Conquistadors The Rise and Fall Episode 2 The Caribbean Conquest
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00:00March 15th, 1493.
00:11The hero returns.
00:14Having departed Spain as little more than an eccentric merchant, Christopher Columbus
00:19is swept up in a flurry of fame and legend.
00:23The man who sailed across an impossible Atlantic to stave a swift, safe trade route to Asia.
00:30But contrary to his claims, Columbus hadn't led his tiny fleet to Asia.
00:38His discovery was North America.
00:43He and his crew of sailors had been the first Europeans to set foot on the continent since
00:48the time of the Vikings.
00:51Thirty-nine of his men had been left to further explore the mysteries of the Isle of Hispaniola,
00:58whilst Columbus prepared to set sail westwards, finally reuniting with them once again.
01:04Only on this journey, his mission wasn't discovery and trade, but to convert and colonize.
01:13Columbus was about to spark a firestorm of Spanish brutality across the Caribbean, opening
01:19up the New World to a mass of European explorers.
01:24Bringing with them disease, death, and subjugation, and marking the dawn of the age of the conquistadors.
01:42Columbus certainly was a great self-promoter.
01:46The first exploration, the first voyage is, as we know, involves three very small ships.
01:53He returns to Spain.
01:55He tells the Catholic monarchs about this great land that he's discovered that's ripe
02:00for colonization, for settlement, for Christianization.
02:05In sort of telling that account, what he aims to do is enlist the financial support of the
02:12monarchs and private investors for his exploits.
02:19Columbus probably has some doubts into his mind as to whether or not he has actually
02:23found what he said he was finding.
02:25But in reality, one of the reasons why he's making that claim is that everything that
02:31he had agreed to with Isabella in 1491, before his first voyage, was predicated on him finding
02:38Asia.
02:40As he became increasingly aware that he was probably nowhere near the Asia that he sought,
02:46he still knew that he had to go back.
02:49He had to either try and find the place that he was looking for, or at least try and become
02:54so successful that it wouldn't matter.
02:58In the case of the papal bulls that the Catholic kings received in the aftermath of Columbus
03:03arriving to the Americas, those papal bulls grant the kings authority to spread through
03:11the Americas while converting the native population.
03:14And that's kind of the stipulation, that their most important charge is going to be
03:18evangelization of the people that they encounter.
03:25After the first voyage, once it's become clear that it is possible to cross to these islands,
03:31how you do it, how you get back, that there's potentially sources of wealth and maybe places
03:37where you can create settlements.
03:39The second voyage is really the beginning of a Spanish attempt to create settlements
03:46in the Caribbean.
03:48It's no longer just exploratory.
03:50This is the beginning of a sustained campaign of settlement and invasion.
03:57Ever since he was a young boy helping his father weave wool in their family's humble
04:02workshop, Columbus had dreamt of immense wealth and a gleaming reputation as an unrivaled
04:09seafarer.
04:11Finally, his fantasy was within reach.
04:16The crown's promise to invest an immensely healthy sum in a second voyage attracted a
04:21huge interest from fellow explorers, allowing him to commandeer a far greater fleet.
04:29The second expedition was a large operation with hundreds of individuals, goods, everything
04:36you can imagine to create a functioning Spanish society in the Americas.
04:41Having made it and come back, there are a lot more individuals that are willing to sign
04:45onto the expedition.
04:46People that were dubious of his earlier claims for not really knowing the size of the world
04:51are willing to join this expedition.
04:55You have farmers, you had people from the trades, skilled labor, but you also had clergymen
05:03and you had some nobles.
05:05So it was kind of like a good slice of Castilian society represented in this expedition.
05:13He comes with, we believe to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 ships.
05:21These ships are loaded with the essentials of European life.
05:25They come with wheat and barley to be planted in what they think about as sort of large
05:31fields.
05:32They come with cattle, pigs and horses, as well as sheep and goats.
05:39September 1493, a current of excitement flowed through the bustling port of Cadiz.
05:47Columbus was now a major celebrity, the public firmly rooting for his success.
05:52This was the man who had brought them closer than ever to Asia, with all its exotic goods.
06:00The ships were loaded with vital supplies to feed the thousand voyagers joining Columbus
06:05on his epic quest across the sea.
06:10Sightings of the Lesser Antilles were first made on November 3rd, veering north within
06:15three weeks, Hispaniola appeared on the horizon.
