america. a narrative history

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. www.NortonEbooks.com

NINTH EDITION

AMERICA

George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi

A NARRATIVE HISTORY

AMERICA

D E TA I L O F E N G R AV I N G B A S E D O N

T H E C H A S M O F T H E C O LO R A D O

B Y T H O M A S M O R A N

AMERICAA N A R R A T I V E H I S T O R Y

Ninth Edition

G E O R G E B R O W N T I N D A L L

D A V I D E M O R Y S H I

W . W . N O R T O N & C O M P A N Y . N E W Y O R K . L O N D O N

W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its founding in 1923,when William Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton first published lectures delivered at the Peoples Institute, the adult education division of New York Citys Cooper Union. The firm soon expanded its program beyond the Institute, publishing books by celebrated academics from America and abroad. By mid-century, the two major pillars of Nortons publishing programtrade books and college textswere firmly established. In the 1950s,the Norton family transferred control of the company to its employees, and todaywith a staff of four hundred and a comparable number of trade, col -lege, and professional titles published each yearW. W. Norton & Companystands as the largest and oldest publishing house owned wholly by its employees.

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All rights reserved.Printed in the United States of America.

Editor: Jon DurbinProject editors: Kate Feighery and Melissa Atkin

Electronic media editor: Steve HogeAssociate media editor: Lorraine Klimowich

Assistant editor: Justin CahillEditorial assistant, media: Stefani Wallace

Marketing manager, History: Heather ArteagaProduction manager: Ashley Horna

Photo editor: Stephanie RomeoComposition: Jouve International-Brattleboro, VT

Manufacturing: Quad/Graphics-Taunton, MA

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tindall, George Brown.America : a narrative history / George Brown Tindall,

David Emory Shi.9th ed.p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-393-91262-3 (hardcover)1. United StatesHistoryTextbooks. I. Shi, David E. II. Title.

E178.1.T55 2013 2012034504973dc23

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110-0017wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

FOR BRUCE AND SUSANAND FOR BLAIR

FORJASON AND JESSICA

GEORGE B. TINDALL recently of the University of NorthCarolina, Chapel Hill, was an award-winning historian of the South with a number of major books to his credit, including The Emergence of the New South, 19131945 andThe Disruption of the Solid South.

DAVID E. SHI is a professor of history and the presidentemeritus of Furman University. He is the author of severalbooks on American cultural history, including the award-winning The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking inAmerican Culture and Facing Facts: Realism in AmericanThought and Culture, 18501920.

CONTENTS

List of Maps xvii

Preface xxi

Acknowledgments xxv

Part One / A N O T - S O - N E W W O R L D1 | THE COLLISION OF CULTURES 5

PRE-COLUMBIAN INDIAN CIVILIZATIONS 6 EUROPEAN VISIONS OF

AMERICA 15 THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE 17 THE VOYAGES OF

COLUMBUS 19 THE GREAT BIOLOGICAL EXCHANGE 23 PROFESSIONAL

EXPLORERS 25 THE SPANISH EMPIRE 26 THE PROTESTANT

REFORMATION 40 CHALLENGES TO THE SPANISH EMPIRE 44

2 | BRITAIN AND ITS COLONIES 52

THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND 52 SETTLING THE CHESAPEAKE 56

SETTLING NEW ENGLAND 67 INDIANS IN NEW ENGLAND 78

THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA 83 SETTLING THE

CAROLINAS 84 SETTLING THE MIDDLE COLONIES AND GEORGIA 89

THRIVING COLONIES 102

ix

3 | COLONIAL WAYS OF LIFE 106

THE SHAPE OF EARLY AMERICA 107 SOCIETY AND ECONOMY IN THE

SOUTHERN COLONIES 114 SOCIETY AND ECONOMY IN NEW

ENGLAND 127 SOCIETY AND ECONOMY IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES 139

COLONIAL CITIES 143 THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN AMERICA 146

THE GREAT AWAKENING 150

4 | FROM COLONIES TO STATES 158

ENGLISH ADMINISTRATION OF THE COLONIES 159 THE HABIT OF

SELF-GOVERNMENT 164 TROUBLED NEIGHBORS 165 THE COLONIAL

WARS 169 REGULATING THE COLONIES 180 FANNING THE

FLAMES 185 A WORSENING CRISIS 190 SHIFTING AUTHORITY 194

INDEPENDENCE 200

Part Two / B U I L D I N G A N A T I O N5 | THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 213

1776: WASHINGTONS NARROW ESCAPE 214 AMERICAN SOCIETY AT

WAR 218 1777: SETBACKS FOR THE BRITISH 221 1778: BOTH

SIDES REGROUP 225 THE WAR IN THE SOUTH 229 THE TREATY

OF PARIS 235 THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION 238 THE SOCIAL

REVOLUTION 240 THE EMERGENCE OF AN AMERICAN CULTURE 249

6 | SHAPING A FEDERAL UNION 254

THE CONFEDERATION GOVERNMENT 255 CREATING THE CONSTITUTION 267

7 | THE FEDERALIST ERA 284

A NEW NATION 285 HAMILTONS FINANCIAL VISION 290 THE REPUBLICAN

ALTERNATIVE 298 CRISES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC 300 SETTLEMENT

OF NEW LAND 309 TRANSFER OF POWER 312 THE ADAMS

ADMINISTRATION 314

x CONTENTS

8 | THE EARLY REPUBLIC 326

THE NEW AMERICAN NATION 327 JEFFERSONIAN SIMPLICITY 329

DIVISIONS IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 340 WAR IN EUROPE 342

THE WAR OF 1812 347

Part Three / A N E X P A N S I V E N A T I O N9 | THE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH 369

TRANSPORTATION AND THE MARKET REVOLUTION 370 A COMMUNICATIONS

REVOLUTION 379 AGRICULTURE AND THE NATIONAL ECONOMY 380

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 384 THE POPULAR CULTURE 392

IMMIGRATION 395 ORGANIZED LABOR 402 THE RISE OF THE

PROFESSIONS 405 JACKSONIAN INEQUALITY 407

10 | NATIONALISM AND SECTIONALISM 410

ECONOMIC NATIONALISM 410 AN ERA OF GOOD FEELINGS 415 CRISES

AND COMPROMISES 420 JUDICIAL NATIONALISM 424 NATIONALIST

DIPLOMACY 428 ONE-PARTY POLITICS 429

11 | THE JACKSONIAN ERA 440

SETTING THE STAGE 442 NULLIFICATION 447 JACKSONS INDIAN

POLICY 455 THE BANK CONTROVERSY 459 CONTENTIOUS

POLITICS 462 VAN BUREN AND THE NEW PARTY SYSTEM 468 ASSESSING

THE JACKSON YEARS 474

12 | THE OLD SOUTH 478

THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF THE OLD SOUTH 480 WHITE SOCIETY IN

THE SOUTH 487 BLACK SOCIETY IN THE SOUTH 492 THE CULTURE

OF THE SOUTHERN FRONTIER 505

Contents xi

13 | RELIGION, ROMANTICISM, AND REFORM 510

RATIONAL RELIGION 511 THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING 513

ROMANTICISM IN AMERICA 522 THE FLOWERING OF AMERICAN

LITERATURE 527 EDUCATION 531 THE REFORM IMPULSE 535

ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENTS 542

Part Four / A H O U S E D I V I D E DA N D R E B U I L T

14 | AN EMPIRE IN THE WEST 559

THE TYLER PRESIDENCY 560 THE WESTERN FRONTIER 563 MOVING

WEST 571 ANNEXING TEXAS 579 THE MEXICAN WAR 589

15 | THE GATHERING STORM 600

SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 601 THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 609

THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA CRISIS 617 THE DEEPENING SECTIONAL CRISIS 628

THE CENTER COMES APART 637

16 | THE WAR OF THE UNION 648

THE END OF THE WAITING GAME 648 THE BALANCE OF FORCE 654

THE WARS EARLY COURSE 656 EMANCIPATION 672 THE WAR

BEHIND THE LINES 676 GOVERNMENT DURING THE WAR 679 THE

FALTERING CONFEDERACY 685 THE CONFEDERACYS DEFEAT 690

A MODERN WAR 700

17 | RECONSTRUCTION: NORTH AND SOUTH 704

THE WARS AFTERMATH 705 THE BATTLE OVER POLITICAL

RECONSTRUCTION 711 THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN 713

RECONSTRUCTING THE SOUTH 720 THE RECONSTRUCTED

SOUTH 724 THE GRANT YEARS 732

xii CONTENTS

Part Five / G R O W I N G P A I N S18 | BIG BUSINESS AND ORGANIZED LABOR 751

THE RISE OF BIG BUSINESS 751 ENTREPRENEURS 761 THE WORKING

CLASS 768

19 | THE SOUTH AND THE WEST TRANSFORMED 790

THE MYTH OF THE NEW SOUTH 791 THE NEW WEST 797

20 | THE EMERGENCE OF URBAN AMERICA 820

AMERICAS MOVE TO TOWN 821 THE NEW IMMIGRATION 826

POPULAR CULTURE 832 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL THOUGHT 839

21 | GILDED AGE POLITICS AND AGRARIAN REVOLT 848

PARADOXICAL POLITICS 849 CORRUPTION AND REFORM: HAYES TO

HARRISON 853 THE FARM PROBLEM AND AGRARIAN PROTEST

MOVEMENTS 864 THE ECONOMY AND THE SILVER SOLUTION 872

RACE RELATIONS DURING THE 1890S 878

Part Six / M O D E R N A M E R I C A22 | SEIZING AN AMERICAN EMPIRE 897

TOWARD THE NEW IMPERIALISM 898 EXPANSION IN THE PACIFIC 900

THE WAR OF 1898 903 IMPERIAL RIVALRIES IN EAST ASIA 920

BIG-STICK DIPLOMACY 922

23 | MAKING THE WORLD OVER: THE PROGRESSIVE ERA 932

ELEMENTS OF REFORM 934 THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 935 EARLY EFFORTS AT

