III.

History

A.

The Historical Record

Determining the history of human settlement and cultural development in the central and southern portion of the Western Hemisphere (or Middle and South America) is an exercise in reconstructing the past. Scholars use many types of evidence and methods to reconstruct the histories of the cultures that existed in the Americas before the late 15th century, when Europeans began their conquest of what they called the New World. Well before then, indigenous peoples had developed advanced civilizations. These civilizations were centered in the most densely settled areas of Middle America (Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies) and the Andean region of western South America. When Europeans arrived, the Aztec Empire ruled over central Mexico and the Inca Empire dominated the Andean region. Most historical research has focused on these areas.

Archaeology, the examination of surviving physical remains, has been conducted throughout the Americas. This method uncovers information that can help to reconstruct the broad structures and textures of cultures. The layout of communities and architecture of buildings provide a fundamental understanding of the people who created and lived in these places. The designs and patterns found on textiles and pottery also provide important clues to their ways of life. However, archaeology rarely illuminates the dynamics behind changes through time. Also, the quality and quantity of existing physical remains differs considerably from one area to another. The archaeological record remains incomplete for the early indigenous cultures of the Americas. Most evidence is from the larger civilizations, which constructed stone edifices. These ruins provide a more durable record than the dwellings made of wood or other perishable materials that were built by many smaller societies. In addition, the physical record has been altered by the impact of human-induced destruction and variations in climate. Technological advances in radiocarbon dating methods and DNA studies, both of which are used in the scientific evaluation of archaeological evidence, can help scholars formulate more accurate conclusions from surviving remains.

Other types of evidence are based on human memory and record keeping. Native American testimonies survive from many early encounters with Europeans. Although these records are invaluable, they are often shaped by the European recorders’ understanding of Native American languages and by their subjective interpretations. In Middle America and the Andean region, where the most advanced indigenous civilizations thrived, native scholars and officials wrote histories of their cultures and communities in the decades following European conquest. This substantial body of writings is highly informative and quite reliable, especially when the individual works are evaluated against each other and against other sources. In Middle America many native peoples became literate in their own languages using the Roman alphabet and recorded land-ownership transactions, minutes from meetings, and other important events. The enormous volume of such documents affords a detailed and intimate view of native life and culture after European contact, and sometimes even before the first encounters. Present-day native rituals, dances, and oral histories also provide important information through the retelling and reenactment of legends and myths. However, these forms often relate an idealized and selective reconstruction of events, rather than an exact account of what may have actually happened.

The Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula and Guatemala and the various native peoples of central Mexico had developed writing, as well as highly accurate mathematical systems and calendars, hundreds of years before Europeans arrived. Writing was a skill restricted to official scribes, who enjoyed high status. They created thousands of codices, which were folding books made from tree bark and animal skins. The codices recorded religious systems, political dynasties, military victories, and other matters of high importance. However, the Spanish destroyed almost all of the codices, in the belief they were a hindrance to the smooth conversion of Native Americans to Christianity. The ability to read classical Mayan was lost for centuries. Scholars finally learned to read the language during the second half of the 20th century, giving new significance to the many inscriptions found on surviving Maya structures, monuments, and ornaments. Other indigenous societies, especially in the Andean region, used knotted cords called quipus to keep accurate counts of population, animals, and products. Some of these have survived, providing another source of information.

B.

Early Migration Patterns

It remains unknown precisely when humans first appeared in the Western Hemisphere. The first inhabitants most likely migrated from northeastern Asia to what is now Alaska by crossing over a land bridge, known as Beringia. This land bridge was exposed from about 25,000 years to 10,000 years ago, during the final glacial stage of the Pleistocene Epoch (1.6 million years to 10,000 years before present). At that time ocean levels were lower because more of Earth’s water was frozen in glaciers. Migratory and herd animals such as mastodons, horses, mammoths, camelids, bison, elk, and moose also crossed the land bridge. Some of these large Pleistocene mammals, including the horse, became extinct in the Americas by 7000 bc. When the Pleistocene Epoch ended, water completely covered Beringia, effectively closing off this early migration route. By then humans had migrated throughout the Americas. They reached the southern cone of South America, as evidenced by the archaeological site of Monte Verde, at least 12,500 years ago. Some early southward migrations may have taken place in boats. See also Migration to the Americas.

C.

Early Settlement and Way of Life

The early inhabitants of the Americas existed by hunting, gathering, and fishing. They adjusted their diet to what was seasonally available in their environment, gathering wild edible plants and insects as well as hunting and fishing all sorts of wild animals. This early diet permitted substantial population growth. Population density remained low, however, and people mostly lived in bands of 50 or fewer members. Populations also increased because most epidemic diseases common to Europe, such as smallpox and measles, did not exist in the Americas.

