"SPANISH PROTECTORS" AND AMERIGO VESPUCCI
The Spanish Protectors of America (W3:D3) - Queen Isabel recognized all those among the islands as subjects - people under her rule - of her country Castille. She believed that they must be treated with care, and not cruelty, and not enslaved, unless criminal conduct had occurred. She believed also that they should be taught Christian ways, but they should not be forced upon them. She sent protectors - friars, to teach the people, and to report back any instances of mistreatment towards the indigenous. After Columbus’s first voyage, the Pope also recognized Columbus as the Governor and entrusted him with friars.
In 1515, well after Columbus’s death, one Spanish noble, Bartolome de las Casas, gave up slavery and became a Dominican friar. He began to write down his view of the treatment of the native people and cruelties that may or may not have occurred. He was accused of overly dramatizing events to push his anti-slavery agenda. He provided more sources of information about the early Americas - a historiography (written understanding), though his writings of Columbus were not by observation, but from others’ accounts, making this close, but not a primary source. He disdained the treatment of the native people and wrote adamantly against it, requesting to switch African slaves for natives.
Francisco de Vitoria, on the other hand, never visited the Americas and relied upon the writings of other friars to obtain his stance on the people of the Americas. His importance is found in his lectures at the University of Salamanca, and in statements made to the Crown. With Las Casas’s help, they created “The Nueva Laws of 1542,” regulating the treatment of the indigenous.
Activity: You Make the Laws – What are some of the rules you would have made during this time of exploration? Remember that your people, the Spanish, English, or French, needed to expand (in their eyes). How would you satisfy their need to explore, and yet be just to the indigenous people?
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Put yourself in the place of the explorers or settlers; would your rules seem fair to you?
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Put yourself in the place of the indigenous people; would your rules seem fair to you?
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Amerigo Vespucci and the Naming of America (W3:D4)
(search bold words at huntthepast.com to know more)
Did you know that America was named after a procurer of wine, women, and tax collecting? Amerigo was born in Florence and grew up in mere poverty, yet found employment with the wealthy banker, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici. Medici used Vespucci to get things that he wanted, whether it was payments by someone, or goods for entertainment. With this experience, Vespucci became a small-time, but successful, businessman, though he knew that his love was the sea. He changed his focus towards ships, as a pilot, navigator, explorer, and cartographer – or map maker. He made his way to Spain and made friends with the man who was in charge of the finances and supplying for Columbus’s voyages.
Here, his love for the sea grew. But, being inexperienced, he had to learn quickly, by writing down his observations. He would sell his writings each time he returned to land. One of his responsibilities was cartographer, or map maker. He would use his ability of observation and star-based navigation to create very accurate maps of the New World.
His writings became so widespread throughout Europe, that he was just as well-known as Columbus himself. He made the claim of this being a “New World” and it began to stick - the idea that this was not Asia, but a new continent, instead. Working for both the King and Queen of Spain, and their rival Portugal, he was able to take two long voyages and travel most of the eastern coast of South and Central America. His maps were to become so well-known, that a German cosmographer created the first world map, ‘Cosmographia Waldseemuller,’ published the year after Columbus’s death, naming the new continent America (after Amerigo Vesupucci, who died before the name stuck).
Activity: Recognition - If you could name something after yourself, what would it be? Remember that, to name something after yourself, you have to have influence over it, and others must recognize that. With that recognition, what would you give your name to?
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Part 2 – If you were to name the new world of the American Continent, what would you name it? Allow at least two of those names to be named after you. What would the name be?
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