URBAN REFORM 937 FEATURES OF PROGRESSIVISM 944 ROOSEVELTS

Contents xiii

PROGRESSIVISM 950 ROOSEVELTS SECOND TERM 953 FROM

ROOSEVELT TO TAFT 958 WOODROW WILSONS PROGRESSIVISM 962

LIMITS OF PROGRESSIVISM 977

24 | AMERICA AND THE GREAT WAR 980

WILSON AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS 980 AN UNEASY NEUTRALITY 983

AMERICAS ENTRY INTO THE WAR 995 AMERICA AT WAR 1001

THE FIGHT FOR THE PEACE 1007 LURCHING FROM WAR TO PEACE 1015

25 | THE MODERN TEMPER 1022

THE REACTIONARY TWENTIES 1024 THE JAZZ AGE DURING THE

ROARING TWENTIES 1034 MASS CULTURE 1044 THE MODERNIST

REVOLT 1050

26 | REPUBLICAN RESURGENCE AND DECLINE 1060

NORMALCY 1061 ISOLATIONISM IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 1065

THE HARDING SCANDALS 1069 THE NEW ERA 1074 PRESIDENT

HOOVER, THE ENGINEER 1078 GLOBAL CONCERNS 1086 FROM

HOOVERISM TO THE NEW DEAL 1092

27 | NEW DEAL AMERICA 1100

REGULATORY EFFORTS 1105 THE SOCIAL COST OF THE DEPRESSION 1110

CULTURE IN THE THIRTIES 1117 THE NEW DEAL MATURES 1120

ROOSEVELTS SECOND TERM 1129 THE LEGACY OF THE NEW DEAL 1136

28 | THE SECOND WORLD WAR 1142

FROM ISOLATIONISM TO INTERVENTION 1142 FOREIGN CRISES 1143

WAR CLOUDS 1150 THE STORM IN EUROPE 1152 THE STORM IN

THE PACIFIC 1159 A WORLD WAR 1163 MOBILIZATION AT HOME 1165

SOCIAL EFFECTS OF THE WAR 1167 THE ALLIED DRIVE TOWARD BERLIN 1175

LEAPFROGGING TO TOKYO 1185 A NEW AGE IS BORN 1188 THE

FINAL LEDGER 1200

xiv CONTENTS

Part Seven / T H E A M E R I C A N A G E29 | THE FAIR DEAL AND CONTAINMENT 1209

DEMOBILIZATION UNDER TRUMAN 1210 THE COLD WAR 1215

CIVIL RIGHTS DURING THE 1940S 1225 THE COLD WAR HEATS UP 1232

30 | THE 1950S: AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY IN AN ATOMIC AGE 1246

A PEOPLE OF PLENTY 1248 A CONFORMIST CULTURE 1258 CRACKS

IN THE PICTURE WINDOW 1261 ALIENATION AND LIBERATION 1263

MODERATE REPUBLICANISMTHE EISENHOWER YEARS 1268 THE EARLY

YEARS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT 1273 FOREIGN POLICY IN

THE 1950S 1282 FOREIGN INTERVENTIONS 1285 REFLECTION

AND FOREIGN CRISES 1290 FESTERING PROBLEMS ABROAD 1294

ASSESSING THE EISENHOWER PRESIDENCY 1296

31 | NEW FRONTIERS: POLITICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE 1960S 1300

THE NEW FRONTIER 1300 EXPANSION OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT 1306

FOREIGN FRONTIERS 1314 LYNDON B. JOHNSON AND THE GREAT

SOCIETY 1322 FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO BLACK POWER 1331 THE TRAGEDY

OF VIETNAM 1338 SIXTIES CRESCENDO 1344

32 | REBELLION AND REACTION: THE 1960S AND 1970S 1350

THE ROOTS OF REBELLION 1351 NIXON AND MIDDLE AMERICA 1367

NIXON AND VIETNAM 1376 NIXON TRIUMPHANT 1381

WATERGATE 1387 AN UNELECTED PRESIDENT 1392

33 | A CONSERVATIVE REALIGNMENT: 19771990 1400

THE CARTER PRESIDENCY 1401 THE REAGAN REVOLUTION 1412 REAGANS

FIRST TERM 1417 REAGANS SECOND TERM 1425 THE CHANGING

SOCIAL LANDSCAPE 1429 THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION 1438 CULTURAL

CONSERVATISM 1446

Contents xv

34 | AMERICA IN A NEW MILLENNIUM 1450

AMERICAS CHANGING MOSAIC 1451 BUSH TO CLINTON 1452

DOMESTIC POLICY IN CLINTONS FIRST TERM 1456 REPUBLICAN

INSURGENCY 1458 THE CLINTON YEARS AT HOME 1462 FOREIGN-POLICY

CHALLENGES 1466 THE ELECTION OF 2000 1469 COMPASSIONATE

CONSERVATISM 1472 GLOBAL TERRORISM 1473 SECOND-TERM

BLUES 1482 A HISTORIC ELECTION 1487 OBAMAS FIRST TERM 1491

GLOSSARY A1

APPENDIX A59

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE A61 ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION A66

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES A74 AMENDMENTS TO THE

CONSTITUTION A86 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS A96 ADMISSION OF

STATES A104 POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES A105 IMMIGRATION

TO THE UNITED STATES, FISCAL YEARS 18202011 A106 IMMIGRATION BY

REGION AND SELECTED COUNTRY OF LAST RESIDENCE, FISCAL YEARS 18202011 A108

PRESIDENTS, VICE PRESIDENTS, AND SECRETARIES OF STATE A117

FURTHER READINGS A123

CREDITS A149

INDEX A155

xvi CONTENTS

M A P S

The First Migration 7

Pre-Columbian Civilizations in Middle and South America 10

Pre-Columbian Civilizations in North America 11

Norse Discoveries 16

Columbuss Voyages 22

Spanish and Portuguese Explorations 26

Spanish Explorations of the Mainland 35

English, French, and Dutch Explorations 45

Land Grants to the Virginia Company 59

Early Virginia and Maryland 66

Early New England Settlements 70

The West Indies, 16001800 73

Early Settlements in the South 85

The Middle Colonies 96

European Settlements and Indian Tribes in Early America 100101

The African Slave Trade, 15001800 120

Atlantic Trade Routes 133

Major Immigrant Groups in Colonial America 142

The French in North America 168

Major Campaigns of the French and Indian War 172

North America, 1713 176


Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775 195

Major Campaigns in New York and New Jersey, 17761777 217

xvii

Major Campaigns in New York and Pennsylvania, 1777 222

Western Campaigns, 17761779 228

Major Campaigns in the South, 17781781 232

Yorktown, 1781 232


Western Land Cessions, 17811802 258

The Old Northwest, 1785 260

The Vote on the Constitution, 17871790 280

Treaty of Greenville, 1795 305

Pinckneys Treaty, 1795 308

The Election of 1800 322

Explorations of the Louisiana Purchase, 18041807 339

Major Northern Campaigns of the War of 1812 353

Major Southern Campaigns of the War of 1812 355

Transportation West, about 1840 372373

The Growth of Railroads, 1850 376

The Growth of Railroads, 1860 377

Population Density, 1820 384

Population Density, 1860 385

The Growth of Industry in the 1840s 389

The Growth of Cities, 1820 392

The Growth of Cities, 1860 393

The National Road, 18111838 414

Boundary Treaties, 18181819 418

The Missouri Compromise, 1820 423


Indian Removal, 18201840 456


Cotton Production, 1821 482

Population Growth and Cotton Production, 18211859 483

The Slave Population, 1820 494

The Slave Population, 1860 495

The Mormon Trek, 18301851 522

The Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 1842 563

Wagon Trails West 573


The Oregon Dispute, 18181846 588

Major Campaigns of the Mexican War 594

xviii MAPS

The Compromise of 1850 613

The Gadsden Purchase, 1853 619

The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 620



Secession, 18601861 652

The First Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861 657

Campaigns in the West, FebruaryApril 1862 664

The Peninsular Campaign, 1862 667

Campaigns in Virginia and Maryland, 1862 672

The Vicksburg Campaign, 1863 686

Campaigns in the East, 1863 688

Grant in Virginia, 18641865 693

Shermans Campaigns, 18641865 696

Reconstruction, 18651877 730


Transcontinental Railroad Lines, 1880s 758

Sharecropping and Tenancy, 18801900 793

The New West 802803

Indian Wars 806

The Emergence of Cities, 1880 822

The Emergence of Cities, 1920 823


The War of 1898 in the Pacific 909

The War of 1898 in the Caribbean 911

U.S. Interests in the Pacific 917

U.S. Interests in the Caribbean 926

Womens Suffrage, 18691914 941


World War I in Europe, 1914 989

World War I, the Western Front, 1918 1003

Europe after the Treaty of Versailles, 1918 1013


The Tennessee Valley Authority 1110

Aggression in Europe, 19351939 1146

Japanese Expansion before Pearl Harbor 1160

World War II Military Alliances, 1942 1176

World War II in Europe and Africa, 19421945 11781179

Maps xix

World War II in the Pacific, 19421945 11861187

The Occupation of Germany and Austria 1224


The Korean War, 1950 1235

The Korean War, 19501953 1235


Postwar Alliances: The Far East 1289

Postwar Alliances: Europe, North Africa, the Middle East 1292


Vietnam, 1966 1340







xx MAPS

P R E F A C E

This edition of America: A Narrative History includes the most substantialchanges since I partnered with George Tindall in 1984, but I have been dili-gent to sustain his steadfast commitment to a textbook grounded in a com-pelling narrative history of the American experience. From the start of ourcollaboration, we strove to write a book animated by colorful characters, informed by balanced analysis and social texture, and guided by the unfold-ing of key events. Those classic principles, combined with a handy formatand low price, have helped make America: A Narrative History one of themost popular and well-respected American history textbooks.