By 7,000 years ago people in Middle and South America were cultivating edible plants. Permanent agricultural settlements emerged about 4,000 years ago. Peoples of the temperate highlands, specifically south central and northeastern Mexico and coastal Peru, began to cultivate maize around this time. During the next several hundred years, the populations of these areas became much larger. The local societies organized into distinct states, with royal families, governmental bureaucracies, and legal and judicial systems.

D.

Civilizations in Middle America

Middle America is made up of a long, tapering isthmus that forms a bridge between North America and South America. It includes the present-day countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Large mountain chains of volcanic origin dominate much of Middle America. In Mexico the mountains divide the vast temperate highlands of the central plateau into a number of valleys and basins, each with a distinct environmental setting. The Valley of Mexico, on the southern edge of this plateau, was the focal point of several prominent civilizations. Southeast of this valley is the huge northward-projecting Yucatán Peninsula, the center of the great Maya civilization.

During the 1st millennium bc several cultures in the region began to establish complex urban and ritual centers. These elaborately constructed centers were the locus of power, high culture, and immense wealth. Through trade, conquest, and alliances, several civilizations extended their spheres of cultural influence and political rule. The development of civilizations in Middle America culminated in the great Aztec Empire, which was at its height when the Spanish conquest destroyed it in 1521.

D.1.

Olmec Civilization

In about 1500 bc the Olmec people emerged as the first major civilization in Middle America. They built their settlements and ritual centers in fertile coastal lowlands southeast of the Valley of Mexico along the Gulf of Mexico. The favorable climate permitted crops to be harvested twice a year, and the fine stones of the region, particularly jades, were marketed over a vast area. The Olmec culture thrived until about 600 bc and influenced other cultures in central Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula. The Olmec developed calendar and counting systems that were the precursors to systems used by later cultures in Middle America.

D.2.

Monte Albán

The Zapotec people inhabited the Valley of Oaxaca, south of the Valley of Mexico, beginning in at least 1500 bc. They established one of the first city-states in Middle America. In about 500 bc they built their capital, Monte Albán, on top of a flattened mountain in the valley. When the city reached its height of influence, power, and wealth in about ad 500, it had between 25,000 and 30,000 inhabitants. The political domain of Monte Albán spread beyond the confines of the Valley of Oaxaca, and the Zapotec established ties with other civilizations in Middle America, including Teotihuacán. After about 750, however, the city declined for unknown reasons. The Zapotec developed a more centralized and hierarchical society than the Olmec. They also developed one of the earliest writing systems in Mesoamerica, and the edifices they built at Monte Albán have many hieroglyphic stone inscriptions.

D.3.

Teotihuacán

In central Mexico, meanwhile, important ritual and market centers began to appear about 400 bc. Teotihuacán was the urban center of the first of several far-reaching civilizations in this region. It was located in the Valley of Mexico about 40 km (25 mi) northeast of present-day Mexico City. In the 1st century ad Teotihuacán began to grow rapidly as a city and to assert its influence and control more widely. By 600 it was one of the largest cities in the world. It extended over an area of 21 sq km (8 sq mi) and included probably 125,000—but possibly as many as 200,000—inhabitants. Its center consisted of a vast ceremonial complex, including two great pyramids, along a sunken road that extended more than a mile.

Teotihuacán established its influence throughout much of central Mexico. The city grew in wealth and power through its extensive trading zone, which reached into Central America. Cacao, tropical bird feathers, honey, and herbs were brought to the city from the Yucatán Peninsula and beyond. Teotihuacán’s many craftspeople, some of whom had their own neighborhoods, produced cut precious stones and pottery that were marketed widely in Mexico and Central America. Massive projects of agricultural engineering, including the construction of raised fields, canals, and terraces, were undertaken throughout central Mexico to increase agricultural production as the region’s population continued to grow into the millions. Maize, beans, and specialized crops were routinely transported over considerable distances to supply the network of provincial cities that grew ever larger and more elaborate.

Teotihuacán flourished until about ad 650. The reasons for its collapse, although unknown for certain, were seemingly a combination of population pressure on limited resources and recurrent attacks by nomadic tribal peoples who lived in the desert region north of the city.

D.4.

Maya States

Also during this time, the Yucatán Peninsula and present-day Guatemala were inhabited by Mayan-speaking peoples. Between 1000 and 600 bc they developed autonomous agricultural communities with substantial populations. Over the next several centuries a number of Maya cities, beginning with Tikal, emerged as marketing and regional centers, developed more complex political structures, and extended their cultural influence and political control over their hinterlands. By about ad 250 the Maya were organized into city-states, each ruled by a hereditary king and a social elite, or aristocracy. The Maya conducted extensive trade throughout the region. The city-states were in competition with one another, and warfare was frequent among them. No great empire developed, but regional ones were common. The Maya also developed a hieroglyphic writing system, complex mathematics, and a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy that yielded a highly accurate calendar.

