American History - Investors

It’s probably worth taking a moment to look at exactly how it was that the New World was explored. Now during the time, which some asshat historians have dubbed the Age of Discovery, the the nations of western Europe were in a period of transition. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, the economy was basically just a giant pyramid scheme with serfs on the bottom and kings on the top, and a whole bunch of various lords and other other nobles in between. The serfs were basically required to pay their local lords, usually in the form of free labor, for the right to raise crops for themselves, and the lords were then required to pay the king for the right to own the land on which the serfs were exploited. However, this system began changing pretty rapidly in the mid-fourteenth century when the Bubonic Plague killed around half the population. Thanks to a rather pronounced labor shortage, lords found themselves increasingly having to pay people in return for their labor, sparking the beginnings of the transition from a feudal to capitalistic society.

Now when looking at the so-called Age of Discovery, most of the early exploration from western Europe was funded by the government, which at the time was the king and his various lackeys. Similar to the U.S. government sending people to the moon, the rulers of Spain, Portugal, England, France, and so on, threw money at crazy ideas that seemed rather impractical at the time in hopes for a big score. Sending people sailing randomly into the ocean in hopes of somehow reaching the riches of Asia was not exactly a cheap endeavor. It wasn’t just something thrown together by a bunch of idiots after talking about it at the tavern one night, and few people had the cash available to fund such risky ventures except for the schmucks running whole countries. Most of the big names; Columbus, Vespucci, Cabot, Cartier; were all funded by kings and queens.

Things began to change as the understanding and knowledge of the New World began to expand, and ships began to more regularly sail across the Atlantic. After all, its one thing to set sail into the unknown, its another to set sail knowing full well that you’re eventually going to hit a giant land mass. As a result, exploration of the New World shifted away from grandiose ideas being completely funded by royalty to investment opportunities. Basically the way it worked was somebody would get an idea of wanting to go exploring or start a colony. They would then go to the ruling monarch to get royal assent to do so, which was basically asking a monarch to put their stamp of approval on the venture, which aside from helping limit the chances of the king cutting off your head if they decided they didn’t like what you were doing, also was great advertising. Now the sponsoring monarch might throw in some money to help out, but overall it was up to the person planning the venture to find people to invest in the idea, usually various members of the nobility and increasingly over time members of the merchant class. Explorers were basically running joint stock companies, a concept becoming increasingly popular across western Europe for all sorts of things during this period.

Now of course, if people are investing in something, it means they are most likely expecting some kind of return on investment. After all, there are very few people who just hand out money will nilly with no expectations. As a result, exploration of the New World increasingly become driven by the need for profit, and new lands weren’t added to the map just out of curiosity, but rather in hopes that the blank spot on the map contained something that could be turned into cold hard cash. About the only exception to this was explorations taken on behalf of the Catholic church, which was much less interested in making money as it was in saving souls in the new lands discovered. Especially with Spain and Portugal, where the Catholic church held a significant amount of sway and power throughout the Age of Discovery, getting royal assent often meant also supporting the church’s mission of converting Native Americans, though for the people actually leading the expeditions, unless they were a particularly pious bastard, this was most often treated as a secondary objective.

Anyways, as explorers found new sources of income, investments increased, which in turn led to the construction of increasingly complex infrastructure, which led to colonies growing into cities and the creation of systems of government to manage everything and ensure that everyone, including the king, back home was getting their share of the profits. So was born what we would later call the United States.

American History - Hispanic

This might be a good moment to take a step back to get a bit of perspective. When we think about American history, we tend to think of it from the perspective of the United States, which tends to downplay the significant amount of change that had already taken place in the New World by the time Jamestown was founded in 1607. We tend to picture the arrival of Europeans in Virginia in much the same way we picture the arrival of Columbus in the Caribbean in 1492, which is a completely garbage way to look at things. By the time the first idiots arrived in Jamestown, the Old World and New World had been interacting with each other for over a century, which for those of you who aren’t good with time as a concept, is a really fricking long time. Furthermore, as far as centuries go, the sixteenth century was probably the most transformative century in American history.

When Columbus first arrived, the New World was home to millions of people, comparable to Europe. By the time Jamestown was built, at least two-thirds of them were dead, most from disease, with the majority of the rest soon to be dead by the middle of the seventeenth century. Even though this death toll did not affect all areas equally, it most definitely had a ripple effect across the continent, shifting power dynamics and sparking waves of emigration and conquest. The world experienced by Columbus and the early Spanish was completely different than the world experienced by the first settlers of Jamestown.

In American history, the sixteenth century is most definitely the Spanish century. With the exception of a few small Portuguese colonies in Brazil, the Spanish were the only Europeans with a significant presence in the New World, controlling vast swaths of territories by the close of the century. However, they really didn’t give two shits about the land itself. The Spanish didn’t come to the New World for more land, they came for gold and silver, a dynamic that affected everything from what territories they claimed to how they interacted with the natives. The Spanish relationship with the natives was largely defined by a need for labor. They needed people to mine for gold and silver and to build and maintain the supporting infrastructure. From the Spanish point of view, they didn’t want to topple the existing power structures, they just wanted to be the ones on top controlling them. When the natives started dying off by the millions, the Spanish way of seeing it wasn’t: “sweet, more free land for us,” it was: “holy shit, all the fricking worker bees are dying.”

