What They Made of Each Other · Unit 1 · Topic 1.6

Practice questions: Cultural Interactions Between Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans

Are These Not Men?

1511–1512

1. The treatment Montesinos condemned took place mainly within which colonial system?

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Are These Not Men?

1511–1512

Question 1

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Sermon reported later · Henríquez Ureña / Hanke · Adapted

English translation by Pedro Henríquez Ureña, 1945

This voice says that you are in mortal sin, that you live and die in it, for the cruelty and tyranny you use in dealing with these innocent people.

— Antonio de Montesinos, reported by Las Casas; English by Pedro Henríquez Ureña, reprinted in Lewis Hanke, The charge: cruelty and tyranny (Advent 1511)

The treatment Montesinos condemned took place mainly within which colonial system?

Royal grants that let colonists demand labor and tribute from Native villages
Trading posts where colonists bought furs from independent Native hunters
Sugar estates worked mainly by enslaved Africans bought from Portuguese traders
Mission towns where friars gathered Native converts under church authority

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (A) Royal grants that let colonists demand labor and tribute from Native villages

Encomiendas gave colonists on Hispaniola the labor and tribute of Taíno communities, and most of the friar’s listeners held one.
Fur-trading posts belonged to the later French and Dutch trade in North America, not to Spanish Hispaniola in 1511.
Large shipments of enslaved Africans to Hispaniola began around 1518, as the Taíno population collapsed and sugar mills spread.
Friar-run mission towns came later on Spain’s frontiers; in 1511 the Dominicans were criticizing colonists, not governing Native towns.

Skill: Explain how a development fits a broader context

Question 2

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Woodcut title page, Seville, 1552 · Verbatim

The 1552 Seville title page. The English under it is MacNutt, 1909.

English translation by Francis Augustus MacNutt, 1909

The prince at once said, without any more thought, that he did not wish to go there, but rather to hell so as not to be where Spaniards were, nor to see such cruel people. … I saw all the above things and numberless others.

— Bartolomé de las Casas; English by Francis Augustus MacNutt, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (8 December 1542)

Las Casas wrote this account for the Spanish court. Which purpose best explains why he included this exchange?

To argue that conquistadors needed more freedom from royal officials in Cuba
To show that Taíno leaders accepted baptism once they understood its rewards
To persuade the Crown that colonists’ violence was undermining conversion
To urge the Crown to send more soldiers so that missionaries could work in safety

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (C) To persuade the Crown that colonists’ violence was undermining conversion

Las Casas spent his career asking the Crown to restrain conquistadors, and he backed the New Laws of 1542 that curbed their power.
Hatuey died unbaptized in 1512, and Las Casas told his story to show cruelty driving Native people away from the faith.
Las Casas wrote to win royal laws protecting Native people, arguing that Spanish cruelty turned them away from Christianity.
Las Casas argued that faith had to spread by peaceful persuasion, and in 1537 he won a governor’s approval to send friars into a Guatemalan province without soldiers.

Skill: Explain the purpose of a source

Question 3

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Native speech reported by Las Casas · MacNutt 1909 · Adapted

English translation by Francis Augustus MacNutt, 1909

Behold here is the God of the Christians, let us perform Areytos before Him, if you will (these are dances in concert and singly); and perhaps we shall please Him, and He will command that they do us no harm. Note well that in any event if we preserve the gold, they will finally have to kill us, to take it from us: let us throw it into this river.

— Bartolomé de las Casas, reporting Hatuey and his people; translated by Francis Augustus MacNutt, Hatuey names the Christians' god and throws away the gold (1511)

Behold here is the God of the Christians … Note well that in any event if we preserve the gold, they will finally have to kill us, to take it from us: let us throw it into this river.

— Hatuey, a Taíno leader, to the people of Cuba, about 1511, as reported by Bartolomé de las Casas, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (written 1542; English by F. A. MacNutt, 1909)

Hatuey’s warning most directly reflects which development in the Caribbean in the early 1500s?