This Ninth Edition of America features a number of importantchanges designed to make the text more teachable and classroom-friendly.Chief among them are major structural changes, including the joining ofseveral chapters to reduce the overall number from thirty-seven to thirty-four, as well as the re-sequencing of several chapters to make the narrativeflow more smoothly for students. Major organizational changes include:

New Chapter 4, From Colonies to States, combines The Imperial Perspec-

tive and From Empire to Independence from previous editions to better

integrate the events leading up to the American Revolution.

New Chapter 9, The Dynamics of Growth, now leads off Part III, An

Expansive Nation, to first introduce the industrial revolution and the

growth of the market economy before turning to major political, social,

and cultural developments.

New Chapter 12, The Old South, has been moved up, now appearing

between the chapters on the Jacksonian era and the American Renais-

sance, in order to foreground the importance of slavery as a major issue

during this period.

xxi

From Isolation to Global War, a chapter from previous editions, has been

broken up, and its parts redistributed to new Chapter 26, Republican

Resurgence and Decline, and new Chapter 28, The Second World War, in

order to better integrate the coverage of domestic politics and interna-

tional relations during this period.

New Chapter 30, The 1950s: Affluence and Anxiety in an Atomic Age,

combines Through the Picture Window and Conflict and Deadlock: The Eisen-

hower Years from the previous editions to better show the relationship

between political, social, and cultural developments during the 1950s.

In terms of content changes, the overarching theme of the new edition is theimportance of African-American history. While African-American historyhas always been a central part of the books narrative, this Ninth Edition fea-tures enhanced and fully up-to-date treatment based on the best recentscholarship in African-American history, including African slavery, slaveryin America during the colonial era and revolutionary war, the slave trade inthe South, slave rebellions, the practical challenges faced by slaves liberatedduring the Civil War, the Wilmington Riot of 1898, in which an elected citygovernment made up of blacks was ousted by armed violence, PresidentWoodrow Wilsons segregationist views and policies, the Harlem Renais-sance, the Double V Campaign during World War II, and the Freedom Sum-mer of 1964.

Of course, as in every new edition, there is new material related to con-temporary Americathe first term of the Barack Obama administration,the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and the emergence of theTea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movementsas well as the stagnanteconomy in the aftermath of the Great Recession. In addition, I have incor-porated fresh insights from important new scholarly works dealing withmany significant topics throughout this new edition.

Americas New Student Resources are designed to make students betterreaders. New, carefully crafted pedagogical features have been added to theNinth Edition to further guide students through the narrative.

Focus questions, chapter summaries, and new bold-face key terms worktogether seamlessly to highlight core content. The chapters are enhanced

with easy-to-read full-color maps and chapter chronologies.

New Author Videos feature David Shi explaining major developments inAmerican history. Each of the 42 video segments includes additional

media, such as illustrations and maps, to enhance the learning experience.

xxii PREFACE

New Critical Reading Exercises, tied directly to the Ninth Edition, helpstudents learn how to read the textbook. Students are guided through a

series of exercises to identify the most important information from select

passages in each chapter.

New Cross-Chapter Quizzes in the Norton Coursepacks are designed tohelp students prepare for midterm and final examinations by challenging

them to think across periods, to trace longer-term developments, and to

make connections and comparisons.

A new edition of For the Record: A Documentary History of America, byDavid E. Shi and Holly A. Mayer (Duquesne University), is the perfect

companion reader for America: A Narrative History. The new Fifth Edi-

tion has been brought into closer alignment with the main text. For the

Record now has 250 primary-source readings from diaries, journals,

newspaper articles, speeches, government documents, and novels, includ-

ing a number of readings that highlight the substantially updated theme

of African-American history in this new edition of America. If you

havent looked at For the Record in a while, now would be a good time to

take a look.

New Norton Mix: American History enables instructors to build theirown custom reader from a database of nearly 300 primary and secondary

source selections. The custom readings can be packaged as a standalone

reader or integrated with chapters from America into a custom textbook.

America: A Narrative History StudySpace (wwnorton.com/web/america9) provides a proven assignment-driven plan for each chapter. In

addition to the new Critical Reading Exercises and new Author

Videos, highlights include focus questions, learning objectives, chapter

outlines, quizzes, iMaps and new iMap quizzes, map worksheets, flash-

cards, interactive timelines, and U.S. History Tours powered by Google

Earth map technology. There are also several hundred multimedia primary-

source selectionsincluding documents, images, and audio and video

clipsgrouped by topic to aid research and writing.

Americas New Instructor Resources are designed to provide addi-tional resources that will enable more dynamic classroom lectures:

New Norton American History Digital Archive disks on African-Americanhistory are the eighth and ninth disks in this extraordinary collection of

digital resources for classroom lecture. The 2 new disks come with nearly

Preface xxiii

400 selections from African-American history, including illustrations, pho-

tographs and audio and video clips.

New PowerPoint Lectures with dynamic Author Videos. Replete withevery image and map from the textbook, the America Ninth Edition

PowerPoints now also feature the new Author Videos. These classroom-ready presentations can be used as lecture launchers or as video sum-

maries of major issues and developments in American history.

New enhanced Coursepack integrates all StudySpace content with thesehandy features and materials: 1) Forum Questions designed for online and

hybrid courses; 2) Critical Reading Exercises that report to your LMS

Gradebook; 3) Cross-Chapter Quizzes for each half of the survey course.

The Instructors Manual and Test Bank, by Mark Goldman (TallahasseeCommunity College), Michael Krysko (Kansas State University), and

Brian McKnight (UVA, Wise), includes a test bank of multiple-choice,

short-answer, and essay questions, as well as detailed chapter outlines,

lecture suggestions, and bibliographies.

Its clear why America continues to set the standard when it comes to provid-ing a low-cost book with high-value content. Your students will buy it becauseits so affordable, and theyll read it because the narrative is so engaging!

xxiv PREFACE

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

In preparing the Ninth Edition, I have benefited from the insights and sug-

gestions of many people. Some of those insights have come from student

readers of the text, and I encourage such feedback. Id particularly like to

thank Eirlys Barker, who has worked on much of the new StudySpace con-

tent, Laura Farkas (Wake Technical College), who has created the wonderful

new Critical Reading Exercises, and Id like to give special thanks to Bran-

don Franke (Blinn College, Bryan) for his work on the new PowerPoint lec-

tures. Finally, many thanks to Mark Goldman, Michael Krysko, and Brian

McKnight for their efforts on the Instructors Manual and Test Bank.

Numerous scholars and survey instructors advised me on the new edi-

tion: Eirlys Barker (Thomas Nelson Community College), Blanche Bricke

(Blinn College), Michael Collins (Midwestern State University), Scott Cook

(Motlow State Community College), Carl Creasman, Jr. (Valencia College),

Stephen Davis (Lone Star College), Susan Dollar (Northwestern State Uni-

versity of Louisiana), Alicia Duffy (University of Central Florida), Laura

Farkas (Wake Technical Community College), Jane Flaherty (Texas A&M

University), Brandon Franke (Blinn College), Mark Goldman (Tallahassee

Community College), James Good (Lone Star College), Barbara Green

(Wright State University), D. Harland Hagler (University of North Texas),

Michael Harkins (Harper College), Carolyn Hoffman (Prince Georges

Community College), Marc Horger (Ohio State University), Michael Krivdo

(Texas A&M University), Margaret Lambert (Lone Star College), Pat Ledbet-

ter (North Central Texas College), Stephen Lopez (San Jacinto College),

Barry Malone (Wake Technical Community College), Dee Mckinney (East

Georgia College), Lisa Morales (North Central Texas College), Robert Out-

land III (Louisiana State University), Catherine Parzynski (Montgomery

County Community College), Robert Lynn Rainard (Tidewater Community

College), Edward Duke Richey (University of North Texas), Stuart Smith III

xxv

(Germanna Community College), Roger Tate (Somerset Community Col-

lege), Kyle Volk (University of Montana), Vernon Volpe (University of

Nebraska), Heidi Weber (SUNY Orange), Cecil Edward Weller, Jr. (San Jac-

into College), and Margarita Youngo (Pima Community College).

Once again, I thank my friends at W. W. Norton for their consummate

professionalism and good cheer, especially Jon Durbin, Justin Cahill, Steve

Hoge, Melissa Atkin, Kate Feighery, Lorraine Klimowich, Stephanie Romeo,

Debra Morton-Hoyt, Ashley Horna, Heather Arteaga, Julie Sindel, and

Tamara McNeill.

xxvi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Part One

A

N O T - S O - N E W

W O R L D

History is filled with ironies. Luck and accidents often shapeevents more than actions do. Long before Christopher Columbus hap-pened upon the Caribbean Sea in his effort to find a westward passage toAsia, the indigenous people he mislabeled Indians had occupied andtransformed the lands of the Western Hemisphere for thousands ofyears. The first residents in what Europeans came to call the NewWorld had migrated from northeastern Asia during the last glacialadvance of the Ice Age, nearly 20,000 years ago. By the end of the fif-teenth century, when Columbus began his voyage west, there were mil-lions of Indians living in the Western Hemisphere. Over the centuries,they had developed diverse and often highly sophisticated societies,some rooted in agriculture, others in trade or imperial conquest. So, theNew World was new only to the Europeans who began exploring, con-quering, and exploiting the region at the end of the late fifteenth century.