06:20It was here, only nine months earlier, that Columbus had left 39 of his most trusted men
06:25in charge of a newly constructed fortress.
06:30In 1493, when Columbus's second voyage arrived at the site of the original fort that Columbus
06:38and his crew had left behind on the first voyage, they discovered that the place had
06:43been razed, had been burned.
06:47Columbus discovers that the contingent of men that he had left at the site of La Navidad
06:53has been killed.
06:55And in fact, the cacique nearby, Guancanagadi, is in hiding for fear of reprisals from Columbus
07:02for the death of his men.
07:04Eventually Columbus is able to sort of lure Guancanagadi out and sort of deduce that some
07:10of his men had been excessive in their demands of the local community.
07:17It seems possible that actually Spaniards harassed quite a lot of indigenous people
07:22for food.
07:23It's possible that they harassed women also.
07:26It seems that, you know, indigenous people might have resented the abuse that they received
07:30by the Spaniards who were stranded and might have acted against them.
07:34It started a chain of conflicts with indigenous polities.
07:43Columbus then decides to move the settlement a little bit more to the east and establishes
07:48a new community of La Isabela, named after the Queen of Castile.
07:53The problem is that there are a lot more Spaniards.
07:56They don't have enough European food stores.
07:59They haven't brought enough food to sort of readily feed everyone for a long time.
08:03And so they begin to place a lot of demands on the local indigenous groups that they have
08:09created some ties to for food.
08:12He's bringing a lot more mouths to feed, but also a lot more people that want to be able
08:18to profit from the voyage.
08:22And as a result, Columbus begins this march inland with as many men as he can muster to
08:27try and find both the source of the gold that he's been told is there, as well as through
08:33force or through alliance, get access to more indigenous communities that can help
08:39supply this fledgling colony.
08:44Columbus was fully aware that the immediate survival of the Spaniards in these strange
08:48new lands would be solely dependent on allegiances made with the indigenous people.
08:55How else could he build and maintain the thriving colony he had promised Queen Isabella?
09:01It may not be Asia, but at least he could still make a success of Hispaniola.
09:07He would have to, to ensure he wasn't returned to Spain in chains.
09:13When the Spaniards reached the Caribbean islands, those islands and the mainland all around
09:19those islands or the circum-Caribbean was well inhabited and had been inhabited for
09:24thousands of years.
09:26The great Antilles were populated mostly, but not exclusively by, by Tainos.
09:31They spoke a common language, but they were actually divided politically into different
09:35casicascos or chiefdoms.
09:39They had alliances and wars between each other sometimes.
09:44They traded with each other, they married each other.
09:47So it was a complex society, just like any other in that sense.
09:54And the chiefs in the Taino word, or it's a Spanish, a Hispanization of the Taino word
10:00is cacique.
10:02And the Spaniards latch onto that word and they think of those individuals, those local
10:07chiefs or rulers as being caciques.
10:09They actually carry that word onto the mainland and they, and they assign it to indigenous
10:14chiefs all over the Americas.
10:15So it becomes an important concept.
10:19The interaction between Spaniards and indigenous peoples in the Caribbean at first is relatively
10:27peaceful, but very quickly it dissolves into violence.
10:31Then there's this downward spiral that starts, in some ways it starts with Columbus's first
10:36landing, but particularly with a much larger second voyage is when it begins to, to spiral
10:42down.
10:49As the months dragged on, relations between the Spanish invaders and the influential caciques
10:59were rapidly deteriorating, as was the notion of peaceful cohabitation of the islands.
11:06They were completely dependent on indigenous people for food and indigenous people, Tainos,
11:11provided food freely and willingly as a sign of hospitality, but the Spaniards ate voraciously.
11:18There is just not enough supplies.
11:19There's not enough food to go around.
11:21It's going to become a great problem.
11:22There's going to be a great hunger among colonists.
11:25The Spaniards organized expeditions to the indigenous towns to raid for food.
11:31You can imagine what kind of terrible things can be actually executed when you are starved
11:37and you're thinking that everybody around you is conspiring against you.
11:41At the same time, Columbus has a mission, which is to locate the source of wealth.
11:50He wants to find a way to turn a profit.
11:53To do that, he very quickly identifies gold as the commodity that will be most valuable
11:59for export.
