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Exploration/Settlement of North America

Added May 23, 2012 •

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long before Europeans venture out into the Waters of the Atlantic to see what lay beyond the boundaries of their continent tribes of Native Americans inhabited the land we now know as North America North America and South America the last two continents that are in the temperate and tropical zones that received human and habitation and as far as we can tell the first people to come into the continent game on North Eastern Asia and they came at some point between about fifteen and twelve thousand years ago but the archaeology can we rely upon to make those statements is in the state of flux and there are some people who suggested the occupation may have begun as long ago as 30000 y the elders tell us this is the first history in the first history occurred when when plants the animals came into being when the creative force is moved upon the Earth when the positive and negative forces influenced what we what is human beings today Paleo-Indians who are the first people to colonize the Americas were a hunting and Gathering people and they apparently braided in relatively small bands probably in the vicinity of 50 to 200 people which they would mostly be United by kinship and it appeared that they were coming in in the Americas they were very large herds of very large mammals such as wooly mammoths and mastodons and giant bison and from a hunter's perspective it was a paradise  at first the animals and plants of the land provided the sustenance necessary for survival 99% of human history people have hunted and gathered that was the tribe and the true that work that was sustainable people removal of vast territories took from those territories in extremely light and extensive way was narrator revolution in the relationship of people to land if you place human evolution equal to a day say the last three million years equal to hey agriculture has taken up about the last four and a half minutes before midnight  it really only takes hold and America North of Grand after about 580 and spreads into the American Northeast between about a thousand and 1280 Farmers agriculture in North America is Raising corn also rice beans and squash and so it is what's a classic European grain such as we draw a barley and there is not the raising of cattle and horses and pigs and she none of these animals were part of the development of agriculture in North America biggest Spanish that the amount of the remnant there are of the older agricultural civilizations that existed around here with them very elaborate social organization ritual development development creative crafts in agriculture which exist before Europeans come there as groups of people moved across the land and the did the different environments they began to distinguish themselves one group from another  and the range of their movements Courage the proliferation of different languages so that we have quite an array of somewhere in the vicinity of 375 different language is spoken in North Monica I'm on the choctaws for example they they believe they moved cross the American West in an easterly Direction a southeasterly Direction they were directed by staff that the leaders would put into the Earth every day and then it would lean in a particular direction and then in the morning they would follow that direction but clear continues be long-distance trade among the native people so that we find good traveling over half of North America we can find minerals set timer originally extracted from Quarries in the Midwest and graves in America Northeast so there continue to be exchanges of these next primarily in the forms of gifts that managed to seal relationships between neighboring peoples for centuries Disney some people's the tribes and nations of the north and south are relatively free of outside interference this is not the situation on the other side of the Atlantic home early 15th century Europe was a patchwork of small kingdoms and principalities they were in a competition I'm with some Muslim peoples who was very much expanding during the 14th and 15th centuries and most notably in 1453 the should the great Greek Christian city of Constantinople which provided to Turkish Empire than with entree to invade into Southeastern Europe show the expansion of Europe in many ways you could say is kind of a surprise given that they've been on The Retreat on the other hand they have a powerful hand sign next try to find some way to get around Muslim power  and this lad some enterprising Mariners and from Spain and Portugal to start the cast about ways to sail around Africa to try to get to the trade goods of Asia in order to enrich their economies and enrich themselves and then one of these Mariners and most of vision Ariel all Christopher Columbus thought why not just sailed Westwood's given their understanding that the world was round and he went around sitting patrons who would support the test of this Theory after failing to win support from Portugal Europe leading Maritime power Columbus turns to Queen Isabella of Spain she and her husband Fred eager to gain recognition for their young moneke agree to support his plan I left the city of Granada on Saturday the 12th day of May 1492 and proceeded to polish the seaport where I armed three vessels married surprise having provided myself with stores and see me I set sail from the port on Friday the 3rd of August half an hour before dude for the Canary Islands sing this day 19 means turn the counts less than between number that the crew might not be dismayed The Voyage you prevail at Sunset Martin Alonzo cold out with great joy from his vessel that he saw the land and demanded we have no award for his intelligence continues its course West to the afternoon then Southwest encounter the heavy than they had met with before in the whole Voyage the crew in the pita they also picked up a stick which appeared to have been carved with an iron tool the crew of the ninga saw other signs of land and a the Adams directed them to keep a strict watch on the floor castle and look out diligently for land with him first discover if you promise the silken jacket besides the reward with the king and queen and offered two in the morning Latin was discovered that two leaders distance what's a good thing that they made it when I did they were getting low on what been a little over 30 days but of course it wasn't China Japan that they reach they were on islands in the West Indies off the coast of North and South American Indian Columbus went to his grave thinking that these islands were very close to China and Japan  gymtime Spanish Flores stop thinking of the Americas is simply an obstacle on route to Asia they see it as a potential