The expansion of Spain's territory took place under the Catholic Monarchs
Isabella I of Castile and her husband
Ferdinand II of Aragon, whose marriage marked the beginning of Spanish power beyond the
Iberian Peninsula. They pursued a policy of joint rule of their kingdoms and created the initial stage of a single
Spanish monarchy, completed under the eighteenth-century Bourbon monarchs. The first expansion of territory was the conquest of the Muslim
Emirate of Granada on 1 January 1492, the culmination of the Christian
Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula, held by the Muslims since 711. On 31 March 1492, the Catholic Monarchs ordered the expulsion of the Jews in Spain who refused to convert to Christianity. Having departed from the port of
Palos de la Frontera on 3 August 1492, on 12 October 1492, Genoese mariner
Christopher Columbus and his crew made landfall in the Western Hemisphere, and in 1493 permanent Spanish settlement of the Americas began. Castile and Aragon were ruled jointly by their respective monarchs, but they remained separate kingdoms. When the Catholic Monarchs gave official approval for the plans for Columbus's voyage to reach "the Indies" by sailing West, the funding came from the queen of Castile. The profits from Spanish expedition flowed to Castile. The
Kingdom of Portugal authorized a series of voyages down the coast of Africa and when they rounded the southern tip, were able to sail to India and further east. Spain sought similar wealth, and authorized Columbus's voyage sailing west. Once the Spanish settlement in the Caribbean occurred, Spain and Portugal formalized a division of the world between them in the 1494
Treaty of Tordesillas. The deeply pious Isabella saw the expansion of Spain's sovereignty inextricably paired with the evangelization of non-Christian peoples, the so-called "spiritual conquest" with the military conquest.
Pope Alexander VI in a 4 May 1493 papal decree,
Inter caetera, divided rights to lands in the Western Hemisphere between Spain and Portugal on the proviso that they spread Christianity. These formal arrangements between Spain and Portugal and the pope were ignored by other European powers, with the French, the English, and the Dutch seizing territory in the Caribbean and in North America claimed by Spain but not effectively settled. Portugal's claim to part of South America under the Treaty of Tordesillas resulted in the creation of Portuguese colony of Brazil. Although during the rule of
Charles V, the Spanish Empire was the first to be called "
The empire on which the sun never sets", under
Philip II the permanent colonization of the
Philippine Islands made it demonstrably true.
General principles of expansion ) The Spanish expansion has sometimes been succinctly summed up as being motivated by "gold, glory, God", that is, the search for material wealth, the enhancement of the conquerors' and the crown's position, and the expansion of Christianity to the exclusion of other religious traditions. In the extension of Spanish sovereignty to its overseas territories, authority for expeditions (
entradas) of discovery, conquest, and settlement resided in the monarchy. Expeditions required authorization by the crown, which laid out the terms of such expedition. Virtually all expeditions after the Columbus voyages, which were funded by the crown of Castile, were done at the expense of the leader of the expedition and its participants. Although often the participants,
conquistadors, are now termed "soldiers", they were not paid soldiers in ranks of an army, but rather
soldiers of fortune, who joined an expedition with the expectation of profiting from it. The leader of an expedition, the
adelantado was a senior with material wealth and standing who could persuade the crown to issue him a license for an expedition. He also had to attract participants to the expedition who staked their own lives and meager fortunes on the expectation of the expedition's success. The leader of the expedition pledged the larger share of capital to the enterprise, which in many ways functioned as a commercial firm. Upon the success of the expedition, the spoils of war were divvied up in proportion to the amount a participant initially staked, with the leader receiving the largest share. Participants supplied their own armor and weapons, and those who had a horse received two shares, one for himself, the second recognizing the value of the horse as a machine of war. For the conquest era, the names of two Spaniards are popularly known because they led the conquests of two indigenous empires,
Hernán Cortés, leader of the expedition involved in the
conquest of the Aztec Empire, and
Francisco Pizarro, leader of the
conquest of the Inca in Peru. Spanish conquerors took advantage of indigenous rivalries to forge alliances with groups seeing an advantage for their own goals. This is most clearly seen in the conquest of the
Aztec Empire with the alliance of the Nahua
city-state of
Tlaxcala against the Aztec Empire resulting in lasting benefits to themselves and their descendants.
