Rohin, Vignesh, Abbie and Karan

Mr.Dutton
IB History of Americas P-5
September 9th, 2016
The Use of Indian Labor
In the forthcoming establishment of the Americas, European people came in order to
claim riches from the land and native people. This was done through the use of imperial
extraction of indigenous people and soon African slaves. The primary cause of this was
because of the funding to find a western route to India in 1492 under Christopher Columbus
from the queen of Isabel of Castile. She did so in hopes of making the Spanish kingdom
richer and providing contribution to the era of exploration. The Portuguese native explorer
soon landed in the West Indies thinking he was in india. After Columbus mapped the land
and accounted for all his visits, he came back to Europe with his discovery with quick brevity
this news had spread to Portugal and other countries where explorers would invest into the
Americas and people would colonized the land for the compelling motive of religious
purpose and most importantly getting rich.
In 1500 Pedro Alvarez Cabral reached the Brazil in the Americas after Columbus but
didn't really take the initiative to take what was there. His chronicler, Pero Vaz de Caminha,
wrote description of what they saw in Brazil, which to their surprise were native people who
were naked. They didn't seem to be interested of the land at the time because of the
resources not being profitable except for the brazilwood tree. They then left finding a
western route to Asia which would play a huge role in the establishment of companies and
ports for trade in Asia. The significance of Pedro's discoveries mentioned about the land and

the native people would interest the others back in Europe and which then permanently
changed the way people viewed America.
The first known use of Indian or native labour was when the Spaniards quickly took
advantage of suppressing the land of the Americas. After others visiting the Americas like
Pedro, who brought activism of bringing people to the Americas, Spain was there to suppress
upon whatever they could. The Spaniards knew much about the land before landing in Mexico
in 1519. Their first experience of native people were the Arawak people who the Spanish
swiftly enslaved. The Spanish learned of how to cultivate manioc and other crops and
supervised the communities affairs to avoid riots. They used slaves that harvested crops and
showed interest in glass, beads, and metal that the Spanish brought and traded with the
indigenous peoples. The Spanish were not there to make allies but in order to seek private
fortunes which they deeply valued because of their primary motive, religion. The Spanish
took claim of all indigenous inhabitants and eventually the land, using the Arawak people in
the Tabasco region of Mexico leaving little for the next wave of adventurers.
Overtime the Spanish took control of the all of the Caribbean, Central and most of
South America. This was significant because Hernan Cortes use of power when he arrived in
the Yucatan Peninsula. As he arrived he heard of major cities in Central America and began
his conquest up north to the heart of the Aztec Empire, Tenochtitlan. When he arrived the
Aztecs were astonished at what had come before them. Moctezuma suspected the Spanish
were Gods who had come to speak with them with their intimidating armor, weapons and
horses. In 1521 The Aztecs and Spanish Conquistadors then fought a short battle where the
Aztec empire collapsed upon themselves due to inferior weapons, tactics, allies and rapid

spread of disease. This forced remaining Aztec people to become enslaved and become part of
dynasty that exponentially grew larger upon the Americas in the 1500s.
Similarly the Spanish expedition in South America enslaved many people of the Inca
empire in the south of Peru. In 1530, Francisco Pizarro set out with 180 men and soon joined
by reinforcements to make a force of a about 600 to invade Ecuador and Peru region and In
1533, the Spanish put their fist upon Cuzco, capital of the Inca Empire, where they took full
control and captured all of their ruling elites and killed most of them. They then asked the
Inca ruler Atahualpa to deliver large quantities of gold to him and then strangled him and
decapitated him in front of the whole city. Pizarro then used the local people as slaves to
thrive and bring the Global significance of silver in the Andes Mountains which powered
most of the Spanish economy because they sent it across the Atlantic as raw Silver to help
finance and develop armies in Spain which brought trade to the Americas from Asia which in
turn brought Porcelain, silk and foreign spices.
When the the Spanish took control of all of Central America, Caribbean, most of South
America and some of North America and they developed large numbers of slaves in which
they showed much use. They could now mine for gold in the region due to large amount of
labour and with the capture of the natives this made mining more efficient but only supplied
sufficient amount of gold until 1515 because of limited supply in the region which proved
slightly significant in trade. Soon recruitment of labor came through with a system called
the encomienda in large ranches called Haciendas. This was a system where large numbers of
native people were enslaved and in return for their labour would be assumed responsibility
under the Spanish to look after their health, welfare and encouragement of the conversion to