The Indian cultures were, of course, profoundly affected by the arrivalof peoples from Europe and Africa. The Indians experienced cata-strophic cultural change: they were exploited, infected, enslaved, dis-placed, and exterminated. Millions of acres of tribal lands were taken orbought for a pittance. Yet this conventional tale of tragic conquest over-simplifies the complex process by which the Indians, Europeans, andAfricans interacted in the Western Hemisphere. The Indians were morethan passive victims of European power; they were also trading partnersand often allies as well as rivals of the transatlantic newcomers. Theybecame neighbors and advisers, converts and spouses. As such, they par-ticipated creatively and powerfully in the creation of the new societyknown as America.

The Europeans who risked their lives to settle in the Western Hemi-sphere were a diverse lot. Young and old, men and women, they camefrom Spain, Portugal, France, the British Isles, the Netherlands, Scandi-navia, Italy, and the German states (Germany would not become aunited nation until the midnineteenth century). A variety of motivesinspired them to undertake the often-harrowing transatlantic voyage.Some were adventurers and fortune seekers eager to gain glory and findgold, silver, and spices. Others were fervent Christians eager to createkingdoms of God in the New World. Still others were convicts,debtors, indentured servants, or political or religious exiles. Many were

simply seeking a piece of land, higher wages, and greater economicopportunity. A settler in Pennsylvania noted that poor people (bothmen and women) of all kinds can here get three times the wages fortheir labour than they can in England.

Yet such enticements were not sufficient to attract enough workers tokeep up with the rapidly expanding colonial economies, so the Euro-peans forced the Indians to work for them. But there were never enoughlaborers to meet the unceasing demand. Moreover, captive Indians oftenescaped or were so rebellious that their use as slaves was banned in sev-eral colonies. The Massachusetts legislature outlawed forced laborbecause the Indians displayed a malicious, surly and revengeful spirit;rude and insolent in their behavior, and very ungovernable.

Beginning early in the seventeenth century, colonists turned to Africafor their labor needs. European nationsespecially Portugal andSpainhad long been transporting captive Africans to the WesternHemisphere, from Chile to Canada. In 1619 a Dutch warship broughttwenty captured Africans to Jamestown, near the coast of Virginia. TheDutch captain exchanged the slaves for food and supplies. This first ofmany transactions involving enslaved people in British America wouldtransform American society in complex, multilayered ways that no one at the time envisioned. Few Europeans during the colonial era saw the contradiction between the promise of freedom in America for themselves and the expandinginstitution of race-based slavery.Nor did they reckon with theproblems associated with intro-ducing into the colonies peopledeemed alien and inferior. Thusbegan the two great social injus-tices that have come to hauntAmerican history: the conquestand displacement of the Indiansand the enslavement of Africans.

The intermingling of people,cultures, and ecosystems from thecontinents of Africa, Europe, andthe Western Hemisphere gavecolonial American society its

distinctive vitality and variety. In turn, the diversity of the environmentand the varying climate spawned quite different economies and patternsof living in the various regions of North America. As the original settle-ments grew into prosperous and populous colonies, the transplantedEuropeans had to fashion social institutions and political systems tomanage dynamic growth and control rising tensions.

At the same time, imperial rivalries among the Spanish, French, Eng-lish, and Dutch triggered costly wars fought in Europe and around theworld. The monarchs of Europe struggled to manage often-unrulycolonies, which, they discovered, played crucial roles in their frequentEuropean wars. Many of the colonists had brought with them to Amer-ica a feisty independence, which led them to resent government interfer-ence in their affairs. A British official in North Carolina reported thatthe residents of the Piedmont region were without any Law or Order.Impudence is so very high, as to be past bearing. As long as the reins ofimperial control were loosely held, the colonists and their British rulersmaintained an uneasy partnership. But as the royal authorities tightenedtheir control during the mideighteenth century, they met resistancefrom colonists, which became revolt and culminated in revolution.

1 T H E C O L L I S I O N O F C U L T U R E S

The history of the United States of America begins long before1776. The supposed New World discovered by intrepidEuropean explorers was in fact a very old world to civiliza-tions thousands of years in the making. Debate continues about when andhow the first humans arrived in North America. Until recently, archaeolo-gists had assumed that ancient Siberians some 12,000 to 15,000 years agohad journeyed 600 miles across the frigid Bering Strait near the Arctic Circleon what was then a treeless land connecting northeastern Siberia withAlaska (by about 7000 B.C., the land bridge had been submerged by rising sealevels). These nomadic, spear-wielding hunters and their descendants, calledPaleo-Indians (old Indians) by archaeologists, drifted south in pursuit oflarge game animals. Over the next 500 years, as the climate warmed and theglaciers receded, a steady stream of small groups fanned out across the entireWestern Hemisphere, from the Arctic Circle to the tip of South America.

F O C U S Q U E S T I O N S

What civilizations existed in America before the arrival of Europeans?

Why were European countries, such as Spain and Portugal, pre-pared to embark on voyages of discovery by the sixteenth century?

How did contact between the Western Hemisphere and Europechange through the exchange of plants, animals, and pathogens?

What were the Europeans reasons for establishing colonies inAmerica?

What is the legacy of the Spanish presence in North America?

What effect did the Protestant Reformation have on the coloniza-tion of the New World?

wwnorton.com/studyspace

6 THE COLLISION OF CULTURES (CH. 1)

Recent archaeological discoveries in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Chile sug-gest a more complex story of human settlement. The new evidence revealsthat prehistoric humans may have arrived much earlier (perhaps 18,000 to40,000 years ago) from various parts of Asiaand some may even havecrossed the Atlantic Ocean from southwestern Europe.

Regardless of when humans first set foot on the North American conti-nent, the region and its indigenous peoples eventually became a crossroadsfor immigrants from around the globe: Europeans, Africans, Asians, and othersall of whom brought with them as immigrants distinctive back-grounds, cultures, technologies, and motivations. This immigrant experiencepast and presenthas become one of the major themes of Americanlife. Before and after 1776, what became the United States of America hastaken in more people, and more different kinds of people, than any othernation in world history. Christopher Columbuss pathbreaking voyage in 1492unleashed an unrelenting wave of exploration, conquest, exploitation, andsettlement that transformed the Americas, Europe, and Africa in ways no oneimagined possible.

P R E -C O LU M B I A N I N D I A N C I V I L I Z AT I O N S

The first peoples in North America discovered an immense continentwith extraordinary climatic and environmental diversity. Coastal plains,broad grasslands, harsh deserts, and soaring mountain ranges generated dis-tinct habitats, social structures, and cultural patterns. By the time Columbushappened upon the Western Hemisphere, the hundreds of tribes living inNorth America may together have numbered over 10 million people. Theyhad developed a diverse array of communities in which more than 400 lan-guages were spoken. Yet despite the distances and dialects separating them,the Indian societies created extensive trading networks, which helped spreadideas and innovations. Contrary to the romantic myth of early Indian civi-lizations living in perfect harmony with nature and one another, the indige-nous societies often engaged in warfare and exploited the environment byburning vast areas, planting fields, and gathering seeds, berries, and rootswhile harvesting vast numbers of game animals, fish, and shellfish.

E A R LY C U LT U R E S After centuries of subsistence nomadic life centeredon hunting game animals and gathering edible wild plants, the ancient Indi-ans settled in more permanent villages. Thousands of years after people firstappeared in North America, climatic changes and extensive hunting had

Pre-Columbian Indian Civilizations 7

When did people first cross the Bering Sea? What evidence have archaeologists andanthropologists found from the lives of the first people in America? Why did thosepeople travel to North America?


killed off the largest mammals. Global warming diminished grasslands andstimulated forest growth, which provided plants and small animals forhuman consumption. The ancient Indians adapted to the new environmentsby developing nature-centered religions, mastering the use of fire, improvingtechnology such as spear points, inventing fiber snares and basketry, as well asmills for grinding nuts, and domesticating the dog and the turkey. A new cul-tural stage arrived with the introduction of farming, fishing, and potterymaking. Hunters focused on faster, more elusive mammals: deer, antelope,elk, moose, and caribou. Already by about 5000 B.C., Indians of Mexico weregenerating an agricultural revolution by growing the plant foods that wouldbecome the staples of the hemisphere: chiefly maize (corn), beans, andsquash but also chili peppers, avocados, and pumpkins. The annual cultiva-tion of such crops enabled Indian societies to grow larger and more complex,with their own distinctive social, economic, and political institutions.

T H E M AYA S , A Z T E C S , C H I B C H A S , A N D I N C A S Between about2000 and 1500 B.C., permanent farming towns and cities appeared in Mexicoand northern Guatemala. The more settled life in turn provided time for thecultivation of religion, crafts, art, science, administrationand frequentwarfare. The Indians in the Western Hemisphere harbored the usual humangrievances against their neighbors, and wars were common. From about A.D.300 to 900, Middle America (Mesoamerica, what is now Mexico and CentralAmerica) developed densely populated cities complete with gigantic pyra-mids, temples, and palaces, all supported by surrounding peasant villages.Moreover, the Mayas used mathematics and astronomy to devise a sophisti-cated calendar more accurate than the one the Europeans were using at thetime of Christopher Columbus in the late fifteenth century. Mayan civiliza-tion was highly developed, featuring sprawling cities, hierarchical govern-ment, terraced farms, spectacular pyramids, and a cohesive ideology.

