 Hi, I'm Dr. Gene Price. Today's lecture looks at New Spain's Northern Frontier. And this is really what we would call the American Southwest stretching from around California, Oregon, all the way over to Texas. We're gonna look at the period 1540 to 1820. So we're gonna cover a lot of ground. And what we want to accomplish in this lecture is to look at the Spanish settlement in North America to summarize the competition that various European empires had over North America and to explain the role that New Spain in the Northern Frontier played by the end of the 18th century. First, we need to look at, or at least keep in mind how Europeans looked at North America, how they looked at the New World. And the Spanish, this is true of them, right? They were looking at from a Spanish perspective, from a European perspective. And I like this quote, the discovery and exploration of America, he says, was made and exploited for the purposes that were relevant to the European society from which the discoverers sprang. In other words, they looked at the New World, at North America especially, from their European eyes. And so we have to keep that in mind. And one of the things that Europeans were used to was that it was a religious society. And what this means, especially for the Spanish, was that it was a Catholic versus Muslim society. The Muslims, the Ottoman Turks had invaded and taken over the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal today, and about the year 750. And from that time to about 1492, Catholics in Spain were trying to regain control of the government. And so this was called the Re Conquista, which was their mindset. And from this, sprang an institution called the Encomienda System, which basically said that if you did not convert, then you were subject to being enslaved. And they used this in the New World to enslave Native Americans. We also have to consider the fact that Europe and Spain was a hierarchical society, not only in their military, but also in the church and in the government. People followed rules. Rules were established, people lower down the chain followed those rules. And it was also a mercantilistic economy. And what this meant was that they saw the economies for economic exploitation. They saw the value in the colonies was to serve the homeland. And after Columbus came, he settled in Hispaniola, and that was where the Spanish headquarters were. What is today Haiti and the Dominican Republic? By 1513, Columbus and his descendants fell into conflict with other Spaniards. 1513, we talk about him in his search for the fable fountain of youth. He was governor in that area, and then he moved into Puerto Rico. And he was then sent to established colonies, outposts, and explore the mainland from Florida all the way over to the Gulf of Mexico. Now the Spanish call that Gulf of Mexico area Florida anyway. So to them, that was Florida. So he had the ability to explore a large amount of territory if he could. Also that same year 1513, this was the requirement that you had to convert. If they didn't, they could be conquered. Finally, this gave rise to what was known in Europe as the Black Legend, the dark story of Spain's atrocities in the New World. And it was filled with stories of Columbus and other conquistadors, torturing, raping, pillaging Native Americans and killing them off. And what this did, although there was a lot of truth to that, what this did was that it allowed countries like France, England, and others to say we have the right because Spain is doing such a poor job of treating people over there. If we look at the conquest of Mexico, the defeat of the Aztec Empire by Hernando Cortez in 1519, when he arrived, a lot of people say, well, you know, he tricked the Aztecs. They thought he was a god that had returned to Earth and they owed him homage. Well, whether or not he actually tricked the king of the Aztecs, Montezuma, is really a matter that most historians today say that's just false. That Montezuma certainly knew by, after a few weeks anyway, that this guy was not a god and certainly opposed him. The Aztecs did rebel in 1520 against the Spanish. And this led to the siege of the Noctitlan. To Noctitlan, what we would call Mexico City today fell in 1521. Now, how did the Spanish, about 500 Spanish defeat a city of several hundred thousand Aztecs? Well, first of all, they had better weapons. They had gunpowder. They had war dogs that were trained to rip people apart. And they had just iron and steel weapons that the Aztecs did not have access to. They also had horses. They were also aided by many enemies of the Aztec Empire. The Aztecs had accumulated a lot of enemies among their neighbors who were eager to see them fall. And so when the Spanish came in, they were ready to join with the Spanish. And finally, of course, disease. European disease plagued the Aztecs and killed a lot of the population. Finally, one thing that we want to look at is the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe. This is an apparition or an appearance of the Virgin Mary that Catholics believe applied to an Aztec named Juan Diego in 1531. In a few years later, the Pope of the Catholic Church issued a papal bull that said that we have to realize that native people were human beings. And as human beings, they had reason and could reason about the gospel. And so if they accepted Catholicism, Christianity, then they could become not only Catholics, but they could become Spanish citizens. And as such, they could not be enslaved. So this was a change in the regulation and the way that the Spanish viewed the native Americans. And it had import later on, the Virgin of Guadalupe is still considered the patron saint of Spanish people and of North America. As Spain was exploring the northern frontier, they received word from a shipwreck victim, Cavesa