Caribbean islands and the Spanish Main Theodor de Bry for
Las Casas' A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies depicting Taínos fighting back against Spaniards, showing
cannibalism and forcing a Spaniard to swallow molten gold Patterns of the first Spanish settlements in the Caribbean were to endure there and had a lasting impact on the Spanish Empire. Until his dying day, Columbus was convinced that he had reached Asia, the Indies. From that misperception the Spanish called the
indigenous peoples of the Americas, "Indians" (
indios), lumping a multiplicity of civilizations, groups, and individuals into a single category. The Spanish royal government called its overseas possessions "The Indies" until its empire dissolved in the nineteenth century. In the Caribbean, because there was no integrated indigenous civilization such as found in Mexico and Peru, there was no large-scale Spanish conquest of indigenous peoples, but there was indigenous resistance to Spanish colonization. Columbus made four voyages to the
West Indies as the monarchs granted Columbus vast powers of governance over this unknown part of the world. The crown of Castile financed more of his trans-Atlantic journeys, a pattern they would not repeat elsewhere. Effective Spanish settlement began in 1493, when Columbus brought livestock, seeds, agricultural equipment. The first settlement of
La Navidad, a crude fort built on his first voyage in 1492, had been abandoned by the time he returned in 1493. He then founded the settlement of
La Isabela on the island they named
Hispaniola (now divided into
Haiti and the
Dominican Republic). illustration depicting Spanish atrocities during the
conquest of Hispaniola. Las Casas wrote about the cruelty of Spanish settlers: "They erected certain Gibbets, large, but low made, so that their feet almost reached the ground, every one of which was so ordered as to bear Thirteen Persons in Honour and Reverence (as they said blasphemously) of our Redeemer and his Twelve Apostles, under which they made a Fire to burn them to Ashes whilst hanging on them" , who rebelled against the Spanish Spanish explorations of other islands in the Caribbean and what turned out to be the mainland of South and Central America occupied them for over two decades. Columbus had promised the crown that the region he now controlled held a huge treasure in the form of gold and spices. Spanish settlers initially found relatively dense populations of indigenous peoples, who were agriculturalists living in villages ruled by leaders not part of a larger integrated political system. The Spanish saw these populations as a source of labor, there for their exploitation, to supply their own settlements with foodstuffs, but more importantly for the Spanish, to extract mineral wealth or produce another valuable commodity for Spanish enrichment. The labor of dense populations of
Taínos were allocated as grants to Spanish settlers in an institution known as the
encomienda, where particular indigenous settlements were awarded to individual Spaniards. There was surface gold found in early islands, and holders of encomiendas put the indigenous to work panning for it. For all practical purposes, this was slavery. Queen Isabel put an end to formal slavery, declaring the indigenous to be vassals of the crown, but Spaniards' exploitation of indigenous labor continued. The Taíno population on Hispaniola went from hundreds of thousands or millions – the estimates by scholars vary widely – but in the mid-1490s, they were practically wiped out. Disease and overwork, disruption of family life and the agricultural cycle (which caused severe food shortages to Spaniards dependent on them) rapidly decimated the indigenous population. From the Spanish viewpoint, their source of labor and viability of their own settlements was at risk. After the collapse of the Taino population of Hispaniola, Spaniards began raiding indigenous settlements on nearby islands, including
Cuba,
Puerto Rico, and
Jamaica, to enslave those populations, replicating the demographic catastrophe there as well. The names of two indigenous leaders (
caciques) who rebelled against Spanish colonization,
Enriquillo and
Hatuey in the Dominican Republic (Hispaniola), have become important. Dominican friar
Antonio de Montesinos denounced Spanish cruelty and abuse in a sermon in 1511, which comes down to us in the writings of Dominican friar
Bartolomé de las Casas. In 1542, Las Casas wrote a damning account of this demographic catastrophe,
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. It was translated quickly to English and became the basis for the anti-Spanish writings, collectively known as the
Black Legend. Las Casas spent his long life attempting to defend the indigenous populations and to enlist the Spanish crown in establishing protections for them, seen most prominently in the enactment of the
New Laws of 1542, restricting Spaniards' inheritance of
encomiendas. The first mainland explorations by Spaniards were followed by a phase of inland expeditions and conquest. In 1500 the city of
Nueva Cádiz was founded on the island of
Cubagua, Venezuela, followed by the founding of Santa Cruz by
Alonso de Ojeda in the present-day
Guajira Peninsula.