In about 900 the great Maya civilization collapsed and fragmented. It had depended on the food production from agricultural engineering projects that required continual upkeep. Some sort of subsistence crisis seems to have erupted, causing famine and considerable loss of life. This led to mass rejection of the social and political elites, and perhaps even of the gods, and brought about an extended period of warfare. The calendar and writing systems were abandoned, and most forms of state organization failed, as the reduced population concentrated on local food production and village affairs.

D.5.

Toltec Empire

In central Mexico, meanwhile, the Toltec people established the next major civilization after the fall of Teotihuacán. A Nahuatl-speaking people, the Toltec migrated from the north and established their capital of Tula (Tollán) in the central plateau, about 64 km (40 mi) north of present-day Mexico City. Tula achieved a population of about 60,000 during the peak of the Toltec civilization, from about 900 to 1200. The Toltec assembled an empire with trading routes that extended north of the present-day border of Mexico and south into Maya territory. This trade network spread Toltec influence over a much greater area than that under direct Toltec rule. The Toltec Empire was not as expansive or culturally pervasive as Teotihuacán, and it flourished for a relatively brief period. However, it achieved a sustained period of peaceful rule. Successor states, including the great Aztec Empire, considered it to be the primary source of high culture and political legitimacy in the region. Even centuries later, leaders of politically ambitious ethnic groups sought to intermarry with descendents of the noble lineage from imperial Tula.

D.6.

Aztec Empire

For two centuries after the decline of the Toltec Empire, no single group achieved domination over a substantial area of central Mexico. A series of competing and warring mini-empires briefly held sway over small areas. Many nomadic groups migrated from the desert in the north into the more developed and temperate central plateau, and then acculturated to a more settled way of life based on agriculture. Most were speakers of Nahuatl, and this became the dominant language in central Mexico. The Mexica were among the last of the nomadic groups (known collectively as Chichimec by the sedentary societies in central Mexico) to migrate to the Valley of Mexico, arriving there in the 13th century. In about 1325 the Mexica began to construct their capital, Tenochtitlán, on one of the islands of Lake Texcoco, which was one of five interconnected lakes in the valley basin. They fought as mercenary warriors for other cultural groups in the valley for some time after their arrival, and they were subordinated to a small empire assembled by the Tepaneca. In 1428 the Mexica joined with the peoples of two other subjected city-states, Texcoco and Tlacopan, in revolt against the Tepaneca. After a successful insurrection, the triple alliance went on to establish the Aztec Empire. Tenochtitlán became the imperial capital.

Aztec armies conquered the entire region of central Mexico in less than a century of expansion, and the Aztec Empire became larger than any of the preceding empires in Middle America. The empire demanded labor service and tribute payments from its subjects. The subjugated peoples remained culturally distinct within the empire, however. They continued to be governed by their own royal families and worshiped their distinctive gods. Their frequent rebellions were violently suppressed by the Aztec armies. These internal wars provided Tenochtitlán with captives to offer as sacrifices to the Aztec gods. The Aztec Empire practiced far more human sacrifice than any other society in the Americas, making it central to religious ritual. In the other aspects of its culture the Aztec Empire largely resembled the preceding civilizations of Middle America. Little technological progress had occurred since Teotihuacán. None of the peoples of the Americas, for example, had developed industrial metallurgy, although they refined gold, silver, and some copper. Their tools and weapons still depended on sharpening and shaping obsidian (volcanic glass) and basalt (volcanic rock). Their extensive agricultural engineering, however impressive, largely replicated models and techniques that were centuries old. These factors placed restraints on the empire’s productivity and development.

E.

Civilizations in South America

In South America the indigenous peoples of the Andean region also had a long history of advanced civilizations. The immense Andean mountain chain rises in western Venezuela and extends down the west coast through present-day Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and Chile to the southern tip of the continent. The mountains rise near the coast and extend inland hundreds of miles in many places, forming a distinctive high plateau region, or Altiplano, in western Bolivia and southwestern Peru. The peoples of the Andean region established communities at many different elevations, from the coastal lowlands and inland river valleys well into the higher reaches of the mountains. The Andes became the most densely populated mountain chain in the world. The overall population was smaller than that of Middle America, however, and the rugged terrain led to a more dispersed pattern of settlement.

The Andean cultures had a greater variety of crops and animals than did the peoples of Middle America. They cultivated root vegetables in the colder climate of the highlands and raised camelids—llamas, alpacas, and vicuñas—to provide wool, meat, and pack animals. They engineered innovative systems for agriculture, such as underground irrigation canals and mountainside terraces, in response to the challenges posed by extreme variations in climate and terrain. They also developed superior food storage and distribution techniques. They warehoused processed foods, such as freeze-dried potatoes, and other products to guard against future shortages and to supply military campaigns. Although they never created calendric, writing, or mathematical systems that rivaled those of Middle America, they did invent weaving and metallurgy earlier and developed them to a more advanced stage.