source of wealth even greater than your original destination inside except for a portion of South America now known as Brazil they claimed the entire new world for Spain and begin the process of colonization and subjugation  the Spanish monarchs really didn't have the capacity to fund and direct their own military expeditions especially on the other side of the Atlantic they were very dependent upon farming out these operations to essentially private entrepreneurs military so an enterprising gentleman somebody of military ability and of great and would Lobby the crown and try to get a license as an idol on title which meant that he had the king's permission to awesome some part of the world she got other people conquer them and benefit from tribute taken from them but any people conquered would then become part of the Spanish Empire in the king would receive a share of the plunder and with your taxes and so for the monarchs this is a low-risk strategy they don't have much in the way of money they don't have much in the way of a bureaucracy to manage large Expeditions and it encourages these ambitious young Aristocrats who otherwise might be making trouble at home Cortez was probably most famous most successful candy stores the Spanish suffered from a disease of the heart that only gold computer and that's a far more complicated saving than it appears at first because it's not just we want money want gold but gold for the 16th century was an up one of entry with an entree into much greater forms of social Independence file and you could buy status of a certain kind you could be a gentleman and that would free you in all kinds of ways what surprised of course patient encounter in the western hemisphere of the first major one they hit where the Aztecs and they are the Mayas in later of course the Incas and chief justice all kinds of others and I think ultimately they were rather dazzled by many of these civilizations towns in shrines in buildings rising from the water All Made of Stone seemed like an enchanted vision from the tale of ominous indeed some of our soldiers asked whether it was not all the dream it was all so wonderful that I do not know how to describe this first glimpse of things never heard of never seen and never dreamed of before and yet as the Conquistadors cars attack across the they bring destruction to each of the civilization the encounter they are in there to get rich quick to conquer dude plunder them and of course they're doing this they of course are going to kill a great number of Indians and destroy a great number of Indian towns have warning the Spanish attacked flashing at the hands and faces until they had killed all of them Slaughter in the sacred patio went on for three hours then descended into the rooms of the temple to kill the other those who would carry fodder for the horses grinding meal for sweeping the floor after night show the terrifying mother women appeared carrying torches that came for the husband's and relatives who they did in the Poltergeist when does the women who recognize them then they threw themselves, with great sorrow and grief and raised such a wailing and crying but it's no one has the figures of how many people died we only know through the emotions of those oral histories cry out to us about how horrible it was to watch the people around you die the loss of a lot of Indian lives and the destruction of a lot in towns is not in the long-term interest of the Spanish Monarch who wants his people to be taxpayers and he wants him to convert to Christianity their destruction doesn't work that and it's a Spanish Monarch wants to use the Conquistadors but then wants to put them on I have shorter she can keep them on  and that interest coincides with that a Franciscan missionaries they are totally dedicated to their mission which is spreading Hannity and they're appalled by the violence of the Conquistadors and so they're off and lobbying the king to reduce the power of the Conquistadors turn the increase the power of The Franciscan missionaries over these Colonial Enterprises colonization the missionary effort all the missionaries who come over and the Spanish Crown itself is in Spanish state is very much tied what is the papacy into a sense of its own religious purpose  turn the native experience but franciscans are not always Pleasant people to take in native peoples who are reeling from Conquistador violence off of feel they don't have any choice that there you can make the best of a bad situation by accepting Franciscan missionaries in as far as protectors but it see it's always of a bargain with many price goodnight people must pay the idea was to destroy the religions of the encountered and impose Catholicism upon those whom they met what's the way it really turned out was the Catholic Student found that the best way to to get conference was to work out blends of catholicism's which is why you find in all scism in different parts of Latin America to be so different because of the daring Indian influences on on the Catholicism in terms of the governmental structures of course they wanted destroy the major governmental structures that once it's turned in the way of their Conquest on the other hand to the degree that they could allow localized government to continue to operate as long as they play ball with the new Spanish rulers in conquering the Aztecs the Spanish put themselves at the head of a system in which the taking Indian labor was already part of the system but when Spanish go to places far from the valley of Mexico when they move even Beyond New Mexico Orinda California onto the Great Plains they don't find those same kind of Indian peoples in place and they find it very difficult to him the kind of relations that may work in Mexico or the Andes to those places so they have to learn to adopt  Hope Springs Eternal a lot to that Stick Empires in Inca Empires and it's this hope that inspires other Spanish conquistadors to probe Northrop from Mexico and to what is now Florida and Texas New Mexico Arizona even along the coast of California looking for other Rich Empires the other and more tangible an immediate incentive is that the Spanish plantations of the Caribbean islands needed labor and hated people I had initially you're going into doing the work on these plantations and also mines we're dying out on their exposure to European diseases Samsung's distresses of slavery the earliest Europeans to make contact with the African continent in to begin bring black people into predominant white communities as lifetime workers are slaves were the Spanish and the Portuguese and they're doing this in the 15 16th century say it may even have been doing it earlier than that they will initially even bring a few of these workers to Europe so on that Iberian Peninsula Spain there is a pattern of black slavery