Spanish Influence On Native Americans

Native Americans living in Southwest America in the seventeenth century came to see many changes in their society. Freedom for many Native people would be the right to practice their own religion, and keep up their traditions. When it came to land, power, or wealth, the Native people shared this among each other and had a structured way of living before European and Spanish arrival to their homeland. The Spanish craved wealth and land, and took over Southwest America making it like a prison to most of the inhabitants of the land. The Native American people was put in severe and harsh captivity, stripped of their religion, and forced into labor by Spanish troops on their homeland for years. They have changed society for Native people and diminished
They would torture and execute indians who tried to support traditional religious practices. They labeled these religious practices as sorcery, and the women as witches. Many but if not all was stripped of their freedom and was forced into labor for the Spanish, and the women with these beliefs forced to be mistress with very little independence. For many Native Americans sacred ceremonies, statues, and religious markings were very important to how they live out their freedom, so was hunting for food, and the relationship with their women. Native life after the arrival of the Spanish consisted of working in mines under brutal conditions looking for gold and silver to enrich the Spanish landowners. As explained in the textbook (pg 27-35) the Spanish people did not think Natives qualities and traditions was an unchanging part of them, instead they believed that we could be altered and eventually brought up to their level of civilization. Oñate, a Spanish troop sent on a mission to the southwest in the seventeenth century said “any indians who resisted Spanish authority would be crushed”. The missionaries burned idols and
When Native workers would tell landowners they were hungry or sick, landowners would think they're looking for a way out of work and continue to work them without treatment, this caused many of the native population to die from hunger and sickness. Foner shows you the Natives ideas of freedom before the newcomers came and how certain elements (the meaning, social conditions, boundaries) effected freedom for the Native people of Southwest America. When it comes to the Spanish and the Native people of Southwest, as it does with many other conquerors of “The New World”, their biggest conflicts was with religion, land, and wealth. Forner wrote about how the newcomers to this land much like the Spanish Empire had confidence that their beliefs and cultures were superior to those that lived there. So the justification for the many oppressions Native people received was the idea that Christianity would bring them true freedom. However to many Native people it did the exact