western Europe, the development of American colonies brought an era of “splendor and glory.” The emergence of the Atlantic as the world’s major avenue for trade and population movement, Smith noted, enabled millions of Europeans to increase the “enjoyments” of life. To the “natives” of the Americas, however, Smith went on, the years since 1492 had been ones of “dreadful misfortunes” and “every sort of injustice.” And for millions of Africans, the settlement of America meant a descent into the abyss of slavery. Long before Columbus sailed, Europeans had dreamed of a land of abundance, riches, and ease beyond the western horizon. Once the “discovery” of this New World had taken place, they invented an America of the imagination, projecting onto it their hopes for a better life. Here, many believed, would arise unparalleled opportunities for riches, or at least liberation from poverty. Europeans envisioned America as a religious refuge, a society of equals, a source of power W h a t w e r e t h e m a j o r p a t t e r n s o f Na t i v e A m e r i c a n l i f e i n N o r t h A m e r i c a b e f o r e E u r o p e a n s a r r i v e d ? 7 A 1544 engraving of the Western and glory. They searched the New World for golden cities and fountains Hemisphere by Sebastian Cabot, the son of of eternal youth. Some sought to establish ideal communities based the Italian-born explorer John Cabot and, like his father, an accomplished mariner. on the lives of the early Christian saints or other blueprints for social In the early sixteenth century, sailing for justice. England and then Spain, Sebastian Cabot Some of these dreams of riches and opportunity would indeed be led several expeditions to the New World. fulfilled. To many European settlers, America offered a far greater chance The ships depicted are caravels, the first to own land and worship as they pleased than existed in Europe, with its European vessels capable of long-distance rigid, unequal social order and official churches. Yet the conditions that travel, and the map also shows stylized scenes of Native Americans, including a enabled millions of settlers to take control of their own destinies were battle with Spanish conquistadores. made possible by the debasement of millions of others. The New World 8 C H. 1 A New World THE FIRST AMERICANS became the site of many forms of unfree labor, including indentured servitude, forced labor, and one of the most brutal and unjust systems ever devised by man, plantation slavery. The conquest and settlement of the Western Hemisphere opened new chapters in the long histories of both freedom and slavery. There was a vast human diversity among the peoples thrown into con- tact with one another in the New World. Exploration and settlement took place in an era of almost constant warfare among European nations, each racked by internal religious, political, and regional conflicts. Native Americans and Africans consisted of numerous groups with their own languages and cultures. They were as likely to fight one another as to unite against the European newcomers. All these peoples were changed by their integration into the new Atlantic economy. The complex interac- tions of Europeans, American Indians, and Africans would shape American history during the colonial era. THE FIRST AMERICANS THE SETTLING OF THE AMERICAS The residents of the Americas were no more a single group than Europeans or Africans. They spoke hundreds of different languages and lived in numerous kinds of societies. Most, however, were descended from bands of hunters and fishers who had crossed the Bering Strait via a land bridge at various times between 15,000 and 60,000 years ago—the exact dates are hotly debated by archaeologists. Others may have arrived by sea from Asia or Pacific islands. Around 14,000 years ago, when glaciers began to melt at the end of the last Ice Age, the land link became submerged under water, once again separating the Western Hemisphere from Asia. History in North and South America did not begin with the coming of Europeans. The New World was new to Europeans but an ancient home- land to those who already lived there. The hemisphere had witnessed many changes during its human history. First, the early inhabitants and their descendants spread across the two continents, reaching the tip of South America perhaps 11,000 years ago. As the climate warmed, they faced a food crisis as the immense animals they hunted, including woolly mam- moths and giant bison, became extinct. Around 9,000 years ago, at the same time that agriculture was being developed in the Near East, it also emerged in modern-day Mexico and the Andes, and then spread to other parts of the Americas, making settled civilizations possible. Throughout the hemisphere, maize (corn), squash, and beans formed the basis of agri- culture. The absence of livestock in the Western Hemisphere, however, limited farming by preventing the plowing of fields and the application of natural fertilizer. W h a t w e r e t h e m a j o r p a t t e r n s o f Na t i v e A m e r i c a n l i f e i n N o r t h A m e r i c a b e f o r e E u r o p e a n s a r r i v e d ? 9 THE FIRST AMERICANS Chukchi t ra i t gS Pen insu la r in Be Ale ut n ia Isl an ds NORTH AMERICA MOHAWK ONEIDA Pac ific O ce an ONONDAGA CAYUGA SENECA r i ve io R Cahokia Oh Chaco CHEROKEE Mi ssippi R. Canyon ssi HOPI PUEBLO CHICKASAW ZUNI At la nt i c O c ean Poverty Point CHOCTAW Gulf of Mexico Chichen Itzá S AZ Tenochtitlán AN Yu cat án TEC MAY Pe n in s ul a S Caribbean Sea Monte Alban Palenque CE NT RAL 0 500 1000 miles AM ERIC 0 500 1000 kilometers A Possible migration routes SOUTH AMERICA I NC S A A map illustrating the probable routes by INDIAN SOCIETIES OF THE AMERICAS which the first Americans settled the North and South America were hardly an empty wilderness when Western Hemisphere at various times Europeans arrived. The hemisphere contained cities, roads, irrigation sys- between 15,000 and 60,000 years ago. tems, extensive trade networks, and large structures such as the pyramid- temples whose beauty still inspires wonder. With a population close to 10 C H. 1 A New World THE FIRST AMERICANS Map of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán and the Gulf of Mexico, probably produced by 250,000, Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire in what is now a Spanish conquistador and published in Mexico, was one of the world’s largest cities. Its great temple, splendid royal 1524 in an edition of the letters of Hernán palace, and a central market comparable to that of European capitals made Cortés. The map shows the city’s complex the city seem “like an enchanted vision,” according to one of the first system of canals, bridges, and dams, with Europeans to encounter it. Further south lay the Inca kingdom, centered in the Great Temple at the center. Gardens modern-day Peru. Its population of perhaps 12 million was linked by a and a zoo are also visible. complex system of roads and bridges that extended 