12:02Gold in Hispaniola was found normally in riverbeds.
12:05So in the proximity of these sources of gold, he's going to place forts.
12:10There are going to be also forts in proximity to indigenous towns sometimes to kind of keep
12:14an eye on them.
12:18At the same time, Columbus is not going to be afraid of using quite brutal tactics to
12:24scare the population into submission.
12:28If anyone shows resistance, he uses an overwhelming attack, something that the Spaniards term
12:36a fuego y sangre, war of fire and blood, in order to attack those that might resist him.
12:44That kind of violence, it was considered to be the best way to ensure that indigenous
12:49people weren't going to rebel.
12:50It was kind of like the shock, producing a shock with violence that was such that it
12:54would kind of like mute a response.
13:00Communities that initially ally with the Spaniards very quickly feel oppressed by their demands.
13:06That the Spanish are demanding huge amounts of food, they're demanding labor at times.
13:12And as a result, there is a sort of built-in tension even with allied caciques over those
13:18demands.
13:21Columbus was losing control of Hispaniola, of the respect of his men, and of his own
13:29swelling ego.
13:31He struck out to nearby islands, praying he would discover something, anything of value,
13:38which could buy him some time.
13:41But upon his return to Hispaniola, a startled Columbus was shocked to learn that nearly
13:46two-thirds of the Europeans, the people whose lives he was essentially responsible for,
13:52had fatally succumbed to famine and disease.
13:58The Spaniards felt the bitter sting of resentment, their friends and crewmates dead, and for
14:03what?
14:04An aggressive tyrant hell-bent on making a name for himself, whilst claiming every pebble
14:09of gold that they had found.
14:13They saw him as a kind of like a failed leader in many ways.
14:16So opposition against Columbus is going to appear very quickly, and there are going to
14:22be factions of Spaniards who are going to even run away from the Spanish settlements
14:27and go to live with indigenous communities.
14:32Desperation to retain control drove Columbus into survival mode.
14:37If a mutiny broke out, his career, and maybe even his life, would be over.
14:43His solution was to allow the colonists to forcibly extract labor from the native islanders.
14:50This would eventually lead to the Spanish introducing a cruel, formalized system of
14:56domination, the encomienda.
15:00The encomienda was considered a relationship between two individuals.
15:06The encomendero, or is a Spaniard, and then the encomendado, or which is like the person
15:13that is put under the protection of the Spaniards.
15:18These indigenous peoples were entrusted to them.
15:20That's the word encomienda means to entrust.
15:23And so the idea was that this was not tantamount to slavery, but this was in order to protect
15:29the indigenous people.
15:30So the theory was that the overlord, the encomendero, was a protector.
15:37He would see to the well-being of the indigenous peoples.
15:41He would see to their conversion to Christianity.
15:46But in return, he would be able to make some demands, whether in tribute or in labor.
15:58A relationship that was intended to protect indigenous people and to evangelize them,
16:04it was quickly subverted into a form of forced labor.
16:10Without labor to produce food, to mine those precious metals, or to raise livestock, the
16:17new world is meaningless.
16:19And so encomienda really was a grant of land, but the real part of encomienda was a grant
16:25of labor.
16:28And so they abused the native people.
16:30They exploited them.
16:32They beat them.
16:34They raped them.
16:36They overworked them.
16:37They did not want to educate or Christianize them.
16:40And so the mortality rate on these encomiendas was just staggering.
16:54Despite his grand ambitions, Columbus was a mediocre mapmaker, not a master politician.
17:01By the close of the 15th century, his dreadful decisions had cost Hispaniola its peace and
17:06prosperity, turning it into a place of death and subjugation.
17:10Its capital, the newly established city of Santo Domingo, was the dark heart of this
17:16violent regime of cruelty against the local people.
17:20As Columbus becomes more brutal in trying to get gold, more and more caciques become
17:27resistant.
17:291495, 96, 97 is really a period of quite broad conflict between caciques in the center part
17:39of the island to the south of where the Spanish have established themselves, as well as to
17:43the east, who begin to attack the Spanish.
17:51The Spanish advantage, particularly their steel swords, their crossbows, to a lesser
17:57extent their firearms, made it an incredibly mismatched fight.
18:06It's pretty clear that even a small number of Spaniards, a dozen, 20, could hold their
18:13own against hundreds of Taino warriors.