Native alliances with Spain against rival chiefdoms on the islands
Smallpox epidemics that had emptied Cuba before the Spanish invasion
Missionary campaigns that had won many converts among Taíno nobles
Spanish demands for gold and labor that drove Taíno leaders to resist

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (D) Spanish demands for gold and labor that drove Taíno leaders to resist

Hatuey organized resistance to Spain; the best-known Native alliance with Spain, Tlaxcala’s against the Aztecs, came in Mexico in 1519.
Smallpox first struck the Caribbean in 1518, several years after Spain conquered Cuba in 1511–1514.
Hatuey’s warning concerned Spanish greed for gold, and when the Spanish captured him in 1512 he refused baptism at the stake.
On Hispaniola the Spanish forced Taíno people to mine gold under encomienda, and Hatuey fled to Cuba to warn its people and fight the invasion.

Skill: Explain a causal relationship

Children of the Sun

1528–1539

Question 4

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Retrospective account; translated · Verbatim

English translation by Buckingham Smith (1871 edition)

The Indians, at sight of what had befallen us, and our state of suffering and melancholy destitution, sat down among us, and from the sorrow and pity they felt, they all began to lament so earnestly that they might have been heard at a distance, and continued so doing more than half an hour. It was strange to see these men, wild and untaught, howling like brutes over our misfortunes. It caused in me as in others, an increase of feeling and a livelier sense of our calamity.

— Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Malhado: compassion, prejudice and the islanders’ censure (1542)

Cabeza de Vaca’s description of the islanders best reflects which of the following?

A habit of judging Native customs by European standards of civilized conduct
A Spanish system that ranked Native peoples by ancestry to set their tribute
Gulf Coast peoples’ adoption of mourning customs learned from earlier traders
A reformer’s portrayal of Native peoples as gentle victims to win royal laws

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (A) A habit of judging Native customs by European standards of civilized conduct

Like many Europeans, Cabeza de Vaca treated unfamiliar Native customs as signs of savagery, even when he described people who were feeding him.
Spain’s ranking of people by ancestry operated in its settled colonies, not on an island far beyond Spanish control.
No European traders are known to have worked this coast; the castaways of 1528 were among the first Europeans these islanders met.
Las Casas wrote that way to win reforms; Cabeza de Vaca’s description here insults the people it describes.

Skill: Explain a source’s point of view

Question 5

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Retrospective account; translated · Verbatim

English translation by Buckingham Smith (1871 edition)

We possessed great influence and authority: to preserve both, we seldom talked with them. The negro was in constant conversation; he informed himself about the ways we wished to take, of the towns there were, and the matters we desired to know.

— Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, The healers and their essential negotiator (1542)

The excerpt best supports which conclusion about Africans in the early Spanish Americas?

Africans who served on Spanish expeditions won their freedom when they returned
Spanish officials kept enslaved Africans away from contact with Native peoples
Enslaved Africans could serve as guides and go-betweens on Spanish expeditions
Most Africans who reached the early Spanish colonies arrived as free hired sailors

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (C) Enslaved Africans could serve as guides and go-betweens on Spanish expeditions

Estevanico stayed enslaved after the journey; the viceroy of New Spain kept him and sent him north as a guide in 1539.
The viceroy sent Estevanico ahead of the 1539 expedition precisely to make first contact with Native towns.
Estevanico, an enslaved man from Morocco, handled much of the talking and route-finding for the castaways and later guided Fray Marcos north.
Some free Africans sailed and fought with the Spanish, but most Africans in the early colonies arrived enslaved.

Skill: Explain how evidence supports a claim

Question 6

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Retrospective account; translated · Adapted

English translation by Buckingham Smith (1871 edition)

Our countrymen became jealous at this, and caused their interpreter to tell the Indians that we were of them, and for a long time we had been lost; that they were the lords of the land who must be obeyed and served, while we were persons of mean condition and small force. The Indians cared little or nothing for what was told them; and conversing among themselves said the Christians lied: that we had come whence the sun rises, and they whence it goes down; we healed the sick, they killed the sound; that we had come naked and barefooted, while they had arrived in clothing and on horses with lances; that we were not covetous of anything, but all that was given to us we directly turned to give, remaining with nothing; that the others had the only purpose to rob whomsoever they found, bestowing nothing on any one. In this way they spoke of all matters respecting us, which they enhanced by contrast with matters concerning the others, delivering their response through the interpreter of the Spaniards.

— Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Near Culiacán: healers and slave hunters — reported exchange (1542)

The “Christians” in the excerpt were Spanish slave raiders on the frontier of New Spain in 1536. Which development best explains their activity there?

Colonists’ demand for Native workers, which slave raids helped to supply
The search for guides to lead an expedition to the rumored cities of Cíbola
A royal ban on African slavery that pushed colonists to enslave Native people
The New Laws, which let colonists enslave Native people captured in war

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (A) Colonists’ demand for Native workers, which slave raids helped to supply

Until 1542 Spanish law still allowed enslaving Native people taken in war, and raiders in western New Spain sold their captives as laborers.
The march toward Cíbola began in 1539, and it grew out of the castaways’ own reports after this meeting.
Spain did not ban African slavery in this period; shipments of enslaved Africans to its colonies grew through the 1500s.
The New Laws came in 1542 and did the reverse, banning the enslavement of Native people for any cause.

Skill: Explain how a development fits a broader context

Question 7

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Official report; translated · Adapted

English translation by George Parker Winship (1896 edition)

the people at Cibola sent word to those of this village and in its neighborhood that if any Christians should come, they ought not to consider them as anything peculiar, and ought to kill them, because they were mortal — saying that they had learned this because they kept the bones of the one who had come there;

— Antonio de Mendoza, quoting Melchior Díaz’s report, The mortality message relayed to Mendoza (April 17, 1540)

Which development most directly followed the decision described in the excerpt?

Pueblo towns united to drive Spanish colonists out of New Mexico
Zuni fighters battled Coronado’s army outside Hawikuh that summer
The viceroy halted northern expeditions after Estevanico’s death
Zuni leaders asked the viceroy for protection against Plains raiders

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (B) Zuni fighters battled Coronado’s army outside Hawikuh that summer

The Pueblo Revolt came in 1680, after decades of Spanish colonization in New Mexico, not in the year of this report.
When Coronado’s army reached Hawikuh in July 1540, Zuni warriors refused it entry and fought before the Spanish took the town.
Mendoza did the opposite: in 1540 he sent Coronado north with hundreds of Spaniards and more than a thousand Native allies.
The Zuni towns prepared to resist the Spanish rather than seek their protection, as the fight at Hawikuh showed.

Skill: Explain a causal relationship

Of No Value

1534–1536

Question 8

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Voyage account · translated 1924 · Verbatim

English translation by H. P. Biggar (1924 edition)

making the sign of the cross with two of his fingers; and then he pointed to the land all around about, as if he wished to say that all this region belonged to him, and that we ought not to have set up this cross without his permission. … the cross had been set up to serve as a land-mark and guide-post

— Jacques Cartier; the relation is anonymous in the manuscript and is his voyage's account, The first voyage, 1534 (1534)

The dispute in the excerpt best illustrates which difference between European and Native American views of land?

Europeans held land in common, while Native nations divided it into private estates
Europeans marked claims for distant rulers, while Native leaders governed local use
Native leaders treated crosses as deeds, while Europeans relied on written treaties
Native leaders sold land outright, while Europeans sought to lease fishing rights

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (B) Europeans marked claims for distant rulers, while Native leaders governed local use

This reverses the usual contrast: Europeans recorded private ownership in deeds, while many Native peoples held use rights in common.
Cartier claimed the coast for Francis I with a cross bearing royal arms, while Stadaconan leaders decided by custom who could fish and land on that shore.
Crosses and royal arms were a European way of claiming land; Native nations did not treat such markers as deeds.
No land changed hands at Gaspé, and Cartier raised the cross to claim the region for France, not to rent a fishing ground.

Skill: Explain a historical concept

Question 9

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Voyage account · translated 1924 · Verbatim

English translation by H. P. Biggar (1924 edition)

making the sign of the cross with two of his fingers; and then he pointed to the land all around about, as if he wished to say that all this region belonged to him, and that we ought not to have set up this cross without his permission. … the cross had been set up to serve as a land-mark and guide-post

— Jacques Cartier; the relation is anonymous in the manuscript and is his voyage's account, The first voyage, 1534 (1534)

Cartier wrote for Francis I, the French king who paid for his voyages. How did that audience most likely shape his account?

