THE EUROPEAN COLONIES CHAPTER III SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE AMERICA "frontier." THE word "frontier "has two meanings. First, it is used to designate that part of a country which faces another country. Thus the French speak of their German frontier, meaning by that the part Meaning of of their country which faces Germany. Second, by a the word frontier is meant the edge or border of civilization. As civilization pushes into a new region the frontier may be said to include the little fringe of settlements on the remote outskirts. In this sense early America may be spoken of as the frontier of Europe. The first great frontier of which there is definite knowledge was that built up by the ancient Greeks, as they spread their colonies along the unoccupied borders of the Ægean and Mediterranean Seas. The Roman Empire had a frontier in Britain, in Germany, in Africa, and in other parts of the world on the borders of its domain. Then, for a thousand years and more, all the known parts of the globe that seemed desirable were filled in with people, no more outposts of civilization were erected, and the world quite forgot about frontier building till Columbus gave to civilization a new opportunity to extend its borders. America. What followed was in reality a grand scramble among the powers of Europe for the possession of what were considered the most desirable parts of the new continent. Utterly regardless of the The grand rights of the natives, greedy Europe sliced up America in scramble for much the same fashion as it partitioned Africa in the nineteenth century. On the present map of Africa there are here British colonies, here French, here German, and so on; each power has taken what it could, and the native Africans have been little regarded. Just so it has been in parts of China until recently, and just so it was in the new world of Columbus. We shall devote our main attention to those parts of the new frontier occupied by the thirteen English colonies which later formed the United States of America, but in order to understand the develop ment of this portion we must briefly notice those parts of the English frontier in America that did not enter into the United States, and also the American frontiers of the other European powers. We shall see how the different nations of Europe, step by step, made their settlements in America, and how these struggled with one another in rivalry; how the colonies of the English gradually grew larger and more important than the others, how at length, by a revolution, the greater part of these English colonies separated themselves from the mother country and became the independent nation of the United States of America, and how the new nation from time to time added to its area till it reached to the Pacific and even to the islands beyond. It is necessary at the outset to understand why Europeans exchanged their life in the settled society of Europe for that of the Why the Europeans came to the frontier in America. American wilderness. In Europe the civilization of the time was at its best, while life in America meant a dangerous voyage over the sea, exposure to savage races, and utter abandonment of the comforts of home. Yet thousands made the change. Some sought gold and silver and improvement in worldly fortune, some sought to extend trade, and some to increase geographical knowledge; some went as condemned criminals to escape prison sentences, some out of a mere love of adventure, and a few to convert the natives to Christianity; but by far the largest number fled from overcrowded conditions of life at home, from religious persecution, or from the arbitrary rule of tyrannical monarchs. The golden the Spanish frontier, Peru. The Spaniards planted their first settlements in the West Indian Islands while Columbus was still alive. Thence they spread to Mexico, to Central America, and to South America, where, kingdom of in Peru, they found their golden kingdom. When the Pizarro brothers captured the Peruvian king, the royal captive, standing in a room twenty-two feet long and seventeen feet wide, made a mark on the wall as high as he could reach, offering for his freedom gold enough to fill the room up to that mark; and this enormous ransom, amounting to $15,000,000 in gold, was easily raised, and a large amount of silver as well. Mexico was almost as rich. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the mines of Peru and Mexico together produced annually from $30,000,000 to $40,000,000, and at the Mexico. present time the apparently inexhaustible yield still goes on. Spain was rendered wonderfully rich by the influx of treasure from her western possessions, and her leadership among the nations was assured for almost a century. It followed as a matter of course that men were attracted by successful gold hunting, so that it is not strange that the Spaniards left what is now the United States, where their search revealed The populano gold, and flocked by thousands to the more southern tion of the Spanish lands. St. Augustine in Florida, the oldest permanent frontier. white settlement within the present limits of the United States, founded in 1565, and Santa Fé in New Mexico, founded in 1605, marked the limits of their northern settlement, and these were both small villages. The Spaniards likewise deserted the West Indies, with the exception of Cuba and a few of the larger islands, as soon as the scant supply of gold there gave out. A census of 1576 revealed the presence in South America, or, as it was called, New Spain, of 160,000 Spaniards. To a remarkable extent the natives were then living in settled villages, attending Christian churches and schools, of which there were hundreds, and slowly taking on the ways of civilization. Progress was perhaps facilitated by the intermarriage of the races. There were mestizos, born of Spanish fathers and Indian mothers; mulattoes, of white and negro parentage, for negroes were early brought from Africa; quadroons, three-fourths white and one-fourth black; octoroons, seven-eighths