Crash Course Native American & Spaniards

Here is a history crash course of relationship between the Native American People and the Spaniards.

Native American People

Through the European lens the Native American people didn’t have classical style civilizations with buildings and roads and a set ownership of land like they did in Europe.

The Native Americans did not have the wheel or a written language to read about their history in books like they do now.

They didn’t have guns, gun powder, or domesticated animals.

What they did have was farming, a complex political structures, trade and trade routes and a spiritual religion.

The Native Americans used only what they needed and a great respect for the land and the animals.

It was estimated that the diverse population of Native Americans was between 2-10 million people to a high of 18 million people, that dispersed throughout North America.

Many of this populations was totally wiped out because of disease like the smallpox disease and influenza brought in by the Europeans. It was not a 1-10 but more in 8-10 wiped out by disease

Generalization of History of What is Written

There was huge diversity of many tribes living in different areas.

Organized as tribes were dominated by the Natural Resources they lived in and were surrounded by.

For example the West coast tribes lived by fishing, gathering, hunting see mammals. While the plains tribes were largely Bison Hunters.

A lot of the tribes organized into Societies or confederacies. One of the more popular confederacies is the Iroquois confederacy or the Great League of Peace.

Religion

Depending on where the tribe lived and the natural resources they had made great affect on their religion.

The Indigenous people were very religious peoples. Many with songs and use of music with instruments of the rattle and drum.

If you came from the plains then a lot of your spirituality came from the animals you hunted and used for sustenance and animals that were around as well.

The Plains Indians got a lot of their education from the Buffalo, Eagle, Wolf, and Horse. They learned from the land through the medicines it provided and more.

The West Coast Tribes have many stories of the Raven, Salmon, and whales that goes along with their spirituality.

The tribes that focused on Agriculture have many of their spiritual teachings around a good harvest.

The Creator

Most of all the tribes believed in one Creator of all things and prayed to the creator for guidance and help.

Some Native Americans refer to the Creator as also the Great Mystery.

There is many similarities from the Creator and the Christian God, so the Europeans used this as a way to convert Tribes over to Christianity and ease into the conversation of God.

Property

The land that the First Peoples occupied was not organized by ownership of that land. It was known as a common resource for the people who occupied it and was used for only the resources needed.

Structure of Native Americans

Leadership and Chiefs

Most leaders came from the same family or they earned the right from deeds done and accomplishments. The leaders were often though chosen by the people.

The leaders didn’t have total power but were very respected and generally followed by the tribe as a whole.

Usually there would be different types of leaders within a tribe, such as a civil leader and a war leader who took over during times of war. An example would be like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse of the Lakota, where Sitting Bull was more of a philosophical thought leader and Crazy Horse being the great war leader.

Villages and Families

Families and people were further divided up into clans. Large extended families often lived together.

The tribes were much less obsessed with female chastity and sex wasn’t so taboo like it was amongst the europeans.

The boys went under the wing of the men and the men of the tribes to learn how to sustain the tribe and protect the people.

The girls went under the wing of the mother and the woman of the tribe to learn how to be a good provider and keeper of the lodges.

Rules and Punishment

For the most part there was no physical punishment inflicted. The people that committed crimes or went against the ways of the tribe were often rebuked and shamed in front of the people of the tribe.

In the most extreme cases, the person who done the wrong deed was expelled from the tribe.

The European Spanish

A man by the naame of Juan Ponce de Leon was a spanish explorer who lead an expedition to Florida. He in his crew were out to find the fountain of youth and gold.

In 1521 Juan attempted to start a large-scale spanish colony in Southwest Florida. The native Calusa people in the area though, resisted the incursion and they wounded Juan in the skirmish.

Juan later died from his wounds after returning to Cuba.

Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca was also a spanish explored during the early 16th Century. He became a faith healer and a trader to many Native American people in the area of Florida.

Alvar looking for gold in early 16 century but didn’t find any, instead they brought the microbes that started to kill off a huge number of the Native American Population.

Spanish in Search for Gold

When America was discovered, the spanish people became obsessed with this idea that somewhere within the land were rich mines of Gold and Silver. Various expeditions were sent out to find where some of these mines may be.

From 1540-1542, Franciso Vazquez de Coronado lead a large expedition through Mexico which is now present day Kansas and other parts of the Southwestern United States.

He was in search for Gold and in particular the Seven Cities of Gold to find his riches.

Spanish Missionaries and Christianity

Part of the expedition brought in Spanish Missionaries whose job was to convert the Native American people to Christianity.

During this time in the early 1600s there was a lot of brutality of the Spanish people to the Native Americans in trying to convert their way of life to the European way of life and Christianity.

There was many ways that the Spanish treated the First Peoples in very brutal ways.

• There was mass killings of unarmed people.
• The fed them to hungry dogs.
• Hung and Burned them alive
• They took the lives of Newborn babies
• Used people to test the strength of their blades
• They spread devastating diseases
• They cut off their hands and hung them around their necks
• Forced them into slavery and worked them until they perished
• Burned them alive in their own homes
• Mutilated their faces
• They used skull crushing spikes during battle
• They enslaved 2,000 men and Burned them alive for 15 European Casualties
• They tied up a Queen and used her for target practice

All this was in the name of Christianity and the European way of life.

Native Americans Uprising and Fighting Back

In 1680 a leader of the Pueblo people by the name of Popē decided to revolt against the spanish europeans.

Popē united tribes of even different speaking tribes to rise up and fight the spanish people and to return to the Old Ways of peace.

2,000 of the Native Americans advanced on the spanish europeans and killed 400 of them and drove them out of the area of Sante Fe, New Mexico.

They burned and destroyed the buildings except the Palace of the Governors which is the oldest church in United States.

It was the first uprising from Native Americans on European people.

Peace Talks and Alliances

By 1693 other tribes started fighting back like the Comanche, Apache, and Navajo tribes.

Because of this the Spanish people wanted to form an alliance with the Pueblo people to bring about a much more peaceful existence.

English and Native Americans

When the english came into America they used what the spanish had done to justify what they were doing in the treatment of the Native Americans.

They were here to “save the Indian from the awful spanish”, but they weren’t much different in their brutality and way of living.

Anything We Might have Left Out? Leave it in the comments below and we will add it in.