When Christopher Columbus “discovered” North
America, the continent had been the home of Indian
peoples for thousands and maybe even tens of thou-
sands of years. Although population estimates vary,
by 1492 as many as 18 million people were living
north of present-day Mexico. Still, what Columbus
and the early European explorers who followed him
saw was not a settled continent but a new world
rich with resources to exploit. Among these re-
sources were the Indians themselves. While some
Europeans imagined the Indians’ primary worth as
potential slave labor, others quickly recognized their
enormous value as sources of information on how
to survive in an unfamiliar land.
Inspired by Columbus’s voyages, England fi-
nanced the explorations of John Cabot in 1497,
while France sent Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524
and Jacques Cartier in 1534 to stake out claims in
the so-called New World. But in the 16th century,
Spain launched the most extensive expeditions in
North America. Conquistadores made inroads into
the West Indies, Mesoamerica, and the American
Southeast and Southwest. The brutality of these
invaders was typified by Hernán Cortés’s conquest
of the Aztec Empire. In 1521, with the help of the
Aztec’s Indian enemies, he and his men looted and
destroyed the Aztec’s capital of Tenochtitlán, en-
slaved its people, and forced them to mine precious
metals that would make their conquerors rich.
The lure of gold also led to the 1539 expedition
headed by Hernando de Soto, whom the Spanish
Crown granted the right to conquer and colonize
lands north of Cuba. For two years, his 600 men
terrorized Indians, pillaging their villages and tak-
ing captives to use as slaves, throughout what is
now the southeastern United States. In 1541, dur-
ing Francisco Vásquez de Coronado’s search for the
fabled gold-filled Seven Cities of Cibola, Spaniards
similarly abused the Indians of the Southwest and
western Plains. To their relief, Coronado’s failure to
find the riches he hoped for dissuaded other Span-
iards from following in his path for nearly 40 years.
Reports of the conquistadores’ mistreatment of
Indians sparked a debate among Spanish intellectuals
on the Indians’ humanity. The consensus held that
Indians were in fact human beings. This determina-
tion placed on the Spanish Crown a responsibility not
only to rein in the conquistadores’ violent tenden-
cies but also to save the souls of the heathen Indians
they sought to conquer. Thus along with warfare and
Strangers Arrive
1492 TO 1606
