WorksheetsSpanish Colonization and Labor, Slavery, and Caste TEST
Total questions: 28
Worksheet time: 14mins
An example of “syncretism” is
elements of Pueblo and Spanish cuisine fusing together
elements of Pueblo and Spanish trading practices fusing together
elements of Pueblo religion and Catholicism fusing together
“Mestizo” refers to people who are
a combination of African and Asian in origin
descendants of native South Americans
are a combination of Native American and European in origin
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado found neither gold nor silver on his expeditions into what is today Mexico and the American Southwest. What wonders did he find, however?
The great city of Cahokia, where he was given endless gifts of corn
The Grand Canyon and the Colorado River; members of his expedition were the first Europeans to see either of them
The Seven Cities of Gold in New Mexico (though he wasn’t allowed to touch them)
What was an effect of Hernando de Soto’s expeditions into what is today the Southeastern United States?
De Soto’s expedition spread Eurasian diseases into the interior of the country, inadvertently killing thousands of Native people
De Soto’s expedition convinced the Native American tribes living in the area, including Seminoles and Cherokees, to band together against future European incursions
De Soto’s discovery of the Fountain of Youth led Florida to become a popular place to retire
Bartolomé de las Casas was a Spanish planter and slaveholder on the island of Hispaniola, in what is today the Dominican Republic. How did de las Casas come to feel about the encomienda system?
He opposed it, because it interfered with his business; he had a slave-trading business that primarily trafficked in African people
He came to oppose and protest the encomienda system as immoral, writing A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies; he would later become a Dominican friar and urge Carlos V to abolish encomiendas
He was one of its staunchest defenders, writing a book called A Brief History of the Glories of Imperial Spain; he would later be made a hidalgo by Carlos V
Hernán Cortés was a Spanish explorer and military leader, also known as a:
Xocolatl
Cacique
Conquistador
What did 1494’s Treaty of Tordesillas accomplish for the Portuguese?
It ended the Eighty Years’ War, freeing up Portugal’s navy and allowing the nation’s sailors to explore instead of fight
It gave Portugal the right to lay claim to nearly all of South America
It created a vertical line through South America, giving Portugal the claim to the east coast of what is today Brazil
What is Francisco Pizarro best known for accomplishing in Incan Peru?
He discovered the thriving arts colony of Machu Picchu
He conquered the Incan empire, ransomed the emperor Atahualpa, and then had him executed
He established a trading post in Cuzco, and introduced the potato to Europe
What was the purpose of the Pueblo uprising?
The Pueblo people aimed to reclaim their land and cultural practices from the Spanish
The Spanish aimed to take cultural practices and foods from the Pueblo people back to Spain
The Pueblo people aimed to convert the Spanish to their religion
What distinguished the Roanoke colony from other colonies along the Eastern seaboard?
It was by far the wealthiest and most successful of the Virginia colonies
It was the first English colony in the New World; the colony dissolved under mysterious circumstances
George Washington’s grandfather, Lawrence Washington, founded the colony
When the Spanish colonized the Americas, they utilized the encomienda system, in which colonial settlers
set themselves up as wards for Native American laborers, extracting labor in exchange for feudal ‘protection’
hired Native Americans as cooks for expeditions into the interior of the South American continent
intermarried with Native peoples and converted them to Catholicism
When Cortés first entered the city of Tenochtitlán in 1519, what happened to Moctezuma II, the ruler?
Moctezuma rallied his imperial guard and prevented Cortés from approaching the city’s center
Moctezuma was poisoned by his nephew, Cuautehmoc, for allowing foreigners into the city
Cortés seized the palace and held Moctezuma hostage there
The Incan Empire was a civilization with a powerful federal government, located in
The Yucatan Peninsula of North America
The Andean Mountains of South America
The Rocky Mountains of North America
Dona Marina, also known as La Malinche, performed which of the following in the service of Hernan Cortés?
She acted as a double-agent, spying for the Aztecs and helping them to repel the Spanish.
She used her knowledge of local plants to create a treatment for smallpox, which had afflicted the conquistadores.
She used her knowledge of the Nahuatl and Mayan languages, as well as her burgeoning command of Spanish, to act as a diplomat between the Conquistadores and the Maya and Aztec peoples.
How was the relatively small Conquistador army of Hernan Cortés able to conquer the great Aztec imperial city of Tenochtitlàn?
