Spanish colonization of the Americas

“ Spaniards Invite Americans to Become Colonists.
Next to secretly rousing the Indians, the Spaniards placed most reliance on intriguing with the Westerners, in the effort to sunder them from the seaboard Americans. They also at times thought to bar the American advance by allowing the frontiersmen to come into their territory and settle on condition of becoming Spanish subjects. They hoped to make of these favored settlers a barrier against the rest of their kinsfolk. ”

“ For some time after the disastrous failure of the attempt of Las Casas to found a colony on the Pearl Coast of Cumaná, the northern portion of Spanish South America, from the Orinoco westwards, is almost lost to history. The powers working for good had signally failed, and the powers of evil seemed to have it almost all their own way. The regions discovered by the Spaniards were so vast, in proportion to the numbers of the discoverers, that many of them were long lost to view, and probably to memory. ”

“ The spanish domination during the colony was overwhelming and absolute, reaching so inhumane extremes, which only demonstrate the spiritual poverty of the spanish who carried out the invasion. By the end of the colonial period, it is estimated that the New Spain approximately had six million people, of these, according to the 1793 census there were eight thousand peninsular Spanish, who controlled the political, economic and social power of the entire population. ”

“ For three centuries the political and commercial dependence of the colonies upon the mother country was as complete and absolute as selfish policy, rigorous laws, and oppressive government could make it. To drain the Indies of their wealth and draw it to Spain was the sole aim which influenced the Spanish monarchs in legislating for their colonial possessions, and the prohibitive system of commerce pursued by them makes glaringly conspicuous their indifference to the welfare of the transatlantic settlements. ”

“ In the colonies the most striking feature of Spanish economic policy was its wastefulness. After the conquest of the New World, it was to the interest of the Spaniards to gradually wean the native Indians from barbarism by teaching them the arts and sciences of Europe, to encourage such industries as were favoured by the soil, and to furnish the growing colonies with those articles which they could not produce themselves, and of which they stood in need. Only thus could they justify their monopoly of the markets of Spanish America. ”

“ The standard of revolt was raised in Mexico, 1808; in Venezuela, 1810; Buenos Ayres, Chili, and Peru followed the movement, until, before the death of Ferdinand, every American colony and every island had been lost to Spain except Cuba and Puerto Rico. Long and sanguinary were the struggles between the desperate Spaniards and the aspirants for freedom; but in the end the patriots conquered, and continental America was freed from Spanish misrule. Florida was ceded in 1819 to the United States, which ultimately acquired a vast portion of Mexican territory by conquest and treaty. ”

“ The American Forces are at Hand, ready to undertake Expeditions, and to accomplish any purpose, before the Spaniards, at so many thousands of miles distance, can be apprized of their Designs; and long before they possibly can send sufficient Reinforcements. Another Reason is, that the Native Spanish Indians, being in the most abject Slavery to the Prince and the Priests, will naturally and heartly join the late British Colonies, and assist them in subduing the Spaniards, in order to emancipate themselves from bondage, and to regain their long lost Liberties. ”

“ The deadly rivalries of Catholic and Protestant, of Englishman and Spaniard, have left indelible traces upon their descendants which intensify race prejudice and misunderstanding. The Englishman or American looks with a contempt upon the economic blindness or incapacity of the Spaniard that veils his eyes to their real aims and achievements.
The tragedies and blunders of English colonization in America are often forgotten and only the tragedies and blunders of Spanish colonization are remembered. ”

“ Since the arrival of the earliest Spanish settlers more than 400 years ago, millions of Hispanic men and women have come to the United States from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba and other Caribbean regions, Central America, South America, and Spain, in search of peace, freedom, and a more prosperous future. ”

“ Perhaps one of the best proofs of Catholic Spanish humanity is the fact of the preservation of the aborigines of the land wherever Spanish conquests were made. Take for example, the statistics of the last census of Mexico which reveal that of a population of 15,000,000 souls 7,000,000 are pure Indian 5,000,000 mestizos or of mixed Indian and foreign extraction and only 3,000,000 foreigners or of Mexican birth but of purely foreign extraction. Take, California, Arizona, New Mexico and other former Spanish possessions of whom the same may be said in proportion. ”

“ But in the case of the most prosperous instances of colonization by the British, the native races have either wholly disappeared or are in progress of extinction, while the infusion of Spanish and foreign blood into the colonies of Spain has not only allowed the increase of the indigenous population, but has been insufficient to change or do more than slightly modify their national characters. ”

“ Colonies, from being primarily fields for the propagation of Christianity and incidentally for the production of wealth, became the field primarily for industrial and commercial development and incidentally for Christian work. The change no doubt has contributed vastly to the wealth of the world and to progress, but it has been fatal to the native populations. The Spanish policy aimed to preserve and civilize the native races, not to establish a new home for Spaniards, and the colonial legislation provided elaborate safeguards for the protection of the Indians. ”

“ Population and industries.—The heroic age of Spanish colonization had now passed. The surprising results achieved in the New World during the first eighty years, not counting the work of exploration, are set forth in a description of the colonies in 1574 written by López de Velasco, official geographer. At that time there were in North and South America about two hundred Spanish towns and cities, besides numerous mining camps, haciendas, and stock ranches. The Spanish population was 32,000 families, or perhaps from 160,000 to 200,000 persons. ”