He had reason to describe Stadacona as Spain’s ally to win support for war
He had reason to stress the protest so that the king would end the voyages
He had reason to present the claim as secure and his conduct as peaceful
He had reason to hide the claim, since the king opposed taking any new lands

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (C) He had reason to present the claim as secure and his conduct as peaceful

Spain had no presence on the St. Lawrence, and Cartier’s goals were a route to Asia and riches for France.
Cartier wanted further royal backing, and Francis I sent him back in 1535 and again in 1541.
An explorer seeking more royal money had reason to show his claim as lawful and orderly, so his report of the protest needs careful reading.
Francis I backed French claims in the Americas and rejected the idea that Spain and Portugal owned all the new lands.

Skill: Explain how audience and purpose affect a source

Question 10

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Voyage narrative · Verbatim

English translation by H. P. Biggar, 1924

Thereupon Dom Agaya sent two women with our Captain to gather some of it; and they brought back nine or ten branches. They showed us how to grind the bark and the leaves and to boil the whole in water. … They call it in their language Annedda.

— Jacques Cartier; English by H. P. Biggar, 1924, The second voyage, winter 1535–36, and the tree called Annedda (1535–36)

A historian argues that early encounters often combined exchange with coercion. Which development, together with the excerpt, best supports that argument?

Scurvy killed twenty-five of Cartier’s men during that same long winter
Stadaconans held out for hatchets when they bargained with the French
French traders formed lasting alliances with the Huron in the next century
Cartier seized Donnacona and nine others and carried them off to France

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (D) Cartier seized Donnacona and nine others and carried them off to France

The deaths explain why the French needed the cure, but they show no coercion by either side.
Bargaining for better goods shows Stadaconans pursuing their interests in trade, which is exchange rather than force.
The Huron alliance of the early 1600s was cooperation, and it came long after Cartier’s voyages.
In May 1536, months after Stadaconan women showed his men the cure, Cartier carried off their leader and nine others, and by 1541 only one girl was alive.

Skill: Explain a relationship among pieces of evidence

The Fifteenth Judge

1542–1555

Question 11

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Royal law · Verbatim

English translation by Henry Stevens (1893 edition)

We ordain and command that from henceforward for no cause of war nor any other whatsoever, though it be under title of rebellion, nor by ransom nor in other manner can an Indian be made a slave

— Charles V (the laws were issued in his name), The New Laws of the Indies (November 20, 1542, Barcelona)

Which development most directly limited the effect of reforms such as the one in the excerpt?

Colonists’ resistance, which led the king to let heirs inherit encomiendas
The Valladolid debate, in which royal judges ruled that conquest was lawful
The spread of Protestantism, which ended papal backing for Spain’s claims
The shift to African labor, which made encomiendas worthless in New Spain

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (A) Colonists’ resistance, which led the king to let heirs inherit encomiendas

After protests across Spanish America and a colonists’ revolt in Peru, Charles V revoked the inheritance ban in 1545.
The Valladolid judges met in 1550–1551, after the 1545 reversal, and they issued no joint ruling on conquest.
The papacy stayed Spain’s ally, and the Reformation did not cancel Spain’s claims in the Americas.
Encomienda and other forms of forced Native labor stayed central in New Spain for decades, even as imports of enslaved Africans grew.

Skill: Explain a causal relationship

Question 12

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Treatise · Verbatim

English translation (1960 edition)

Those who surpass the rest in prudence and intelligence, although not in physical strength, are by nature the masters. … who in prudence, skill, virtues, and humanity are as inferior to the Spanish as children to adults, or women to men

— Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Democrates secundus (On the Just Causes for War against the Indians) (about 1544–1547)

Sepúlveda’s argument drew most directly on which of the following?

Enlightenment theories that government rests on the people’s consent
Observations he had made while living in Spain’s American colonies
Las Casas’s printed accounts of Spanish cruelty in the Caribbean
Aristotle’s idea that some peoples are suited by nature to be ruled

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (D) Aristotle’s idea that some peoples are suited by nature to be ruled

Enlightenment consent theories came in the late 1600s and 1700s, and they cut against rule by natural masters.
Sepúlveda did not cross the Atlantic; he built his case from classical texts and reports by conquerors and officials.
Las Casas printed his Brief Account in 1552, after Sepúlveda wrote, and it attacked conquest instead of supporting it.
Sepúlveda translated Aristotle and used his idea of natural slavery to argue that Spaniards should rule Native peoples.