The Andean cultures did not construct urban complexes, temples, and pyramids on such a massive scale as those that characterized the civilizations in Middle America. Their urban centers were fewer and smaller. Their ritual centers also were generally smaller and less elaborate. They developed extensive trading networks like those found in Middle America, but they had fewer marketing centers.

E.1.

Regional Andean Empires

In about ad 400 two important city-states emerged in the Andean highlands. The Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco) culture was centered at Lake Titicaca, straddling the present-day border between Peru and Bolivia. The Huari (Wari) culture was centered at Ayacucho, in south central Peru. Lake Titicaca, situated at an elevation of about 3,810 m (12,500 ft) in the Altiplano, was the site of many early cultures. In the 5th century Tiwanaku began to expand its influence, promoting increased agricultural production and trade throughout the Altiplano. Meanwhile, the influence of the Huari culture expanded from Ayacucho throughout much of the highlands and westward to the coast. Both cultures eventually assembled regional empires. They developed their regions considerably through colonization of underpopulated areas, agricultural engineering, and the construction of roads, bridges, and storehouses. This became a characteristic pattern of development in the Andean zone, and one that the Incas later used to their advantage in establishing their vast empire.

The Chimú civilization was the largest to develop in the coastal lowlands. The capital city of Chan Chan was located in the Moche River Valley, the site of the earlier Moche (Mochica) culture, in present-day Peru. The Chimú constructed an extensive irrigation system in Chan Chan, and thousands of artisans worked in the city. Chan Chan encompassed an area of 20 sq km (7.7 sq mi) and had at least 25,000 inhabitants. Extending their influence from Chan Chan, the Chimú began to assemble an empire in the 12th century and eventually dominated other river-valley societies over a 1,000-km (625-mi) expanse of coastland. This empire was intact when it was conquered by the Incas in the 15th century.

E.2.

Inca Empire

The Incas were a highland people with Cuzco, in present-day south central Peru, as their capital. In 1438 they were attacked by a neighboring group, the Chanca. After a successful defense, they undertook their own offensive and quickly dominated nearby provinces. During the next 90 years they subjugated virtually all of the peoples in the Andean region from southern Colombia into northern Chile. The population of Cuzco increased to about 100,000. The Inca Empire controlled the entire sedentary agricultural zone. Further expansion of the empire would have been difficult and would have yielded little of value.

The Inca Empire, called Tawantinsuyu (Land of the Four Quarters) by the Incas, was the first Andean civilization to extend over virtually the entire region, encompassing both the coastal lowlands and the mountain highlands. The Incas demanded only labor service, not tribute, from the peoples they conquered. The Incas generally did not replace the traditional ethnic rulers of the provinces that surrendered. The peace they imposed promoted agricultural development, greater productivity, and economic integration. They even founded entire new cities as administrative centers and as warehouse complexes to supply adjacent areas in times of shortage. Few revolts were attempted against Inca rule, unlike the many insurrections within the Aztec Empire.

E.3.

Other Societies of South America

Beyond the central Andean civilizations, many indigenous societies thrived in other areas of South America. The Chibcha (Muisca), a semisedentary people who occupied the high plain of central Colombia, were located close enough to the Andean zone of high civilization to be influenced by some of the major accomplishments, including the construction of temple complexes and the manufacture of fine jewelry. They produced a substantial amount of gold ornaments and ceremonial objects. They lived in fortified communities and established some limited, unstable empires. They maintained extensive trading relations throughout a broad region that included the more developed Andean societies.

The northern coast of South America was inhabited by the Arawak and the Carib. Over time both of these peoples had migrated from the mainland to populate the Caribbean islands. The Arawak inhabited the coast of present-day Venezuela and the major Caribbean islands. They were a semisedentary people with locally powerful chiefs and communities of considerable size. The Carib, a warlike hunting-and-gathering people who practiced some cannibalism, inhabited the smaller islands of the Caribbean and some areas of the mainland coast.

The peoples of the Amazon River Basin in South America belonged to a great many different ethnic groups. They were organized into chiefdoms. They practiced agricultural engineering, including raised fields, and lived in compounds on earthen mounds they constructed along the river to protect their communities from regular floods. Although they remained substantially dependent on a diet of fish drawn from the river, they increasingly supplemented it with manioc and then maize. They had been producing ceramics for several millennia before the arrival of Europeans.

Most native communities in highland and coastal Brazil were inhabited by members of the Tupian language group. Primarily agriculturalists, these semisedentary peoples lived in communities organized around a headman, who assembled the residents from his extended family, marriage alliances, and friends. These were among the most warlike people in the Americas, gaining prestige and wealth from recurrent conflict against neighboring communities.