In about A.D. 900 the complex Mayan culture collapsed. The Mayas hadoverexploited the rain forest, upon whose fragile ecosystem they depended. Asan archaeologist has explained, Too many farmers grew too many crops ontoo much of the landscape. Widespread deforestation led to hillside erosionand a catastrophic loss of nutrient-rich farmland. Overpopulation added tothe strain on Mayan society, prompting civil wars. Mayan war partiesdestroyed each others cities and took prisoners, who were then sacrificed tothe gods in theatrical rituals. Whatever the reasons for the weakening ofMayan society, it succumbed to the Toltecs, a warlike people who conqueredmost of the region in the tenth century. But around A.D. 1200 the Toltecsmysteriously withdrew after a series of droughts, fires, and invasions.


During the late thirteenth century the Aztecsnamed after the legendaryAztln, from where they were supposed to have comearrived from thenorthwest to fill the vacuum in the Basin of Mexico. They founded the cityof Tenochtitln in 1325 and gradually expanded their control over neighbor-ing tribes in central Mexico. The Aztecs developed a thriving commerce ingold, silver, copper, and pearls as well as agricultural products. When theSpanish invaded Mexico in 1519, the sprawling Aztec Empire, connected bya network of roads with rest stops every ten miles or so, encompassed per-haps 5 million people.

Farther south, in what is now Colombia, the Chibchas built a similarempire on a smaller scale. Still farther south the Quechuas (better known asthe Incas, from the name for their ruler) controlled a huge empire contain-ing as many as 12 million people speaking at least twenty different languages.The Incas had used a shrewd mixture of diplomacy, marriage alliances withrival tribes, and military conquest to create a vast realm that by the fifteenthcentury stretched 2,500 miles along the Andes Mountains from Ecuador toChile on the west coast of South America. The Incas were as sophisticated as

Mayan society

A fresco depicting the social divisions of Mayan society. A Mayan lord, at the center,receives offerings.


the Aztecs in transforming their mountainous empire into a flowering civi-lization with fertile farms, enduring buildings, and an interconnected net-work of roads.

I N D I A N C U LT U R E S O F N O RT H A M E R I C A The pre-ColumbianIndians of the present-day United States created several distinct civilizations,the largest of which were the Pacific Northwest culture; the Hohokam-Anasazi culture of the Southwest; the Adena-Hopewell culture of the OhioRiver valley; and the Mississippian culture east of the Mississippi River. Noneof these developed as fully as the civilizations of the Mayas, Aztecs, and Incasto the south, but like their Mesoamerican counterparts, the North AmericanIndians often warred with one another. They shared some fundamental

A T L A N T I C

O C E A N

P A C I F I C

O C E A N SOUTH AMERICA

MIDDLEAMERICA

Tenochtitln

Monte Albn

Teotihuacn

CARIBBEAN SEA

GULF OF MEXICO

0 250

0 500 Kilometers250

500 Miles

CHIBCHAS

PRE-COLUMBIANCIVILIZATIONSIN MIDDLE AND

SOUTH AMERICA

MEXICO

MA

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S

A Z T E C S

INC

AS

(QU

ECHUAS)

AN

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What were the major pre-Columbian civilizations? What factors caused the demiseof the Mayan civilization? When did the Aztecs build Tenochtitln?


myths and beliefs, especially concerning the sacredness of nature, the necessityof communal living, and respect for elders, but they developed in differentways at different times and in different places. In North America alone, therewere probably 240 different tribes speaking many different languages whenthe Europeans arrived.

The Indians of the Pacific Northwest occupied a narrow strip of landand offshore islands along the heavily forested coast, extending 2,000 milesnorthward from California through what are now Oregon, Washington, andBritish Columbia, to southern Alaska. They engaged in little farming sincethe fish, whales, game (mostly deer and mountain sheep), and edible wildplants were so plentiful. The coastal Indians were also talented woodwork-ers; they built plank houses and large canoes out of cedar trees. Socially, the

PRE-COLUMBIANCIVILIZATIONS

IN NORTH AMERICA

P A C I F I C

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PUEBLO-HOHOKAM

MIS

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ADEN

A-HOP

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MIS

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VALL

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OHIO VA

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TAI N

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0

0 500 Kilometers

500 Miles

What were the three dominant pre-Columbian civilizations in North America?Where was the Adena-Hopewell culture centered? How was the Mississippian civi-lization similar to that of the Mayans or Aztecs? What made the Anasazi culture different from the other North American cultures?


Indians along the Northwest coast were divided into chiefs, commoners, andslaves; raids to gain slaves were the primary cause of tribal warfare.

The Adena-Hopewell culture in what is today the Midwest left behind enor-mous earthworks and hundreds of elaborate burial mounds, some of themshaped like great snakes, birds, and other animals. The Adena and, later,the Hopewell peoples were gatherers and hunters who lived in small, isolatedcommunities. They used an intricate kinship network to form social and spir-itual alliances. Evidence from the burial mounds suggests that they had a com-plex social structure featuring a specialized division of labor. Moreover, theHopewells developed an elaborate trade network that spanned the continent.

The Mississippian culture, centered in the southern Mississippi River valley, flourished between 900 and 1350. The Mississippians forged a complex patchwork of chiefdoms. In river valleys they built substantialtowns around central plazas and temples. Like the Hopewells to thenorth, the Mississippians developed a specialized labor system, an effec-tive gov ernmental structure, and an expansive trading network. Theycleared vast tracts of land to grow maize, beans, squash, and sunflowers.The dynamic Mississippian culture peaked in the fourteenth century, butsuccumbed first to climate change and finally to diseases brought byEuropeans.

The Mississippian people con-structed elaborate regional centers,the largest of which was Cahokia,in southwest Illinois, across theMississippi River from what is nowSt. Louis. There the Indians con-structed elaborate public struc-tures and imposing shrines. At theheight of its influence, betweenA.D. 1050 and 1250, the Cahokiametropolis hosted thousands ofpeople on some 3,200 acres. Outly-ing towns and farming settlementsranged up to fifty miles in all direc-tions. For some unknown reason,the residents of Cahokia dispersedafter 1400.

The arid Southwest (in what isnow Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico,and Utah) spawned irrigation-

Mississippian artifact

A ceramic human head effigy from theMississippian culture. The Mississippiansdisappeared by 1500.


based cultures, elements of which exist today and heirs to which (the Hopis,Zunis, and others) still live in the adobe cliff dwellings (called pueblos by theSpanish) erected by their ancestors. About A.D. 500, the indigenous Hohokampeople migrated from present-day Mexico into todays southern Arizona, wherethey constructed temple mounds similar to those in Mexico. For unknown rea-sons, the Hohokam society disappeared during the fifteenth century.

The most widespread and best known of the Southwest tribal cultureswere the Anasazi (Enemys Ancestors in the Navajo language). In ancienttimes they developed extensive settlements in the four corners, where thestates of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet. In contrast to theMesoamerican and Mississippian cultures, Anasazi society lacked a rigidclass structure. The religious leaders and warriors labored much as the restof the people did. In fact, the Anasazi engaged in warfare only as a means ofself-defense (Hopi means Peaceful People). Environmental factors shapedAnasazi culture and eventually caused its decline. Toward the end of thethirteenth century, a lengthy drought and the pressure of migrating Indiansfrom the north threatened the survival of Anasazi society.

Cliff dwellings

Ruins of Anasazi cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado.


I N D I A N S I N 1500 When Europeans arrived in North America in thesixteenth century, as many as 10 million Indians lived on a continent criss-crossed by trails and rivers that formed an extensive trading network. Overthousands of years, the Indians had developed a great diversity of responsesto an array of natural environments. The scores of tribes can be clusteredaccording to three major regional groups: the Eastern Woodlands tribes, theGreat Plains tribes, and the Western tribes.

The Eastern Woodlands peoples tended to live along the rivers. Theyincluded three regional groups distinguished by their languages: the Algon -quian, the Iroquoian, and the Muskogean. The dozens of Algonquian-speakingtribes stretched from the New England seaboard to lands along the GreatLakes and into the upper Midwest and south to New Jersey, Virginia, and theCarolinas. The Algonquian tribes along the coast were skilled at fishing; theinland tribes excelled at hunting. All of them practiced agriculture to someextent, and they frequently used canoes hollowed out of trees (dugouts) tonavigate rivers and lakes. Most Algonquians lived in small round shelterscalled wigwams. Their villages typically ranged from 500 to 2,000 inhabitants.

West and south of the Algonquians were the Iroquoian-speaking tribes(including the Seneca, Onondaga, Mohawk, Oneida, and Cayuga, and theCherokee and Tuscarora in the South), whose lands spread from upstate NewYork south through Pennsylvania and into the upland regions of the Carolinasand Georgia. The Iroquoiss skill at growing corn led them to create perma-nent agricultural villages. Around their villages they constructed log walls, andwithin them they built enormous bark-covered longhouses, which housedseveral related family clans. Unlike the patriarchal Algonquian culture, Iroquoian society was matriarchal. In part, the matriarchy reflected the fre-quent absence of Iroquois men. As adept hunters and traders, the men traveledextensively for long periods. Women headed the clans, selected the chiefs, controlled the distribution of property, and planted as well as harvestedthe crops.

The third major Indian group in the Eastern Woodlands included the tribeswho spoke the Muskogean language: the Creeks, Chickasaws, and Choctaws.West of the Mississippi River were the peoples living on the Great Plains and inthe Great Basin (present-day Utah and Nevada), many of whom had migratedfrom the East. Plains Indians, including the Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Arapaho,Comanche, Apache, and Sioux, were nomadic tribes whose culture focused onhunting the vast herds of bison. The Western tribes, living along the Pacificcoast, depended upon fishing, sealing, and whaling. Among them were Salishtribes, including the Tillamook, the Chinook, and the Pomo and Chumash.

For at least 15,000 years before the arrival of Europeans, the Indians hadoccupied the vastness of North America undisturbed by outside invaders.