2,000 miles along the Andes mountain chain. When Europeans arrived, a wide variety of native peoples lived within the present borders of the United States. Indian civilizations in North America had not developed the scale, grandeur, or centralized organization of the Aztec and Inca societies to their south. North American Indians lacked the technologies Europeans had mastered, such as metal tools and machines, gunpowder, and the scientific knowledge necessary for long- distance navigation. No society north of Mexico had achieved literacy (although some made maps on bark and animal hides). They also lacked wheeled vehicles, since they had no domestic animals like horses or oxen to pull them. Their “backwardness” became a central justification for European conquest. But, over time, Indian societies had perfected tech- niques of farming, hunting, and fishing, developed structures of political power and religious belief, and engaged in far-reaching networks of trade and communication. W h a t w e r e t h e m a j o r p a t t e r n s o f Na t i v e A m e r i c a n l i f e i n N o r t h A m e r i c a b e f o r e E u r o p e a n s a r r i v e d ? 11 MOUND BUILDERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER VALLEY Remarkable physical remains still exist from some of the early civilizations in North America. Around 3,500 years ago, before Egyptians built the pyramids, Native Americans constructed a large community centered on a series of giant semicircular mounds on a bluff overlook- ing the Mississippi River in present-day Louisiana. Known today as Poverty Point, it was a commercial and governmental center whose residents established trade routes throughout the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys. Archaeologists have found there copper from present-day Minnesota and Canada, and flint mined in Indiana. More than a thousand years before Columbus sailed, Indians of the Ohio River valley, called “mound builders” by eighteenth-century settlers who A modern aerial photograph of the ruins of encountered the large earthen burial mounds they created, had traded Pueblo Bonita, in Chaco Canyon in across half the continent. After their decline, another culture flourished in present-day New Mexico. The rectangular the Mississippi River valley, centered on the city of Cahokia near present- structures are the foundations of day St. Louis, a fortified community with between 10,000 and 30,000 inhab- dwellings, and the circular ones are kivas, itants in the year 1200. Its residents, too, built giant mounds, the largest of or places of religious worship. which stood 100 feet high and was topped by a temple. Little is known of Cahokia’s political and economic structure. But it stood as the largest set- tled community in what is now the United States until surpassed in popu- lation by New York and Philadelphia around 1800. WESTERN INDIANS In the arid northeastern area of present-day Arizona, the Hopi and Zuni and their ancestors engaged in settled village life for over 3,000 years. During the peak of the region’s culture, between the years 900 and 1200, these peoples built great planned towns with large multiple-family dwellings in local canyons, constructed dams and canals to gather and distribute water, and conducted trade with groups as far away as central Mexico and the Mississippi River valley. The largest of their structures, Pueblo Bonita, in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, stood five stories high and had over 600 rooms. Not until the 1880s was a dwelling of comparable size constructed in the United States. After the decline of these communities, probably because of drought, survivors moved to the south and east, where they established villages and perfected the techniques of desert farming, complete with irrigation sys- tems to provide water for crops of corn, beans, and cotton. These were the Cliff dwellings in Cañon de Chelly, in the people Spanish explorers called the Pueblo Indians (because they lived in area of modern-day Arizona, built small villages, or pueblos, when the Spanish first encountered them in the sometime between 300 and 1300 and sixteenth century). photographed in 1873. 12 C H. 1 A New World THE FIRST AMERICANS Another drawing by the artist John White shows ten male and seven female Native Americans dancing around a circle of posts in a religious ritual. White was a careful observer of their clothing, body markings, and objects used in the ceremony. On the Pacific coast, another densely populated region, hundreds of dis- tinct groups resided in independent villages and lived primarily by fishing, hunting sea mammals, and gathering wild plants and nuts. As many as 25 million salmon swam up the Columbia River each year, providing Indians with abundant food. On the Great Plains, with its herds of buffalo—descendants of the prehistoric giant bison—many Indians were hunters (who tracked animals on foot before the arrival of horses with the Spanish), but others lived in agricultural communities. INDIANS OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA In eastern North America, hundreds of tribes inhabited towns and villages scattered from the Gulf of Mexico to present-day Canada. They lived on corn, squash, and beans, supplemented by fishing and hunting deer, turkeys, and other animals. Indian trade routes crisscrossed the eastern part of the con- tinent. Tribes frequently warred with one another to obtain goods, seize captives, or take revenge for the killing of relatives. They conducted diplo- macy and made peace. Little in the way of centralized authority existed until, in the fifteenth century, various leagues or confederations emerged in an effort to bring order to local regions. In the Southeast, the Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaw each united dozens of towns in loose alliances. In present-day New York and Pennsylvania, five Iroquois peoples—the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Onondaga—formed a Great League of Peace, bringing a period of stability to the area. Each year a Great Council, with representatives from the five groupings, met to coordinate behavior toward outsiders. The most striking feature of Native American society at the time Europeans arrived was its sheer diversity. Each group had its own political system and set of religious beliefs, and North America was home to literally hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages. Indians had no sense of W h a t w e r e t h e m a j o r p a t t e r n s o f Na t i v e A m e r i c a n l i f e i n N o r t h A m e r i c a b e f o r e E u r o p e a n s a r r i v e d ? 