The Legacy of Spain in the Americas

Originally posted by edgewaters ... Lol, yup, that's more straightforward. The weird thing is that I don't think any of the groups who practiced Mourning Wars ever kept any women as captives - it was always men. I have no idea why this was so, although, in principle, the idea of the Mouring Wars was to replace warriors and increase the forces. Still it doesnt explain why they didn't keep women as well.

Originally posted by elenos I suppose that comes down to necessity. If the men were needed they would be retained, if not then their ass would be grass.

Originally posted by Constantine XI I do wonder, would the constant warfare between the Mapuches and Europeans be one reason why the Mapuches did not usually adopt?

Well put Sander. I would go one step further and say the Spanish Monarchy of the time was corrupt. They may have made laws for their presence in South America but nobody cared for "what your Majesty decrees", everybody knew "your majesty" was happy as a dog with two tails with the plunder. Those that should have been hanged under the laws got promoted. 

Edited by elenos - 25-Jul-2007 at 01:17

Originally posted by Sander They better call the White Legend, the whitewash legend.  The Spanish  might have been overdemonized a bit,  but thats no reason to take a diametrically opposed view; Spain as the great contributer and saviour of the Indians ....

What can we say pinquin? I know where you get this stuff and some of the reasons for pushing it are justifiable, well almost. We are honestly not sitting in judgment on this situation. We take the facts as recorded and will re-evaluate them if need be, but you have left out far too much to make any impression on what is already accepted.

But more important that all, Spaniard usually were in good terms with the friendly Indians, unlike any other colonial power.

not unlike the French.

Originally posted by pinguin But more important that all, Spaniard usually were in good terms with the friendly Indians, unlike any other colonial power.

Well that's manifestly untrue. Every colonial power in the Americas that I am familiar with had extensive allies among the natives - French, English, Dutch, and Spanish. Maybe the Portuguese too but I don't know enough to be sure on that.

In North America, the worst offenders were actually the post-colonial states of Canada and the US, who did not feel obliged to respect treaties native groups had signed with the British. One of the factors behind the American Revolution (in addition to the usual ones like taxes) was that the British had agreements with natives of the interior and barred colonists from settling on the far side of the Appalachian Mountains, restricting them to the coastal areas of the 13 Colonies. They had forts set up in the Appalachians and turned back settlers to ensure they couldn't settle westward - and the colonists were upset because there was no more free land available.

Originally posted by pinguin Yes, edgewaters, but they didn't intermarried, except�in same exceptional cases.�

True, but one might also observed that the Spanish never accepted Indian nations as sovereign equals, except in some exceptional cases. The English and French did, for a time at least.

Everybody had their different vices and different virtues.

Edited by edgewaters - 25-Jul-2007 at 20:59

Originally posted by pinguin The Spaniards wanted to integrate Amerindians but at the same time they did all what they could to destroy their cultures. It was the same phylosophy of the "Indian schools" in the early 20th century's U.S.�

Canada had those too - the Residential Schools. Biggest sexual abuse class action lawsuit in legal history (globally), the Baxter National Class Action, underway right now ... the government is on the hook for a 1.7 billion dollar settlement to 13000 claimants, maybe more (there are around 87000 potential claimants).

However, theirs culture survived in syncretic form. Just visit Taco Bell or drink a Tequila; that's syncretism. The only natives that didn't lost theirs culture were the free people that Spaniards never defeated (Amazonians, Mapuches, Mayas)

True, there was little or no syncretism here, so native culture was shattered (not quite destroyed, but near enough).

Edited by edgewaters - 25-Jul-2007 at 21:24