European Visions of America 15

War between tribes, however, was commonplace. Success in warfare wasthe primary source of a males prestige among many tribes. As a Cherokeeexplained in the eighteenth century, We cannot live without war. Should wemake peace with the Tuscororas, we must immediately look out for someother nation with whom we can engage in our beloved occupation.

Over the centuries, the native North Americans had adapted to the neces-sity of warfare, changing climate, and varying environments. They wouldalso do so in the face of the unprecedented changes wrought by the arrival ofEuropeans. In the process of changing and adapting to new realities inaccordance with their own traditions, the Indians played a significant role inshaping America and the origins of the United States.

E U R O P E A N V I S I O N S O F A M E R I C A

The European invasion of the Western Hemisphere was fueled bycuriosity and enabled by advances in nautical technology. Europeans hadlong wondered about what lay beyond the western horizon. During thetenth and eleventh centuries the Vikings (seafaring Norse peoples who livedin Scandinavia) crisscrossed much of the globe. From villages in Norway,

Vikings in the New World

A Viking settlement at LAnse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, in northeasternCanada. Reconstructed longhouses in Icelandic Viking style are in the background.


Sweden, and Denmark, Viking warriors and traders ventured down to NorthAfrica, across the Baltic Sea, up Russian rivers, and across the Black Sea tothe fabled Turkish capital, Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). The Vikingsalso headed west, crossing the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, raidingtowns in Ireland, settling in Iceland, and then exploring the coast of theuppermost reaches of North America.

Around A.D. 985 a Norse Icelander named Erik the Red colonized the westcoast of a rocky, fogbound island he called Greenland. The worlds largestisland, Greenland was mostly covered by ice and devoid of human inhabi-tants. The Vikings established a settlement on the southwest coast. Erik the Redironically named the island Greenland in hopes of misleading prospectivecolonists about its suitability for settlement. Leif Eriksson, son of Erik theRed, sailed west and south from Greenland about A.D. 1001 and sightedthe coast of present-day Newfoundland in northeastern Canada, where he set-tled for the winter. The Greenland colonies vanished mysteriously in the fifteenth century.

N O RT HA M E R I C A

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GREENLAND

IRELAND

ICELAND

SCOTLAND

ENGLAND

NORTHSEA

NORWAY

NEWFOUNDLAND

LABRADOR

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FAROEISLANDS

SHETLANDISLANDS

CAPE COD

When did the first Norse settlers reach North America? What was the symbolic sig-nificance of these lands of the Western Hemisphere? How far south in North Amer-ica did the Norse explorers travel?

The Expansion of Europe 17

T H E E X PA N S I O N O F E U R O P E

The European exploration of the Western Hemisphere was enabled byseveral key developments during the fifteenth century. New knowledge andnew technologies enabled the construction of full-rigged sailing ships capa-ble of oceanic voyages, more accurate navigation techniques and maps, andmore powerful weapons. Driving those improvements was an unrelentingambition to explore new territories (especially the Indies, a term which thenreferred to eastern Asia), garner greater wealth and richer commerce, andspread Christianity across the globe. This remarkable age of discovery coin-cided with the rise of modern science; the growth of global trade, commercialtowns, and modern corporations; the decline of feudalism and the formationof nations; the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation;and the resurgence of some old sinsgreed, conquest, exploitation, oppres-sion, racism, and slaverythat quickly defiled the mythical innocence of theso-called New World.

R E N A I S S A N C E G E O G R A P H Y For more than two centuries beforeColumbus, European thought was enlivened by the so-called Renaissancethe rediscovery of ancient texts, the rebirth of secular learning, and a perva-sive intellectual curiosityall of which spread more rapidly after JohannesGutenbergs invention of the printing press around 1440. Learned Euro-peans of the fifteenth century revered the ideas of classical Greece andRome, including ancient concepts of geography. Greek mathematicians hadconcluded that the earth was round rather than flat. That Columbus was try-ing to prove that the worlds sphericity is an enduringand falsemyth; noinformed person in the late fifteenth century thought the earth was flat.Progress in the art of nautical navigation accompanied the revival of secularlearning during the Renaissance. Steering across the open sea, however,remained more a matter of intuition than science.

T H E G R O W T H O F T R A D E , T O W N S , A N D N AT I O N - S TAT E SEuropes interest in global exploration derived primarily from the dramaticgrowth of urban commerce and world trade. By the fifteenth century, Euro-pean traders traveled by sea and land all the way to east Asia, where theyacquired herbal medicines, silk, jewels, perfumes, and rugs. They also pur-chased the much-coveted Asian spicespepper, nutmeg, cloveso essentialfor preserving food and enhancing its flavor. The growing trade betweenEurope and Asia spawned a growing class of wealthy merchants and led to


the creation of the first modern corporations, through which stockholdersshared risks and profits.

Global commerce was chancy and costly, however. Goods commonlypassed from hand to hand, from ships to pack horses and back to ships, alongthe way subject to taxes demanded by various rulers. The vast Muslim world,extending from Spain across North Africa and into central Asia, straddled theimportant trade routes, adding to the hazards. Muslims tenaciously opposedefforts to Christianize their lands. Little wonder, then, that Europeans wereeager to find an alternative all-water western route to spice-rich east Asia.

Another spur to global exploration was the rise of unified nations, ruledby powerful monarchs wealthy enough to sponsor the search for foreignriches. The growth of the merchant class went hand in hand with the growthof centralized political power and the rapidly expanding population. Mer-chants wanted uniform currencies and favorable trade regulations. Theythus became natural allies of the trade-loving monarchs. In turn, merchantsand university-trained professionals supplied the monarchs with money,lawyers, and government officials. The CrusadersEuropean armies sentbetween 1095 and 1270 to conquer the Muslim-controlled Holy Landhadalso advanced the process of international trade and exploration. The Crusadeshad brought Europe into contact with the Middle East and had decimatedthe ranks of the feudal lords, many of whom were killed while fighting Mus-lims. And new means of warfarethe use of gunpowder and royal armiesfurther weakened the independence of the nobility relative to the monarchs.In the late thirteenth century, the Venetian explorer Marco Polo and hisfather embarked on an epic, twenty-four-year-long journey eastward acrossAsia where they met the fabled Kublai Khan, the grand ruler of a vast empireencompassing Mongolia and China. Polos published account of the Asianriches amassed by the Great Khan dazzled Europeans, including Christo-pher Columbus.

By 1492 the map of Europe had been transformed. The decentralized feu-dal system of the Middle Ages had given way to several united kingdoms:France, where in 1453 Charles VII had surfaced from the Hundred YearsWar as head of a unified nation; England, where in 1485 Henry VII hademerged victorious after thirty years of civil strife known as the Wars of theRoses; Portugal, where John I had fought off the Castilians to ensurenational independence; and Spain, where in 1469 Ferdinand of Aragon andIsabella of Castile had united two warring kingdoms in marriage.

The Spanish king and queen were crusading Christian expansionists. OnJanuary 1, 1492, after nearly eight centuries of religious warfare between Span-ish Christians and Moorish Muslims on the Iberian Peninsula, Ferdinand

The Voyages of Columbus 19

and Isabella declared victory for Catholicism at Granada, the last Muslimstronghold. The zealously pious monarchs gave the defeated Muslims, andsoon thereafter, the Jews living in Spain and Portugal (called Sephardi), thesame desperate choice: convert to Catholicism or leave Spain.

The forced exile of Muslims and Jews from Spain was one of the many fac-tors that prompted Europes involvement in global expansion. Other factorsurbanization, world trade, the rise of centralized nations, and advances inknowledge, technology, and firepowercombined with natural humancuriosity, greed, and religious zeal to spur the exploration and conquest ofthe Western Hemisphere. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, Europeansset in motion the events that, as one historian has observed, would bindtogether four continents, three races, and a great diversity of regionalparts. During the two and a half centuries after 1492, the Spanish developedthe most extensive empire the world had ever known. It would span south-ern Europe and the Netherlands, much of the Western Hemisphere, andparts of Asia. Yet the Spanish Empire grew so vast that its sprawling size andethnic complexity eventually led to its disintegration. In the meantime, theexpansion of Spanish influence around the world helped shape much ofthe development of American society and history.

T H E VO YAG E S O F C O LU M B U S

Global naval exploration began in an unlikely place: the tiny seafaringkingdom of Portugal, the westernmost country in Europe, strategically positioned at the convergence of the Mediterranean and Atlantic cultures.Beginning in 1422, having captured the Muslim stronghold of Ceuta, on theNorth African coast, the Portuguese dispatched naval expeditions to map theWest African coast, spread the Christian faith among the pagan Africans,and return with gold, spices, ivory, and slaves. Over the years Portugueseships brought back plunder as well as tens of thousands of enslaved Africans.They also adapted superior sailing techniques that they encountered onArab merchant vessels to create new oceangoing ships called caravels, whichcould perform better in headwinds and go faster. The Portuguese also bor-rowed from the Arabs a device called an astrolabe that enabled sailors tolocate their ships position by latitude calculations.

Equipped with such innovations, the Portuguese then focused on find -ing a maritime route to the riches of the Indies. In 1488, Bartholomeu Diasrounded the Cape of Good Hope, at Africas southern tip, before his panickycrew forced him to turn back. Ten years later Diass countryman, Vasco da


Gama, sailed south from Portugal. Without maps, charts, or reliable pilots,he led four leaky ships along the west coast of Africa. They traveled aroundthe Cape of Good Hope, up the Arab-controlled east coast of Africa, andcrossed the Indian Ocean to India, where da Gama acquired tons of spices.The epic two-year voyage covered 24,000 miles, took the lives of over half thecrew, and helped to establish little Portugal as a global seafaring power.