13 NATIVE WAYS OF LIFE, ca. 1500 TLINGIT INUIT Hudson INUIT Bay TSHIMSHIAN KWAKIUTLS thinly populated MICMAC SHUSWAP CREE PENOBSCOT NOOTKIN KOOTENAY ABENAKI BLACKFEET ASSINIBOINE CHIPPEWA ALGONQUIAN SKAGIT L. Su perior WALLA CHEYENNE SIOUX CHINOOK WALLA FLATHEAD L. NEZ CHIPPEWA WAMPANOAG an HURON Ontario MOHEGAN Hu PERCE HIDATSA L. Michig CAYUSE OTTOWA ro n SIOUX MENOMINEE L. PEQUOT TILLAMOOK MANDAN thin NEUTRAL IROQUOIS KLAMATH ARAPAHO rie NARRAGANSETT KIOWA WINNEBAGO L. E POMO MODOC ly PAWNEE IOWA SUSQUEHANNOCK SHOSHONE POTAWATOMI ERIE MOSOPELEA po MAIDU SAUK pu COSTANO SHAWNEE te KICKAPOO la d ILLINOIS PAMLICO UTE WICHITA KASKASKIA CHEROKEE TUSCARORA SOUTHERN CHEMEHUEVI PAIUTE CHUMASH SERRANO COMANCHE CHICKASAW LUISENO HOPI ZUNI TEWA CREEK CAHUILLA CADDO YAMASEE DIEGUENO MESCALERO CHOCTAW TIMUCUA NATCHEZ APALACHEE JUMANO CONCHO KABANKAWA YACHI CALUSA LAGUERNO Pa c if i c Gulf of Mexico COAHUILTEC Oc ean 0 250 500 miles ARAWAK 0 250 500 kilometers Ways of Life in North America, AD 1515 Arctic hunter-gatherers Non-horticultural rancherian peoples Marginal horticultural hunters Subarctic hunter-fisher-gatherers Rancherian peoples with low-intensity horticulture River-based horticultural chiefdoms Northwest coast marine economy Rancherian peoples with intensive horticulture Orchard-growing alligator hunters Plains hunter-gatherers Pueblos with intensive horticulture Tidewater horticulturalists Plains horticulturalists Seacoast foragers Fishers and wild rice gatherers The native population of North America at the time of first contact with Europeans “America” as a continent or hemisphere. They did not think of themselves consisted of numerous tribes with their own as a single unified people, an idea invented by Europeans and only many languages, religious beliefs, and economic years later adopted by Indians themselves. Indian identity centered on the and social structures. This map suggests the immediate social group—a tribe, village, chiefdom, or confederacy. When numerous ways of life existing at the time. Europeans first arrived, many Indians saw them as simply one group among many. Their first thought was how to use the newcomers to 14 C H. 1 A New World THE FIRST AMERICANS enhance their standing in relation to other native peoples, rather than to unite against them. The sharp dichotomy between Indians and “white” per- sons did not emerge until later in the colonial era. NATIVE AMERICAN RELIGION Nonetheless, the diverse Indian societies of North America did share certain common characteristics. Their lives were steeped in religious ceremonies often directly related to farming and hunting. Spiritual power, they believed, suffused the world, and sacred spirits could be found in all kinds of living and inanimate things—animals, plants, trees, water, and wind. Through religious ceremonies, they aimed to harness the aid of powerful supernatural forces to serve the interests of man. In some tribes, hunters performed rituals to placate the spirits of animals they had killed. Other reli- gious ceremonies sought to engage the spiritual power of nature to secure abundant crops or fend off evil spirits. Indian villages also held elaborate religious rites, participation in which helped to define the boundaries of community membership. In all Indian societies, those who seemed to pos- sess special abilities to invoke supernatural powers—shamans, medicine men, and other religious leaders—held positions of respect and authority. Indian religion did not pose a sharp distinction between the natural and the supernatural, or secular and religious activities. In some respects, how- ever, Indian religion was not that different from popular spiritual beliefs in Europe. Most Indians held that a single Creator stood atop the spiritual hierarchy. Nonetheless, nearly all Europeans arriving in the New World quickly concluded that Indians were in dire need of being converted to a true, Christian faith. LAND AND PROPERTY Equally alien in European eyes were Indian attitudes toward property. Numerous land systems existed among Native Americans. Generally, how- ever, village leaders assigned plots of land to individual families to use for a season or more, and tribes claimed specific areas for hunting. Unclaimed land remained free for anyone to use. Families “owned” the right to use land, but they did not own the land itself. Indians saw land, the basis of eco- nomic life for both hunting and farming societies, as a common resource, not an economic commodity. In the nineteenth century, the Indian leader Black Hawk would explain why, in his view, land could not be bought and sold: “The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon, and cultivate as far as necessary for their subsistence; and so long as they occupy and culti- vate it, they have a right to the soil.” Few if any Indian societies were famil- iar with the idea of a fenced-off piece of land belonging forever to a single individual or family. There was no market in real estate before the coming of Europeans. Nor were Indians devoted to the accumulation of wealth and material goods. Especially east of the Mississippi River, where villages moved every few years when soil or game became depleted, acquiring numerous posses- sions made little sense. However, status certainly mattered in Indian soci- eties. Tribal leaders tended to come from a small number of families, and chiefs lived more splendidly than average members of society. But their W h a t w e r e t h e m a j o r p a t t e r n s o f Na t i v e A m e r i c a n l i f e i n N o r t h A m e r i c a b e f o r e E u r o p e a n s a r r i v e d ? 15 A Catawba map illustrates the differences between Indian and European conceptions of landed property. The map depicts not possession of a specific territory, but trade and diplomatic connections between various native groups and with the colony of Virginia, represented by the rectangle on the lower right. reputation often rested on their willingness to share goods with others rather than hoarding them for themselves. A few Indian societies had rigid social distinctions. Among the Natchez, descendants of the mound-building Mississippian culture, a chief, or “Great Sun,” occupied the top of the social order, with nobles, or “lesser suns,” below him, and below them, the common people. In general, however, wealth mattered far less in Indian society than in European society at the time. Generosity was among the most valued social qualities, and gift giving was essential to Indian society. Trade, for example, meant more than a commercial transaction—it was accompanied by elaborate ceremonies of gift exchange. A central part of Indian economies, gift giving bound dif- ferent groups in webs of mutual obligation. Although Indians had no expe- rience of the wealth enjoyed at the top of European society, under normal circumstances no one in Indian societies went hungry or experienced the extreme inequalities of Europe. “There are no beggars among them,” reported the English colonial leader Roger Williams of New England’s Indians. GENDER RELATIONS The system of gender relations in most Indian societies also differed markedly from that of Europe. Membership in a family defined women’s lives, but they openly engaged in premarital sexual relations and could even choose to divorce their husbands. Most, although not all, Indian societies were