18:19Military engagements not only killed the warriors that fought the Spaniards in battle, but then
18:25precipitated things like famine, which then only hastened death due to starvation or malnutrition
18:32or eventually disease.
18:35October 1499, enslavement of indigenous people was by now commonplace.
18:43But news of Columbus' sordid moves to suppress and control Hispaniola's inhabitants had spread
18:49back across the ocean, reaching the turrets of Iberia and his royal patron, Isabella.
18:57People in Spain started to question what was going on very early on. Concerns start coming
19:02simultaneously with encomienda. Things went very badly, very quickly with encomienda,
19:07so concerns for the treatment of the Indians.
19:10It comes right away from friars who are there, asked to do the conversion, and being confronted
19:17with conquistadors who are being violent, who are not being a good model, and writing
19:22back saying, how are we supposed to make people like Christianity, who want people to, you
19:27know, wanting to go to heaven if all they can find is these guys around? They think
19:32if they're going to heaven, I don't want to be there. So that sort of conflict among Spaniards
19:38is absolutely simultaneous. It's happening at the same time as the conquest. And how
19:42powerful that was, you know, when the criticism comes from within, that's very problematic.
19:49All this sort of concern is embodied in the person of Isabel, of Castile. And people went
19:55to her, partly in this gendered way, perhaps as a sort of maternal figure, but also she
20:02was the one who was the most vocal.
20:05In Isabella's eyes, the indigenous people of the New World were subjects of the Crown
20:10of Castile, Iberians who ought to be embraced, not enslaved. Columbus was in serious trouble,
20:20and he knew it.
20:23He's shipped back to Spain in chains to answer to Queen Isabel. He's not thrown permanently
20:34in prison, he's released. But his contract is considered to be null and void, and so
20:40he's stripped of the titles that he was able to claim in his contract, that he's essentially
20:46the ruler for Spain of these islands.
20:59Columbus had left chaos in his wake. But Queen Isabella believed that continued intervention
21:05would restore and maintain order across the new lands he had mistakenly discovered in
21:10her name.
21:12The Crown appointed Francisco de Bobadilla, the man who had arrested Columbus on Isabella's
21:18orders, as the second governor of the Indies in August 1500. Following his death during
21:24a hurricane in July 1502, formidable nobleman Nicolás de Ovando took the helm.
21:32Nicolás de Ovando arriving in Hispaniola with a great number of ships and individuals
21:37is kind of like the second, the big second wave, let's say, of colonists arriving to
21:42Hispaniola. And also he's going to be extraordinarily aggressive in his battle against the remaining
21:48indigenous polities that still existed in Hispaniola. He's going to be very successful
21:53in that, but also very, very brutal in the way they actually achieve his goals.
21:58The governorship of Nicolás de Ovando is seen as the moment in which the Spanish grip
22:02over the land was really solidified.
22:15The Crown clearly trusted in the Caribbean's potential. Why else would they continue to
22:20invest in its development? Popular tales of its gold and glory had begun to spread. A
22:27great number of settlers began to make the perilous journey across the Atlantic.
22:33There were all kinds of ideas about the riches that existed in the New World, the sense of
22:38adventure, the sense of possibility.
22:42In the popular imagination, everybody who moved there would be able to discover a great
22:48empire and strike at the riches very quickly.
22:53These are people from very difficult backgrounds, poverty-stricken, very few opportunities.
23:00They used to talk about hacer las Américas, to make oneself in the Americas, most of them
23:04with the intention of then returning home and living life as lords with the booty that
23:10they had accumulated there.
23:13Within three decades of Columbus stumbling across Hispaniola and establishing his fragile
23:19Thousands were leaving Europe each and every year, placing their faith in the New World
23:26and the promise of its riches. They came from a wide range of backgrounds, but would become
23:32known by one collective title, conquistadors.
23:37So the conquistadors are actually quite a diverse bunch of people. We think of them
23:41as Spanish. It's called the Spanish Conquest. Most of them were Spanish, but not all of
23:45them were. There were other Europeans.
23:48By and large, conquistadors were young men, though there are some women, who were looking
23:53to improve their status in Spanish society, whether by creating a noble name for themselves
24:02or more typically serving the crown and receiving sort of lifelong benefits as members of Spanish
24:09society.
