simple reward of dying in bed. In 1537 a
civil war broke out between him and his
longtime partner in conquest, Diego de
Almagro. Pizarro’s forces defeated and
executed Almagro in 1538, but a faction
still loyal to Almagro assassinated Pizarro
in 1541. Spain tried to relieve the chaos in
1542 by making Peru a viceroyalty, one
that comprised all of Spanish South
America and Panama except for
Venezuela. But the first man appointed as
viceroy was killed by rebels led by Pizarro’s
brother Gonzalo in 1546. By the end of
the 1540s, the king’s new representative,
Pedro de la Gasca, had defeated Gonzalo
Pizarro and executed him, putting the
colony of Peru under firm royal control.
Other Conquests
News of the riches to be had in the New
World drew an influx of colonists, who
hastened to launch their own entradas, or
entries into new lands. Like the expedi-
tions of Cortés and Pizarro, these expedi-
tions were generally mounted with royal
license but with private funding. They
were partnerships of a few hundred men,
in which the members would invest capi-
tal to purchase equipment and supplies,
band together in whatever trailblazing
and fighting there was, and split the pro-
ceeds of gold, loot, or encomiendas, with
the organizers and biggest investors
receiving the largest shares. Though pres-
ent-day people would call them soldiers,
and though they were headed by a man
called a captain, the members were not
part of a regular army and often had little
military experience. They came from all
walks of life, from notaries to carpenters
to seamen to lower nobility. The captain
was usually a nobleman, or hidalgo, who
had already achieved some distinction in
the area that served as the expedition’s
base. They were often driven by Native
American rumors of wealthy empires like
the Seven Cities of Cíbola in the
American Southwest or the land of the
ruler El Dorado in South America. These
and other legendary places failed to mate-
rialize as imagined, but the drive to find
them spurred exploration and conquest.
The most important bases for expe-
ditions were Mexico, the Caribbean,
Panama, and Peru. Expanding southward
from Mexico, Cortés’s lieutenant Pedro
de Alvarado brought what are now
SPAIN IN THE AMERICAS 39DISEASE AND THE
COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE
Upon first encountering the plant known to the Aztec as the xitomatl, Europeans feared
it was poisonous. The Aztec drink xocolatl made them nauseous. But in time, these two
crops—known in English respectively as the tomato and chocolate or cacao—became
staples of the European diet. So did such other distinctively American foods as the pota-
to, maize, red pepper, peanut, cashew nut, squash, cranberry, and avocado. In turn,
Europeans introduced to the Americas a variety of Old World plants and animals—
wheat, grapes, olives, apples, peaches, oranges, pigs, sheep, goats, cows, chickens,
donkeys, and horses. Bananas, coffee, and sugar, the production of which is now close-
ly identified with Latin America, were all introduced from the Old World. The swapping
of biological species between Old and New Worlds is known as the Columbian
exchange or Atlantic exchange.
There were good and bad consequences of this exchange for both hemispheres.
The available food supply increased in both regions, but introduction of alien species
sometimes wreaked havoc on local ecologies—as when the hooves of Spanish cattle
destroyed Native American grassland that was food for game. New World dandelion
seeds were inadvertently shipped to Europe, Old World rats shipped to America. The
exchange also included microbes of which neither Old nor New World societies of the
time had an understanding. For example, syphilis, believed by many historians to have
been a New World illness, may have came back with Columbus to ravage Europe. In the
Americas, Old World microbes such as smallpox and influenza killed whole populations
of Native Americans. For example, in Mexico, the estimated Native American popula-
tion of 25.2 million people in 1519 plummeted following Spanish contact—to 16.5 mil-
lion by 1539, 6.3 million by 1549, and just 1 million by the 1620s. Perhaps the worst gifts
from the New World to the Old were two Native American crops that yielded popular
but harmful products: tobacco and coca, the source of cocaine. Outside of dangerous
microbes, perhaps the most harmful Old World product introduced to the New World
was alcohol, which in time would have an even more widespread impact than cocaine.Native Americans, such as the smallpox victim shown above, were highly
susceptible to European viruses like smallpox because they had no natural
immunity. (Granger Collection)