Skill: Explain how a source fits a broader context

Question 13

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Speech · Verbatim

English translation by Stafford Poole

They are not ignorant, inhuman, or bestial. Rather, long before they had heard the word Spaniard they had properly organized states, wisely ordered by excellent laws, religion, and custom.

— Bartolomé de las Casas; English by Stafford Poole, Apología, the defense read at Valladolid (1550–51)

Las Casas and his opponent at Valladolid, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, agreed on which of the following?

Native peoples had built states whose laws Spain ought to respect
Force was a lawful first step toward converting Native peoples
Spain had a duty to bring Native peoples to the Christian faith
Native peoples were suited by nature to serve Spanish masters

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (C) Spain had a duty to bring Native peoples to the Christian faith

That was Las Casas’s position; Sepúlveda called Native peoples barbarians whose customs justified conquest.
That was Sepúlveda’s position; Las Casas argued that faith could spread only through peaceful persuasion.
Both men accepted Spain’s mission to convert Native peoples; they disagreed over whether war could come before preaching.
That was Sepúlveda’s claim from Aristotle, and Las Casas rejected it, calling Native peoples fully human.

Skill: Compare the arguments of two sources

Question 14

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Legal petition · Verbatim

English translation (2022 edition)

Este huir, y esta natural defensa, muy poderosos señores, llaman y han llamado siempre los españoles, usando mal de la propiedad de los vocablos, en todas las Indias contra, el rey levantarse…

— Francisco Tenamaztle, petition prepared with Bartolomé de las Casas, Tenamaztle’s petition: flight called rebellion (Council receipt: 1 June 1555)

This flight, and this natural self-defense, most powerful lords, the Spaniards call, and have always called, misusing the meaning of words, … rising against the king.

— Francisco Tenamaztle, Caxcan leader in the Mixtón War, petition to the Council of the Indies prepared with Bartolomé de las Casas, received 1 June 1555 (English translation of the Spanish petition)

Tenamaztle’s petition best illustrates which pattern in Native responses to Spanish expansion?

Native leaders accepted Spanish rule once friars explained Christian teaching
Native peoples united across New Spain under one leader to expel the Spanish
Native peoples moved beyond Spanish reach instead of contesting Spanish claims
Native leaders turned to Spanish law to defend their people after armed resistance

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (D) Native leaders turned to Spanish law to defend their people after armed resistance

Tenamaztle had led a war against Spanish rule, and his petition still challenged Spanish conduct.
Mendoza crushed the Mixtón rising with tens of thousands of Native allies, including Tlaxcalans, so Native peoples were divided.
Tenamaztle contested Spain’s claims directly, first in war and then before the Council of the Indies in Spain.
After leading the Caxcan rising of 1540–1542, Tenamaztle petitioned the king’s council, joining diplomacy to military resistance as many Native peoples did.

Skill: Identify a pattern among historical developments

Christ Our Victory

1579–1587

Question 15

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Manuscript proposal, chapter heading · Verbatim

Chap. XI. That the Spaniardes have exercised moste outragious and more then Turkishe cruelties in all the West Indies, whereby they are every where there become moste odious unto them, whoe woulde joyne with us or any other moste willinglye to shake of their moste intolerable yoke, and have begonne to doe yt already in divers places where they were lordes heretofore.

— Richard Hakluyt, Discourse of Western Planting: the anti-Spanish alliance pitch (1584 manuscript)

Hakluyt’s argument was most directly shaped by which context?

England’s alliance with Spain against the Ottoman Turks in the Mediterranean
England’s Protestant rivalry with Catholic Spain for power in the Atlantic
The profits that England was earning from sugar colonies in the West Indies
The departure of English Puritans seeking religious refuge in North America

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (B) England’s Protestant rivalry with Catholic Spain for power in the Atlantic

Elizabeth’s England opened trade with the Ottoman Empire in 1580 and drifted toward war with Spain, not alliance.
Hakluyt wrote as Protestant England moved toward open war with Catholic Spain in 1585, and English writers used Las Casas’s reports of Spanish cruelty against Spain.
England had no sugar colonies until Barbados was settled in 1627.
Puritan migration to New England began in the 1620s and 1630s, decades after Hakluyt wrote.