matrilineal—that is, centered on clans or kinship groups in which children became members of the mother’s family, not the father’s. Tribal leaders were almost always men, but women played an important role in certain religious ceremonies, and female elders often helped to select male village leaders and took part in tribal meetings. Under English law, a mar- ried man controlled the family’s property and a wife had no independent 16 C H. 1 A New World THE FIRST AMERICANS Indians fishing, in a 1585 drawing by John White. The canoe is filled with fish, legal identity. In contrast, Indian women owned dwellings and tools, and a while two men harpoon others in the husband generally moved to live with the family of his wife. In Indian soci- background. Among the wildlife eties, men contributed to the community’s well-being and demonstrated illustrated are hammerhead sharks their masculinity by success in hunting or, in the Pacific Northwest, by and catfish. catching fish with nets and harpoons. Because men were frequently away on the hunt, women took responsibility not only for household duties but for most agricultural work as well. Among the Pueblo of the Southwest, however, where there was less hunting than in the East, men were the pri- mary cultivators. EUROPEAN VIEWS OF THE INDIANS Europeans tended to view Indians in extreme terms. They were regarded either as “noble savages,” gentle, friendly, and superior in some ways to Europeans, or as uncivilized and brutal savages. Giovanni da Verrazano, a Florentine navigator who sailed up and down the eastern coast of North America in 1524, described Indians he encountered as “beautiful of stature and build.” (For their part, many Indians, whose diet was probably more nutritious than that of most Europeans, initially found the newcomers weak and ugly.) Over time, however, negative images of Indians came to overshadow positive ones. Early European descriptions of North American Indians as barbaric centered on three areas—religion, land use, and gender relations. Whatever their country of origin, European newcomers concluded that Indians lacked genuine religion, or in fact worshiped the devil. Their shamans and herb healers were called “witch doctors,” their numerous cer- emonies and rituals at best a form of superstition, their belief in a world alive with spiritual power a worship of “false gods.” Christianity presented W h a t w e r e t h e m a j o r p a t t e r n s o f Na t i v e A m e r i c a n l i f e i n N o r t h A m e r i c a b e f o r e E u r o p e a n s a r r i v e d ? 17 no obstacle to the commercial use of the land, and indeed in some ways encouraged it, since true religion was thought to promote the progress of civilization. Whereas the Indians saw nature as a world of spirits and souls, the Europeans viewed it as a collection of potential commodities, a source of economic opportunity. Europeans invoked the Indians’ distinctive pattern of land use and ideas about property to answer the awkward question raised by a British minis- ter at an early stage of England’s colonization: “By what right or warrant can we enter into the land of these Savages, take away their rightful inher- itance from them, and plant ourselves in their places?” While the Spanish claimed title to land in America by right of conquest and papal authority, the English, French, and Dutch came to rely on the idea that Indians had not actually “used” the land and thus had no claim to it. Despite the Indians’ highly developed agriculture and well-established towns, Indian women planting crops while men Europeans frequently described them as nomads without settled commu- break the sod. An engraving by Theodor nities. The land was thus deemed to be a vacant wilderness ready to be de Bry, based on a painting by Jacques Le claimed by newcomers who would cultivate and improve it. European set- Moyne de Morgues. Morgues was part of tlers believed that mixing one’s labor with the earth, which Indians sup- an expedition of French Huguenots to posedly had failed to do, gave one title to the soil. Florida in 1564; he escaped when the In the Indians’ gender division of labor and matrilineal family struc- Spanish destroyed the outpost in the tures, Europeans saw weak men and mistreated women. Hunting and following year. fishing, the primary occupations of Indian men, were considered leisure activities in much of Europe, not “real” work. Because Indian women worked in the fields, Europeans often described them as lacking free- dom. They were “not much better than slaves,” in the words of one English commentator. Europeans considered Indian men “unmanly”— too weak to exercise authority within their families and restrain their wives’ open sexuality, and so lazy that they forced their wives to do most of the productive labor. Throughout North America, Europeans promot- A seventeenth-century engraving by a ed the ideas that women should confine themselves to household work French Jesuit priest illustrates many and that men ought to exercise greater authority within their families. Europeans’ view of Indian religion. A Europeans insisted that by subduing the Indians, they were actually demon hovers over an Iroquois longhouse, bringing them freedom—the freedom of true religion, private property, suggesting that Indians worship the devil. and the liberation of both men and women from uncivilized and unchristian gender roles. INDIAN FREEDOM, EUROPEAN FREEDOM INDIAN FREEDOM And what of liberty as the native inhabitants of the New World understood it? Many Europeans saw Indians as embodying freedom. The Iroquois, wrote one colonial official, held “such absolute notions of liberty that they allow of no kind of superiority of one over another, and banish all servitude from their territories.” But most colonizers quickly concluded that the notion of “freedom” was alien to Indian societies. Early English and French dictionaries of Indian languages contained no entry for “freedom” or liberté. Nor, wrote one early trader, did Indians have “words to express despotic power, arbitrary kings, oppressed or obedient subjects.” Indeed, Europeans considered Indians barbaric in part because they did not appear to live under established governments or fixed laws, and had no 18 C H. 1 A New World INDIAN FREEDOM, EUROPEAN FREEDOM respect for authority. “They are born, live, and die in a liberty without restraint,” wrote one religious missionary. In a sense, they were too free, lacking the order and discipline that Europeans considered the hallmarks of civilization. Even slavery, wrote Richard Eden, an English writer of the mid-sixteenth century, was preferable to the Indians’ condition before European contact, which he described as “rather a horrible licentiousness than a liberty.” When Giovanni da Verrazano described the Indians as liv- ing in “absolute freedom,” he did not intend this as a compliment. The familiar modern understanding of freedom as personal independ- ence, often based on ownership of private