Christopher Columbus, meanwhile, was learning his trade in the schoolof Portuguese seamanship. Born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451, Columbus took tothe sea at an early age, teaching himself geography, navigation, and Latin. By the 1480s, he was eager to spread Christianity across the globe. Dazzledby the prospect of garnering Asian riches, he developed a bold plan to reachthe spice-trade ports of the Indies (India, China, the East Indies, or Japan)by sailing not south along the African coast but west across the Atlantic. Thetall, red-haired Columbus was an audacious visionary whose persistence wasas great as his courage. He eventually persuaded the Spanish monarchs Fer-dinand and Isabella to award him a tenth share of any riches he gatheredabroad: pearls; gold, silver, or other precious metals; and the Asian spices socoveted by Europeans. The legend that the queen had to hock the crown jew-els to finance the voyage is as spurious as the fable that Columbus set out toprove the earth was round.

Columbus chartered one seventy-five-foot ship, the Santa Mara, andthe Spanish city of Palos supplied twosmaller caravels, the Pinta and theNia. From Palos on August 3, 1492,this little squadron of tiny ships, withabout ninety men, most of them Span -iards, set sail westward for whatColumbus thought was Asia. As theweeks passed, the crews grew first weary,then restless, then panicky. There waseven whispered talk of mutiny. Twoof Columbuss captains urged him toturn back. But early on October 12a lookout yelled, Tierra! Tierra!(Land! Land!). He had sighted anisland in the Bahamas east of Floridathat Columbus named San Salvador(Blessed Savior). Columbus decided,incorrectly, that they must be near the

Christopher Columbus

A portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo,ca. 1519, said to be ChristopherColumbus.

The Voyages of Columbus 21

Indies, so he called the island people los Indios. At every encounter with thepeaceful indigenous people, known as Tainos or Arawaks, his first questionwas whether they had any gold. If they had gold the Spaniards seized it; ifthey did not, the Europeans forced them to search for it. Columbusdescribed the Indians as naked people, very well made, of very handsomebodies and very good faces. He added that with fifty men they could all besubjugated and compelled to do anything one wishes. It would be easy, hesaid, to convert these people [to Catholicism] and make them work for us.

After leaving San Salvador, Columbus continued to search for a passage tothe fabled Indies through the Bahamas, down to Cuba, and then eastward tothe island he named Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic),where he first found significant amounts of gold jewelry and was introducedto tobacco. Columbus learned of, but did not encounter until his second voy-age, the fierce Caribs of the Lesser Antilles. The Caribbean Sea was namedafter them, and their supposed bad habit of eating human flesh gave rise tothe word cannibal, derived from a Spanish version of their name (canbal).

At the end of 1492, Columbus, still believing he had reached Asia, decidedto return to Europe. He left about forty men on Hispaniola and captured adozen Indians to present as gifts to the Spanish king and queen. WhenColumbus reached Spain, he received a heros welcome. Thanks to the newlyinvented printing press, news of his westward voyage spread rapidly acrossEurope. In a letter that circulated widely throughout Europe, Columbusdescribed the great victory he had achieved by reaching the Indies and tak-ing possession of the innumerable peoples he found there. The Spanishmonarchs Ferdinand and Isabella told Columbus to prepare for a secondvoyage, instructing him to treat the Indians very well and lovingly andabstain from doing them any injury. Columbus and his men would repeat-edly defy this order.

The Spanish monarchs also sought to solidify their legal claim againstPortugals threats to the newly discovered lands in the Americas. With thehelp of the pope (a Spaniard), rivals Spain and Portugal reached a compro-mise, called the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which drew an imaginary linewest of the Cape Verde Islands (off the west coast of Africa) and stipulatedthat the area to its westwhich included most of the Americaswould be aSpanish sphere of exploration and settlement. Africa and what was tobecome Brazil were granted to Portugal. In practice, this meant that whileSpain developed its American empire in the sixteenth century, Portugal pro-vided it with enslaved African laborers.

Flush with success and convinced that he was an agent of Gods divineplan, Columbus returned across the Atlantic in 1493 with seventeen ships


and 1,400 men. Also on board were Catholic priests charged with convertingthe Indians. Columbus discovered that the camp he had left behind was inchaos. The unsupervised soldiers had run amok, raping women, robbing vil-lages, and, as Columbuss son later added, committing a thousand excessesfor which they were mortally hated by the Indians.

Columbus returned to Spain in 1496. Two years later he sailed west again,discovering the island of Trinidad and exploring the northern coast of SouthAmerica. He led a fourth and final voyage in 1502, during which he sailedalong the coast of Central America, still looking in vain for a passage to theIndies. To the end of his life, Columbus insisted that he had discovered theoutlying parts of Asia, not a new continent. By one of historys greatestironies, this lag led Europeans to name the New World not for Columbusbut for another Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed acrossthe Atlantic in 1499. Vespucci landed on the coast of South Americaand reported that it was so large it must be a new continent. Europeanmapmakers thereafter began to label the New World using a variant ofVespuccis first name: America.

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How many voyages did Columbus make to the Americas? What is the origin of thename for the Caribbean Sea? What happened to the colony that Columbus left onHispaniola in 1493?

T H E G R E AT B I O L O G I C A L E XC H A N G E

The first European contacts with the Western Hemisphere began anunprecedented worldwide biological and social exchange that ultimatelyworked in favor of the Europeans at the expense of the indigenous peoples.Indians, Europeans, and eventually Africans intersected to create new reli-gious beliefs and languages, adopt new tastes in food, and develop newmodes of dress.

If anything, the plants and animals of the two worlds were more differentfrom each other than were the peoples and their ways of life. Europeanshad never seen creatures such as iguanas, bison, cougars, armadillos,opossums, sloths, tapirs, anacondas, condors, and hummingbirds. Turkeys,guinea pigs, llamas, and alpacaswere also new to Europeans. Nordid the Indians know of horses,cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, and chick-ens, which soon arrived fromEurope in abundance. Within ahalf century whole islands of theCaribbean would be overrun bypigs brought from Europe.

The exchange of plant lifebetween Old and New Worldsworked a revolution in thediets of both hemispheres. BeforeColumbuss voyage, threefoods were unknown in Europe:maize (corn), potatoes (sweetand white), and many kindsof beans (snap, kidney, lima, andothers). The white potato, al -though commonly called Irish, isactually native to South America.Explorers brought it back toEurope, where it thrived. TheIrish potato was eventuallytransported to North America byScots-Irish immigrants duringthe early eighteenth century.Other Western Hemisphere food

The Great Biological Exchange 23

Algonquian chief in warpaint

From the notebook of English settler JohnWhite, this sketch depicts an Indian chief.


plants included peanuts, squash, peppers, tomatoes, pumpkins, pineapples,sassafras, papayas, guavas, avocados, cacao (the source of chocolate), andchicle (for chewing gum). Europeans in turn introduced rice, wheat, barley,oats, wine grapes, melons, coffee, olives, bananas, Kentucky bluegrass,daisies, and dandelions to the Americas.

The beauty of the biological exchange was that the food plants were morecomplementary than competitive. Corn, it turned out, could flourish almostanywhere in the world. The nutritious food crops exported from the Ameri-cas thus helped nourish a worldwide population explosion probably greaterthan any since the invention of agriculture. The dramatic increase in theEuropean populations fueled by the new foods in turn helped provide thesurplus of people who colonized the New World.

Smallpox

Aztec victims of the 1538 smallpox epidemic are covered in shrouds (center) as twoothers lie dying (at right).

Professional Explorers 25

By far the most significant aspect of the biological exchange, however, wasthe transmission of infectious diseases. European colonists and enslavedAfricans brought with them deadly pathogens that Native Americans hadnever experienced: smallpox, typhus, diphtheria, bubonic plague, malaria,yellow fever, and cholera. The results were catastrophic. Far more Indianstens of millionsdied from contagions than from combat. Deadly diseasessuch as typhus and smallpox produced pandemics on an unprecedentedscale. Unable to explain or cure the diseases, Native American chiefs and reli-gious leaders often lost their stature. As a consequence, tribal cohesion andcultural life disintegrated, and efforts to resist European assaults collapsed.

Smallpox was an especially ghastly and highly contagious disease in theNew World. In central Mexico alone, some 8 million people, perhaps a thirdof the entire Indian population, died of smallpox within a decade of thearrival of the Spanish. In colonial North America, as Indians died by the tensof thousands, disease became the most powerful weapon of the Europeaninvaders. A Spanish explorer noted that half the Indians died from smallpoxand blamed us. Many Europeans, however, interpreted such epidemics asdiseases sent by God to punish those who resisted conversion to Christianity.

P R O F E S S I O N A L E X P L O R E R S

The news of Columbuss remarkable voyages raced across Europeduring the sixteenth century and stimulated other expeditions to the WesternHemisphere. Over the next two centuries, many European nations dis-patched ships and claimed territory by right of discovery: Spain, Portugal,France, Britain, the Netherlands, and Russia. The national governmentssponsored professional explorers, mostly Italians, who probed the shorelinesin the Americas during the early sixteenth century. The first to sight theNorth American continent was John Cabot, a Venetian sponsored by HenryVII of England. Authorized to conquer and possess any territory he found,Cabot crossed the North Atlantic in 1497. His landfall at what the king calledthe new founde lande, in present-day Canada, gave England the basis for alater claim to all of North America. During the early sixteenth century, how-ever, the English grew so preoccupied with internal divisions and warwith France that they failed to capitalize on Cabots discoveries. In 1513 theSpaniard Vasco Nez de Balboa became the first European to sight thePacific Ocean, having crossed the Isthmus of Panama on foot.

