The Legacy of Spain in the Americas

So what's the point? That Anglo-America, Europe or Indian treats better to "people of color"? At least in here we never had the bad manner of hunging black people on the trees or giving cloths to the indians contaminated with contagious desseases.

Edited by pinguin - 22-Jul-2007 at 16:14

Originally posted by calvo ...  I'm not saying that any system is better than others, but only that Latin american society isn't as colourblind as it claims to be. I am British but I've spent a long time living in Spain and in many ways I'm hispanized; and I've known many Latin americans (Mexicans, argentinians, Peruvians, Chileans, Ecuadoreans, venezuelans...).   The conlcusion I gather is that in Latin America, social class has a lot to do with colour of skin; while in England, it does not. There are upper, middle, and lower class people of all races. as a fact, Asian people in the UK are mostly middle-class. However, racism does exist unfortunately.   Spain is a country where immigration only happened recently, and there is a problem with xenophobia, but what I have noticed is that Spaniards tend to be less "colour-sensitive" than either the British or the Latin americans. For example, among all the immigrants in Spain today, Rumanians and Morrocans, who tend to look "Spanish", are not necessarily considered any better than Peruvians or Ecuadoreans, who look Indian. "Spanish xenophobia" has more to do with nationality and place of birth than to do with colour. Before the wave of foreign immigration, a certain degree of xenophobia even existed among Spaniards of distinct geographical origins, especially in the rural villages where any "outsider" was considered a threat to local integrity.   And it's true that many Latin Americans I've met here have commented that although xenophobia does exist in Europe, the type of "colour-snobbism" in Latin America is much less pronounced here. I have heard Argentinians and "White Mexicans" make statements such as "I am superior because I don't have any Indian blood". Such statements are totally unacceptable both in Spain and in the UK, and most of us find it shockingly racist to hear people say it.   Xenophobia of nationality or racism of colour..... Which way is better? I cannot say, but no empire who has conquered and submitted other nations can call themselves innocent.

British are guilty of the genocide on the Caribs in the Caribbean and the spread of the Black Garifunas, though.

Edited by pinguin - 22-Jul-2007 at 21:10

With respect to the Iroquois alliance with the British, that's anything new. The Spaniards also allied with local natives to destroy other tribes. Natives armies were always superior in numbers than the Europeans! That's explain that only 500 men could take the Aztec Empire in the first place, because they were many more Native helping the Spaniards that Spanish themselves.

Originally posted by pinguin That's not the point. War never destroyed a people. Mapuches fought during 400 years against the Europeans and theirs descendents and theirs numbers increased! However, when you kill the game, poisson the rivers, willingly spread deseases, kill women and children in mass, put people in places where they die by hunger, etc.. Then you are in presence of a genocide.

Well, I'm not sure the English ever poisoned rivers. As I mentioned, genocide was the way of war in the areas where they settled before they arrived, and indeed, some groups had been exterminated even before European arrival. Why it didn't happen on a larger scale in pre-Columbian times was that it was restricted to a few small areas (like the Iroqouis/Huron border area), they were less efficient because they did not have guns, and they did not have the mobility that horses brought. At least, that's the reason in the St. Lawrence/ New England area.

If there were precise numbers of the population at the time of contact we could clarify this matter, and accuse with bases to the British and U.S. government of genocide.

There is no doubt they practiced genocide. They received genocidal treatment from natives too, and used the natives to try and conduct genocide on French settlers. But the largest group in the area of English settlement - the Hurons aka Wyandot - were wiped out by 1650. Do you know who wiped them out, all by themselves? There were many, many small tribes and even other large confederacies like the Neutrals who were wiped out by the same people. Hint; it wasn't the English or the French or the Dutch.

Edited by edgewaters - 22-Jul-2007 at 21:57

It would be impossible to even outline the Spanish behavior in the New World in a just a few paragraphs, it got worse as time went by. There are so many lesser known incidents, let alone the major ones that would fill a library.  

Originally posted by pinguin Spaniards?

Nope, the Spaniards were never anywhere that area. Wasn't Europeans at all ...

But if you try me to convince that the whole North American continent was wiped out by Spaniards or Indians, and pure, cast, innocent British and its American descendents�had anything to do with it, then you will have a hard time....

In different regions of North America, different things happened, and at different times for different reasons.

