Hippocampus United States History: Spanish Explorers

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Columbus’s return from the New World created an abundance of activity throughout Europe. Old World monarchs dispatched explorers and small armies to the newly discovered continent to establish outposts, spread religious beliefs, and seek treasure. The advanced Indian civilizations of South and Central America were prime targets for invasion because of their abundance of gold and silver.

As Spain and Portugal battled for legal rights to the New World, Pope Alexander VI, a Spaniard, mediated a compromise that divided the non-Christian world between the two powers. The Treaty of Tordesillas drew an imaginary line from the arctic pole to the Antarctic pole, 100 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, which are located west of the African coastline. The decision gave Spain the rights to anything west of the line and the opportunity to explore and settle the known New World. Brazil, however, though part of the New World, was settled by the Portuguese because it was on the eastern side of the treaty line.

Within a decade after Columbus’s landfall, thousands of Spanish conquistadores, explorers, and settlers ventured across the southern portion of the present-day United States, through Mexico, and southward into Peru. The conquistadores were typically professional soldiers and sailors recruited to fight for church and crown. However, many nobles, peasants, and members of the middle class also joined the excursions in search of adventure and wealth.

The lust for gold was a common motivator that sometimes drove the explorers to perform heinous acts against the Native Americans. Military conquest, diseases, slavery, and deceit broke the Indians’ resistance, while Indian allies, superior weapons, and horses, provided conquistadores the strength and mobility to control vast populations.

The first known European explorer to set foot on what became the United States was Juan Ponce de León. In 1493, the Spanish explorer accompanied Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to America. As a reward for his assistance in suppressing Indian revolts, Ponce de León was named governor of present-day Puerto Rico. After subjugating the Indians on Puerto Rico and amassing a fortune in gold and slaves, he was replaced as governor.

Free to dedicate his attention to exploration, Ponce de León set out to find the fabled island of Bimini. He was driven to discover new lands, gold, slaves, and possibly the legendary Fountain of Youth. Many believed that those who drank from the fountain would be cured of all illnesses and their youthful appearance would be restored. Ponce de León sailed northwest from Puerto Rico until he reached Florida. He followed the coastline south, rounded the peninsula, and explored much of Florida’s west coast.

The king of Spain honored Ponce de León with a knighthood and named him governor of Florida. He was unable to mount a second expedition until 1521, when an attempt was made to colonize Florida. However, the natives no longer passively accepted Spanish domination, and Ponce de León was mortally wounded during an Indian attack. He discovered neither great wealth nor the Fountain of Youth, and failed to establish a permanent settlement in Florida.

In 1540, another Spanish explorer, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, began a trek through what is now the southwestern United States in search of the fabled treasures of the Seven Cities of Cibola. The expedition consisted of several hundred Spaniards, some African slaves, and about a thousand Indian allies. They discovered the Grand Canyon and the adobe pueblos of the Zuñi in New Mexico, which were later determined to be the source of the Cibola legend. Coronado pushed as far north as the plains of Kansas where vast herds of buffalo roamed, but he never found gold, silver, or other riches, and returned to Mexico City. Although his journeys familiarized the Spanish with the Pueblo people and the geography of the American southwest, Coronado was considered a failure because he did not bring back the fabled riches of Cibola.

During the same period that Coronado ventured through the Southwest, Hernando de Soto landed in Florida and explored the southeastern portion of the present-day United States. His party included more than six hundred soldiers with armor, about half of them mounted on horseback, and was considered to be the best-equipped expedition yet in the New World. De Soto traveled through Florida, into the Carolinas, and westward toward the Mississippi River where he became the first European to view the “Father of Waters.” Disappointed by the lack of riches in the small Indian villages they encountered, the Spanish typically attacked the natives and burned their villages.

In May 1542, de Soto was stricken with a fever and died near Natchez. About half of the expedition ultimately returned to Mexico, empty-handed and dressed in rags and skins, after a four-year ordeal. In 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo led an expedition to explore the western coast of California. As a young conquistador, he served in the Spanish army and helped Hernan Cortés conquer the Aztecs. Cabrillo’s experience as an explorer prompted the viceroy of New Spain to select him to lead the exploration of the Pacific coastline, as far north as San Francisco bay. Although he died during the journey, Cabrillo established the Spanish claim to California.

The Spanish explorations opened the New World to European settlers. Hundreds of new villages were established throughout the United States, primarily in the south from Florida through Texas and into California. Some Spaniards took control of existing Indian villages as encomenderos. Through the Spanish system called encomienda, favored officers were given land and ownership of one or more Indian villages. As encomenderos, they served as protectors, but also used the natives as laborers.

As Spain’s control of the New World spread across the land, so did the rumors of the conquistador’s cruel behavior toward the Indians. In an effort to protect the natives and change the actions of the Spanish explorers, Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican priest, documented the questionable behavior in A Brief Relation of the Destruction of the Indies. Although the literature prompted Spanish leaders to make some reforms, it also started the Black Legend of Spanish cruelty that labeled the Spaniards as vicious, inhumane beings who slaughtered thousands of Indians and enslaved the survivors.

Although the Black Legend damaged Spain’s reputation, the Spanish empire in America continued to grow. Spanish culture, laws, religion, and language gradually blended with those of the Indians and African slaves to form new communities and traditions. Spain had most of the New World to itself for about a century before other European nations began serious efforts to establish their own American colonies.