Cortés leveraged the discontentment felt by the tributary city-states of the Aztec Empire, like the Tlaxcaltecas and the Texcocans, and allied his army with theirs
The Conquistadores snuck into the city one at a time, inside wicker baskets carried by Tlaxcala vassals
Cortés killed Emperor Moctezuma II himself, and in so doing, demoralized the Aztec people so badly that they surrendered at once
Read the excerpt and answer the question below.
As we wish the said Indians to be converted to our Holy Catholic Faith, and to be taught its doctrines . . . I command you to compel and oblige the said Indians to deal and associate with the Christians of the said island, to work in their buildings in collecting and mining gold and other metals, and to grow food and supplies for the Christian settlers and inhabitants of the said island . . . . and this they are to do as the free persons they are, and not as slaves; and you are to see to it that the said Indians are well treated . . .
-Queen Isabella to Nicolas de Ovando, Governor of Hispaniola, 1503
Which of the following contributed most directly to the enactment of the law in the excerpt?
epidemic diseases reducing the indigenous population
indigenous nations’ requests for religious instruction
European demands for laborers in the New World
religious conflict during the Protestant Reformation
Read the excerpt and answer the question below.
It is public opinion and knowledge that no end of deception is practiced and a thousand acts of robbery and violence are committed in the course of bartering and carrying off Negroes from their country and bringing them to the Indies and to Spain. . . . Since the Portuguese and Spaniards pay so much for a Negro, they go out to hunt one another without the pretext of a war, as if they were deer; even the very Ethiopians, who are different, being induced to do so by the profit derived. . . . They embark four and five hundred of them in a boat which, sometimes, is not a cargo boat. The very stench is enough to kill most of them, and, indeed, very many die. The wonder is that twenty percent of them are not lost.
-Source: Fray Tomas de Mercado, Spanish Dominican Friar, 1587
Which of the following developments contributed most directly to the conditions described in the excerpt?
military conflict between West African peoples
forced religious conversions during the Reconquista
European mines and plantations in the New World
lax enforcement of the British Navigation Acts
Read the excerpt and answer the question below.
As we wish the said Indians to be converted to our Holy Catholic Faith, and to be taught its doctrines . . . I command you to compel and oblige the said Indians to deal and associate with the Christians of the said island, to work in their buildings in collecting and mining gold and other metals, and to grow food and supplies for the Christian settlers and inhabitants of the said island . . . . and this they are to do as the free persons they are, and not as slaves; and you are to see to it that the said Indians are well treated . . .
-Source: Queen Isabella to Nicolas de Ovando, Governor of Hispaniola, 1503
Which of the following was the most immediate result of the edict excerpted?
the Spanish caste system
the encomienda system
the Reconquista
the transatlantic slave trade
Read the passage and answer the question below.
“By virtue of the said ransom, let ships go there and bring away as many male and female Negroes as possible, newly imported and between the ages of fifteen to eighteen or twenty years. . . .The burden of work of the Indians will be eased and unlimited amounts of gold will be mined. This is the best land in the world for Negroes, women and old men, and it is very rarely that one of these people die.”
-Source: Alonso de Zuazo, Spanish colonial judge, 1518
Which of the following contributed most to the increasing use of African slave labor instead of Native American labor in colonial Spain?
Enslaved Africans were immune to most diseases spread by the Spanish, while indigenous people were not.
Enslaved Africans had already converted to Christianity, satisfying the Spanish crown.
Enslaved Africans had knowledge of where to find gold and silver mines in the Americas.
Enslaved Africans could cultivate cash crops at a faster rate, satisfying European demands for agricultural products.
Examine the image and answer the question.
This painting was intended to:
exclude indigenous and African people from society.
define individuals’ social status in Spanish North America.
promote Spanish fashions to wealthy colonial consumers.
illustrate the effects of European diseases in the New World.
Read the excerpt and answer the question below.
"Into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts . . . killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons.”
-Source: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies, 1542.
Which of the following practices did the ideas expressed in the excerpt most directly challenge?
enslaving indigenous people as laborers in the encomienda system
converting indigenous people to Christianity through missionary work
taking indigenous land for colonization by creating unfair treaties
mixed-race relationships between Spaniards and indigenous people
Read the passage and answer the question below.
