Early Atlantic Voyagers
The Italian navigator funded by Spain in 1492 who landed in the Bahamas while searching for a westward water route to Asia.
Who is Christopher Columbus?
The Spanish queen of Castile who agreed to finance Columbus's 1492 transatlantic expedition.
Who is Isabella of Castile?
Spanish military conquerors driven by greed, personal glory, and religious zeal to subdue American native empires.
Who are Conquistadores?
Lethal European epidemic disease with no native biological immunity that killed 80–95% of the indigenous American population.
What is Smallpox?
The 1565 Spanish fort in Florida that is the oldest continuous, permanent European settlement in the United States.
What is St. Augustine?
The Caribbean island (modern Haiti and Dominican Republic) where Columbus built his first outpost.
What is Hispaniola?
The Spanish monarch of Aragon whose marriage to Isabella united Spain and created a powerful monarchy.
Who is Ferdinand of Aragon?
Spanish conquistador who conquered the Mexica (Aztec) Empire at Tenochtitlán between 1519 and 1521.
Who is Hernando Cortés?
People of mixed Spanish and Native American parentage who became the demographic majority in Spanish America.
Who are Mestizos?
The administrative colonial capital of Spanish New Mexico founded in 1609.
What is Santa Fe?
Portuguese explorer blown off course while en route to India in 1500, making landfall on the coast of Brazil.
Who is Pedro Álvares Cabral?
The 1493/1494 papal ruling (Treaty of Tordesillas) that divided the Americas between Spain and Portugal, reserving Brazil for Portugal.
What is the Papal decree (or Treaty of Tordesillas)?
Spanish conquistador who conquered the Incan Empire in Peru (1532–1538), capturing vast quantities of silver and gold.
Who is Francisco Pizarro?
Royal licenses that gave Spanish settlers the authority to extract forced labor and tribute from local Native villages.
What are Encomiendas?
Frontier religious settlements managed by friars to convert Native Americans and assimilate them into the Spanish Empire.
What are Catholic missions?
Florentine merchant and explorer whose popular published letters recognized the Americas as new continents, earning his name on the landmass.
Who is Amerigo Vespucci?
1573 Spanish royal statutes that outlawed brutal, unprovoked military conquests and mandated colonization through missionary pacification.
What are the Ordinances of Discovery?
Spanish conquistador who led an expedition across the American Southeast (1539–1541) and was the first European to cross the Mississippi River.
Who is Hernando de Soto?
The forced commercial migration of West Africans to the Americas, driven by the labor demands of sugar plantations.
What is the African slave trade?
Spanish conquistador who led 500 men into New Mexico in 1598, establishing Spanish settlement before being removed for cruelty.
Who is Don Juan de Oñate?
Spanish explorer who crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513, becoming the first European to view the Pacific Ocean from the American coast.
Who is Vasco de Balboa?
The South American territory claimed by Portugal following Pedro Álvares Cabral's voyage.
What is Brazil?
Spanish conquistador who journeyed north through the Southwest (1540–1542) looking for gold cities, opening the region to Spanish settlement.
Who is Francisco Coronado?
The rigid Spanish colonial social hierarchy consisting of peninsulares, criollos, mestizos, and indigenous peoples.
What is the Racial hierarchy (or Casta system)?
The 1680 uprising led by the medicine man Popé that drove the Spanish out of Santa Fe and New Mexico for 12 years.
What is the Pueblo Revolt (or Popé's Rebellion)?