Native Diversity and the Varieties of Conquest and Colonialism

The impact of European conquest and colonisation on indigenous religious practices, including the ritual exercise of violence, was far from uniform, varying in its timing, forms and intensity among the regions of the continent.

The empires of the Aztec and Inca in Mexico and the central Andes succumbed to the Spanish conquerors and their native allies in a few years (1519-21 and 1532-9). Colonial rule was firmly established in these native societies characterised by intensive agriculture, urbanism and class stratification in the first half of the sixteenth century. The Spaniards ousted only the top imperial leaders from offices, installing themselves at the apex of the political hierarchy. Conquest and the subsequent establishment of colonial rule were more difficult in the case of less-centralised native chiefdoms with inequality based on the ranked order of kin groups, such as those prevailing in south-eastern North America, the West Indian islands, most of Central America, the northern parts of South America and the fertile alluvial plains (varzeas) along the major lowland rivers, such as the Amazon and Orinoco. Here each polity or settlement had to be conquered individually. Political fragmentation was greater and conquest and colonisation even more difficult in the rest of the Americas. Mobile people, who combined hunting and fishing with gathering and gardening, populated most of the South American lowlands. Foragers roamed the Arctic and the Great Basin, where agricultural production was impossible due to the harsh climate or lack of adequate tools to break up the grass cover. However, most indigenous groups in North America lived semi-sedentary in towns and villages combining horticulture and hunting. Large parts of these areas remained outside of effective colonial control and were contested between Europeans and Amerindians for decades or even up to the end of the colonial period.

Another factor that decisively shaped the colonial encounter was the different interests of the Europeans arriving on the continent.

Most Iberians strove for silver and gold and to live on the exploitation of the numerous native peasants and workers in Mesoamerica and the Central Andes or, in the peripheries of the colony and in Brazil, slave labour. The Europeans who reached North America in the sixteenth century were mostly explorers, fishermen or traders, and contacts remained mostly sporadic. This began to change only after 1600 when colonists arrived in greater numbers in the quest for agricultural land. Consequently, two quite different types of colonialism emerged. While settler colonies developed in eastern North America where the native population was a disturbing factor to be dispelled or wiped out, colonies of domination based on the sweating of the natives had already emerged in the Iberian core areas in Mesoamerica and the Central Andes in the first half of the sixteenth century. Amerindians in the interior of South and most of North America, in contrast, preserved their independence up to the eighteenth century or beyond, and the major European presence remained confined to a relatively small strip of land along the coasts. While preColumbian cultural practices were soon repressed by colonial officials and missionaries in the colonial core areas, Amerindians were able to uphold their traditions, including forms of ritual violence, to a much larger extent in the other regions where they coexisted with Europeans - as enemies or allies - for more or less extended periods of time.

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Source: Antony Robert, Carroll Stuart, Pennock Caroline D. (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 3: AD 1500-AD 1800. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 710 p.. 2020

Native Diversity and the Varieties of Conquest and Colonialism

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