Interaction of Old World people with New World

Spanish explorers set out to find new opportunities in northern parts of Mexico and the Caribbean.

They established towns, forts, and missions.

The Caribbean was the first place the spanish. The people who were prominently there were known as the Tainos. Christopher Columbus and his followers made the base of spanish operations, Hispaniola, in the Caribbean.There they created the fort of Santo Domingo. This later became the Spanish Caribbean capital. They began to mine in order to make a living. The workers came mostly from the Tainos’ ranks. They used encomienda in order to make Tainos work for the spanish. It was brutal labor, in which Tainos occasionally rebelled against. Smallpox, a disease transmitted from spanish explorers to the Caribbean, caused a serious effect on the population of the Caribbean.

The Spanish soon began to explore Mexico. Conquistadors began to conquer Mexico in search of gold and glory. The conquistador, Hernán Cortés, captured the Aztec emperor of Tenochtitlan. Aztec forces drove out the invaders, but the Conquistadors soon sieged the city, starving it to surrender. Like the Caribbean, disease also decimated Mexico, which was spread by the spanish. Francisco Pizarro led explorers to Peru. They had previously taken the Inca capital of Cusco. They held a meeting for Inca elite in Peru, where the spanish ended up killing most of them. Pizarro than forced the Inca ruler hand over gold, and immediately after, they killed him.

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