Christianity but a century after evolved into a system called the Repartimiento system was
more lenient which offered wages and limited work hours. During the time of Spanish rule in
the 1500s the conscription of labor was immoral because the captured natives worked hard
hours and were punished severely when they did not deliver the expected amount of gold, or
work sufficient enough. By 1515 the original Arawak people had all died out due to social
disruption, physical abuse, and disease. With the upbringing of Aztec and Incas as slaves this
made development easy for the Spanish and still operated under the encomienda system.
After years went by and time arrived in the mid century, the Portuguese were forced
under the French to come and settle Brazil which affected the Tupi society. The Portuguese
came and under the Treaty of Tordesillas they claimed the land until the north-south line 370
leagues west of Azores and Cape Verde Islands. This allowed the Portuguese to take
advantage of the Amazon forests for wood and implement sugar plantations would would
bring much profit to the country and become a major export in the Colombian trade. The Tupi
Society was forced upon slavery when the Portuguese realized the value of sugar as a
valuable commodity in trade. The Portuguese tried to maintain relations in terms of land but
overtime disputes turned the Portuguese to force because Sugar was a plantation crop and
required plenty of capital investment to and a large labour force. This then turned the heads
of the Portuguese towards the Tupi as labor and their land as Capital. Soon the Portuguese
and Tupi were put into deadly skirmishes between the two over land and meant enslaving
large number of Tupi people slowly bring numbers into large. Although the plan was to
destroy all of their society much of them fled into the forest where escape was possible. The
king tried to suppress the oppression on the native people but his power upon the new owlets

was limited in effect. Same as the Arawak people the Remaining Tupi slaves decimated in
number due to disease and to replace them the Portuguese brought African slaves which
brought a new era of slavery.
On the other hand in the Northernmost part of America, the French and English had
bitter rivalries between each other in which the french controlled much of the middle and
northern parts of America located in modern mid-west United States, Nova Scotia, Quebec and
a main river called Saint Lawrence River which proved to be useful during the fur trade, they
called this land Louisiana, but for the English empire they had just laid the foundation of
what would be one of the largest empires in the world later on. This is where they controlled
much of the North American East coast, and a separate portion of a land above Louisiana
surrounding the Hudson bay stretching across to the Rocky Mountain Range. The French and
the English really differed from the Portuguese and Spanish in relation with the indigenous
people. They did not find large, or complex society living in densely settled societies. Nor
did they meet a sedentary type of society which depended on agriculture. Although they did
find some native peoples, most of them spoke other languages like Algonquian, Iroquois, or
Sioux languages. The natives depended on the hunting of buffaloes, deer and wolves and
never really defined a territory as claimed but rather migrated to local areas or other
territories which classified them as non-sedentary. But soon as time lapsed the English and
the French ventured deep into the hunting grounds of the Native people which caused conflict
because hunting was a way of life for them not a hobby. English settlers tried to negotiate
with the Native peoples but they didn't appreciate their lawfulness and oppression they felt
upon the lands they have been using for centuries. In 1622, the natives started attacking

local English settlers and decimated the population to two-thirds of the original population
in the Chesapeake region. This led to the English to start raids upon their settlements as
well in which people advocated for the annihilation of the Native people.
The English and French never really made native slaves because of their susceptibility
to disease and lack of efficient work done compared to African slaves and the will to force
the Natives was not necessary, principally because of the land and climate not well suit for
agricultural purposes but rather more profitable among local wildlife. Although the French
and English may have coexisted with the Native people for a while like learning the value of
fur from Beavers, wolves, squirrels and raccoons. The significance of the French and English
settling the North essentially brought more colonization and allocation of local resources for
profit which brought conflict between the Natives, which was only waiting to happen because
of similar interests, and placed the indigenous people in a steady population decline from
the 1500s to the 1800s from being around ten million people in size shrinking to a mere
six hundred thousand.