In this paper, I will be summarizing the following chapters: Chapter 3: "A Legacy of Hate: The Conquest of Mexico’s Northwest”; Chapter 4: “Remember the Alamo: The Colonization of Texas”; and Chapter 5: “Freedom in a Cage: The Colonization of New Mexico. All three chapters are from the book, “Occupied America, A History of Chicanos” by Rodolfo F. Acuna. In chapter three, Acuna explains the causes of the war between Mexico and North America. In chapter four, Acuna explains the colonization of Texas and how Mexicans migrated from Mexico to Texas. In chapter five, Acuna explains the colonization of New Mexico and the economic changes that the people had to go through.…
How? Who? That's what I wonder about Cabeza De Vaca's Journey to Mexico. Cabeza De Vaca was a conquistador from the country of spain, that led a mission to texas. On his way there, he shipwrecked, and lost all his people but 3, and of course himself. After this, he made his way all through texas and on into mexico, but how and why did he survive? The only things that can explain this were his wilderness skills, good relationships with natives, and his great communication skills.…
There is a Spanish explorer in 1592 who was reduced into a slave. Cabeza De Vaca survived in the americas in 1592. Cabeza De Vaca survived even when he was a slave band Native tribe. Cabeza was smart enough to befriend a native band so he could get some food. One day he was smart enough to escape the slavers. Cabeza De Vaca was also Ex-Military.…
The first Spanish conquistadors’ motive that greatly affected the people living in the new world was the search for gold. You can see that this was a big motive by looking in documents two and three. In document two it talks about how Cortez got lots of money for going to the new world and he promised gold and Indian slaves to people going with him. This document shows how Cortez promised something valuable as gold to motivate people to accompany him on his journey to the new world. In document three it is Cortez again telling his men that if they stick with him and fight the war against the Native Americans he can make them rich men. So as you can see Cortez is using gold as a big motive for going to the new world. Now when you look at how did this affect the Native Americans and it is plain to see in documents two and three that these motives greatly hurt the Native Americans.…
The myth is that the conquistadors conquered the America’s relatively quickly in a sovereign effort but Restall explains that the Spaniards had a lot of help from the Natives and African’s and the “completion” of conquest was anything but; as mass portions of the land remained unscathed by the conquest. Restall effortlessly explains how the conquistador myths of superior communication between the Spaniards and Natives were just as fabricated as the modern misconception of inferior communication by historians. The communication between the two, or lack thereof, fell somewhere between both myths. Restall uses his concise writing style to explain the resilience of the Natives, debunking the myth of Native desolation and how the myth of superiority derives from Eurocentric beliefs of racial dominance which lead to racist ideologies that “underpinned colonial expansion from the late fifteenth to early twentieth centuries.”…
He recounts the devastations that the Americas have faced, such as “the Spaniards” imposition of their Old World culture to the New World, and “the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.” When Spain colonized the New World, they brought with them their European culture that clashed with the Native Americans. With history as our evidence, the destruction is well known. The Dust Bowl was the fault of applying old traditions to new lands. Scientifically proven, readers can see that by migrating and bringing their own ways without adaptation results in disaster. Together, readers can logically conclude that the outcome of moving ended up in a…
Most of the beginning of American history seems like a race of conquest between the Spaniards and Europeans with Native Americans caught in the crossfire. A seemingly peaceful group of people, the Native Americans were under constant attack from the moment settlers arrived into their territory. Historians can pull from first-hand accounts and primary sources to piece together the history of this nation. One Spainard exploratory mission wrecked off the coast of Florida with about 400 men (OTP S1-6, OTP 22). After long battles and shipwrecks, the expedition was cut short and only four men survived, one an African slave and Spanish explorer named Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca. De Vaca wrote a narrative explaining his encounters with Native Americans who had never seen white or black people before. De Vaca described the Indians as “war like people…and protect themselves from their enemies as they would have if they had been raised in Italy and in continuous war” (OTP S1-6). He explains in his narrative…
THE BIGGEST POPULATION SHIFT OF MODERN TIMES HAS been the colonization of the New World by Europeans, and the resulting conquest, numerical reduction, or complete disappearance of i1OSt groups of Native Americans (American Indians). As I explained in Chapter I, the New World was initially colonized around or before 11,000 BCE by way of Alaska, the Bering Strait, and Siberia. Complex agricultural societies gradually arose in the Americas far to the south of that entry route, developing in complete isolation from the emerging complex societies of the Old World. After that initial colonization from Asia, the sole well-attested further contacts between the New World and Asia involved only hunter-gatherers living on opposite sides of the Bering Strait, plus an inferred transpacific voyage that introduced the sweet potato from South America to Polynesia. As for contacts of New World peoples with Europe, the sole early ones involved the Norse who occupied Greenland in very small numbers between 4D, 986 and about 1 500. But those Norse visits had no discernible impact on Native American societies. Instead, for practical purposes the collision of advanced Old World and New World societies began abruptly in 1492 CE, with Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of Caribbean islands densely populated by Native Americans. The most dramatic moment in subsequent European-Native American relations was the first encounter between the Inca emperor Atahuallpa and the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro at the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca on November 16, 1532. Atahuallpa was absolute monarch of the largest and most advanced state in the New World, while Pizarro represented the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (also known as King Charles I of Spain), monarch of the most powerful state in Europe. Pizarro, leading a ragtag group of 168 Spanish soldiers, was in unfamiliar terrain, ignorant of the local…