Unlike the later settlers in what we today call the United States, the primary goal of the early Spanish when dealing with the natives was integration. However, though they wanted the natives to be part of their new society, it was definitely a very stratified society based upon race and standing. The natives were on the bottom, then came people of mixed Spanish and native descent, then people of Spanish descent born in the New World, and then people born in Spain on the top. Though the lines between these groups grew increasingly blurred as time moved forward, the basic structure continues to exist to this day in many Latin American countries. As well, the integration of many tribes over time also created a distinction between “civilized” natives who had been fully integrated, those who were in the process of being “civilized”, and those who lived outside of Spanish society. Those deemed more “civilized” enjoyed greater rights and privileges, while it was basically okay to enslave, murder, and steal from those deemed “uncivilized”, as long as doing so would not negatively affect the mining of gold and silver.

It is worth noting that throughout the history of New Spain, the Spanish themselves were never the majority, even after pandemics killed the vast majority of natives and immigration from Spain increased in the second half of the century. By 1600, an estimated 275,000 people considered to be Spanish lived in New Spain, compared to 2.3 million considered to be natives. The fact that even when immigration increased, only 25% were women, meant that intermarriage with the natives was extremely common for everyone but the highest levels of the social ladder. The result was that even with all of the atrocities committed by the Spanish against the natives, their bloodlines and cultures became blended together, creating a new group of people and societies which today are collectively referred to as Hispanic. This blending of the Old World and New World, while not unique to just the Spanish, did not take place to the same degree with the later settlers of North America.

American History - New Mexico

In 1546, natives showed the Spanish several previously unknown silver deposits in the deserts to the northwest of Mexico City. The Spanish, being rather into silver, of course went all out crazy over the find, with hundreds racing northward to get rich quick. This turn of events was not exactly to the liking of the Chichimeca peoples who lived in the area, especially once the Spanish started doing raids to force them to work in the newly dug mines. The Chichimeca were nomadic hunter gatherers. Unlike their conquered neighbors to the south, they did not have cities or empires, but rather lived as scattered tribes across north-central Mexico. Tiring of the general Spanish assholery, the Chichimeca declared all out war, attacking the caravans moving supplies to the mines. Having conquered the Aztecs and many other advanced Mesoamerican civilizations, the Spanish thought subduing the Chichimeca would be easy, but oh boy were they ever wrong.

For the next fifty years, the Chichimeca waged a devastating guerilla campaign. At first the Spanish and their native allies responded with brute force, building forts throughout the area and enslaving, torturing, and slaughtering any Chichimeca they found. However, this only resulted in increased Chichimeca attacks, which grew even worse when the Chichimeca started to steal and ride horses. The war did not come into an end until the Spanish basically bought the tribes off by halting military operations, stopping the slave raids, and handing out food and other goods. The Spanish also gave away special privileges to native allies willing to relocate to the area, which acted as role models to help teach the Chichimeca farming and convert them to Catholicism. The strategy was surprisingly effective. Hostilities ended in 1590, and over the next several decades the Chichimeca became fully assimilated into the society and culture of New Spain.

The war with the Chichimeca made it difficult for the Spanish to expand northwards, but not impossible. Spurred on by the myth of the seven cities of gold, various expeditions made their way north starting in the late 1560s, establishing scattered silver mines across what is today northwestern Mexico. Further expeditions in the 1580s reached as far as present day New Mexico. Some returned home, reporting there being nothing of interest, while others spread rumors of likely sources of silver and gold, reviving old rumors of the mythical seven cities of gold. This prompted the departure of several unauthorized expeditions at the end of the Chichimeca war, one which was forced to turn back and one which moved eastward onto the Great Plains where all of its members were slaughtered by the Wichita, a Caddoan tribe with large settlements throughout the area. It was at this point, that the leaders of New Spain decided to officially take control of the territory known as New Mexico. Two reasons were given for this decision, the first being to secure any possible sources of gold or silver, and the second being to convert the natives to Christianity. The person they chose to lead the expedition, Juan de Onate, did neither of these things.

Departing in 1598, Onate marched around one thousand would be Spanish and native settlers and thousands of livestock to northern New Mexico where they forcibly took over a Puebloan village, renaming it San Juan and declaring it the territories new capital. He then proceeded to march around to the neighboring villages, demanding food and supplies. At first the locals just went along with it, but after about a year of such crap some started to refuse, which led to an argument where several Spaniards were killed. Onate responded by massacring a village of several thousand and chopping off the toes of the survivors for some reason. This did not really help the relationship. Facing growing hostility from the Puebloans, Onate next took what soldiers he had on an expedition eastward across the Great Plains in 1601 in search of the mythical seven city’s of gold. Finding nothing in present day Texas, Oklahoma, or Kansas, he returned home after pissing off and getting attacked by the Wichita. Returning to New Mexico, he found that the would be settlers were now pissed off at him as well for having taken nearly all the soldiers, leaving them vulnerable to attack by the still pissed off Puebloans. Onate responded by threatening anyone who questioned him and then leaving on an expedition to explore the length of the Colorado River to the ocean in 1604. Having enough of such shit, the leaders of New Spain ordered him to return to Mexico City in 1606.

After the departure of Onate, a new governor of New Spain got things back in order. A new settlement named Santa Fe was established in 1610, better relations were established with the local native tribes, and offers of free land drew more settlers northward. The new governor also invited more Catholic friars north to better convert the natives to Christianity. These friars built missions across New Mexico, which brought the new religion to the various Puebloan peoples, but also unfortunately a number of Old World diseases. Between 1620 and 1645, 70% of the native population died in outbreaks of small pox and measles, as well as the famines resulting from such a quick decline. Entire villages, inhabited for centuries, were left empty. Catholic friars, knowing little of disease, declared it God’s will.