English Colonists

In chapter one Conquerors and Victims: The Image of America Forms (1500-1800) Gonzalez talks about the impact upon the arrival of the Europeans to America. This arrival was categorized as “the greatest and most important event in the history of human kind”. Spain and England were two countries that had a big impact on our modern world and transplanted their cultures around the territories they took over. Both countries created their empires in which they established on their identities and viewpoint of their language and social customs. Upon their arrival the native population was outnumbered, many of which live around Mexico’s Valley and others populate the Central Andes region and Rio Grande.

The Spanish and New England colonies from 1492 to 1700 were significantly similar in terms of treatment of indigenous people. Admittedly, there was a difference in the treatment of indigenous people. The Spanish conquistadors used forced labor through the encomienda system, while the New England colonists did not have forced labor systems. This difference between the treatment happend because the Spanish ran large plantations and needed manual labor, while the New England colonists survived on subsistence farming and had no need for extra labor from the Indians. On the other hand there was a similarity in the forced conversions of the Indians to a Christian faith. This similarity occurred because The Roman Catholic Church saw the Indians as people who were in need of saving and insisted that the Indians

It is important to develop a clear thesis on the validity of the statement at the outset of the essay. A good essay could be developed on either side of the issue or in support of a middle-of –the-road position. Supporting paragraphs should be developed to build the position chosen. Both the Spanish and the English treated the Native Americans as inferiors, thought it important to bring them Christianity, sought to profit economically from relations with the Native Americans, and

English colonists first came to America late 1500s with the lost colony of Roanoke. English settlers then tried again for a permanent settlement in the early 1600s with Jamestown. Following Jamestown the English were consistently sending new colonists from England to America. The first English settlers had faced quite the hardships. None of the colonists were prepared or equipped with the knowledge to survive in their new environment. This is where Native American and English colonists interactions began. Prior to English settlers, the Native Americans had also had interactions with the Spanish. At first people believed that English colonists would treat the Natives better than the Spanish colonists. But as history has shown,

The final Spanish conquistadors’ motive that greatly affected the people living in the new world was glory. This motive is plain to see in documents 3 and 5. In document three Cortez talks about how the war that he and his men are fighting in will bring them fame. In document five it’s the same thing it is Cortez who is plowing through the Indians land conquering everybody for respect in Spain. Now when you look at how did this affect the Native Americans you see that the Spanish conquistadors’ obsession with glory ended up harming Indians because the Spanish wanted conquer Indian lands so that they could win respect back in Spain.

The American colonists saw them self’s just as common folks in King George III eyes. They figured by trading with Britain they can all just be in peace. (So they thought) In this time period, they did not have banks and they had little money so Colonists used credit to get the things they needed from the other colonies. When they came to America, Britain wanted to control expansion into the western territories after the French and Indian War. To do so, King George issued the Proclamation of 1763 prohibiting settlements beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Pushing everyone who hand already settled down on that side to move back over to were the rest of the colonist were.

The belief in spreading Christianity into the Native population was one of the reasons why Columbus sailed to the Americas. Everytime the Spaniards visited a native community, they informed the members of the Christian truth and asked for their conversion. If the natives refused, the Spaniards felt justified to enslave the Indians since they defied the Church. Another reason the Spanish invaded the Americas was the idea that gold was in abundance there and their desire for gold. One native named Hatuey realized the Spanish were desperately after the precious metal and threw all his gold to the bottom of the river to protect his people. However, he was later burned alive. The Spanish required the Indians to pay a certain quota of gold every three months; anyone who didn’t had their hands chopped off. Since the amount of available gold was actually small, the Spaniards went on killing sprees. The Spanish murdered for fun, inventing brutal ways to spill blood. Indian babies were fed to hungry dogs and Indian men were slashed open as their innards spewed out. The Spaniards only cared for quick wealth too, despite human costs. In order to maximize profits and, the encomienda system was established and masters had complete control over their slaves. Enslaved Indians were worked to death and fed extremely poorly, many died of starvation. Those who were too ill or

Since 1492 to late into the17th the century there was perpetual struggle between the power hungry Europeans and the natives in the New World. Pitted against each other, the Dutch, English, French, Spaniards, and Indians struggled to maintain control of what they viewed as rightfully theirs. The English, were struggling to settle on the eastern coast and had no use and respect for the Indians or their land and way of life. At first maintaining a tentative relationship, the English, in the case of the Quakers and Puritans, soon realized that the Indians had very little to offer and were an obstacle on the path of their progress. Spain was primarily interested in missionary activities and