Throughout Castaways, by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, and A Land So Strange, the Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca, by Andre Resendez, a transformation is seen through the thoughts and actions of the four Spanish survivors. Clearly motivated by curiosity, greed, and religion, at first, a dramatic transformation from explorers and conquistadors into assimilated Spanish Indians and revolutionary idealists occurs. Cabeza de Vaca believed that his peaceful ascendancy over the Indians of North America was achievable through a partnership, creating a more humane kind of colonial occupation (Resendez 207-208).…
During the 16th Century, European attitude towards Indians was dehumanizing as they felt that the Native Indians were inferior to them because they didn't have European characteristics of blue eyes and blonde hair .The European conquistadors were looking for new land in hopes to live, seek gold and gather wealth. Europeans enslaved the Native Indians and tried to force them off the land, thus the Indians had to fight back. Religious missionaries tried to convert the Indians to Christianity, they believed that this was the right thing to do because the Indians were superstitious and savage. Due to this perception of Europeans, Cabeza de Vaca suffered greatly because of his sympathy for Native Indians.…
Tzvetan Todorov was born in Stalinist Bulgaria and came to France in the early 1960s. His personal experience of the internal “otherness” which Julia Kristeva describes as “strangers to ourselves”, lead him to explore the American encounter which was a “unique event in the history of humanity” in that two continents, which had been oblivious to each other’s existence, came into a sudden and violent contact. In his The Conquest of America (1982), Tzvetan Todorov has given us a most interesting recent reading of Columbus and several others of the most important 16th century Spanish commentators on the New World. Todorov constructs a narrative from a collection of texts : Columbus’s famous letters to Ferdinand and Isabella; Hernan Cortes’s Letters of Relation; Juan Gines de Sepulveda’s Demoncrates Alter and the writings of Bartolome de Las Casas, among others.…
It gives an accurate picture of just how detrimental Europeans were to the indigenous peoples of Central and South America, and echoes a narrative that would eventually lead to Spain becoming known throughout the Americas as “The Black Legend.” The story itself echoes the account of Dominican Priest Bartolome Las Casas, whose published writings on the cruelty shown to Native Americans first shed light on the atrocities in 1537 . Though Las Casas was a proponent of African slavery, his views on the inhumane treatment of the Natives acted in the same way as the Jesuits’, and ultimately, Cardinal Altamirano’s. Coming from Europe, he, like many Europeans, saw Spanish colonization under any circumstances as an elevation from the primitive, savage communities of the natives. To them, subjugation was the most efficient way to cultivate the Native population into a “civilized” society. Father Gabriel saw the beauty in the simplicity of the native lifestyle, appreciating its ability to bring one closer to God. Though not corrupt, Altamirano, though he felt compassion for the tribes, simply could not understand the sanctity of what the missions provided. Spain would ultimately grow to become the richest nation in Europe from its colonies in the New World, transporting billions in gold across the Atlantic by enslaving Africans and Native American…
Picture a vast scope stretching from the Red River Basin to the Plains of Colorado to the Arkansas River to the Rio Grande. Envision the diverse groups of Natives that live on the land peacefully. Imagine the golden Pueblos of the Acoma Indians, the Hogan huts of the Navajo, and the wiki-ups of the Lipan. Then imagine this picturesque view shattered by European imperialism. The Europeans during the 16th and 17th centuries took several different approaches to the New World. The French saw potential business and trading partners, the English sought territory to expand their empire, and the Spanish were much more complex. The Spanish made one purposeful thrust into the New World in the 16th century to claim the industrious Natives as subjects of the Crown and Church. A century later, the Spanish returned to the New World. The Spanish unleashed forces of change that changed the lives of the native people throughout the arena that the Anglo-Americans call the Southwest. The Spanish affected the culture and structure of the Southwest by way of religion, architecture, and agriculture and livestock. This culture shock in the Southwest by means of…
Behind the Great Conquest In 1492 Columbus discovered the American continent, a year later the Spaniards were sent to settle the land, later called Hispaniola. The Hispaniola was populated with native people called Indians. These people were uncivilized and loyal to their Indian masters. The Indians believed the Spaniards were sent by God, they trusted them and were determined to serve them in the same way they did with their Indian masters. Spain’s conquest of the Americas was an outright tragedy because of the massive amount of Native deaths and the Spanish idea of cultural superiority and destruction of native culture.…
All my life, I have heard one story about California Indians being lazy, primitive, and immoral people. What kind of story is that we grow up with? The assigned readings of this week offer confusion of California history itself, as well as how Mission history been taught and debated in California’s education. The article’s within the essay The Spanish Impact on the Indians, 1769-1821 contradicts itself about the past of Indians and Padres. The article of Father Luis Jayme speaks to us as if the priest had lots of love for the Indians and were supposedly very concern about the abuses that Indians suffer against the soldiers.…