de Vaca, a shipwreck survivor who had been in Texas. They had actually started their expedition in Florida. And due to a series of calamities had made rafts to try to sail back to Mexico into the mainland. In 1528, they were shipwrecks somewhere around between Galveston and Corpus Christie, we think, and spent the next eight years wandering around what is today South Texas and Northern Mexico with Indians serving as healers and as other helpers, they were being traded from one tribe to another. When they were captured and brought back, and they told their story of cities, gold and silver, this fed into some myths that the Spanish had. And so out of Mexico came two expeditions, three actually. One was the De Soto, Muscozo expedition, which actually came out of Florida, what's today Florida, and they traveled over land in search of these golden cities. From about 1539 to 1543, around the Mississippi River De Soto, the leader died and Muscozo took over. They reached probably Waco, Texas about 1542, didn't find anything so turned around. Another expedition was led by a priest named Marcos de Niza, who went up and said, yes, he had also heard stories from the Native Americans in the Texas region of cities of gold. And the next year, Coronado's expedition. The Coronado expedition left Mexico and went up as far west as what is today the Grand Canyon, and then others in the expedition traveled as far east as Kansas City, Missouri. They didn't find any cities of gold, and they were very harsh on the natives and the guides. They killed some people. And Coronado came back in chains and was arrested for his in humanity, but they explored the Southwest. And this was their lasting legacy. The Spanish had also established St. Augustine by this time as a protection against a Huguenot French Protestants who had settled around the St. Augustine, Florida area and the Spanish went over there, wiped that village out to maintain her hold on Florida. In 1598, Juan de Ognate was sent to explore the Northern Rio Grande River and he along the way established settlements along this like Santa Fe and he spread Christianity and established missions. But he also was very harsh not only on Native Americans, but also on other Spaniards who were settling up in the area and they eventually ousted him as well. We have to realize that it wasn't just explorers that were going and making these settlements, but there was a whole organization under the Spanish authority. Soldiers were moving forward and establishing presidios and a lot of these presidios, these forts, as we might call them, were protecting missions and the missions were the religious branch of exploration. They would go out and try to convert the Indians and of course around them, you know, there were sometimes the soldiers would have relations with the converted Indian women and then this would lead to families and so what do the families live? Well, they lived in the government centers, the towns and this is where government and business leaders resided in as far as other residents as well too. They live there as well too. There were farms that were established up by residents who not only had places for their families and were growing food for their families, but they were also growing food to sell to the presidios and to the missions who were also growing food to sell as well. So there was some competition going on there and finally there were the ranchers, the ranchers and these families who worked there and the workers that worked with them. Not only were doing some farming but who also raised horses and cattle, goats and sheep and chickens for food and of course this made more competition as they were trying to sell to the presidios and to the towns. Competition not only from the farms but also from the missions. So you can see that in this interrelated circle of institutions that were used for Spanish settlement, there was also a lot of competition and sometimes a lot of animosity between these groups. The Spanish settled according to a law that had been set out that coordinated how towns were built up. This town design and the law of the Indies said that there had to be a central plaza. Around this, the cities were to be laid out in grids and around this central plaza, and it was supposed to be related to the number of people who lived in the town, that there would be government offices on one side, churches on the other. So there was a central area and you can still see these plazas laid out in towns like Santa Fe, New Orleans, San Antonio. So this method of town building held a lot of sway in the establishment of villages and cities in North America. There was also mestizaje. This is the mixing, ethnic mixing. And the reason why this is important is because this was very important to the hierarchical societal organization of the Spanish. And of course, we see this in the British colonies as well, this idea that if you intermingled and had relations and had children with Native Americans, with Africans or with people from Asia, it was going to situate you into a different caste and also into a different social status. And so the Spanish, these illustrations are from a book that was written in 1775, right before the American Revolution, but it comes out of California describing the different types of racial mixing that was going on in the colonies in these areas and trying to set some sort of hierarchy and structure on the descendants that came out of these relationships. By 1680, in New Mexico, Native Americans under the direction of an Indian named Pope, led a revolt. They ran the Spanish out of New Mexico and forced them to congregate around what is now El Paso, Texas, at the time it was called Corpus Christi de Esleta. And so El Paso began growing. This was the pass to the north for the Rio Grande. And that lasted until