F.

European Conquest and Colonization

Spaniards began to colonize the major islands of the Caribbean just two years after explorer Christopher Columbus discovered them for the Spanish Empire in 1492. They demanded labor service from the indigenous peoples to develop the meager gold deposits of the islands. They also introduced epidemic diseases such as influenza, smallpox, measles, and typhus. These foreign diseases were catastrophic for the native peoples, who had no natural resistance to them. Within 50 years the diseases had decimated the indigenous populations of the large Caribbean islands.

In the early 1500s the Spanish began to broaden the scope of their conquest and colonization to the mainland. In 1519 Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés led expedition forces into central Mexico. The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán fell to Cortés’s forces in August 1521. The Spanish then built their own capital, Mexico City, on the site of the conquered and razed Aztec capital. Their colony in Mexico became known as New Spain.

In 1532 Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro commanded a force of fewer than 200 Spaniards against the Inca Empire in the Andean zone of South America. Pizarro’s forces executed Inca emperor Atahualpa and conquered the Inca capital of Cuzco after a three-month siege. Pizarro established a colonial capital at Lima. The Spaniards proceeded to establish control over all of Inca-held territory except the Inca kingdom at Vilcabamba, which was protected by difficult terrain. It survived as the last Inca stronghold until the Spanish conquered it in 1572 and executed its ruler, Tupac Amarú.

The Aztec and Inca empires were less than a century old when they were conquered. Both empires extended over vast areas and encompassed millions of people. The imperial capitals fell to the invaders only after prolonged campaigns with numerous casualties among the native armies, but comparatively few among the Spaniards. The same epidemics that had decimated the native populations of the Caribbean islands also afflicted the Aztecs, but not the Incas, during their wars against the Spanish. The conquest of the Incas largely preceded the impact of European diseases, although the peoples of the Andean region eventually were decimated by epidemics as well.

The very size and sophistication of the Aztec and Inca empires worked against them during the European conquests. Their strict social and political hierarchies and their dedication to a certain way of war made them easier targets. The ancient military tradition of their armies, which numbered in the tens of thousands, emphasized one-on-one engagements on the front lines in open, level areas. The bulk of each army remained out of action, acting instead as support forces for the actual fighters as they waited for their turn at the battlefront. The armies made little use of battlefield tactics or ambushes. Further, the primary goal of the combatants was to disable their opponents and take them captive, rather than to slay them. Also, the armies operated under the strict authority of their commanders. They did not use graduated levels of command. If the commander was killed or captured, his army considered itself defeated and withdrew from the battle.

The Europeans enjoyed several major advantages in military conflicts against the Aztec and Inca forces. They had metal weapons and armor, while the indigenous peoples of the Americas had not yet developed large-scale industrial metallurgy. The weapons used by indigenous forces—arrows and spears with chipped-stone tips and wooden clubs—were not effective in inflicting fatal wounds on the armored invaders. At the same time, Aztec and Inca warriors were largely defenseless against the Spanish weapons—sword blades and metal bolts fired from crossbows. At that time firearms were still inaccurate and slow-firing, and the Spanish forces found them ineffective in the type of warfare they used against the Aztec and Inca armies. Meanwhile, many native peoples who had been subjugated by the Aztec and Inca empires sided with the Europeans. They provided invaluable logistical support, but the Spanish used them only infrequently in actual combat.

The Spanish had much less success against the tribal peoples who occupied most other areas of Middle and South America. These peoples did not hesitate to attack from ambush and to flee into the hinterland when battles turned against them. They depended on bows and arrows in combat and sought to avoid numerous casualties. The Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula used such tactics to frustrate repeated Spanish expeditions. In 1542 the Spanish founded the city of Mérida in the northwestern corner of the peninsula, but they effectively controlled only the surrounding region and a couple of other small areas. Independent Maya communities occupied the greater part of the peninsula for many decades, despite repeated efforts to subjugate them or to convert them to Christianity.

The Spanish encountered particularly fierce resistance by the Araucanian tribes. With the conquest of the Inca Empire complete, a Spanish force moved southward to found the city of Santiago in 1541 and to gain control over the fertile central region of present-day Chile. In the southern part of their colony were the Araucanians, who resisted foreign control well into the 19th century. The Spanish built a string of forts to defend their settlements against Araucanian attacks and raids, which were nevertheless frequent and often successful. The Araucanians adapted to the European style of warfare. They learned to ride horses, which Europeans had introduced to the Americas, and to shoot arrows while on horseback. They devised spears to stymie Spanish cavalry charges. In the 18th century the Araucanians raided across the Andes into southern Argentina, defeating the indigenous inhabitants of that region and rustling cattle from the Spanish colonists. They drove these cattle to Chile, where they traded them with Spanish middlemen for armaments and manufactured goods. The Araucanians prospered through this system until the end of the 1870s, when they were defeated in battle by the Argentine and Chilean militaries and forced onto government-designated reservations.

