French and Spanish Influance essays

French and Spanish Influance essays The French and Spanish responded differently to the culture and economy of the Native Americans. Even though both countries traveled to the New World for riches, their ways of obtaining the riches could not have been more different. The Spanish decided to conquer and enslave the Indians. The French traded peacefully with the Indians and changed both the Indian culture and their own culture to gain confidence with the Indians. The type of Spaniard, which arrived on the New World before 1750, was either a monk or a conquistador. The job of the conquistadors was to capture Indian cities and then loot them of all their riches. After the capturing and looting of cities, the conquistadors would usually enslave all the surviving Indian people to earn money for the conquistador. The Spanish government did not mind this because they got one fifth of all the profits of these settlements known as The Royal Fifth. Because of the lack of Spanish women, the conquistadors intermarried with the Indians creating a new race called Mestizos. In Spain, being a Mestizo or having Native American blood in your veins was looked down upon. The social hierarchy consisted of pure blood Spanish being at the top and pure Native Americans being at the bottom. This created a natural block against any people with Native American blood holding a high position in Spain, which was probably one of the main reasons Indian slavery was never put into question by the Spaniards. The monks of Spain were no better then the conquistadors. The monks only goal was to convert the Native Americans to Catholicism. These servants of God destroyed the Indian temples and built churches where they once lay. No part of Indian culture was allowed to be retained by the Native Americans. The effect of this was the Indians did not accept Catholicism but they also lost ties to their own culture. The French had a more peaceful approach to the Indians. The f...