Traditions and Encounters Chapter 25 Americas and Oceania Outline

•Born in 1500, Dona Marina, a noble woman played a remarkable role in Spanish Conquest• She made many travels in the Americas as a girl and was sent to the Mexican coast as a slave when she was a girl•When Hernan Cortes arrived on the Mexican coast in 1519 his small army included a Spanish soldier who learned the Maya language•Cortes communicated through the soldier and Dona Marina•She provided Cortes with intelligence, diplomatic and linguistic services•Often alerted Cortes when the native peoples planned to destroy the small Spanish army, thus giving him time to forestall an attack•On one occasion she gave him the precise details of a planned ambush and also helped Cortes negotiate with emissaries from Tenochtitlan and other major cities•Dona Marina gave birth to a son fathered by Cortes in 1522 (a year after fall of Tenochtitlan) and bore a daughter to the Spanish captain that she married•Offspring were first in western hemisphere of indigenous and Spanish descent.

The Macchu Picchu, a UNESCO World Heritage Site ne...

Tenochtitlan, Entrance of Hernan Cortes. Cortez an...

Pizarro and his followers in Lima in 1535

•Norse explorers had a small colony in Newfoundland and fisherman had few dealings, but otherwise contact in the eastern and western hemisphere was infrequent and sporadic•After 1492, contact with eastern and western hemispheres as well as Oceania became permanent and sustained•All lands had profound changes, some being violent and others having a great impact•Europe had powerful military weapons, horses and sailing ships giving them a technological advantage over the rest of the world•Europeans were also mostly immune to all diseases that greatly affected Oceania and the Western Hemisphere•Europeans did not affect Australia and Oceania much until the 19th and 20th centuries, but greatly changed life in the eastern hemisphere•Spanish conquerors established territorial empires in Mexico and Peru that were ruled from Spain•In Brazil, Portuguese entrepreneurs founded sugar plantations and imported African slaves to do the hard, heavy and intense labor•In...