Despite encountering areas of resistance, however, the Spanish rapidly expanded their empire in Middle America, the Caribbean, and the Andean region. Meanwhile, Portugal was much less successful in colonizing its new territory in South America. In 1500 Portugal claimed the eastern coast of the continent. Portugal’s holdings in Africa and Asia were far more lucrative than its new colony until well into the 17th century, and relatively few people from Portugal migrated to the Americas. Those who did depended on alliances with certain tribes to protect their settlements and to provide indigenous labor. Initially Portugal exploited just one product from its colony in South America, the native-growing brazilwood, which yielded a highly prized red dye. (The Portuguese eventually named their South American colony Brazil.) Coastal tribes harvested brazilwood trees and stored them near the shoreline until Portuguese ships arrived with European goods to bargain a trade.

Later in the 16th century, the Portuguese began to develop sugar plantations in Brazil. The clearing of land for intensive cultivation intruded on indigenous lands, and many native peoples fled to the hinterland of the interior. At the same time, the demand for native labor increased. Among the indigenous peoples of this region, women traditionally did the agricultural work; however, the Portuguese preferred male labor for their plantations. Plantation owners tried to coerce indigenous peoples to work in the sugar fields and mills. They also forced many into slavery. Beginning in the 1560s, however, the Portuguese were faced with a diminishing labor force as European-introduced diseases swept through the indigenous villages and decimated their populations. The Portuguese began to import slaves from Africa to work the plantations. The introduction of large numbers of slaves via the Atlantic slave trade continued into the mid-1800s, transforming areas of Brazil into multiracial societies with Native American, European, and African populations.

G.

Forced Change, 17th and 18th Centuries

The Spaniards never saw it in their interest to destroy the structure of native society. Rather, they sought to use established patterns and hierarchies to govern effectively, to mobilize indigenous labor, to funnel resources from the countryside into the colonial cities and the market economy, and to Christianize the population.

Until about 1650 the collapse of indigenous populations was caused primarily by the impact of waves of epidemic diseases that arrived with the colonists. Native Americans living in temperate and tropical climates suffered the most. In central Mexico the native population declined by about 95 percent, or to fewer than 1.5 million, about a century after European contact. The native-colonist population ratios shifted so dramatically that surviving Native Americans acculturated much more fully to the European way of life and could be more closely administered by Spanish officials and priests. In addition, vast expanses of previously populated land became available for use by the colonists.

An unintended consequence of the Spanish conquest was the fragmentation of the great civilization zones that had long prevailed in Mexico and the Andes. The dense connections of belief systems, artistic representation, local economic specializations, skilled craftsmanship, and political networks fell apart after the military defeats through neglect rather than from Spanish policy. Although indigenous villages participated in local markets and the Spanish colonial economy, they became far more culturally isolated and more focused on maize cultivation for their subsistence than ever before.

Native Americans quickly began using metal tools and milled fabrics, and raising animals such as chickens and pigs, that were introduced from Europe. These things improved their productivity and diversified their diet. Native communities made only limited use of draft animals, however, because of their cost. While wheat was introduced and preferred by the Europeans, maize remained the staple of the indigenous diet.

The indigenous peoples quickly adopted Christianity, as they found it compatible with important traditional beliefs. Few priests worked among the native populations, so indigenous communities were able to adapt Christian beliefs and rituals to their local practices. Religious worship and ritual became closely associated with community identity and service. Native Americans incorporated important aspects of Roman Catholicism, such as ritual godparenthood, religious brotherhoods, and devotion to saints, into their own cultures. Individual towns adopted patron saints and shrines that they promoted through festivals and generally developed forms of Catholicism that could be practiced without a priest’s continued presence. A priest appeared usually once or twice a year, especially during the community’s major festivals. Only then were confessions heard, masses conducted, and marriages and baptisms carried out.

The Spanish colonial government required Native Americans to make tribute payments in cash. To make these payments, indigenous peoples had to work on colonial enterprises or raise a crop they could sell. At first, individual Spanish settlers were granted privileged access to the labor of specific native communities through the encomienda system. Another system of forced labor, known as the repartimiento (division), emerged in the mid-1500s. It required Native American communities to supply a quota of workers available for hire by the Spanish colonists.