property, had little meaning in most Indian societies. But Indians certainly had their own ideas of freedom. While the buying and selling of slaves was unknown, small-scale slavery existed in some Indian societies. So too did the idea of personal liberty as the opposite of being held as a slave. Indians would bitterly resent the efforts of some Europeans to reduce them to slavery. Although individuals were expected to think for themselves and did not always have to go along with collective decision making, Indian men and women judged one another according to their ability to live up to widely understood ideas of appropriate behavior. Far more important than indi- vidual autonomy were kinship ties, the ability to follow one’s spiritual val- ues, and the well-being and security of one’s community. In Indian culture, group autonomy and self-determination, and the mutual obligations that came with a sense of belonging and connectedness, took precedence over individual freedom. Ironically, the coming of Europeans, armed with their own language of liberty, would make freedom a preoccupation of American Indians, as part and parcel of the very process by which they were reduced to dependence on the colonizers. CHRISTIAN LIBERTY On the eve of colonization, Europeans held numerous ideas of freedom. Some were as old as the city-states of ancient Greece, others arose during the political struggles of the early modern era. Some laid the foundations for modern conceptions of freedom, others are quite unfamiliar today. Freedom was not a single idea but a collection of distinct rights and privi- leges, many enjoyed by only a small portion of the population. One conception common throughout Europe understood freedom less as a political or social status than as a moral or spiritual condition. Freedom meant abandoning the life of sin to embrace the teachings of Christ. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is,” declares the New Testament, “there is lib- erty.” In this definition, servitude and freedom were mutually reinforcing, not contradictory states, since those who accepted the teachings of Christ simultaneously became “free from sin” and “servants to God.” “Christian liberty” had no connection to later ideas of religious tolera- tion, a notion that scarcely existed anywhere on the eve of colonization. Every nation in Europe had an established church that decreed what forms of religious worship and belief were acceptable. Dissenters faced persecu- tion by the state as well as condemnation by church authorities. Religious uniformity was thought to be essential to public order; the modern idea that a person’s religious beliefs and practices are a matter of private choice, not legal obligation, was almost unknown. The religious wars that racked How did Indian and European ideas of freedom differ on the eve of contact? 19 Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries centered on which reli- gion would predominate in a kingdom or region, not the right of individu- als to choose which church in which to worship. FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY In its secular form, the equating of liberty with obedience to a higher authority suggested that freedom meant not anarchy but obedience to law. Aristotle had described the law as liberty’s “salvation,” not its enemy. The identification of freedom with the rule of law did not, however, mean that all subjects of the crown enjoyed the same degree of freedom. Early modern European societies were extremely hierarchical, with marked gradations of social status ranging from the king and hereditary aristocracy down to the urban and rural poor. Inequality was built into virtually every social relationship. The king claimed to rule by the authority of God. Persons of high rank demanded deference from those below them. Less than 5 percent of the population monopolized English economic wealth and political power. Within families, men exercised authority over their wives and children. According to the widespread legal doctrine known as “coverture,” when a woman married she surrendered her legal identity, which became “cov- ered” by that of her husband. She could not own property or sign contracts in her own name, control her wages if she worked, write a separate will, or, except in the rarest of circumstances, go to court seeking a divorce. The husband conducted business and testified in court for the entire family. He had the exclusive right to his wife’s “company,” including domestic labor and sexual relations. Everywhere in Europe, family life depended on male dominance and female submission. Indeed, political writers of the sixteenth century explicitly compared the king’s authority over his subjects with the husband’s over his family. Both were ordained by God. To justify this argument, they referred to a passage in the New Testament: “As the man is the head of the woman, so is Christ the head of the Church.” Neither kind of authority could be challenged without threatening the fabric of social order. LIBERTY AND LIBERTIES In this hierarchical society, liberty came from knowing one’s social place and fulfilling the duties appropriate to one’s rank. Most men lacked the freedom that came with economic independence. Property qualifications and other restrictions limited the electorate to a minuscule part of the adult male population. The law required strict obedience of employees, and breaches of labor contracts carried criminal penalties. European ideas of freedom still bore the imprint of the Middle Ages, when “liberties” meant formal, specific privileges such as self-government, exemption from taxation, or the right to practice a particular trade, granted to individuals or groups by contract, royal decree, or purchase. One legal dic- tionary defined a liberty as “a privilege... by which men may enjoy some benefit beyond the ordinary subject.” Only those who enjoyed the “free- dom of the city,” for example, could engage in certain economic activities. 