Lesson 2: Spain in America

Lesson Focus

Failing to find a route to Asia, Spain sought wealth in the Americas. We will explore how Spanish conquistadores and missionaries conquered empires, extracted resources, and permanently altered the lives of Native American peoples.

People to Know

Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, Junípero Serra

Learning Objectives

• Describe the Spanish exploration and conquest of the great empires of Central and South America.
• Discuss the structured society, economy, and culture that developed in the Spanish colonies of the Americas.

Driven by a desire for gold, Spanish conquistadores arrived in the Caribbean in the late 1400s and early 1500s.
They enslaved native populations, forcing them to mine for precious metals.
The natives were nearly wiped out by overwork and European diseases like smallpox, to which they had no immunity. This devastation led the Spanish to import enslaved Africans to replace the native labor force.

Hearing tales of riches, Hernán Cortés led an expedition to Mexico in 1519.
Using superior weapons, horses, and alliances with native groups who opposed the Aztec, he marched on Tenochtitlan. After being forced out, Cortés returned in 1521 to besiege and destroy the capital.
On its ruins, he built Mexico City, which became a center of Spanish power and wealth from nearby silver mines.

Inspired by Cortés, Francisco Pizarro led 180 soldiers to the Inca empire in 1531.
He found the empire weakened by civil war and captured the emperor Atahualpa. Although the Inca paid a massive ransom in gold, the Spanish executed their emperor anyway.
This act shattered Inca leadership, allowing Pizarro and other Spaniards to easily conquer the region and begin mining its vast gold and silver deposits.

To control its American colonies, Spain created a society based on birth.
At the top were peninsulares (born in Spain), followed by creoles (of Spanish parents, born in America), and then mestizos (mixed Spanish and Indian). At the bottom were Indians, Africans, and mulattos.
This rigid structure reserved the most powerful government and church positions for the peninsulares, creating tension with the wealthy but less powerful creoles.

To reward conquistadores and manage the colonies, the Spanish crown created the encomienda system.
This system gave Spanish colonists land and the right to demand labor and taxes from the Native Americans living there, supposedly in exchange for protection and religious instruction.
In reality, it became a system of brutal forced labor that allowed colonists to become extremely wealthy by cruelly overworking the native population.

The Spanish used missions to convert natives to Catholicism and expand their empire's northern frontier.
Starting in 1769, Father Junípero Serra founded a chain of missions in California, connected by a road called El Camino Real. Nearby forts, or presidios, were built to protect them.
These missions became centers for teaching European farming and controlling the native population, extending Spanish influence into areas without gold or silver.