24:14Making this fresh start required a traumatic journey over thousands of miles of sea. Discomfort
24:21and danger were among the few guarantees on offer during this agonizing transatlantic
24:27passage.
24:2816th century ships were rather small, shockingly small, say 100, 120 square meters. And in
24:36the space, if you can imagine that, you had anywhere from 100 to 120 people living day
24:44and night with basically no bathroom. The passage between Spain and the Caribbean islands
24:54in the early 16th century would take anywhere from four to six weeks.
25:00It depended on the winds. It depended on the seaworthiness of the ship. It depended upon
25:06the capability of the people navigating the ship. They ran out of food. They ran out of
25:11water. Sailors became sick with scurvy and other kinds of illnesses. They became dissatisfied.
25:20Sometimes mutinies occurred.
25:23There were all kinds of stories out there about what awaited them. Some were very fearful
25:30that they would encounter these half-human, half-beast individuals. There were illustrations
25:37throughout Europe that showed human beings with their faces and their mouths in their
25:43stomachs. There were stories of, you know, 10, 12-foot giants that wandered the land.
25:51If you're lucky, you only make one of these expeditions, only make one voyage, and you
25:57happen to be part of an expedition that discovers, let's say, the Aztec Empire, the Inca Empire.
26:03Whatever it is, you make enough that if you can then make it back home, you're set for
26:08the rest of your life.
26:10If you had the desire, the nerve, or the necessity, you could jump on a ship and be part of this.
26:17No training. But you knew also that the chances of survival were pretty slim. But if you did
26:24manage to survive, who knows what kind of wealth and what kind of stature you could
26:29achieve in the process.
26:33In many cases, they were private expeditions. And so basically, the leader of this expedition
26:40or captain would also invest his own capital into leasing or buying ships. Individual conquistadors
26:51would bring their own weapons and their own provisions. And so they would be entitled
26:55to additional shares of whatever proceeds they would find. And they would just simply
27:00recruit in Seville.
27:05The financial and physical risks of the New World may have been shouldered by the conquistadors.
27:11But permission to be there was granted by the crown. This was sealed in the form of
27:17a detailed contract.
27:19Some of these contracts were for trading with the natives only. Others were to establish
27:25forts or cities, etc. So there were different possibilities.
27:30The crown, because it gave permission, said it was entitled to a certain percentage of
27:35the wealth that was uncovered as a result of the expedition. This begins to breed some
27:41resentment on the part of those who took all the risks. And it's the crown that's becoming
27:46wealthy off of all of their efforts.
27:58As scores of Spaniards arrived on the sands of the Caribbean, alongside them came an unpredictable
28:04and disturbing peril. Disease.
28:08Now the explanation that we all learn while we were in grade school was about the biological
28:14effects that the Europeans brought. Illnesses for which the natives did not have defenses
28:20for or immunity for. Subvergent soil epidemics. But there was more than that.
28:28If we combined war plus exhaustive conditions, working conditions, and we are also diseased,
28:37indigenous mortality was catastrophic.
28:41The population of Hispaniola, before the arrival of the Spaniards, could be considered
28:47around, let's say, half a million. Half a million individuals. And by 1518, there are
28:53about 3,000 natives left. So in the process of settling and colonizing Hispaniola, Spaniards
29:04depopulated the Caribbean basin. And not only a loss of life, but a loss of culture, a loss
29:10of family life, structure. We're talking about a horrifying event.
29:21As the indigenous population in Hispaniola declined, Spaniards saw themselves looking
29:28for labor elsewhere. It meant bringing forced labor from all the islands of the Caribbean.
29:36In the first 30 years of the 16th century, Spaniards conducted multiple raids to secure
29:42indigenous labor and to bring them as slaves to Hispaniola to work in the gold fields.
29:49So the conquest of Cuba, the conquest of Puerto Rico, conquest to the north in places like
29:54the Bahamas, are really intended not so much to gain access to new areas of land, but really
30:03to capture people that can be put to work on Hispaniola to continue to extract gold
30:10from the island. So Spaniards are going to propel themselves
30:15throughout the greater Antilles, populating every island and trying to control the indigenous
30:22population, which was going to be an ongoing process. And they meant a significant loss
30:27of life for everybody involved. And as those sources of labor themselves become
30:37scarce or become harder to access, the Spanish begin to turn to trade with the Portuguese.
