Steve Juanico
Mr. Ben Alexander
History 103: American History (1607-1865)
3 March 1999
Compare and contrast the styles of colonization, especially in terms of relations with the Native American population, of the English, the French, and the Spanish. Your essay should include the roles played by religion, trade, and military force.
The conversion of Native Americans to Christianity and the search for "good things, riches, and more secrets" were the foremost goals of Spanish colonization efforts in the New World.1 Missionaries, ready to convert all heathen natives they encountered, accompanied the conquistadores in all their expeditions. In practice, however, the search for wealth and profit supplanted the religious motive. In fact, religion served as a useful tool in the pacification of the native population, for it emphasized passivity and conformity of thought. Faced with a shortage of labor in their New World colonies, the Spanish enslaved the Native Americans and forced them to work in their mines and plantations. The encomienda system—a feudal institution in Spain where landlords or encomenderos were given royal permission to utilize the labor of Spanish peasants under their care as compensation for their services to the king—was adopted to solve the labor crisis. Legalized in 1512, the encomienda system obligated the Native Americans to work, without compensation,
1Carol Berkin et al., Making America: A History of the United States. 2nd ed. Vol. I (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1999) 36.
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for the encomendero "nine months each year."2 In return for this privilege, the encomendero was required to pay a tax to the royal government for each Native American under his care and to Christianize and civilize them, which meant teaching each Native American the blessings of Spanish culture and language. In effect, the Native American played the role that was formerly assigned to the Spanish peasant. For the recalcitrant Native American who defied the status quo, death or enslavement was his or her reward since "Under Spanish law, any Indian who resisted Spanish rule 'had no rights save such as the conqueror might freely choose to concede to them'."3
The Dominican and Franciscan missionaries saw at close range the evils of colonial exploitation, and they pressured the royal government for reforms. Philip II proclaimed a law that made it mandatory for conquistadores to let the Native Americans they were about to subdue know beforehand their duties and obligations toward the Spanish crown and church and "to offer to absorb them peacefully if they would acknowledge those obligations."4 Consequently, this law
required the conquistadores to bring along a priest on all expeditions and forays. The priest would act as a witness to their reading of the Requerimiento—the document that records the duties and obligations of the Native Americans toward the Spanish crown and church—to all Native American tribes they confronted. Those who accepted the Requerimiento became laborers under the encomienda system, and those who did not were enslaved. In practice, however, this law was often violated and usually ignored:
2Berkin 41.
3Berkin 41.
4Berkin 42.
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Conquistadors frequently stood outside an Indian village, read the Requerimiento in a whisper, and then attacked when the community made no immediate response. Some simply forged a priest's signature, anticipating that by the time the document reached administrators in faraway Madrid, no one would know the difference. Others ignored the law altogether.5
Another example of Spanish behavior toward Native Americans that was particularly brutal occurred in an expedition mounted in the Rio Grande area of New Mexico under the leadership of Don Juan de Oñate in 1598. The inhabitants of the Ácoma pueblo had the temerity to refuse the terms laid down by the Requerimiento. They paid for their intransigence with their lives. Those who survived the Spanish onslaught, mostly women and children, were enslaved. On the other hand, every "male survivor over the age of twenty-five had one foot chopped off to prevent his escape."6 In addition, the Spanish appetite for violence whetted, two Hopi Indian, who were at the wrong place at the wrong time, "had their right hands chopped off and were sent home as an example of the price of resistance."7 Defiance and hostility toward Spanish expansion solidified among the Pueblo Indians after this incident.
5Berkin 42.
6Berkin 46.
7Berkin 46.
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Another problem that plagued Spain's New World colonies was the lack of Spanish women. In order to solve this problem, the royal government allowed the Spanish colonists to marry local Indian women. The result of this intermarriage was a "hybrid creole population."8 In the northern frontiers of New Spain (Mexico), Spanish colonists traded with the Southern Plains Indians since the imperial economy, that was based in Mexico City, was too far away to be of any practical use. Like other Spanish colonies, they too faced a critical manpower shortage. The Southern Plains Indians needed horses to maintain their nomadic way of life. So, the Spanish colonists exchanged their horses, which they bred in large numbers, for Native Americans captured by the Southern Plains Indians in inter-tribal warfare.