20 C H. 1 A New World THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE Numerous modern civil liberties did not exist. The law decreed acceptable forms of religious worship. The government regularly suppressed publica- tions it did not like, and criticism of authority could lead to imprisonment. In England, members of the House of Commons enjoyed freedom of speech during parliamentary sessions, but the right did not extend to ordinary cit- izens. Personal independence was reserved for a small part of the popula- tion, and this was one reason why authorities found “masterless men”— those without regular jobs or otherwise outside the control of their social superiors—so threatening. Nonetheless, every European country that colo- nized the New World claimed to be spreading freedom—for its own popu- lation and for Native Americans. T H E E X PA N S I O N O F E U R O P E It is fitting that the second epochal event that Adam Smith linked to Columbus’s voyage of 1492 was the discovery by Portuguese navigators of a sea route from Europe to Asia around the southern tip of Africa. The European conquest of America began as an offshoot of the quest for a sea route to India, China, and the islands of the East Indies, the source of the silk, tea, spices, porcelain, and other luxury goods on which international trade in the early modern era centered. For centuries, this commerce had been conducted across land, from China and South Asia to the Middle East and the Mediterranean region. Profit and piety—the desire to eliminate Islamic middlemen and win control of the lucrative trade for Christian western Europe—combined to inspire the quest for a direct route to Asia. CHINESE AND PORTUGUESE NAVIGATION At the beginning of the fifteenth century, one might have predicted that China would establish the world’s first global empire. Between 1405 and 1433, Admiral Zheng He led seven large naval expeditions in the Indian Ocean. The first convoy consisted of 62 ships that were larger than those of any European nation, along with 225 support vessels and more than 25,000 men. On his sixth voyage, Zheng explored the coast of East Africa. China was already the world’s most important trading economy, with trade routes dotting the Indian Ocean. Zheng’s purpose was not discovery, but to impress other peoples with China’s might. Had his ships continued west- ward, they could easily have reached North and South America. But as a wealthy land-based empire, China did not feel the need for overseas expan- sion, and after 1433 the government ended support for long-distance mar- itime expeditions. It fell to Portugal, situated on the western corner of the Iberian Peninsula, far removed from the overland route to Asia, to take advantage of new techniques of sailing and navigation to begin exploring the Atlantic. The development of the caravel, a ship capable of long-distance travel, and of the compass and quadrant, devices that enabled sailors to determine their location and direction with greater accuracy than in the past, made it possible to sail down the coast of Africa and return to Portugal. Portuguese seafarers initially hoped to locate the source of gold that for centuries had been transported in caravans across the Sahara Desert to North Africa and What impelled European explorers to look west across the Atlantic? 21 THE OLD WORLD ON THE EVE OF AMERICAN COLONIZATION, ca. 1500 SCOTLAND IRELAND ENGLAND HOLY ROMAN NETHERLANDS EMPIRE FRANCE Venice Genoa PORTUGAL SPAIN Me d OTTOMAN Azores Lisbon iter rane Cre te EMPIRE Ma dei ra I s. OT an Sea Cyp r u s PERSIA TOM CHINA Canary Is. A N EMPIRE S AH AR A D E S E RT INDIA Pa c i f i c MALI O c e an Cap e Verde Is. BENIN ama da G aG Dias EAST INDIES d am a Indian At la n t ic O c ea n O ce a n Cape of 0 1,000 2,000 miles Good Hope 0 1,000 2,000 kilometers In the fifteenth century, the world known Europe. This commerce, which passed through the African kingdom of to Europeans was limited to Europe, Mali on the southern edge of the Sahara, provided Europe with most of its parts of Africa, and Asia. Explorers from gold. Around 1400, it rivaled trade with the East in economic importance. Portugal sought to find a sea route to the And like trade with Asia, it was controlled by Muslim merchants. East in order to circumvent the Italian city-states and Middle Eastern rulers who controlled the overland trade. PORTUGAL AND WEST AFRICA Today, Africa is the world’s poorest continent. In the fifteenth century, it was known for its wealth. Mansa Mūsā, the ruler of Mali, had literally put his realm on the map in 1324 when he led a great pilgrimage to Mecca, distributing so much gold along the way that its price was depressed for a decade. Until 1434, however, no European sailor had seen the coast of Africa below the Sahara, or the forest kingdoms south of Mali that contained the actual gold fields. But in that year, a Portuguese ship brought a sprig of rosemary from West Africa, proof that one could sail beyond 22 C H. 1 A New World THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE An engraving, published in 1668, of a procession of the oba (king) outside Benin on the western coast of Africa. The image suggests the extent of the city, a center of government, trade, and the arts. the desert and return. Little by little, Portuguese ships moved farther down the coast. In 1485, they reached Benin, an imposing city whose crafts- men produced bronze sculptures that still inspire admiration for their artistic beauty and superb casting techniques. The Portuguese established fortified trading posts on the western coast of Africa. The profits reaped by these Portuguese “factories”—so named because merchants were known as “factors”—inspired other European powers to follow in their footsteps. Portugal also began to colonize Madeira, the Azores, and the Canary and Cape Verde Islands, which lie in the Atlantic off the African coast. Sugar plantations worked by Muslim captives and slaves from Slavic areas of east- ern Europe had flourished in the Middle Ages on Mediterranean islands like Cyprus, Malta, and Crete. Now, the Portuguese established plantations on the Atlantic islands, eventually replacing the native populations with thousands of slaves shipped from Africa—an ominous precedent for the New World. Soon, the center of sugar production would shift again, to the Western Hemisphere. FREEDOM AND SLAVERY IN AFRICA Slavery in Africa long predated the coming of Europeans. Traditionally, African slaves tended to be criminals, debtors, and captives in war. They worked within the households of their owners and had well-defined rights, such as possessing property and marrying free persons. It was not uncom- mon for African slaves to acquire their freedom. Slavery was one of several forms of labor, not the basis of the economy as it would become in large parts of the New World. The coming of the Portuguese, soon followed by traders from other European nations, accelerated the buying and selling of slaves within Africa. At least 100,000 African slaves were transported to What impelled European explorers to look west across the Atlantic? 