Cumaná in Venezuela was the first permanent settlement founded by Europeans in the mainland Americas, in 1501 by
Franciscan friars, but due to successful attacks by the indigenous people, it had to be refounded several times, until
Diego Hernández de Serpa's foundation in 1569. The Spanish founded San Sebastián de Uraba in 1509 but abandoned it within the year. There is indirect evidence that the first permanent Spanish mainland settlement established in the Americas was
Santa María la Antigua del Darién. Spaniards spent over 25 years in the Caribbean where their initial high hopes of dazzling wealth gave way to continuing exploitation of disappearing indigenous populations, exhaustion of local gold mines, initiation of cane sugar cultivation as an export product, and forced migration of enslaved Africans as a labor force. Spaniards continued to expand their presence in the circum-Caribbean region with expeditions. One was by
Francisco Hernández de Córdoba in 1517, another by
Juan de Grijalva in 1518, which brought promising news of possibilities there. Even by the mid-1510s, the western Caribbean was largely unexplored by Spaniards. A well-connected settler in Cuba,
Hernán Cortés received authorization in 1519 by the governor of Cuba to form an expedition of exploration-only to this far western region. That expedition was to make world history. The Caribbean islands became less central to Spain's overseas colonization, but remained important strategically and economically, especially the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola. Smaller islands claimed by Spain were lost to the English and the Dutch, with France taking half of Hispaniola and establishing the sugar-producing colony of
St-Domingue, as well as also taking other islands.
Mexico With Spanish expansion into central Mexico under conqueror
Hernán Cortés and the
conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521), Spanish explorers were able to find wealth on the scale that they had long hoped for. Unlike Spanish contact with indigenous populations in the Caribbean, which involved limited armed combat and sometimes the participation of indigenous allies, the conquest of central Mexico was protracted and necessitated significant numbers of indigenous allies, who chose to participate in defeating the Aztec Empire for their own purposes. The conquest of the Aztec Empire involved the combined effort of armies from many indigenous allies, spearheaded by a small Spanish force of conquistadors. The Aztecs did not govern over an empire in the conventional sense but were the rulers of a confederation of dozens of city-states and other polities; the status of each varied from harshly subjugated to closely allied. The Spaniards persuaded the leaders of Aztec vassals and
Tlaxcala (a city-state never conquered by the Aztecs), to ally with them against the Aztecs. Through such methods, the Spaniards came to accumulate a massive force of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of indigenous warriors. Records of the conquest of central Mexico include accounts by the expedition leader Hernán Cortés,
Bernal Díaz del Castillo and other Spanish conquistadors, indigenous allies from the city-states
altepetl of Tlaxcala,
Texcoco, and Huexotzinco. In addition, indigenous accounts were written by the defeated from the Aztec capital,
Tenochtitlan, a case of history being written by those other than the victors. The capture of the Aztec emperor
Moctezuma II, by Cortés was not a brilliant stroke of innovation, but came from the playbook that the Spanish developed during their period in the Caribbean. The composition of the expedition was the standard pattern, with a senior leader, and participating men investing in the enterprise with the full expectation of rewards if they did not lose their lives. Cortés's seeking indigenous allies was a typical tactic of warfare: divide and conquer. But the indigenous allies had much to gain by throwing off Aztec rule. For the Spaniards' Tlaxcalan allies, their crucial support gained them enduring political legacy into the modern era, the Mexican state of Tlaxcala. The conquest of central Mexico sparked further Spanish conquests, following the pattern of conquered and consolidated regions being the launching point for further expeditions. These were often led by secondary leaders, such as
Pedro de Alvarado. Later conquests in Mexico were protracted campaigns with less immediate results than the conquest of the Aztec Empire. The
Spanish conquest of Yucatán, the
Spanish conquest of Guatemala, the conquest of the
Purépecha of Michoacan, the
war of Mexico's west, and the
Chichimeca War in northern Mexico expanded Spanish control over territory and indigenous populations stretching thousands of miles. Not until the
conquest of the Incan Empire, which used similar tactics and began in 1532, was the conquest of the Aztecs matched in scale of either territory or treasure.