white and one-eighth black; and zambos, of negro and Indian parentage. An unfavorable side of the Spanish dealings with the new races was the enforced labor of the latter. At first in the West Indies, under Columbus himself, who started the practice, and then Indian under his successors, the Indians were enslaved without slavery. mercy and treated with the utmost cruelty. An historian, relying on a Spanish writer for his authority, thus describes the cruelty perpetrated on the helpless natives. "Indians were slaughtered by the hundreds, burned alive, impaled on sharp stakes, torn to pieces by bloodhounds. .... Once, 'in honor and reverence of Christ and his twelve apostles,' they hanged thirteen Indians in a row at such a height that their toes touched the ground, and then pricked them to death with their sword points, taking care not to kill them too quickly." Gradually, be it said to the credit of the Spaniards, conditions were improved and the servitude of the Indians was prohibited, though this step was doubtless prompted more by the unprofitableness of Indian labor than by humanitarian motives. Even before the abolition of the slavery of the Indians had been fully accomplished, as soon as it was perceived that the Indians did not possess the physical endurance necessary for the African hard work of the mines, the stronger, blacks of Africa were imported to take their places. A beginning of the new traffic, which slavery. was to continue for more than three hundred and fifty years, was made in 1502, and soon Africa was yielding up her natives to America by the thousand. The slaves of the Greeks and Romans had been largely whites, often as refined and intelligent as their masters. In the fifteenth century there was hardly a vestige left in Europe of anything that could be called real slavery, when suddenly the new negro slavery sprang into existence. The Portuguese were the first in modern times to make a business of kidnapping the blacks, and upon the Spaniards rests the responsibility for their introduction into America. The Spaniards were very jealous of their frontier empire. They would allow none but Spanish ships to trade with New Spain, and Spanish ex- none but Spaniards to enter the country. All trade and clusiveness. communication with Europe was to be by way of the mother country alone, and this only once a year. Large fleets, sometimes numbering scores of vessels, annually made the passage back and forth over the Atlantic, bearing men, treasure, and supplies. But the secret of the fleets could not be kept; rumors of their untold riches would not down; and soon every civilized nation was the enemy of Spain, waiting for a chance to pounce upon the treasure ships and if possible to steal away from her a slice of America. So occupied were the Portuguese in building up their trading posts in the East Indies, that they established but few colonies in the western The frontier. world, notably a few in Brazil. As a result of European wars, the mother country and her possessions were under the Spanish yoke from 1580 to 1639, but in the latter year this yoke was thrown off, and Brazil again became a Portuguese colony, thoroughly Portuguese in language, traditions, and civilization. GENERAL REFERENCES BOURNE, Spain in America; FISKE, Discovery, II; SIR A. HELPS, Spanish Conquest; LOWERY, Spanish Settlements; WINSOR, America, VIII. SPECIAL TOPICS I. SLAVERY IN SPANISH AMERICA. FISKE, Discovery, II, 427–482; Epochs, II, 70-75; WINSOR, America, II, 299-348; SIR A. HELPS, Las Casas. SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS What arguments can you give for and against the Spanish policy of excluding all other nations from New Spain? In what respects did the Spanish civilization of South America differ from that of the English in North America? CHAPTER IV ENGLISH AMERICA UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH AND THE EARLY STUART KINGS, 1558-1642 CRUSHING THE SEA POWER OF SPAIN The rivalry of England and Spain. UNDER the wise and powerful leadership of Queen Elizabeth, 15581603, England became Spain's most troublesome rival. The exciting internal and foreign politics, which had absorbed the attention of the nation in the years immediately following the voyages of the Cabots and had prevented the sailing of more English vessels to the west, were relaxing their hold, and England was entering upon a long period of peace, recuperation, and expansion. Although small in geographical extent, the little island kingdom now boldly disputed Spain's proud claim to the title of the first power in Europe and opposed her at every step. When King Philip of Spain, with the evident design of adding England to his growing dominions, requested Elizabeth's hand in marriage, the Queen, suspecting the King's motives, gave his royal highness a polite refusal, which incident served to increase the bitterness between their realms. Violent differences of religion were another cause of estrangement. Protestant England openly lent sympathy and aid to the struggling Dutch, whom Philip, champion of the Pope, was attempting to hold to Roman Catholicism at the point of the sword. Then, too, England coveted the Spanish American frontier and the wonderful treasure ships. She was fired with a desire for colonies of her own. Said Richard Hakluyt, a leader in the movement in favor of an English onslaught on the Spanish dominions over the sea: "The plantinge of twoo or three strong fortes upon some goodd havens The advice (whereof there is a greate store) betweene Florida and Cape of Richard Briton, would be a matter in shorte space of greater Hakluyt. domage as well to his flete as to his westerne Indies; for wee shoulde not onely often tymes indaunger his flete in the returne thereof, but also in fewe yeres put him in hazarde in loosinge some parte of Nova Hispania. If you touche him in the Indies, you touche the apple of his eye; for take away his treasure, which is nervus belli, and which he hath almoste oute of his West Indies, his olde bandes of souldiers will |