Period 1: 1491–1607: practice

Two historians' interpretations (original)

Historian 1: The collapse of native populations after 1492 was, above all, a biological event. Smallpox, measles and influenza reached peoples who had never been exposed to them. Epidemics often spread ahead of the Europeans themselves, emptying villages that no Spaniard ever saw. No policy of the conquerors could have caused deaths on such a scale.

Historian 2: Disease killed millions, but it did not act alone. Native people forced into mines and fields, driven from their crops and scattered by war were far less able to survive an epidemic. Spanish labor demands and violence turned outbreaks into catastrophes. To call the decline a natural disaster is to excuse the human choices that made it so deadly.

Source: Original text written for this course in the style of a historian's interpretation.

Question 1

Which of the following best describes a difference between the two historians' arguments?

Question 2

Which of the following, if true, would most directly support Historian 2's argument?

Question 3

Both historians would most likely agree that the population decline was part of which broader development?

Thomas Harriot, report on Roanoke, 1588

Within a few days after our departure from every such town, the people began to die very fast, and many in short space; in some towns about twenty, in some forty, in some sixty, and in one six score, which in truth was very many in respect of their numbers. This happened in no place that we could learn but where we had been, where they used some practice against us, and after such time. The disease also was so strange that they neither knew what it was nor how to cure it. . . . [The people] were persuaded that it was the work of our God through our means, and that we by him might kill and slay whom we would without weapons and not come near them.

Source: Thomas Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (London, 1588), adapted. Public domain.

Question 4

The deaths Harriot describes were most directly caused by

Question 5

According to Harriot, some native people explained the deaths by

Question 6

Harriot's report was written in the context of

Native societies of the Mississippi valley (original summary)

Between about 1050 and 1350, a large town stood near present-day St. Louis, at the place now called Cahokia. Its people farmed maize, beans and squash in the river bottomlands and built great earthen mounds, the largest of which rose about one hundred feet. Thousands of people lived there, ruled by leaders who directed labor and ceremonies. Goods such as copper and shells reached the town from distant regions through trade. Cahokia had declined well before Europeans arrived, but village-dwelling peoples who mixed farming and hunting remained common across the Mississippi valley and the Northeast.

Source: Original text written for this course, summarizing archaeological findings about Cahokia and Mississippian societies.

Question 7

The society described in the excerpt was made possible mainly by

Question 8

Cahokia was most similar to which other society before 1492?

Juan Gines de Sepulveda, Democrates Alter, about 1545

Compare the prudence, intelligence, courage, moderation, humanity and religion of the Spaniards with the qualities of those little men in whom you will scarcely find traces of humanity. They have no learning, no written laws, and their customs are barbarous. It is therefore just and natural that such peoples should be subject to the rule of more prudent and virtuous princes and nations, so that they may learn better customs and the true religion. If they refuse this rule, they may be compelled to accept it by arms, and such a war is just.

Source: Juan Gines de Sepulveda, Democrates Alter, or On the Just Causes of War against the Indians (written about 1545), translated and adapted for this course. Public domain.

Question 9

Sepulveda's argument was most likely intended to

Question 10

Sepulveda's views were most directly opposed in his own time by

Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Chronicle of Guinea, 1453

He had a wish to know the land that lay beyond the isles of Canary and that Cape called Bojador, for that up to his time, neither by writings, nor by the memory of man, was known with any certainty the nature of the land beyond that Cape. . . . The second reason was that if there chanced to be in those lands some population of Christians, or some havens, into which it would be possible to sail without peril, many kinds of merchandise might be brought to this realm, which would find a ready market. . . . The third reason was . . . to make it known determinately how far the power of those infidels extended. The fourth reason was . . . he sought to know if there were in those parts any Christian princes, in whom the charity and the love of Christ was so ingrained that they would aid him against those enemies of the faith. The fifth reason was his great desire to make increase in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ and to bring to him all the souls that should be saved.

Source: Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea (1453), translated by C. R. Beazley and E. Prestage (1896), adapted. Public domain.

Question 11

The motives Zurara attributes to Prince Henry most directly reflect which of the following?

Question 12

The voyages described in the excerpt are best understood in the context of