30:46And enslaved Africans quickly come in and are used both in domestic service in cities
30:52like Santo Domingo, in rural service working as ranchers and cowboys to maintain livestock
31:02supplies, as well as to work in the mines and eventually to work on sugar plantations,
31:09which begin to be established in the first couple decades of the 16th century.
31:15When the gold in Hispaniola starts declining, there's going to be a very conscious move
31:20to move towards sugar as the next most important commodity that the island can produce. So
31:26Hispaniola is really the first sugar plantation in the Americas.
31:34We know that in many places, places like Santo Domingo, the population of enslaved Africans
31:42came to meet or in some cases exceed the number of Spaniards.
31:47However, back in Europe, the crown faced a growing opposition to the brutality of its
31:53state-sponsored privateers. Amongst the most famous of the early objectors was Dominican
31:59friar Bartolome de las Casas, a man who had already formed his own complicated relationship
32:05with the Indies.
32:07Bartolome de las Casas came out to the New World as a young man. He settled on the island
32:15of Hispaniola. He participated in the invasion of Cuba, and as a result of his participation
32:24in the invasion of Cuba, was made an encomendero. That is, he was given a grant of Indians who
32:30would pay tribute to him.
32:33In 1511, he heard Antonio de Montesinos preaching a sermon against the abuses of the indigenous
32:40people, peoples who were living in these kind of encomenderos, the cruelty, the kind
32:47of dehumanization.
32:48Bartolome de las Casas then goes through a spiritual transformation. He renounces his
32:55encomienda and he then decides to join the Dominican order. Montesinos had been a Dominican.
33:04And then he became a lifelong advocate for indigenous rise. He's called the apostle of
33:10the Indies. He becomes known as the apostle of the Indies.
33:13He was one of the first ones to denounce the quick disappearance of indigenous people and
33:20try to actually exert some action from the crown. He tried to advocate for some legislation
33:28to protect indigenous people.
33:31His idea was that it was essential to remove natives from the grasp of conquistadors because
33:39that would only lead to their complete extinction.
33:42He is a very, very important figure. Even at the time you will read correspondence which
33:51talks about that Dominican or the Bishop of Chiapas and his troublemaking. So his message
34:01was loud and clear and it was heard in the highest halls of government.
34:08The crown was shocked by this, saying this is not what the church and what God has set
34:18us out to do. So in 1512, Spain enacts the laws of Burgos, which begins to delineate
34:27how Spaniards will treat native people.
34:32The problem, of course, is that from theory to practice it is a long distance. So even
34:36though at certain point indigenous slavery is going to be prohibited, there is always
34:41going to be an asterisk to the law. There is always going to be ways in which Spaniards
34:44can, if not disobey the law, definitely walk around it.
34:49One such loophole was officially written into existence as Spanish law only a year after
34:55the creation of the laws of Burgos.
34:59A jurist in Spain named Justo Palacios created a document that was called the requerimiento.
35:07That means the requirement. Palacios laid out a religious and legal rationale for the
35:15enslavement and total domination of people of the Americas. If the people accept, then
35:22they will be treated well, says the document. If they do not accept, they will be enslaved
35:28and their children and wives will be taken away. They will be killed. This document
35:35made possible things that would not otherwise have been imaginable. Then, from the Spanish
35:41point of view, all of these actions were legitimate.
35:45It's a loophole that's absolutely massive. It's a loophole that you can just sail an
35:48entire conquest expedition right through. And that's what the Spaniards do. So the Caribbean
35:54very quickly becomes a colonial disaster.
36:00Violence was not the Spaniards' only import to the New World. Their arrival in the Caribbean
36:06began a complex biological exchange, which would leave a lasting impact on the Western
36:13Hemisphere.
36:15The Caribbean is a laboratory of empire for Spain. It is at this time that you find many
36:19of the elements that you're going to find later in colonial culture in other places
36:23of the world. They happen first here. They're going to try at least to introduce agricultural
36:27products into the Caribbean with little success, things like wheat, things like grapes to make
36:33wine, things like cattle, like horses, pigs, dogs as well.