Peru 1845. In 1532 at the
Battle of Cajamarca a group of Spaniards under
Francisco Pizarro and their
indigenous Andean Indian auxiliaries native allies ambushed and captured the Emperor
Atahualpa of the
Inca Empire. It was the first step in a long campaign that took decades of fighting to subdue the mightiest empire in the Americas. In the following years, Spain extended its rule over the Empire of the
Inca civilization. The Spanish took advantage of a recent civil war between the factions of the two brothers Emperor
Atahualpa and
Huáscar, and the enmity of
indigenous nations the Incas had subjugated, such as the
Huanca,
Chachapoyas, and
Cañaris. In the following years the
conquistadors and indigenous allies extended control over Greater Andes Region. The Viceroyalty of Perú was established in 1542. The
last Inca stronghold was conquered by the Spanish in 1572. Peru was the last territory on the continent under Spanish rule, which ended on 9 December 1824 at the Battle of Ayacucho (Spanish rule continued until 1898 in Cuba and Puerto Rico).
Chile Chile was explored by Spaniards based in Peru, where Spaniards found the fertile soil and
mild climate attractive. The
Mapuche people of Chile, whom the Spaniards called
Araucanians, resisted fiercely. The Spanish did establish the settlement of
Chile in 1541, founded by
Pedro de Valdivia. South of the
Bío-Bío River the Mapuche successfully reversed colonization with the
Destruction of the Seven Cities in 1599–1604. This Mapuche victory laid the foundation for the establishment of a Spanish-Mapuche frontier called
La Frontera. Within this frontier the city of
Concepción assumed the role of "military capital" of Spanish-ruled Chile. With a hostile indigenous population, no obvious mineral or other exploitable resources, and little strategic value, Chile was a fringe area of colonial Spanish America, hemmed in geographically by the Andes to the east, Pacific Ocean to the west, and indigenous to the south.
New Granada Between 1537 and 1543, six Spanish expeditions entered highland Colombia, conquered the
Muisca Confederation, and set up the
New Kingdom of Granada ().
Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada was the leading conquistador with
his brother Hernán second in command. It was governed by the president of the
Audiencia of Bogotá, and comprised an area corresponding mainly to modern-day
Colombia and parts of
Venezuela. The
conquistadors originally organized it as a
captaincy general within the
Viceroyalty of Peru. The crown established the
audiencia in 1549. Ultimately, the kingdom became part of the
Viceroyalty of New Granada first in 1717 and permanently in 1739. After several attempts to set up independent states in the 1810s, the kingdom and the viceroyalty ceased to exist altogether in 1819 with the establishment of
Gran Colombia.