Spanish and Portuguese colonists clustered in the cities they founded, such as Lima and Santiago, or that they took over from native peoples, such as Mexico City (built on the site of Tenochtitlán), and in nearby farms. They established gold and silver mines wherever they could, but most of these were distant from major zones of native settlement. Few of these ventures greatly disrupted indigenous culture or made heavy demands on the native labor forces. The major exception was the enormous silver-mining complex of Potosí in southern Bolivia. To work these rich deposits, colonial officials required indigenous males to work the mines, usually for six months at a time. Many were accompanied to the mining sites by their wives and children. When their turns were finished, most returned to their home communities.

In the early decades of the colonies, the settlers had depended on drafts of temporary unskilled native laborers. As the colonial economies became more elaborate, however, this form of labor became less useful and survived only in the less developed areas of Middle and South America. Instead, businessmen recruited skilled native workers by offering them better terms of employment. These terms were made more attractive because of the deteriorating circumstances in indigenous communities brought about by population decline and Spanish demands for labor service and tribute payments. Many Native Americans departed from their communities to live in Spanish colonial cities or on Spanish-owned agricultural estates (haciendas). Over the long term, substantial numbers of Native Americans came to reside permanently in Spanish colonial society. Their children were born to this way of life, rather than to the traditional village culture that their parents had witnessed. Indigenous intermarriage with Spaniards and people of African descent in the cities and estates created a growing interracial population. People of mixed Native American and Spanish descent, known as mestizos, were more urbanized and more readily assimilated into colonial society. They adopted many traits and customs of the dominant Spanish culture and had little interaction with indigenous peoples who remained in the villages.

By the beginning of the 18th century the Native American population had begun to recover in some areas. While it never came close to the size attained before the Spanish conquest, the increase placed tremendous pressure on the limited resources and productive capacity of indigenous villages. Although colonial authorities had guaranteed these communities a certain measure of land held in common, the colonists had occupied most of the remaining agricultural land to grow crops for local and international markets. In this situation, many villages faced subsistence crises, in which they could not produce enough to maintain their populations.

In response to this enduring affliction, Native Americans began to work in the colonial economy far more extensively than before. Many more migrated from their communities to the cities and haciendas, where they became permanent workers. However, they were generally unskilled and poorly paid. Even those who remained in their villages labored periodically on the haciendas to earn additional money before returning home. These temporary workers often hired themselves out as labor gangs.

Native American communities also began to organize responses to their circumstances. They brought complaints and entered into judicial disputes over land ownership, boundaries, and access to water. Also, after many decades in which indigenous societies had rarely risen up against the colonial authorities, they began to take action, sometimes violently, to prevent colonists and officials from imposing themselves. These protests typically involved only one village at a time and a complaint against a single issue. Individual revolts lasted for only a limited time and did not expand to embrace larger regions. They also did not challenge the fundamental position of Native Americans in the colonial system.

H.

Wars for Independence, 19th Century

All of the Spanish colonies and Brazil won their independence from the colonial powers by 1824 (see Latin American Independence). But the independence movements that erupted throughout the colonies in the early years of the century did not address issues crucial to indigenous peoples. The fight for independence was primarily an effort by the white elite of the colonies to achieve self-government for their class. For the most part Native Americans did not actively participate in the wars for independence. Mestizos, however, were among the most involved in the wars, fighting in both the patriot and royalist armies.

Before the wars for independence ended colonial rule, Native Americans were officially wards of the Spanish crown and could request that their grievances be heard by special courts. However, under the colonial caste system, which was based on racial categories, Native Americans were placed below whites and mestizos in social status. Therefore they were among the most disadvantaged in the society, along with free blacks and black slaves, and colonial practices such as the repartimiento system allowed them to be greatly exploited and abused.

In 1780, decades before the wars for independence erupted, highland Peru witnessed a massive uprising by Native Americans. An indigenous community leader, José Gabriel Condorcanqui, claimed that he was Tupac Amarú II, a direct descendent of the last independent Inca ruler. He demanded that the Spaniards abandon the highlands and return them to native rule. Tens of thousands flocked to his cause, including many mestizos. Thousands died in the ensuing warfare against colonial forces before Tupac Amarú II and his associates were captured and executed in 1781. The mountainous regions of Peru and Bolivia were marked by similar uprisings until the 1820s. At that time the colonial regime was overthrown, but not to the advantage of the indigenous peoples. Instead, their concerns were largely ignored and neglected by the newly independent nations.

The first uprising of Mexico’s independence movement was led in 1810 by Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a priest of Spanish descent in the parish of Dolores. He led his parishioners, who were mostly mestizos, in a poorly planned revolt against Spanish colonial rule. Hidalgo called for the abolition of the tribute payments required of Native Americans. His parish members were soon joined by tens of thousands of others, mostly Native Americans and mestizos, who rankled at the constraints placed on them by the colonial system. They executed many of the people of Spanish descent they took as captives. After suffering a defeat against a small Spanish force, Hidalgo’s movement fell apart and its participants fled back to their communities. He and his associates were soon captured and executed. Four years later a disciple of Hidalgo, José María Morelos, directed a similar, but smaller and more coordinated, rebellion that also ended in failure. The successful independence movement in Mexico in 1821 neither included Native Americans among its participants nor addressed their plight in its program.