23 Spain and Portugal between 1450 and 1500. In 1502, the first African slaves were transported to islands in the Caribbean. The transatlantic slave trade, and its impact on Africa, will be dis- cussed in Chapter 4. Having reached West Africa, Portuguese mariners pushed their explorations ever south- ward along the coast. Bartholomeu Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope at the conti- nent’s southern tip in 1487. In 1498, Vasco da Gama sailed around it to India, demonstrating the feasibility of a sea route to the East. With a population of under 1 million, Portugal estab- lished a vast trading empire, with bases in India, southern China, and Indonesia. It replaced the Italian city-states as the major European commercial partner of the East. But six years before da Gama’s voyage, Christopher Columbus had, he believed, discovered a new route to China and India by sailing west. A detail from the Cantino World Map THE VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS depicting the western coast of Africa at the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade. A seasoned mariner and fearless explorer from Genoa, a major port in north- Created by an anonymous Portuguese ern Italy, Columbus had for years sailed the Mediterranean and North mapmaker in 1502, the map included Atlantic, studying ocean currents and wind patterns. Like nearly all naviga- Europe, Africa, and a small part of the tors of the time, Columbus knew the earth was round. But he drastically Western Hemisphere, described as “the underestimated its size. He believed that by sailing westward he could rel- islands lately discovered in the parts of atively quickly cross the Atlantic and reach Asia. No one in Europe knew India.” It was smuggled out of Portugal by that two giant continents lay 3,000 miles to the west. The Vikings, to be Alberto Cantino, a diplomat representing sure, had sailed from Greenland to Newfoundland around the year 1000 an Italian city-state. and established a settlement, Vinland, at a site now known as L’Anse aux Meadows. But this outpost was abandoned after a few years and had been forgotten, except in Norse legends. Columbus sought financial support throughout Europe for the planned voyage. His brother Bartholomew even visited Henry VII of England to ask for assistance. Most of Columbus’s contemporaries, however, knew that he considerably underestimated the earth’s size, which helps to explain why he had trouble gaining backers for his expedition. Eventually, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain agreed to become sponsors. Their marriage in 1469 had united the warring kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. In 1492, they completed the reconquista—the “reconquest” of Spain from the Moors, African Muslims who had occupied part of the Iberian Peninsula for cen- turies. The capture of Grenada, the Moors’ last stronghold, accomplished Spain’s territorial unification. To ensure its religious unification, Ferdinand and Isabella ordered all Muslims and Jews to convert to Catholicism or leave the country. Along with the crown, much of Columbus’s financing came from bankers and merchants of Spain and the Italian city-states, who desperately desired to circumvent the Muslim stranglehold on eastern trade. Columbus set sail with royal letters of introduction to Asian rulers, authorizing him to negotiate trade agreements. 24 C H. 1 A New World CONTACT C O N TA C T COLUMBUS IN THE NEW WORLD On October 12, 1492, after only thirty-three days of sailing from the Canary Islands, where he had stopped to resupply his three ships, Columbus and his expedition arrived at the Bahamas. His exact landing site remains in dispute, but it was probably San Salvador, a tiny spot of land known today as Watling Island. Soon afterward, he encountered the far larger islands of Hispaniola (today the site of Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and Cuba. When one of his ships ran aground, he abandoned it and left thirty-eight men behind on Hispaniola. But he found room to bring ten inhabitants of the island back to Spain for conversion to Christianity. In the following year, 1493, European colonization of the New World began. Columbus returned with seventeen ships and more than 1,000 men Columbus’s Landfall, an engraving from to explore the area and establish a Spanish outpost. Columbus’s settlement La lettera dell’isole (Letter from the on the island of Hispaniola, which he named La Isabella, failed, but in 1502 Islands). This 1493 pamphlet reproduced, another Spanish explorer, Nicolás de Ovando, arrived with 2,500 men and in the form of a poem, Columbus’s first established a permanent base, the first center of the Spanish empire in letter describing his voyage of the previous America. Before he died in 1506, Columbus made two more voyages to the year. Under the watchful eye of King New World, in 1498 and 1502. He went to his grave believing that he had Ferdinand of Spain, Columbus and his discovered a westward route to Asia. The explorations of another Italian, men land on a Caribbean island, while Amerigo Vespucci, along the coast of South America between 1499 and local Indians flee. 1502 made plain that a continent entirely unknown to Europeans had been encountered. The New World would come to bear not Columbus’s name but one based on Vespucci’s—America. Vespucci also realized that the native inhabitants were distinct peoples, not residents of the East Indies as Columbus had believed, although the name “Indians,” applied to them by Columbus, has endured to this day. EXPLORATION AND CONQUEST The speed with which European exploration proceeded in the aftermath of Columbus’s first voyage is remarkable. The technique of printing with movable type, invented in the 1430s by the German craftsman Johannes Gutenberg, had made possible the rapid spread of information in Europe, at least among the educated minority. News of Columbus’s achievement traveled quickly. One writer hailed him as “a hero such as the ancients made gods of.” Others were inspired to follow in his wake. John Cabot, a Genoese merchant who had settled in England, reached Newfoundland in 1497. Soon, scores of fishing boats from France, Spain, and England were active in the region. Pedro Cabral claimed Brazil for Portugal in 1500. But the Spanish took the lead in exploration and conquest. Inspired by a search for wealth, national glory, and the desire to spread Catholicism, Spanish conquistadores, often accompanied by religious missionaries and carrying flags emblazoned with the sign of the cross, radiated outward from Hispaniola. In 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa trekked across the isth- mus of Panama and became the first European to gaze upon the Pacific Ocean. Between 1519 and 1522, Ferdinand Magellan led the first expedition What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with Europeans? 