Skill: Explain how a source fits a broader context

Question 16

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Reported Native opinions · performed adaptation · Adapted

Some would likewise seeme to prophecie that there were more of our generation yet to come to kill theirs and take their places, as some thought the purpose was, by that which was already done. Those that were immediatly to come after vs they imagined to be in the aire, yet inuisible and without bodies, and that by our intreatie and for the loue of vs, did make the people to die in that sort as they did, by shooting inuisible bullets into them.

— Unnamed Carolina Algonquian speakers, as reported by Thomas Harriot, Native explanations of illness, through Harriot (Experiences 1585–86)

Harriot’s report best illustrates which feature of early encounters?

English observers traced the deaths to germs carried by their own sailors
Algonquian healers adopted English remedies to treat the new sickness
Algonquian leaders blamed the deaths on English seizures of their land
Algonquians made sense of the deaths through beliefs about unseen powers

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (D) Algonquians made sense of the deaths through beliefs about unseen powers

Germ theory dates from the 1800s; in the 1580s neither the English nor the Algonquians knew that microbes caused disease.
Nothing shows Algonquian healers using English medicine, which had no cure for these diseases either.
The Roanoke colonists held little land in 1585–1586, and the deaths followed visits to towns rather than seizures of fields.
With no idea of germs, Algonquians explained the epidemic through what they already believed about unseen spiritual beings.

Skill: Explain a historical development

Question 17

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Printed voyage narrative · Verbatim

This marueilous accident in all the Countrey wrought so strange opinions of vs, that some people could not tell whether to thinke vs gods or men, and the rather because that all the space of their sicknes, there was no man of ours knowen to die, or that was specially sicke: they noted also that we had no women among vs, neither that we did care for any of theirs.

— Thomas Harriot, Harriot describes illness and competing interpretations (1588 report)

Which of the following best explains the Algonquian reaction noted at the end of the excerpt?

Algonquian women did the farming, so a town of men without women seemed strange
Algonquian men did the farming, so they expected English men to plant crops
English law barred women from sailing on voyages that founded colonies
Algonquian towns were governed by councils of women who chose the chiefs

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (A) Algonquian women did the farming, so a town of men without women seemed strange

In Algonquian towns women grew the corn, beans and squash, so an all-male colony that grew none of its own food looked strange to them.
This reverses the Algonquian division of labor, in which women farmed while men hunted, fished, cleared fields and handled war.
The 1587 Roanoke voyage carried women and children, so no law kept women off colonizing voyages.
Clan mothers who chose leaders belonged to the Haudenosaunee to the north; the Carolina towns the English visited had male leaders such as Wingina.

Skill: Explain a causal relationship

Question 18

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Hostile governor’s report · performed adaptation · Adapted

our Lorde God was not God, since hee suffered vs to sustaine much hunger, and also to be killed of the Renapoaks … that they should not for any copper sell vs any victuals whatsoeuer: besides that in the night they should sende to haue our weares robbed, and also to cause them to bee broken, and once being broken neuer to bee repaired againe by them.

— Ralph Lane, reporting Pemisapan’s people, Pemisapan’s food strategy and his people’s argument (Spring 1586)

According to Lane, the Algonquians who doubted the English God supported their view with which evidence?

The deaths in Algonquian towns that the English had recently visited
The colonists’ hunger and reports that mainland peoples had killed them
The colonists’ failure to bring any women to live among them on Roanoke
The English burning of a town and its corn over a missing silver cup

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (B) The colonists’ hunger and reports that mainland peoples had killed them

Those deaths led some Algonquians to fear English power, which points away from doubting the English God.
By 1586 the colonists depended on Algonquian corn, and rumors that mainland peoples had killed Lane’s men made the English God look weak to Wingina’s people.
Harriot recorded that observation about English customs, and it did not concern the power of the English God.
The burning of Aquascogoc in July 1585 displayed English force, which does not fit an argument that the English were weak.

