SoumikaKarusala,AnjaliNagaraja,AnushaJacob,AllisonLi:1stperiod

The Use of Indian Labor: Europe In The New World

Most of the natives in the New World died of the diseases that the Europeans
unknowingly brought over with them.
European colonization would have been limited without slavery and slave
trading.
The elite entrepreneurial Europeans sought labourers to cultivate cash crops,
mining precious metals, tending livestock, domestic services and in various
artisanal trades.
Natives were often sent from Central America and were shipped to the West
Indies.
The European trade of the American Indians were initiated by Columbus in
1493 as he shipped Indians to Spain, to fund his expeditions for the New World.
European merchants seeking high returns on investment were responsible for
imposition of the Atlantic slave trade.
The Spanish were dependent on Indian labor in most of their colonies.
The Spanish expanded slave trade from Hispaniola to Puerto Rico, Jamaica,
Cuba, and the Bahamas.
As diseases and slavery led to the decline of the indigenous populations, the
Spaniards began to raid Indian islands in Central America, such as Curacao,
Trinidad, and Aruba.
650,000 Indians in coastal Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras were under
Spanish capture in the 16th century.
Conquistadors used Indians as tamemes, which were slaves that would carry
their goods on distant journeys, most of which was embarked to find even
more land and people to conquer.
Indians were also enslaved in the form of yanaconaje, which was were natives
were tied to specific lands to labor, similar to European serfdom.
Under the encomienda system and Chattel Slavery, natives had to pay tribute
to an encomendero, who in provided protection and conversion to Christianity
in exchange. Encomendero systems were enforced particularly in Venezuela,
Chile, Paraguay, and in the Mexican Yucatan into the 19th century. These
systems were necessary forms of colonial exploitation that permitted the
formation of a surplus, sufficient to make such colonial adventures worthwhile.
By 1542, the Spanish outlawed enslavement of most Indians, which led to new
forms of servitude for Indians.

SoumikaKarusala,AnjaliNagaraja,AnushaJacob,AllisonLi:1stperiod

Repartimiento, which was a form of servitude which required Indians to labor

on missions for a specific period of time each year. This went on in Colombia,
Ecuador, and Florida and continued on into the early 1820s. In these missions,
laborers worked in the silver mines, built forts and roads, housing for the army,
church and government, and even worked in agriculture and domestic labor.
The Europeans acquired American Indian land either through complex
negotiations or perpetual warfare.
Indians also sold slaves to Europeans in exchange for trade goods and to obtain
alliances with the Europeans and their Indian allies. They had no choice, as they
did not want to become slaves themselves, but eventually they were all
subjective to the Europeans mercy.

AmericanIndiansgivingatalktoColonelBouquet
inaconferenceataCouncilFire,nearhisCamp
ontheBanksofMuskinguminNorthAmericain
1764,engravingbyC.Grignion,1766.