25 VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY Vinland EUROPE Cabot (1497) NEWFOUNDLAND NORTH AMERICA ) Columbus (1492 ) ( rtés 151 1493 Co b us ( Colum 9) 2) (150 bus lum AFRICA ) Co (1 51 3 A t l a nt i c O c ea n ) 522 02) a bo Columbus 9-1 Bal 1-15 (14 98) 151 5 0 an ( ci (1 00) Magell puc l (15 Ves bra Ca Pa c i f i c SOUTH O ce an AMERICA Ma ge lla n (15 19 -15 22 ) 0 1,000 2,000 miles 0 1,000 2,000 kilometers Christopher Columbus’s first Atlantic to sail around the world, encountering Pacific islands and peoples previ- crossing, in 1492, was soon followed ously unknown to Europe. Magellan was killed in the Philippines, but his by voyages of discovery by English, fleet completed the journey, correcting once and for all Columbus’s erro- Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian neous assessment of the earth’s size. explorers. The first explorer to encounter a major American civilization was Hernán Cortés, who in 1519 arrived at Tenochtitlán, the nerve center of 26 C H. 1 A New World CONTACT the Aztec empire, whose wealth and power rested on domina- tion of numerous subordinate peoples nearby. The Aztecs were violent warriors who engaged in the ritual sacrifice of captives and others, sometimes thousands at a time. This practice thor- oughly alienated their neighbors and reinforced the Spanish view of America’s native inhabitants as barbarians, even though in Europe at this time thousands of men and women were burned at the stake as witches or religious heretics, and criminals were executed in public spectacles that attracted throngs of onlookers. With only a few hundred European men, the daring Cortés conquered the Aztec city, relying on superior mili- tary technology such as iron weapons and gunpowder, as well as shrewdness in enlisting the aid of some of the Aztecs’ subject peoples, who supplied him with thousands of warriors. His most powerful ally, however, was disease— a smallpox epidemic that devastated Aztec society. A few years later, Francisco Pizarro conquered the great Inca king- dom centered in modern-day Peru. Pizarro’s tactics were typ- ical of the conquistadores. He captured the Incan king, demanded and received a ransom, and then killed the king Engravings, from the Florentine Codex, anyway. Soon, treasure fleets carrying cargoes of gold and silver from of the forces of Cortés marching on the mines of Mexico and Peru were traversing the Atlantic to enrich Tenochtitlán and assaulting the city with the Spanish crown. cannon fire. The difference in military technology between the Spanish and THE DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER Aztecs is evident. Indians who allied with Cortés had helped him build vessels and The transatlantic flow of goods and people, sometimes called the carry them in pieces over mountains to the Columbian Exchange, altered millions of years of evolution. Plants, ani- city. The codex (a volume formed by mals, and cultures that had evolved independently on separate continents stitching together manuscript pages) was were now thrown together. Products introduced to Europe from the prepared under the supervision of a Americas included corn, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, tobacco, and cotton, Spanish missionary in sixteenth-century while people from the Old World brought wheat, rice, sugarcane, horses, Mexico. cattle, pigs, and sheep to the New. But Europeans also carried germs previ- ously unknown in the Americas. No one knows exactly how many people lived in the Americas at the time of Columbus’s voyages—current estimates range between 50 and 90 million. The European population in 1492 (including Russia) was around 90 million, the African population was around 40 million, and about 210 million lived in China and modern-day India. Most inhabitants of the New World lived in Central and South America. In 1492, the Indian population within what are now the borders of the United States was between 2 and 5 million. Whatever their numbers, the Indian populations suffered a catastrophic decline because of contact with Europeans and their wars, enslavement, and especially diseases like smallpox, influenza, and measles. Never having encountered these diseases, Indians had not developed antibodies to fight them. The result was devastating. Many West Indian islands were all but depopulated. On Hispaniola, the native population, estimated at between 300,000 and 1 million in 1492, had nearly disappeared fifty years later. The What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with Europeans? 27 population of Mexico would fall by more than 90 percent in the sixteenth century, from perhaps 20 million to under 2 million. As for the area that now forms the United States, its Native American population fell continuously. It reached its lowest point around 1900, at only 250,000. Overall, the death of perhaps 80 million people—close to one-fifth of humankind—in the first century and a half after contact with Europeans represents the greatest loss of life in human history. It was disease as much as military prowess and more advanced technology that enabled Europeans to conquer the Americas. T H E S PA N I S H E M P I R E By the middle of the sixteenth century, Spain had established an Another scene from the Florentine Codex immense empire that reached from Europe to the Americas and Asia. depicts the smallpox epidemic that The Atlantic and Pacific oceans, once barriers separating different parts ravaged the Aztec capital after the arrival of the world, now became highways for the exchange of goods and the of Cortés. movement of people. Spanish galleons carried gold and silver from Mexico and Peru eastward to Spain and westward to Manila in the Philippines and on to China. The Spanish empire included the most populous parts of the New World and the regions richest in natural resources. Stretching from the Andes Mountains of South America through present-day Mexico and the Caribbean and eventually into Florida and the southwestern United States, Spain’s empire exceeded in size the Roman empire of the ancient world. Its center in North America was Mexico City, a magnificent capital built on the ruins of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán that boasted churches, hospitals, monasteries, government buildings, and the New World’s first university. Unlike the English and French New World empires, Spanish America was essentially an urban civilization, an “empire of towns.” For centuries, its great cities, notably Mexico City, Quito, and Lima, far outshone any urban centers in North America and most of those in Europe. GOVERNING SPANISH AMERICA Spain’s system of colonial government rivaled that of ancient Rome. Alarmed by the destructiveness of the conquistadores, the Spanish crown replaced them with a more stable system of government headed by lawyers and bureaucrats. At least in theory, the government of Spanish America reflected the absolutism of the newly unified nation at home. Authority originated with the king and flowed downward through the Council of the Indies—the main body in Spain for colonial administration—and then to viceroys in Mexico and Peru and other local officials in America. The Catholic Church also played a significant role in the administration of Spanish colonies, frequently exerting its authority on matters of faith, morals, and treatment of the Indians. Successive kings kept elected assemblies out of Spain’s New World empire. Royal officials were generally appointees from Spain, rather than 28 C H. 1 A New World THE SPANISH EMPIRE An eighteenth-century view of the criollos, as persons born in the colonies of European ancestry were called. marketplace in Havana, Cuba, a major The imperial state was a real and continuous presence in Spanish America. center of the Spanish empire in America. But as its power declined in Europe beginning in the seventeenth century, the local elite came to enjoy more and more effecti