topic 1.7

• Spanish colonial dominance in the Americas fundamentally shaped the culture there
• Spanish hegemony refers to the domination of one nation or group by another nation or group
• Spanish expansion in the Americas


  1. Sending missionaries to convert natives to Christianity

  2. Establishing the mission system
• Differences between Spanish and Native American worldviews


  • Religion: Natives were pantheists/animists, Spanish had hierarchical Catholic Christianity
  • Land use: Natives saw land as spiritual, Spanish saw it as a commodity for private ownership
  • Family: Natives had extended kinship networks, Spanish had nuclear families
• Both groups adopted parts of the other's culture that they found useful
• Differences between the two groups held pride of place, leading to misunderstandings
• Native groups that converted to Christianity

  • Pueblo people
• Pueblo conversion to Christianity


  Pueblo retained some of their native religious practices, worshipping Christ alongside their other gods
• Pueblo revolt


  1. Pueblo killed Spanish colonizers and burned churches in 1610

  2. Spanish later reconquered the land and people
• King Charles convened a group to discuss the moral and legal fallout of Spanish conquest in the Americas
• Perspectives on Spanish conquest of the Americas


  • Arguments for the inferiority and backward nature of the Indians, and that conquest was good for them
  • Voices defending the dignity of the Indians, led by Bartolomé de las Casas
• Bartolomé de las Casas argued that natives ought not be put under the heavy yoke of the encomienda system, but suggested Africans replace them in forced labor
• Africans bore the weight of enslaved labor in the Americas and much of the Western Hemisphere from then on