The Spanish were eager to find a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.To that end, in 1519 Ferdinand Magellan, a haughty Portuguese sea captain


hired by the Spanish, discovered the strait at the southern tip of SouthAmerica that now bears his name. Magellan kept sailing north and westacross the Pacific Ocean, discovering Guam and, eventually, the Philippines,where indigenous people killed him. Surviving crew members made theirway back to Spain, arriving in 1522, having been at sea for three years. Theirdramatic accounts of the global voyage quickened Spanish interest in globalexploration.

T H E S PA N I S H E M P I R E

During the sixteenth century, Spain created the worlds most powerfulempire. At its height it encompassed much of Europe, most of the Americas,parts of Africa, and various trading outposts in Asia. But it was the gold

CongoRiver

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ZANZIBAR

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PHILIPPINEISLANDS

MOLUCCAS

CANARYISLANDS

Line of Treatyof Tordesillas,1494

Line of Treatyof Tordesillas,1494

CAPE HORN

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE

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Equator

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2,000 Miles

What is the significance of Magellans 1519 voyage? What biological exchangesresulted from these early explorations?

The Spanish Empire 27

and especially the silver looted from the Americas that fueled the engineof Spains Golden Empire. And the benefits of global empire came atthe expense of Indians. Heroic Spanish adventurers were also ruthlessexploiters. By plundering, conquering, and colonizing the Americas andconverting and enslaving its inhabitants, the Spanish planted Christianity inthe Western Hemisphere and gained the resources to rule the world.

The Caribbean Sea served as the funnel through which Spanish powerentered the Americas. After establishing colonies on Hispaniola, includ -ing Santo Domingo, which became the capital of the West Indies, the Span-ish proceeded eastward to Puerto Rico (1508) and westward to Cuba(15111514). Their motives were explicit, as one soldier explained: Wecame here to serve God and the king, and also to get rich. Like the Frenchand the British after them, the Spanish who conquered vast areas of theWestern Hemisphere were willing to risk everything in pursuit of wealth,power, glory, or divine approval.

Many of the Europeans in the first wave of settlement died of malnutri-tion or disease. But the Indians suffered far more casualties, for they were illequipped to resist the European invaders. Disunity everywherecivil disor-der, rebellion, and tribal warfareleft the indigenous peoples vulnerable todivision and foreign conquest. Attacks by well-armed soldiers and deadlygerms from Europe perplexed and overwhelmed the Indians. Europeanstook for granted the superiority of their civilization and ways of life. Sucharrogance undergirded the conquest and enslavement of the Indians, thedestruction of their way of life, and the seizure of their land and treasures.

A C L A S H O F C U LT U R E S The often-violent encounter between Span-ish and Indians involved more than a clash between different peoples. It alsoinvolved contrasting forms of technological development. The Indians ofMexico had copper and bronze but no iron. They used wooden canoes fortransportation, while the Europeans sailed in heavily armed oceangoing ves-sels. The Spanish ships not only carried human cargo, but also steel swords,firearms, explosives, and armor. These advanced military tools terrifiedIndians. A Spanish priest in Florida observed that gunpowder frightens themost valiant and courageous Indian and renders him slave to the whitemans command. Arrows and tomahawks were seldom a match for guns,cannons, and smallpox.

The Europeans enjoyed other cultural advantages. For example, beforethe arrival of Europeans the only domesticated four-legged animals in NorthAmerica were dogs and llamas. The Spanish, on the other hand, broughtwith them horses, pigs, and cattle. Horses provided greater speed in battle


and introduced a decided psychological advantage. The most essentialthing in new lands is horses, reported one Spanish soldier. They instill thegreatest fear in the enemy and make the Indians respect the leaders of thearmy. Even more feared among the Indians were the greyhound fightingdogs that the Spanish used to guard their camps.

C O RT E S S C O N Q U E S T The most dramatic European conquest of amajor indigenous civilization on the North American mainland occurred inMexico. On February 18, 1519, Hernn Corts, driven by dreams of goldand glory in Mexico, set sail from Cuba. His fleet of eleven ships carriednearly 600 soldiers and sailors. Also on board were 200 indigenous Cubans,sixteen horses, and cannons. After the invaders landed at what is now Ver-acruz, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, they assaulted a confederation offour small Indian kingdoms independent of, and opposed to, the domineer-ing Aztecs. Corts shrewdly persuaded the vanquished warriors to join hisadvance on the hated Aztecs.

Cortss soldier-adventurers, called conquistadores, received no pay; theywere military entrepreneurs willing to risk their lives for a share in theexpected plunder and slaves. To prevent any men from deserting, Corts had

Corts in Mexico

Page from the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, a historical narrative from the sixteenth century.The scene, in which Corts is shown seated on a throne, depicts the arrival of theSpanish in Tlaxcala.


the ships burned, sparing one vessel to carry the expected gold back toSpain. The nearly 200-mile march of Cortss army from Veracruz throughdifficult mountain passes to the Aztec capital took nearly three months.

T H E A Z T E C S Corts was one of the most audacious figures in worldhistory. With his small army, the thirty-four-year-old adventurer brashly setout to conquer the opulent Aztec Empire, which extended from central Mex-ico to what is today Guatemala. The Aztecstheir most accurate name isMexicawere a once-nomadic people who had wandered south fromnorthern Mexico and settled in the central highlands in the fourteenthcentury. On marshy islands on the west side of Lake Tetzcoco, the site ofpresent-day Mexico City, they built Tenochtitln, a dazzling capital citydominated by towering stone temples, broad paved avenues, thriving mar-kets, and some 70,000 adobe huts.

By 1519, when the Spanish landed on the Mexican coast, the Aztecs were oneof the most powerful civilizations in the world. As their empire had expandedacross central and southern Mexico, they had developed elaborate urban soci-eties, sophisticated legal systems, scientific farming techniques, including irri-gated fields and engineering marvels, and a complicated political structure. By

Aztec sacrifices to the gods

Renowned for military prowess, Aztecs would capture and then sacrifice their enemies.


1519, their arts were flourishing; their architecture was magnificent. Aztec rulerswere invested with godlike qualities, and nobles, priests, and warrior-heroesdominated the social hierarchy.

A Z T E C R E L I G I O N Like most agricultural peoples, the Aztecs centeredtheir spiritual beliefs on the cosmic forces of nature. Many of the Aztec godswere aligned with natural forcesthe sun, the sky, water, wind, fireandthe gods perpetually struggled with one another for supremacy. Like mostMesoamericans, the Aztecs regularly offered human sacrificescaptives,slaves, women, and childrento please the gods and to promote rain, enablegood harvests, and ensure victory in battle. The Aztecs also used the reli-gious obligation to offer sacrifices as a means of justifying their relentlessimperial assaults against other tribes. Prisoners of war in vast numbers wereneeded as sacrificial offerings. In elaborate weekly rituals at temples and inthe streets, Aztec priests used stone knives to cut out the beating hearts oflive victims. By the early sixteenth century as many as 10,000 people a yearwere sacrificed at numerous locations across Mesoamerica. The Spanishwere aghast at this most horrid and abominable custom, but it is impor-tant to remember that sixteenth-century Europeans also conducted publictorture and executions of the most ghastly sortbeheadings, burnings,hangings. Between 1530 and 1630, England alone executed 75,000 people.

S PA N I S H I N VA D E R S As Corts and his army marched across Mexico,they heard fabulous accounts of Tenochtitln. With some 200,000 inhabi-tants, it was the largest city in the Americas and much larger than mostEuropean cities. Graced by wide canals, stunning gardens, and formidablestone pyramids, the fabled lake-encircled capital seemed impregnable. ButCorts made the most of his assets. By a combination of threats and deceptions, Corts and his Indian allies entered Tenochtitln peacefully andcaptured the emperor, Montezuma II. Corts explained to Montezuma whythe invasion was necessary: We Spaniards have a disease of the heart thatonly gold can cure. Montezuma acquiesced in part because he mistookCorts for a god.

After taking the Aztecs gold and silver, the Spanish forced Montezuma toprovide laborers to mine more of the precious metals. This state of affairslasted until the spring of 1520, when disgruntled Aztecs, regarding Mon-tezuma as a traitor, rebelled, stoned him to death, and attacked Cortssforces. The Spaniards lost about a third of their men as they retreated. Their20,000 indigenous allies remained loyal, however, and Corts graduallyregrouped his forces. In 1521, he besieged the imperial city for eighty-five


days, cutting off its access to water and food and allowing a smallpox epi-demic to decimate the inhabitants. As a Spaniard observed, the smallpoxspread over the people as great destruction. Some it covered on all partstheir faces, their heads, their breasts, and so on. There was great havoc. Verymany died of it. . . . They could not move; they could not stir. The ravages ofsmallpox and the support of thousands of anti-Aztec indigenous allies helpexplain how such a small force of determined Spaniards lusting for gold andsilver was able to vanquish a proud nation of nearly 1 million people. Afterthe Aztecs surrendered, a merciless Corts ordered the leaders hanged andthe priests devoured by dogs. In two years Corts and his disciplined armyhad conquered a fabled empire that had taken centuries to develop.

Corts set the style for waves of plundering conquistadores to follow.Within twenty years, Spain had established a sprawling empire in the NewWorld. In 1531, Francisco Pizarro led a band of soldiers down the Pacificcoast from Panama toward Peru, where they brutally subdued the IncaEmpire. The Spanish invaders seized the Inca palaces and country estates,took royal women as mistresses and wives, and looted the empire of its goldand silver. From Peru, Spain extended its control southward through Chileby about 1553 and north, to present-day Colombia, by 1538. One of the con-quistadores explained that he went to America to serve God and HisMajesty, to give light to those who were in darkness, and to grow rich, as mendesire to do.

SPANISH AMERICA As the sixteenth century unfolded, Spainexpanded its settlements in the New World and established far-flung

america. a narrative history

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