36:40They also carry the first diseases from the old world, particularly what we think about
36:45now as swine flu. Within a decade, all the settlements had fallen. The animals had either
36:50died, been eaten, or had run off into the frontier. And diseases had begun to spread,
36:56particularly swine flu, amongst native populations. So it's an abject failure, the first settlements
37:03that Columbus launched. But more broadly, the whole colonial enterprise in the Caribbean
37:09itself is very much similarly a failure through the early period until the mainland becomes
37:16the focus.
37:20We know that relatively early on, there were many instances of rape perpetrated by Spaniards
37:30on indigenous women. But as you moved into the early 16th century, there were some cases
37:38where you see more intentional relationships between Spaniards and indigenous women that
37:46then lead to children that are more part of the Spanish world than part of indigenous
37:51communities. Eventually, by the 1520s, the Spanish have coined a new word to describe
37:59the children born between Spaniards and typically indigenous women. And these children are called
38:06mestizos, which has the same root as the word mixture, right? So these are mixed people.
38:16Having passed away shortly after Columbus's return, Queen Isabella's power had been inherited
38:26by an unsympathetic King Ferdinand. He continued to reject increasingly desperate requests
38:33from the disgraced explorer for the reinstatement of his privileges. Time had run out for Christopher
38:41Columbus. He died in obscurity on the 20th of May, 1506, at only 55 years old.
38:52Columbus was obviously important because he was so tremendously wrong about what he sought
38:59to do. He, of course, is a very controversial figure. He was controversial during his lifetime.
39:08We have to recognize that due to his efforts, the Spaniards did create a colony. They did
39:15create a permanent presence in the New World. And that permanent presence then acted as
39:22the jumping off place for further expeditions. In the second voyage, he learned to master
39:29the winds and currents of the Atlantic, which are fundamental to be able to cross the ocean
39:35in the Age of Sail. It's the voyages that established the permanent navigational route
39:42between Europe and the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas for the next three centuries,
39:48basically. He extensively explored the Caribbean, but he also continued to believe that he had
39:54found a passageway to the east. He never admitted that he had come across lands that had not
40:03been seen or encountered by Europeans before. By 1498, everyone believed that they were
40:09in a new world. People are drafting a new cartography of the globe that includes these
40:15islands that were not a part of India. Most likely, few of the settlers or conquistadors
40:22thought they were actually in India either. The Spanish mission to peacefully Christianize
40:28the Caribbean may have been a failure, but the establishment of colonies on Hispaniola,
40:34modern-day Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba would land the conquistadors with an incredible
40:40opportunity. The Caribbean was a proving ground, wherein the Spaniards were able to identify
40:49and practice strategies of conquest that then would propel them to the mainland, where they
40:56would be able to use those conquests against new peoples in the search for more tribute,
41:03more labor, more income, ultimately more lands for their monarch. Things like the encomienda
41:12is practiced and experimented with in the Caribbean. Plantations are established in
41:18the Caribbean. And settlements, settlements with sort of a Spanish center and indigenous
41:23periphery are experimented with in the Caribbean. You had to have a point of focus with sufficient
41:31individuals there in order to begin the other discoveries. We have enough people on the
41:40islands. We have enough resources to begin to build ships on the island. And so expeditions
41:48no longer have to make the 3,000-mile trip all the way from Spain in order to discover
41:54new areas. And this dramatically changes the nature of the discoveries. Without a base
42:02of operations such as Hispaniola, such as the city of Santo Domingo, the rest of it
42:08just would not have happened. One such expedition in 1513 would see the conquistadors make a
42:16pivotal discovery, offering them their first substantial taste of mainland America. The
42:24conquistadors were coming for Panama. Panama was the first major mainland conquest
42:34after the Caribbean. The campaign led by Pedrarias Dávila was arguably one of the most brutal
42:42campaigns of conquest in all of the Americas. Between those years, it's possible that the
42:48Spanish decimated as many as a quarter of a million Cueva peoples in Panama. From Panama,
42:58the Spanish are able to establish a new foothold that they quickly realize offers access to
43:09another ocean, a monumental discovery for the future course of the conquest of the Americas.
43:20As the second decade of the 16th century draws to a close, one high-ranking politician stuck
43:27in an administrative position in Cuba grows anxious for adventure. Hernán Cortés soon
43:34sets his sights on the mainland. What lay ahead of him would prove to be one of the
43:39greatest and deadliest Spanish conquests, the vast city of Tenochtitlan and the extraordinary
43:47empire of the Aztecs.