Transcription
[Music] Ah, this tea is hot. Well, you know where else it was hot? New Spain. All right, because the Spanish, uh, if we look at the map of the North American colonies, we can see that the Spanish were in Florida and the American Southwest, and of course, the Spanish were also in modern-day Mexico, Central America, South America, basically what we think of as Latin America.
Now, the key to understanding the Spanish is to understand their motivations, and their motivations started with the Reconquista, which is a word that translates into English as "reconquest." And ever since the Middle Ages, the Spanish Christians had been in a steady process of winning their country back from the Muslims. And Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1492, became the monarchs of Spain, and their goal was additional conquest. "We have conquered our country back, now let's go out and conquer somewhere else."
And the motivations of the Spanish are these imperialist motivations of God, glory, and gold. And the agents of this were conquistadors. This translates to "conqueror" in English, very neatly. And these conquistadors came down and took over a lot of these tribes that had been there and established Spanish sovereignty in this area, really extending the Spanish Empire.
And the Aztec Empire, this is the large, largest empire that was taken over by the Spanish. And here is a model of Tenochtitlan, which was the Aztec capital, which is located in modern-day Mexico City. Now, if you look here, you can see that, uh, Tenochtitlan was a very prosperous city, a very large city. A lot of times we imagine Native Americans living in smaller villages, but that's clearly not the case here. We have a very complex civilization.
Hernán Cortés was the most famous of the conquistadors, and he took over the Aztecs, defeating their king, Moctezuma, in battle. And here is a map of all of the places that at some point or another have been under Spanish control. And so we can see that if you include the brief stint controlling Louisiana, that the Spanish have at one point controlled over half of our country.
And it's important to note the cast system of New Spain. Who you were in your social rank depended on two things: first of all, your pedigree, your bloodline, and second of all, where you were born. At the top of this cast system were the Peninsulares, who were full-blooded Spanish and born in Spain. The Creoles, which comes from a word meaning "essentially from here," these were people who were full-blooded Spanish, but they were born in the colonies. Uh, the Spanish looked down on people that were born in the colonies, and a lot of the Spanish didn't really bring their families. This wasn't a place for that. This is a place to come in, make money, supervise Indian labor, conquer, and explore.
And below them in the social hierarchy were Mestizos, people of mixed ancestry who were also born in the colonies. So keep that in mind: your pedigree and where you were born, which is also a big deal in the British colonies, when you'll see that George Washington, in spite of all of his wealth, is going to be looked down upon because he was born in the colonies.
And the Spanish system of labor that was adopted in the early colonial period was known as the encomienda. Now, unfortunately, unlike Reconquista, encomienda, uh, doesn't translate very neatly. Okay, this is just the system of labor, so you have to remember encomienda. If anyone ever, you know, asks you about that, it's, it's bad. It's a system of labor. We don't like it. And neither did Bartolomé de las Casas, who was a Dominican priest who complained to the Spanish government about the abuses of the encomienda system. And he wrote, uh, lots of stuff that was talking about the various ways in which the Spanish were abusing the Native Americans. And you can see things like this, where we see this Spaniard who is feeding children to his dogs. You see a woman who is hanging, and then you see somebody being chased by dogs. Another guy looks like he's going to have spears thrown at him, like he's on Apocalypto or something. Uh, they refer to this as the Black Legend.
Keep in mind that although de las Casas was very effective in getting the encomienda, at least officially, off the books, there was likely some exaggeration here. When we look at de las Casas, if you're looking at point of view, which is very important for AP exams, that de las Casas had a stake here because he's trying to convert Native Americans to the Christian religion. And this is the other side of this. This is the God, glory, and gold thing. Now, the conquistadors are about glory and gold, but you look at people like de las Casas, and he is about God. So this is the other side of the Spanish conquest.
And Spanish priests came over, and they founded missions. And the objective of these missions was to bring Native Americans into Spanish life, into the Spanish Empire. The goal here is assimilation: learn Spanish, convert to Christianity, pay taxes. And here is a map of Spanish missions in California. And you can see here, a lot of famous cities such as San Diego, San Francisco, these started off as Spanish missions. This is a picture of the Mission San Juan Capistrano, which is in Orange County, California.
And missions were more than churches, they were also community centers. We can see here, this place has a guest room, a hat shop, a soap shop, winery, carpenter shop. You also see the way that this is laid out, that this could be a fortress if it needed to, if it were under attack, everybody could go in here. That's the way it's set up. Of course, it had a religious function, but also a function as a sort of community center.
Now, General George S. Patton, as I've related in another video already about the colonists and the Indians, he said, "Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way." Now, of these three, the Spanish are asking the Indians to follow them, come with us, learn Spanish, adopt our religion, and just, yeah, do what we're doing, basically.
And let's close off with a graphic organizer, just reviewing and putting all of this stuff into a nice little box or series of boxes. So the regions colonized by the Spanish would be Mexico, California, the southwestern United States, and Florida. The Spanish were Catholic and interested parties. People who are coming to the Spanish colonies are conquistadors and priests. Their primary economic activity: conquest and forced labor, the encomienda, remember that as far as your vocabulary. Their settlements tended to be missions. Uh, the Spanish didn't build a lot of large cities and towns. Few colonists, and their efforts were about getting wealth and using Indian labor, and also remember evangelizing. That the Spanish had an organized program of evangelism to the Indians. And their advice to the natives: "Follow me."
Hope you'll keep watching. Uh, take a look at my other videos on colonial America. Also, keep in mind that if you want to see more, be sure to subscribe to my channel. Visit my website, www.tomrich.net. And then, of course, you can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, uh, like me on Facebook. Remember, let me know what you think, like, dislike, comment, let me know what I can do for you, how I can help you. I'll be back soon. Till next time.
[Music] [Applause] [Music]