“ French adventure and enterprise had precedence in the actual colonization of the northern half of this continent. Spain was long content with conquest without colonization. She has in Mexico and in South America all that can be said to be rightfully hers in the perpetuation of her language, in exclusive privileges of commerce, in the mixture of Spanish with native blood, and in the still effective, though strained and fretting, ties of traditional loyalty recognized by her transatlantic subjects on main and island. ”

“ The need for negroes was not great in Mexico or Peru, because the native Indians were of a hardier stock than the feeble Arawaks of the Antilles, and lived on under their European masters, though ground down and reduced in numbers by ill treatment. Thus when at last the Spanish colonies asserted their independence, they started without that incubus of a mass of negro slaves which brought so much trouble upon the southern states of the North American Union. ”

“ Florida Blanca, too, very decidedly expressed his aversion to the new republic and was reported to have said "that the independence of America would be the worst example to other colonies, and would make the Americans in every respect the worst neighbors that the Spanish colonies could have." Thus the constant fear that the close proximity of an independent state might rouse the spirit of independence in her own colonies, determined the policy of Spain toward the War of American Independence. ”

“ The weakness of Spain and the failure of her colonial government, plus help from Napoleon by way of his invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 1808, brought about the collapse of the Spanish empire. In America, patriots, inspired by the earlier success of the American Revolution and afire with the ideas of the French Revolution, struck out at the remnants of Spanish rule. By 1825, all the Spanish colonies but the islands of the Caribbean were free and independent nations. New Mexico and the Southwest became part of the Mexican state. ”

“ Spain could not preserve the gifts of Columbus.
SPAINS COLONIAL POLICIES. The logic of events and the progress of civilization have commanded that Spain should withdraw from her possessions in the western hemisphere. Never has there been such a record of ferocity and barbarity in conquest, as that which blackens the pages of Spanish history in connection with Spain's acquisition and subjection of her newly discovered territories. Whether it was the peaceful Indians of the Antilles, the highly civilized Aztecs of Mexico, or the Incas of Peru, the policy pursued was always the same. ”

“ France and Spain sent many men to look for it, and if they did not find Cathay they at least found many curious and wonderful things in America, and so it came about, after a while, that America itself was pretty well known, and many attempts were made to settle it. Spain tried very hard to establish her colonies in the New World, and expedition after expedition was sent across the sea. With one of these expeditions sailed Cabeca de Vaca, a Spanish nobleman, and his account of the trials and misfortunes of the settlers shows how very difficult it was to establish a Spanish colony in America. ”

“ To protect these adventurers and to secure for itself the largest possible share in these new sources of wealth, the Spanish crown forbade the admission of foreigners into these colonies, and then harassed them with commercial and industrial restrictions, burdened them with taxes, strangled them with monopolies and even refused to permit the free emigration thither of Spaniards. Out of such adverse conditions has developed the present population of Mexico. ”

“ It is hardly to be believed that either Great Britain or the Indian proprietors have so disinterested a regard for us, as to be willing to relieve us, by receiving such a colony themselves.... On our western and southern frontiers, Spain holds an immense country, the occupancy of which, however, is in the Indian natives, except a few insulated spots possessed by Spanish subjects. It is very questionable, indeed, whether the Indians would sell? ”

“ Now that the bond of unity once supplied by Spain had been broken, the entire region which had been its continental domain in America dissolved awhile into its elements. The Spanish language, the traditions and customs of the dominant class, and a "republican" form of government, were practically the sole ties which remained. Laws, to be sure, had been enacted, providing for the immediate or gradual abolition of negro slavery and for an improvement in the status of the Indian and half-caste; but the bulk of the inhabitants, as in colonial times, remained outside of the body politic and social. ”

“ Plantations worked by enslaved Indians could be developed on Cuba and Puerto Rico. Those Indians—all Indians—had a greater attraction than just as laborers, however. Alone of all European nations, Spain was committed to incorporating the native Americans into the empire as loyal, taxpaying subjects. Priests accompanied exploring expeditions. After the entradas were completed, missionaries settled among the tribes and began the civilizing process, as civilization was defined by the conquerors. ”

“ Nothing could be less suitable for establishments so situated as were the Spanish colonies in South America than the introduction of the monastic system; yet that system was soon to be found there to a most flourishing extent. In a new settlement, where there is room to spread, the main object should be to encourage population; but the Spaniards, with their usual blindness, began from the first to erect convents, where persons of either sex were shut up in large numbers under a vow of celibacy. ”

“ If, on the one hand, the early conquistadores treated the natives with hideous cruelty, the Spanish government legislated more systematically and benevolently to protect them than any other colonizing power. In the time of the first conquests things moved too rapidly for the home government in those days of slow communication, and the horrors of the clash between ruthless gold-seekers and the simple children of nature, as depicted by the impassioned pen of Las Casas and spread broadcast over Europe, came to be the traditional and accepted characteristic of Spanish rule. ”

“ The Spanish-American empire was therefore much longer-lived than the first colonial dominion of Great Britain in North America, and the natural inference is, either that the Spaniards treated their colonies or dependencies better than the English treated theirs, or that the English colonies were in a better position than the Spanish dependencies to assert their independence, or that both causes operated simultaneously. ”

“ The laws of Spain provided for justice and humanity in the dealings with the Indians, but the settlers, thousands of miles away, paid no attention to these laws, and the red men were almost everywhere reduced to slavery, or where free and given political rights, were looked upon as far inferior to the whites. In every district Spain placed an official called the "Protector of the Indians," but it does not appear that they were much the better off for their "Protectors." It is our purpose here to say something about the cruel treatment of the natives in South America. ”