The leaders of the new nations believed Native Americans should lose any special “privileges,” such as the grievance courts, afforded them during the colonial period. Liberal leaders called for placing all citizens, including Native Americans, under equal laws and ending the caste system. The new national governments initially aspired to remove the tribute payments and required labor services that had been imposed under the colonial regime. But the reality of nearly continuous national bankruptcy led some of them to reimpose tribute payments, though under new names. Some also reimposed mandatory labor service by Native Americans on local construction projects or agricultural estates, arguing that this taught them proper habits and helped the nation.

The new nations also sought to eliminate communal land ownership in Native American communities, a tradition that was so central to their self-reliance. The governments designated the holdings as private lands. Many indigenous communities eventually lost their property to nearby estate owners who sought to expand their profit-oriented enterprises. The land was often sold without the consent of the native peoples, and sometimes it was seized outright. The native communities no longer had special courts to hear their grievances, and the few courts that did exist were unsympathetic. By the late 19th century a great number of the indigenous villages had disappeared, and their former members lived in destitution as temporary agricultural laborers.

The period between about 1870 and 1920 was perhaps the worst era for Native Americans since the initial conquest period. An atmosphere of disdain toward native peoples proliferated. Business interests, prospering during a period of economic growth, dispossessed Native Americans of their resources. Many indigenous groups responded by organizing regional revolts against these actions. The weak national governments had tremendous difficulty suppressing these uprisings, which continued for years before being extinguished.

One of the largest and longest revolts was the Caste War of the Yucatán, in which Maya rebels, many of them farm laborers, won control over almost all of the Yucatán Peninsula by May 1848. By the following spring the people of Spanish descent in the area, most of whom were town dwellers or farm owners and supervisors, had recaptured the western and central areas of the peninsula. However, the eastern area around Chan Santa Cruz remained an independent Maya stronghold until Mexico’s federal troops invaded the city in 1901.

I.

Striving for Indigenous Rights, 20th Century

The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) was a major turning point for Native Americans in Middle America. Under the leadership of Emiliano Zapata, a revolutionary of indigenous descent, large numbers of native peoples in southern Mexico fought to regain the traditional community lands they had lost during the preceding decades. In the two decades following the success of the revolution, most native communities had their lands restored by the national government. The Mexican Revolution marked the first substantial reversal of the neglect of Native Americans that had prevailed since the colonial period. After the revolution, the Mexican government promoted indigenismo as a glorious heritage and established agencies to promote native rights and cultures. Since that time Native American children often have been taught their traditional language as well as Spanish, and indigenous artisans have had success marketing their crafts.

The indigenous peoples of Bolivia lost most of their lands when the government eliminated communal land ownership early in the 20th century. Most of them were retained as laborers on the large and often unproductive estates that incorporated their lands. Despite uprisings and other forms of resistance, they had little success in remedying their condition until a larger revolution erupted in the country in 1952. Native Americans took up arms to help overthrow the old regime and bring to power the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, or MNR), a leftist-oriented political party, which pledged to make them full-fledged citizens. The new MNR government immediately extended the right to vote to Native Americans, and in 1953 it instituted a land reform law that allowed Native Americans to reclaim their traditional lands. Since that time, the indigenous peoples of Bolivia have been able to grow crops for urban markets to support their communities, retain authority over their internal affairs, and obtain education and public health services for their communities. They have also been active in local and national politics.

In some countries, however, Native American populations continued to suffer miserably. In El Salvador in the early 1930s, indigenous communities inspired by radical politicians from the cities protested to have lands restored and labor conditions improved. In 1932 the army seized the government and violently repressed the movement, killing between 10,000 and 30,000 rural Salvadorans in what came to be known as La Matanza (The Massacre). Native Americans were especially targeted during the massacre, and those who survived lived under a repressive military regime.

The Maya of Guatemala, meanwhile, had lost much of their land by the beginning of the 20th century and were required by the government to provide labor to the large estates or face arrest. A reform government that gained power in 1944 began to reverse this situation, but a counterrevolution led by the military in 1954 imposed a series of repressive regimes. In response, radical armed rebels established themselves in the countryside to mobilize support against the government. Both sides competed over the Maya population that composed most of the rural population. Violence was endemic, and the national military committed some horrible massacres of Maya communities, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, in the early 1990s the two sides entered into a national accord, and most of the organized armed violence ended. Some communities regained their lands, and in some schools the Maya began to be educated about the magnificent history of their ancestors, occasionally in their own language.

The History section of this article was contributed by John E. Kicza.