In the areas of Quebec, New England, and around the Great Lakes, most of the exterminations occurred at the hands of the Iroqouis as they attempted to build their Great League of Peace. It was peaceful because all the native groups that fell into its territory either submitted or were wiped out. At first it was restricted to a small area outlying the Confederacy, but during the 16th century, fuelled by guns and the need to control fur trade routes to get guns, it expanded to a vast region.

In the American zone south of the Great Lakes, Americans - who had been victims of genocidal attacks (eg slaughtering whole villages) from French native allies and English native allies and who had participated in genocidal attacks with natives against French, English, and native alike - simply continued to fight against their enemies in the same context, even though some of these groups further West practiced more ritualized sorts of warfare like counting coup. They just failed to distinguish this and the expansion occurred so fast they didn't appreciate that warfare on the Plains was different than warfare in the Eastern Woodlands - and by this time, owing to the fact the Iroqouis had remained allies with the British Crown, the Americans were totally isolated from native cultures and existed in their own envelope with little contact.

In the far west, on the Pacific coast of North America, things were less organized. Native groups like the Yana were exterminated by an assorted mix of other native groups raiding them for slaves to sell in Mexico, and a motley assortment of European adventurers (American, English, and Spanish) who were operating beyond the power of any nation.


For New England, if you want a classic example of how natives and Europeans interacted and how a complex series of factors led to conflict, here is a great example:

http://www.dover.lib.nh.us/DoverHistory/cocheco.htm

Note well the first sentence, and the dates. Note also that the natives fleeing war in Massachusetts in 1676 were actually refugees from King Phillip's War - who were themselves refugees from battles with the Iroqouis. It's all very complex, and in most cases, things start out peacefully enough, often for many many years, before things start to go bad. When things did start to go bad, it often wasn't a simple case of English racists decided to wipe out the natives but a series of catalysts that forced the two groups into conflict.

We often hear that natives were unused to European ways of war. This is only true in the case of certain groups like the Aztecs or the Plains Indians. In Eastern North America it was actually the other way round - the natives practiced a sort of warfare that was much more like total war than did the Europeans; the burning of settlements to the ground and the slaughter of inhabitants was so common that the villages Cartier contacted on the first explorations of the St. Lawrence were all gone when Champlain returned on to do further exploration, fairly large, walled settlements like Hochelaga. The Europeans just adapted to that style of war quickly, and then exported it across the continent.

Not all facets of the Eastern Woodlands warfare styles were embraced by Europeans - genocidal practices went hand-in-hand with something called the "mourning wars" where the losses from the deaths of warriors were replaced by destroying an enemy village, killing all the women and warriors, and taking male prisoners, infants children and men. The men were subjected to torture with fire and weapons and if they lived, were adopted as Iroqouis warriors; children and infants were raised as Iroqouis.

Edited by edgewaters - 22-Jul-2007 at 22:38

I see, the British settlers were innocent, the decrease in numbers of Amerindians in North America is just Indian's own fult. Spaniards continue to be the evil of the history of the Americas.

Originally posted by elenos How come that the Spanish went to these rubber ball games I mentioned and never recorded their purposes? The natives would have  willingly demonstrated their building techniques if asked. But those being told would do what is recorded for all time, every day they tore off any gold earrings or nose rings and flung the natives out to bleed on the streets.

Originally posted by pinguin After all, what happened to the so called "civilized Indians" or "good Indians" in the United States?

Who do you mean? The Cherokee? They're still around. Some (definately not all, but some) groups like the Iroqouis and Mi'kmaq are even still living on or near their original homelands, in numbers probably about the same as they were at the time of contact. The Mi'kmaq actually have a slightly higher population now than they did pre-contact.

You said earlier:

Our universities are full of Amerindian young people with Amerindian faces and last names studying engineering... something I didn't see in Canada.

This is not true at all - there are lots of natives with degrees, going to universities and so on. There are native MPs in Parliament, in fact, if you look at any Canadian-produced TV show like a sitcom or drama produced in the last few decades, all of them feature at least a few native actors, and some of the more popular ones have even featured a majority of native cast (eg North of 60). Some of the most familiar faces on Canadian TV are native actors - eg Adam Beach or Lorne Cardinal.

Of course, they are not a majority in any of these fields, but they make up a small percentage of the population to begin with.

Edited by edgewaters - 22-Jul-2007 at 23:56