Skill: Identify the evidence used in a source to support an argument

Final Review

1511–1590

Question 19

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Reported household exchange · Maudslay 1908 · Adapted

English translation by A. P. Maudslay, 1908

Brother Aguilar, I am married and have three children and the Indians look on me as a Cacique and captain in wartime,—You go and God be with you, but I have my face tatooed and my ears pierced, what would the Spaniards say should they see me in this guise? and look how handsome these boys of mine are, for God’s sake give me those green beads you have brought and I will give the beads to them and say that my brothers have sent them from my own country. What is this slave coming here for talking to my husband,—go off with you, and don’t trouble us with any more words.

— Bernal Díaz del Castillo, reporting Aguilar's account; English by A. P. Maudslay, Guerrero refuses the summons; his Maya wife sends Aguilar away (1519 encounter)

Guerrero’s family is an early example of which development in Spanish America?

The use of castaways and captives as interpreters during conquest
The spread of encomiendas that gave Spanish settlers Native labor
The growth of a population of mixed European and Native ancestry
Royal rules that required Spanish settlers to marry Spanish women

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (C) The growth of a population of mixed European and Native ancestry

Aguilar became Cortés’s interpreter; Guerrero refused to rejoin the Spanish and stayed with his Maya family.
Guerrero held no encomienda; he lived under Maya authority as a war captain, not as a Spanish lord.
Guerrero’s sons with his Maya wife are often described as early mestizos, and people of mixed ancestry became numerous in Spanish America during the 1500s.
The Crown did not require settlers to marry Spanish women, and unions and marriages with Native women were common.

Skill: Explain how one development relates to another

Question 20

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Encyclopedia entry · Verbatim

having become familiar with business practice in France, Domagaya and Taignoagny took their kinsmen to task for accepting trifling articles of no value in return for their goods.

— Marcel Trudel, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Donnacona (1966)

Cartier’s own account called the two brothers “rogues” for giving this advice. Trudel’s interpretation differs from Cartier’s mainly because Trudel

argues that the French offered goods of high value to win allies
treats the brothers’ advice as informed bargaining, not trickery
claims that Stadacona had no earlier experience of European trade
blames the dispute on mistakes made by the French interpreters

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (B) treats the brothers’ advice as informed bargaining, not trickery

Trudel’s point is that the brothers judged the French goods to be of little value, the reverse of this claim.
Trudel credits the brothers with knowledge of French prices gained during their stay in France, so their advice reads as hard bargaining rather than cheating.
Peoples of the Gulf of St. Lawrence had traded with European fishermen before Cartier, and in 1534 Mi’kmaq traders held up furs to his ships.
The brothers were themselves the interpreters, and Trudel presents them as understanding French trade well.

Skill: Compare the arguments of two sources

Question 21

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Written defense for the junta · Verbatim

English translation by Stafford Poole, 1974

The Indians are our brothers, and Christ has given his life for them. Why, then, do we persecute them with such inhuman savagery when they do not deserve such treatment?

— Bartolomé de las Casas; English translation by Stafford Poole, Apología: the closing appeal (1550–1551)

Which statement best describes the result of the debate in which Las Casas made this argument?

The judges ruled for Las Casas, and Spain ended its conquests in America
The debate led the Crown to issue the New Laws, which banned Native slavery
The judges ruled for Sepúlveda, and the Crown restored Native slavery
The judges issued no joint ruling, and conquest and coerced labor went on

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (D) The judges issued no joint ruling, and conquest and coerced labor went on

Spain kept expanding after 1551, founding St. Augustine in 1565, conquering the Philippines from 1565 and settling New Mexico in 1598.
The New Laws came in 1542, eight years before the debate began.
No joint ruling favored Sepúlveda, and the New Laws’ ban on enslaving Native people stayed in force.
The judges never gave a joint verdict, and encomienda, forced labor and new conquests continued in Spanish America.