the Spanish were able to get back into New Mexico. There was also a threat on the other side in the east along the Mississippi River from a explorer named Robert Cavalier, the Sur de La Salle. La Salle had found the Mississippi River had been exploring it from the Great Lakes that had sailed it all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. And he returned to lay claim and to establish French presence in New Orleans. But he was shipwrecked. What's today New Orleans, but he was shipwrecked somewhere around Galveston, actually closer to Victoria. And this while they were shipwrecked, they built a fort, Fort St. Louis in 1689. And from there, they tried to find their way back to the Mississippi River. Now, some did make it. But when they returned to find the fort, the Spanish had already found it had burned the fort to the ground. But the Spanish reporter, they didn't see any French people around. So we think that maybe they went in and lived with the Indians. But the fort disappeared. This reflects a continuing struggle between Spain and France in the New World. Both countries had tried to establish alliances with Native Americans in the New World, missions, especially Franciscan priests from the Franciscan order were especially good at this and were sent out and allowed to to create these missions. In 1711, the Spanish began to pull back from the Mississippi River and settle more along settlements south of the Rio Grande. So one priest, Father Francis Hidalgo, was upset about this. He wanted to continue the presence of Spanish missions in East Texas. And so he wrote a letter to the French governor in Louisiana in 1711. While that letter was being transmitted, another priest, this time in what's today, Arizona, Primera Alta, they called it, Father Quino, was sent to establish missions. And he did so along the around the southern border of Arizona today between Arizona and New Mexico today. That letter that Hidalgo sent reached the French governor in Louisiana and he sent a trader named Sondanie to go to find Hidalgo. So Sondanie in 1714 went down to the Rio Grande in south Texas, what's today, south Texas around where Eagle Pass is today, found Father Hidalgo and together they went back and established forts in the what's today Louisiana area, Nacodish Louisiana and the Spanish a few miles away established a fort mission called Los Adais. Now, in 1718, a Spanish governor said, look, we need to establish a highway, this Camino Real that's running. We need a midpoint on this to help supply our efforts in these Texas. And so in 1718, they established San Antonio, a mission and a Presidio, San Antonio de Bajar and San Antonio de Valero, the mission and the Presidio there. In 1719, although just a year later, out at Los Adais, some Spanish missionaries believe that they were under attack by French soldiers when some chickens got scared. And it turned out that this was not the case, but it reflected this fear from the Spanish that the French were a real threat to the area out there. So in 1721, there were expeditions to establish settlement after the chicken war blew over and there was interest in Spanish settlement in what's today East Texas. You also see because of threats from Russia and English who were interested in the fur trade in the Pacific Northwest that Catholic priests and Spanish soldiers were sent out to California. And there they established outposts at San Diego along the Camino Real all the way up to Los Angeles and they established towns and outposts there as well. So they were trying to maintain their posts in the Pacific side of North America. In 1763, a war that broke out in North America around the Ohio River Valley, the French and Indian War and then spread to Europe where it was called the Seven Years War ended in the Treaty of 1763 that expelled France from the New World. And with the French gone from the New World, the Spanish were free to feel that they could kind of withdraw. They didn't have to hold on to their land. Marquis de Ruby in 1767 established in his regulations for the recidios that they need to close the East Texas missions. They needed to strengthen San Antonio and they needed to prepare for a war with the Lipana Patches. But they also wanted to continue to establish trade routes, especially up into New Mexico. And so several trade route expeditions were set forth. By 1800, Spain was in a weak position and the French Revolution and resulting Napoleonic Wars had really changed the dynamics, the power dynamics in Europe. Spain returned Louisiana to France and the Louisiana, we're talking about the Mississippi River Valley. There was a revolt in Haiti, San Domingo by Toussaint Louverture, led by Toussaint Louverture, a slave rebellion and Napoleon could not control this rebellion. So his dreams of establishing a Caribbean empire out of Haiti and San Domingo in that area, fed by the Mississippi River for resources, failed. The acquisition in 1803 of the Louisiana Purchase, that whole Mississippi River Valley by the United States, put a new threat on New Spain's Northwestern frontier. Now they had an actively aggressive expanding nation on their eastern border. And so how would New Spain respond? So in this lecture, we wanted to analyze the legacy of Spanish settlement in North America. And the Spanish in North America explored, settled and assimilated. And that is in a nutshell what they wanted to do in North America. And they did it. This led to competition. Spain's success attracted competition from other European powers that forced Spain to establish settlements to hold on to her claims. And by the end of the 18th century, New Spain's tenuous hold on its northern frontier and its weakened condition in Europe at the end of the century led to continuing challenges from a new expanding United States. Thank you for listening.