Venezuela Venezuela was first visited by Europeans during the 1490s, when Columbus was in control of the region, and the region as a source for indigenous slaves for Spaniards in Cuba and Hispaniola, since the Spanish destruction of the local indigenous population. There were few permanent settlements, but Spaniards settled the coastal islands of
Cubagua and
Margarita to exploit the pearl beds. Western Venezuela's history took an atypical direction in 1528, when Spain's first Hapsburg monarch,
Charles I granted rights to colonize to the German banking family of the
Welsers. Charles sought to be
elected Holy Roman Emperor and was willing to pay whatever it took to achieve that. He became deeply indebted to the German
Welser and
Fugger banking families. To satisfy his debts to the Welsers, he granted them the right to colonize and exploit western Venezuela, with the proviso that they found two towns with 300 settlers each and construct fortifications. They established the colony of
Klein-Venedig in 1528. They founded the towns of
Coro and
Maracaibo. They were aggressive in making their investment pay, alienating the indigenous populations and Spaniards alike. Charles revoked the grant in 1545, ending the episode of
German colonization.
Río de la Plata and Paraguay Argentina was not conquered or later exploited in the grand fashion of central Mexico or Peru, since the indigenous population was sparse and there were no precious metals or other valuable resources. Although today
Buenos Aires at the mouth of
Río de la Plata is a major metropolis, it held no interest for Spaniards and the 1535–36 settlement failed and was abandoned by 1541.
Pedro de Mendoza and
Domingo Martínez de Irala, who led the original expedition, went inland and founded
Asunción, Paraguay, which became the Spaniards' base. A second (and permanent) settlement was established in 1580 by
Juan de Garay, who arrived by sailing down the
Paraná River from
Asunción, now the capital of
Paraguay. Exploration from Peru resulted in the foundation of
Tucumán in what is now northwest Argentina.
United States Much of what is now the
Southern United States was claimed by Spain, some of it at least explored by the Spanish starting in the early 1500s, and some permanent settlements established. Spanish explorers claimed land for the crown in the modern-day states of Alabama, Arizona, the
Carolinas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas, and California.
Puerto Rico was also colonized by the Spanish during this era, occasioning the earliest contact between
Africans and what would become the United States (via the free Black conquistador
Juan Garrido). Free and enslaved Africans were a feature of New Spain throughout the colonial period. One of the colonists who conquered Puerto Rico,
Juan Ponce de León, is commonly given credit for being the first European to sight Florida in 1513. For political reasons, Spain would sometimes claim that
La Florida was all of the North American continent. However, the name was typically used to refer to the peninsula itself as well as the
Gulf Coast, Georgia, Carolina, and southern
Virginia. In 1521, Ponce de Leon was killed while trying to establish a settlement near what is now
Charlotte Harbor, Florida. Another failed attempt was conducted by
Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, who set out with approximately 500 colonists and established the settlement of
San Miguel de Gualdape in modern-day South Carolina in 1526. In the fall of 1528, Spanish explorer
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca landed on present day
Follet's Island, Texas. In 1559,
Tristán de Luna y Arellano established the first multi-year European settlement in the United States in what is now
Pensacola, Florida. This settlement predates the foundation of
Mission Nombre de Dios in
St. Augustine by six years, marking an important yet often overlooked moment in the history of Spanish colonization. Archaeological evidence from the
University of West Florida has confirmed the presence of Luna's expedition, which included 1,500 people and lasted from 1559 to 1561. The artifacts discovered at the site provide a direct link to Spain's early efforts to colonize the northern Gulf Coast. The 1565 establishment of the settlement in St. Augustine, Florida, lasted in one way or another until modern times, making the city arguably the oldest in the United States. Permanent Spanish settlements were founded in
New Mexico, starting in 1598, with
Santa Fe founded in 1610.
End of era of exploration , who wrote epic account of years of wandering in the North American south and southwest The spectacular conquests of central Mexico (1519–1521) and Peru (1532) sparked Spaniards' hopes of finding yet another high civilization. Expeditions continued into the 1540s and regional capitals founded by the 1550s. Among the most notable expeditions are
Hernando de Soto into southeast North America, leaving from Cuba (1539–1542);
Francisco Vázquez de Coronado to northern Mexico (1540–1542), and
Gonzalo Pizarro to Amazonia, leaving from Quito, Ecuador (1541–1542). In 1561,
Pedro de Ursúa led an expedition of some 370 Spanish (including women and children) into Amazonia to search for El Dorado. Far more famous now is
Lope de Aguirre, who led a mutiny against Ursúa, who was murdered. Aguirre subsequently wrote a letter to
Philip II bitterly complaining about the treatment of conquerors like himself in the wake of the assertion of crown control over Peru. An earlier expedition that left in 1527 was led by
Pánfilo Narváez, who was killed early on. Survivors continued to travel among indigenous groups in the North American south and southwest until 1536.