Skill: Explain continuity and change

Question 22

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Reported collective dialogue · performed adaptations · Adapted

desiring vs not to gather or spill any of their corne, for that they had but little. We answered them, that neither their corne, nor any other thing of theirs, should be diminished by any of vs, and that our comming was onely to renew the old loue, that was betweene vs and them at the first, and to liue with them as brethren and friends: which answer seemed to please them well, wherefore they requested vs to walke vp to their Towne, who there feasted vs after their maner; and desired vs earnestly, that there might bee some token or badge giuen them of vs, whereby we might know them to be our friends, when we met them any where out of the Towne or Island. They told vs further, that for want of some such badge, diuers of them were hurt the yeere before, being found out of the Island by Master Lane his company, whereof they shewed vs one, which at that very instant lay lame, and had lien of that hurt euer since: but they sayd, they knew our men mistooke them, and hurt them instead of Winginos men, wherefore they held vs excused.

— Croatoan people and Stafford’s English party, as reported by John White, Spare the corn; recognize us as friends (July 30, 1587)

The Croatoans’ request best illustrates which Native strategy toward European colonizers?

Withholding food to pressure the colonists to leave the region
Negotiating terms that protected a community’s people and its food
Accepting an English title that placed their lands under the queen
Converting to Christianity to gain English protection in wartime

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (B) Negotiating terms that protected a community’s people and its food

Wingina’s people used that strategy in 1586; the Croatoans asked to be recognized as friends instead.
After English soldiers had wounded some of them in 1586, the people of Croatoan used diplomacy to protect their people and their scarce corn.
The English named Manteo Lord of Roanoke on Ralegh’s order two weeks later; the Croatoans had asked for safety, not English rule.
Manteo’s baptism in August 1587 was one man’s, ordered by Ralegh, and nothing shows the Croatoan community converting.

Skill: Explain a historical development

Question 23

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Voyage narrative · Verbatim

sounded with a trumpet a call, & afterwards many familiar English tunes of songs … but we had no answer … curiously carved these fair Roman letters C R O … but we found no such sign of distress … CROATOAN without any cross or sign of distress … my books torn from the covers, the frames of some of my pictures and maps rotten and spoiled with rain, and my armor almost eaten through with rust … a certain token of their safe being at Croatoan, which is the place where Manteo was born

— John White; spelling and punctuation modernized by the National Humanities Center, The fifth voyage of John White: return to Roanoke (1590)

Which conclusion about the Roanoke colonists does White’s evidence best support?

They had died in a Spanish raid during England’s war with Spain
They had been killed by Wingina’s people in revenge for his death
They had planned a move, but the evidence leaves their fate unknown
They had sailed for England in small boats that White left with them

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (C) They had planned a move, but the evidence leaves their fate unknown

No record shows a Spanish attack on Roanoke, and White found no cross, the sign of danger the colonists had agreed to carve.
White found no sign of distress, and the carving pointed to Croatoan, home of the colony’s Native allies.
The carved name matched the colonists’ plan to mark any move, but White never reached Croatoan, and no one has proved what became of them.
No record shows any colonist reaching England, and the carving named Croatoan, an island to the south.

Skill: Explain how evidence supports a claim

Question 24

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Treatise · Verbatim

English translation (1960 edition)

Those who surpass the rest in prudence and intelligence, although not in physical strength, are by nature the masters. … who in prudence, skill, virtues, and humanity are as inferior to the Spanish as children to adults, or women to men

— Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Democrates secundus (On the Just Causes for War against the Indians) (about 1544–1547)

Sepúlveda’s reasoning most closely resembles which later development in the Americas?

Claims that Africans were inferior by nature and fit for slavery
Claims that land left unfenced and unplowed belonged to no one
Claims that colonists held the same rights as subjects in England
Claims that Native nations were sovereign and could make treaties

Answer and reasoning

Answer: (A) Claims that Africans were inferior by nature and fit for slavery

As slavery came to mean African slavery, its defenders argued that Africans were inferior by nature, the same kind of ranking Sepúlveda applied to Native peoples.
John Winthrop used that land-use argument in 1629 to justify English settlement, but it rested on how land was used, not on a natural ranking of peoples.
Colonists’ claims to the rights of Englishmen in the 1700s argued for equality with other subjects, not for ruling others.
Treating Native nations as sovereign treaty partners recognized their authority, the opposite of Sepúlveda’s case for ruling them.

Skill: Explain a connection across periods