“By virtue of the said ransom, let ships go there and bring away as many male and female Negroes as possible, newly imported and between the ages of fifteen to eighteen or twenty years. . . .The burden of work of the Indians will be eased and unlimited amounts of gold will be mined. This is the best land in the world for Negroes, women and old men, and it is very rarely that one of these people die.”
-Source: Alonso de Zuazo, Spanish colonial judge, 1518
This excerpt best reflects which of the following historical developments?
debates between the Spanish crown and Spanish religious leaders about the treatment of non-Europeans
responses to the change in the indigenous populations after exposure to European diseases
conflicts over the goals of Spanish colonization and the use of forced labor
indigenous rebellions against Spanish colonialism such as the Pueblo Revolt
Examine the image and answer the question.
This painting could best be used as evidence of which of the following historical developments?
how Spanish colonization led to the rapid acceptance of interracial families in the New World
how Spanish colonization led to a racial hierarchy in the New World based on an individual's percentage of Spanish blood
how Spanish colonization created a society in the New World which excluded indigenous people
how Spanish colonization led to the rejection of racial hierarchy in the New World
Read the excerpt and answer the question below.
"Into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts . . . killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons.”
-Source: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies, 1542.
Which of the following historical figures most likely would agree with de Las Casas’s account of Spanish colonization?
Hernan Cortés
Francisco Pizarro
Christopher Columbus
Moctezuma II
Read the excerpt and answer the question below.
It is public opinion and knowledge that no end of deception is practiced and a thousand acts of robbery and violence are committed in the course of bartering and carrying off Negroes from their country and bringing them to the Indies and to Spain. . . . Since the Portuguese and Spaniards pay so much for a Negro, they go out to hunt one another without the pretext of a war, as if they were deer; even the very Ethiopians, who are different, being induced to do so by the profit derived. . . . They embark four and five hundred of them in a boat which, sometimes, is not a cargo boat. The very stench is enough to kill most of them, and, indeed, very many die. The wonder is that twenty percent of them are not lost.
-Source: Fray Tomas de Mercado, Spanish Dominican Friar, 1587
The excerpt is best understood as a response to which of the following historical developments?
the consumer revolution
the Pueblo Revolt
the Atlantic slave trade
the encomienda system
Read the passage and answer the question below.
“By the middle of the sixteenth century, the Spanish state . . . was creating a political, economic, and institutional framework . . . which consisted of two separate but interrelated politics or ‘republics,’ the Indian and the Spanish, [and] was one of the most distinctive aspects of Spanish colonial rule. It essentially allowed for the political and socioeconomic subordination of the indigenous people at the same time that it granted them a special status as Christian vassals of the Crown of Castile. According to Spanish colonial ideology, the native people’s acceptance of the Catholic faith made them into a spiritually favored and unsullied population with their voluntary subjection to the Castilian monarch earned them rights similar to those enjoyed by natives of Spanish kingdoms.”
-Source: María Elena Martínez, historian, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico, 2008
Which of the following cultural and social shifts resulted most directly from the trends described in the excerpt?
the creation of Spanish charters for colonies run by indigenous leaders
the spread of smallpox to wipe out the indigenous population
the start of several wars between Europeans to expand colonial territory
the incorporation of indigenous people into Spanish society
Examine the image and answer the question.
Which of the following most directly led to the circumstances illustrated by the image?
intermarriage between Europeans, Africans, and indigenous people
protection of indigenous peoples’ and Africans’ religious practices
political alliances between European nations in colonial America
military resistance to European invasion by indigenous nations
Read the excerpt and answer the question below.
As we wish the said Indians to be converted to our Holy Catholic Faith, and to be taught its doctrines . . . I command you to compel and oblige the said Indians to deal and associate with the Christians of the said island, to work in their buildings in collecting and mining gold and other metals, and to grow food and supplies for the Christian settlers and inhabitants of the said island . . . . and this they are to do as the free persons they are, and not as slaves; and you are to see to it that the said Indians are well treated . . .
-Queen Isabella to Nicolas de Ovando, Governor of Hispaniola, 1503
Which of the following contributed most directly to the enactment of the law in the excerpt?
epidemic diseases reducing the indigenous population
religious conflict during the Protestant Reformation
European demands for laborers in the New World
indigenous nations’ requests for religious instruction