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was one of four survivors of that expedition, writing an account of it. The crown later sent him to
Asunción, Paraguay to be
adelantado there. Expeditions continued to explore territories in hopes of finding another Aztec or Inca empire, with no further success.
Francisco de Ibarra led an expedition from
Zacatecas in northern New Spain, and founded
Durango.
Juan de Oñate, is sometimes referred to as "the Last
Conquistador", expanded Spanish sovereignty over what is now New Mexico. Like previous conquistadors, Oñate engaged in widespread abuses of the Indian population. Shortly after founding
Santa Fe, Oñate was recalled to Mexico City by the Spanish authorities. He was subsequently tried and convicted of cruelty to both natives and colonists and banished from New Mexico for life.
Factors affecting Spanish settlement , 1553. Two major factors affected the density of Spanish settlement in the long term. One was the presence or absence of dense, hierarchically organized indigenous populations that could be made to work. The other was the presence or absence of an exploitable resource for the enrichment of settlers. Best was gold, but silver was found in abundance. The two main areas of Spanish settlement after 1550 were Mexico and Peru, the sites of the Aztec and Inca indigenous civilizations, and rich deposits of the valuable metal silver. Spanish settlement in Mexico "largely replicated the organization of the area in preconquest times". However, in Peru the center of the Incas was too far south, too remote, and at too high an altitude for the Spanish capital, so the capital
Lima was built near the Pacific coast. The capitals of both Mexico and Peru (Mexico City and Lima) came to have large concentrations of Spanish settlers and hubs of royal and ecclesiastical administration, large commercial enterprises with skilled artisans, and centers of culture. Although Spaniards had hoped to find vast quantities of gold, the discovery of large quantities of silver became the motor of the Spanish colonial economy, a major source of income for the Spanish crown, and transformed the international economy. Mining regions in Mexico were remote, outside the zone of indigenous settlement in central and southern Mexico
Mesoamerica, but mines in
Zacatecas (founded 1548) and
Guanajuato (founded 1548) emerged as key hubs in the colonial economy. In Peru, silver was found in a single silver mountain, the
Cerro Rico de Potosí, which is still producing silver in the 21st century. Potosí (founded 1545) was in the zone of dense indigenous settlement, so that labor could be mobilized on traditional patterns to extract the ore. An important element for productive mining was mercury for processing high-grade ore. Peru had a source in
Huancavelica (founded 1572), while Mexico had to rely on mercury imported from Spain.