before these nations leave the rest of European countries in the conquest and resettlement of what we know North and South America West Indies support included everybody needs that these Europeans who are in a very dynamic make an exciting spansion space they need laborers to help them develop an open up this territory and to make it economically feasible to do what's this soft settlement to get more slaves some of these Expeditions proceeded along the coast of North America the Florida the care volume is to grab people to haul him back and put them in the slavery to sell them as slaves and so someone like Ponce de Leon turn in locking for the fabled Fountain of Youth was looking for slaves you and miss. A third group also enters the sea Spanish settlers their Artisans are farmers their lawyers their government officials and they come in and they want to share the riches of the so there ends up being on very heated competition between the secular colonists and the the missionaries who have a common goal of exploiting Indians but have quite different ways of doing so and it really the only European settlements that that succeed in this area a very very long time but I called vampire settlements because it's Europeans attach themselves to settled Indian Community such as a Pueblo as a New Mexico and Bay I live off of Pueblo labor in Pueblo resource without that settled communities labor from mines labor for Missions labor for for ranches around then in fact your pants by enlarged cannot survive in the serious kids going to be an area which is very resistant of Imperial control for a very long time throughout the 16th and early 17th centuries the number of European settlers in Spanish America remains relatively small the Spanish style colonization is to exploit the existing native population not establish large self-contained colonies widest state in terms of the people they sent over obviously the military-type the missionaries and from the very beginning Spain envisioned highly elaborate complicated bureaucratic state governments and the top down they were going to control everything the fact that they were three four or five thousand miles away was a major complication but it was one that they thought they could overcome  a lot of people get to see in Spain after its golden age of kind of stagnation go to Conn's in that end of the affected its Colonial control they were competing interests and there also is usually not give him much attention and in American history textbooks but in 1680s who is the Preble oh Revolt which was a significant revolt against Spanish control the Pueblo Indians lived in adobe brick Villages which the Spanish call Pueblo these people didn't know they were all one spoke different languages they also fought with one another and they didn't develop a common identity until they had the common set of problems imposed upon them by the intrusion of colonizing Spanish people I am so one of your knees is that the Pueblo Indians developed improve communicate with one another where there had previously been linguistic barriers and this ability to communicate with one another and able variety of Pueblo peoples to unite in a rebellion against Spanish rule in 1680s the drug the Spanish out in the Mexico two centuries of conflict leave their mark on both the Native American and Spanish cultures can you people who aim under a severe disadvantage that's their vulnerability to diseases that come in with Europeans friendly and people these are what where is called virgin soil epidemic on they've no resistance inside the death rates can be absolutely horrifying and these death rates can reach and some places 60 70 80 per-cent now disease itself will not give you that kind of death right it'll give you a lot it'll give you 40 - 50% switch relay to reach the kinds of levels that are that are taking place here bring up what you need is social disruption to any peoples not only get disease but they're very awesome victimized by slaving rating Warfare which makes it impossible to feed clothes and house populations nobody's medicine is any good at this time obviously diseases were carried by Indians who were fleeing the epidemic but an additional way that they may have been spread with through them eggs that the Europeans brought with them they multiplied over the land and and pigs are apparently biologically not dissimilar to human beings and so that is some people think they may have been the disease reservoirs however they were spread it was devastating to populations  not all the interaction between the two cultures is quite this disastrous to Native populations  citizen Stan amount of time which Indians do coexist independently alongside Europeans and indeed many of the cultures of Indian people that we think of as put a sexually engine couldn't tell us until Europeans came because it's kind of noise and so planes nomadism is just as much a product of this history of contact is anything that happens in the does the United States Indians increasingly developed a syncretic culture which adopted elements of Hispanic culture that adopted that's a Catholicism of the Agricultural practices of the Spanish introduced and developed a pretty widespread rudimentary understanding Spanish  intermarriage was frequent men living alone in a Strange Land crave companionship then too there was a quit need for labor that only the native population could fill but one of the quest of the Spaniards for new reaches  ultimately they didn't find another Aztec Empire and I found Indians that had a capacity to defend themselves against the slaving Expeditions by Mustang show by about 1560 or so they concluded that the rest of North America wasn't really worth the bother and they had about all they could handle and indeed they had very profitable colonies in Mexico and Peru so they concentrated their resource Starion Spanish settlement concentrated in those places that we very prosperous why go lives in Florida where there are not dance who can be readily enslaved and there aren't Gold and Silver Mines when you can settle in white happily and prosperously cell in Mexico or improve Spanish Empire was immense it was very rich but it didn't really have the capacity for further expansion at the end of the 16th 17th century and yet the remnants of this collision between the Spanish and Native American cultures in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries buildings today in parts of the United States and the nations of Central and South America The Unfinished nation is it 82 part American history series for more information about this program in a company materials call +1-800-576-2988 or visit us online at w UW Telecom. 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Exploration/Settlement of North America

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