Spain was anxious in gaining new territories and wealth from these new lands. They were given the name the “Golden Empire” due to the gold and silver they looted from the America’s. It is normal that others are stepped on when another rises up in rank and that was the case with Spain. The Indians were plundered, conquered, and colonized by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. They were enslaved and forced to convert religions. This may be a cycle every country goes through when taking over populated territory. At least one person or group always suffers when another person or group rises to power. Indians and Spaniards clashed on many things, especially considering Spaniards were more technologically advanced than Indians. I believe the Indians lived in fear due to the unknown, especially when the Spanish had firearms and explosives to use against the natives in combat. Spain most likely won many battles in their conquest of the America’s due to such advancements. An example of their conquests is the journey Hernan Cortes took from Cuba to Mexico in search for gold and glory. Cortes and his conquistadores used kingdoms surrounding the Aztecs to overthrow the great Aztec empire. They were very disliked due to their ideas, such as human sacrifice to the please their gods. I have been fascinated with their ritual of human sacrifices for a while. It is barbaric but intriguing as to

The process of colonization in the Americas was a complex and complicated series of events, each driven by the varied interests of an array of European empires. For some, the Americas were a world of untold riches, while for others, this discovery allowed for missionary efforts to convert Native Americans to their faith. Regardless of the reason, violence against the many Native Americans who inhabited this “new land” was a common colonization tool to achieve these means. Direct violence is the most well-known approach, one that Spain wielded so effectively that the Black Legend was created to attest to their cruelty. Yet, the violence used was not all direct in nature. Cultural violence, which England employed itself, was used just as often. Overall, though the Black Legend has led to Spain being viewed as the most violent colonizer in the Americas, England’s use of indirect violence through engagement in the fur trade and missionary efforts was just as destructive to Native Americans.

The Spaniards wanted to acquire more land and discover new riches to build up their country’s power. Columbus’s findings in North and South America were brought over to Europe. “On his second voyage, Columbus forcibly subjugated the island of Hispaniola and enslaved its indigenous peoples. On this and subsequent voyages, Columbus brought with him settlers for the new Spanish territories, along with agricultural seed and livestock” (McKay 422). The Spanish took over the Americas by destroying the Aztec and Inca Empires. The fall of these great empires was also due to the diseases that the American inhabitants did not have an immunity to. Columbus also said that the Indians would make good servants and be easily converted to Christianity. Not only did they enslave Indians, but they also took Africans and shipped them to the new world because they were cheap labor. “First, the Spaniards and Portuguese employed cutting-edge sailing and navigational technology to reach, explore, and shuttle back and forth from the Americas” (European Conquests of the Americas). The Europeans were using their new technologies to conquer the Americas. Gun powder was another resource used against the Indians and it changed the way people fought wars. The Europeans discovery of the Americas brought a lot of riches to the region and this gave Europe even more

Missions to the Native Americans by Europeans have always intertwined with complications. Since the first generations of missionaries within the Americas, there have always been mixed motives and cultural misunderstandings in the outreach to the natives. Some groups saw the Native Americans as a group of people who were only a means to an end, motivated by mere self-interest, and not the spread of Christendom. Others tarnished relationships with natives through unintentional means. Even ignorance of the unknown presuppositions held by each culture led to tension between people groups. An example can be seen in the giving of land by the Native Americans to the Puritans. When they natives gave the land to the Puritans, they were unaccustomed to the philosophy of private property, and “when they discovered that the Puritans wanted to keep these tracts exclusively for themselves, without title ever reverting to those who had originally loaned it, the Indians grew bitter.” There was also an ever-growing sense of Western pride, and many whites saw themselves as superior, especially the English, “who seemed the most arrogant about this fact and the leas concerned to preserve any aspect of native civilization. Few Englishmen cared to save aboriginal peoples even if they could persuade them to adopt the values, habits, and materials of a superior culture.”

The social pressures that led to English colonization of North America was driven by a fall in wages and people went homeless. A century later, nearly 400,000 people packed its narrow back streets and cramped buildings. (Norton, 2015) This led England to believe that North America could siphon off what they saw as England’s “surplus population.” (Norton, 2015) The people willing to admit on the dangerous journey also believed that they would be able to better their social position.

After reading “A Discourse of Western planting,” by Richard Hakluyt, several things are brought to attention regarding the European perception of North America’s potential. In Hakluyt’s argument of over 20 reasons of why England should make colonizing North America a priority, it becomes evident that one of England’s main contributing factors is to gain a foot hold above rival countries, mainly Spain. However, though England’s reasons for pushing colonization are not directly equivalent to the rest of Europe’s motivation, it does provide insight into what public opinions were on colonization.

In the late 1600s, European encroachment led to increased colonial settlements and violent confrontations, with North America’s indigenous inhabitants. Requerimiento of 1513 expressed Spanish perspective of the indigenous (Requerimiento). The Spanish believed that St. Peter was the ruler of the world, and that the newly discovered American lands were given to Spain by the pope at the time. Therefore, upon crossing paths with the natives, the Spanish offered them a choice between submitting to Spanish rule and living peacefully or resisting and risk being killed or enslaved. Moreover, the war between British colonists and King Philip, for instance, showcases the processes in which the native people were pushed off their ancestral homelands due to violence. The majority of English people declared that since the natives had not established English-like settlements, they had no right to the land. The perspectives of the colonizers