The French, on the other hand, were mainly interested in trade, especially the highly lucrative fur trade. Samuel de Champlain, the "Father of New France," organized several trading posts in Canada, which also served as bases for Jesuit missionary activities. The French royal government wanted to develop and exploit the natural resources of New France, but it failed in its efforts, even though it granted large tracts of lands as incentives, to attract colonists because few Frenchmen were willing to immigrate to an uncertain life in the New World. Those who were very eager to leave, the French Protestants, were prohibited from departing. Those who did emigrate from France went native. These coureurs de bois or "runners of the woods" chose to live among the Native American tribes and married native women. They only emerged on the trading settlements when they had enough furs to sell. The French colony in Louisiana faced the same problem encountered by the Spanish frontier colonies: a lack of European women. Furthermore, the population
8Berkin.
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of the colony were composed of only three groups: soldiers, coureurs de bois that came from the north, and craftsmen. One factor united these three disparate groups: their ignorance or lack of interest of food production. The royal government responded to this crisis by recruiting young women with the incentive of free passage to the New World since "officials in Louisiana noted that the absence of women was one serious deterrent to attracting useful colonists [i.e., farmers]."9 The French crown's efforts, however, lured only twenty-four women, and they were totally unfit for colonial life in Louisiana. As result, Frenchmen, like their Spanish counterparts, married native women, which created a "hybrid creole population." As for food, the French colonists traded with nearby Native American tribes since the supply ships from France were slow and unreliable. The French colonists aligned themselves with a friendly tribe who provided food, and, in return, the colonists gave military aid to their ally in their tribal wars and vice versa. The French also proselytized Native Americans to the Christian faith. Jesuit missionaries followed the example of the coureurs de bois by living in Native American communities while teaching the natives the Gospel of Christ.
9Berkin 53.
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The English, on the other hand, were primarily interested in land and permanent settlements. Some colonists felt an obligation to coexist peacefully with their Indian neighbors and, unlike the Spanish who took land from the Native Americans by deceit or force, to buy land from presumed Indian landowners. The Plymouth colonists, for example, "preserved their friendship with the local Indians by purchasing rather than seizing the lands."10 The Pilgrims also gave military aid to the local Wampanoag Indians in their wars with other tribes. Another group who had peaceful relations with the Native Americans were the Quakers of Pennsylvania. Their leader, William Penn, "insisted that all land be purchased fairly from Indians, and he pursued a policy of peaceful coexistence between the two cultures."11 Other colonists, however, took Native American lands by "trickery, threats, or violence."12 For instance, Jamestown (the first successful English colony in the New World that was established in 1607) settlers encroached on the lands of the Powhatan Indians (the tribe of Pocahontas), resulting in wars with atrocities committed by both sides. By 1622, however, the Powhatans were decimated—less than 500 of them, out of a population of 40,000, survived. Even the friendship of the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims did not last. War broke out when the Pilgrims demanded more land from the Wampanoags. Chief Metacomet began raiding Pilgrim communities in 1675. The Pilgrims reciprocated by destroying their villages along with their crops and selling captured Wampanoags into slavery. With the help of another Native American tribe (the age-old divide and conquer tactic), the Iroquois, the Pilgrims finally vanquished their foe. The Pilgrims committed a final act of atrocity: they beheaded Metacomet and impaled his head on a stick. The Anglo-Indian alliances "were never as solid as French, largely because of the colonists' demand for land in Indian territories."13
10Berkin 69.
11Berkin 80.
12Berkin 65.
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Another difference between the English and the French and the Spanish was that the French and the Spanish intermarried with native women while the English did not. Thus, the French and Spanish settlements were more inclusive while English communities were not. As for trade, English colonists, especially in the South, often traded with the Native Americans for captive slaves. But the English also tried to convert Native Americans to Christianity. For example, the Puritans established "praying towns" where Native Americans were invited to live in order to assimilate the Puritan way of life.
13Berkin 106.
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