Establishment of early settlements , Mexico City, built by Hernán Cortés in the Aztec central zone of palaces and temples The Spanish founded towns in the Caribbean, on Hispaniola and Cuba, on a pattern that became spatially similar throughout Spanish America. A central plaza had the most important buildings on the four sides, especially buildings for royal officials and the main church. A checkerboard pattern radiated outward. Residences of the officials and elites were closest to the main square. Once on the mainland, where there were dense indigenous populations in urban settlements, the Spanish could build a Spanish settlement on the same site, dating its foundation to when that occurred. Often they erected a church on the site of an indigenous temple. They replicated the existing indigenous network of settlements, but added a port city. The Spanish network needed a port city so that inland settlements could be connected by sea to Spain. In Mexico,
Hernán Cortés and the men of his expedition founded of the port town of
Veracruz in 1519 and constituted themselves as the town councilors, as a means to throw off the authority of the governor of Cuba, who did not authorize an expedition of conquest. Once the Aztec Empire was toppled, they founded
Mexico City on the ruins of the Aztec capital. Their central official and ceremonial area was built on top of Aztec palaces and temples. In Peru, Spaniards founded the city of
Lima as their capital and its nearby port of
Callao, rather than the high-altitude site of
Cuzco, the center of Inca rule. Spaniards established a network of settlements in areas they conquered and controlled. Important ones include
Santiago de Guatemala (1524);
Puebla (1531);
Querétaro (ca. 1531);
Guadalajara (1531–42); Valladolid (now
Morelia), (1529–41); Antequera (now
Oaxaca (1525–29));
Campeche (1541); and
Mérida. In southern Central and South America, settlements were founded in
Panama (1519);
León, Nicaragua (1524);
Cartagena (1532);
Piura (1532);
Quito (1534);
Trujillo (1535);
Cali (1537)
Bogotá (1538);
Quito (1534);
Cuzco (1534);
Lima (1535);
Tunja, (1539);
Huamanga (1539);
Arequipa (1540);
Santiago de Chile (1544) and
Concepción, Chile (1550). Settled from the south were
Buenos Aires (1536, 1580);
Asunción (1537);
Potosí (1545);
La Paz, Bolivia (1548); and
Tucumán (1553).
Ecological conquests and demographic catastrophe The
Columbian Exchange was as significant as the clash of civilizations. Arguably the most significant introduction was diseases brought to the Americas, which devastated indigenous populations in a series of epidemics. The loss of indigenous population had a direct impact on Spaniards as well, since increasingly they saw those populations as a source of their own wealth, disappearing before their eyes. . In the first settlements in the Caribbean, the Spaniards deliberately brought animals and plants that transformed the ecological landscape. Pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, and chickens allowed Spaniards to eat a diet with which they were familiar. But the importation of horses transformed warfare for both the Spaniards and the indigenous. Where the Spaniards had exclusive access to horses in warfare, they had an advantage over indigenous warriors on foot. They were initially a scarce commodity, but horse breeding became an active industry. Horses that escaped Spanish control were captured by indigenous; many indigenous also raided for horses. Mounted indigenous warriors were significant foes for Spaniards. The Chichimeca in northern Mexico, the Comanche in the northern Great Plains and the
Mapuche in southern Chile and the pampas of Argentina resisted Spanish conquest. For Spaniards, the fierce Chichimecas barred them for exploiting mining resources in northern Mexico. Spaniards waged a fifty-year
war (ca. 1550–1600) to subdue them, but peace was only achieved by Spaniards' making significant donations of food and other commodities the Chichimeca demanded. "Peace by purchase" ended the conflict. In southern Chile and the pampas, the
Araucanians (Mapuche) prevented further Spanish expansion. The image of mounted Araucanians capturing and carrying off white women was the embodiment of Spanish ideas of civilization and barbarism. Cattle multiplied quickly in areas where little else could turn a profit for Spaniards, including northern Mexico and the Argentine pampas. The introduction of sheep production was an ecological disaster in places where they were raised in great numbers, since they ate vegetation to the ground, preventing the regeneration of plants. The Spanish brought new crops for cultivation. (See
Mission Garden for specific foods.) They preferred wheat cultivation to indigenous sources of carbohydrates: casava, maize (corn), and potatoes, initially importing seeds from Europe and planting in areas where plow agriculture could be utilized, such as the Mexican
Bajío. They also imported cane sugar, which was a high-value crop in early Spanish America. Spaniards also imported citrus trees, establishing orchards of oranges, lemons, limes, and grapefruit. Other imports were figs, apricots, cherries, pears, and peaches among others. The exchange did not go one way. Important indigenous crops that transformed Europe were the potato and
maize, which produced abundant crops that led to the expansion of populations in Europe. Chocolate and vanilla were cultivated in Mexico and exported to Europe. Among the foodstuffs that became staples in European cuisine and could be grown there were tomatoes, squashes, bell peppers,
cashews,
pecans and
peanuts. ==Civil governance==