Arawak 1
The great undoing of the Arawak was the discovery of gold. The gold fields that the Spanish found were small, and to make them pay, large amounts of labor were needed. When Spanish labor proved inadequate, they impressed natives. Spaniards used the slightest provocations to enslave whole villages, and even created disputes in order to justify their cruelty. The large size of the Arawak population concerned Spaniards mindful of potential uprisings, and led them to kill important leaders and demoralize the people.
The Arawak grew restless at the continuing privations of the Spanish, the diseases they brought, and the flood of new arrivals. Several Arawak chiefs attempted to revolt in 1495, but they were put down with the help of other rival chieftains. The losers became laborers and household servants.
For the next several decades, oppression of the Arawak escalated. As more Spaniards came to the New World, the need for slave labor increased. Villages were overrun, leaders burned at the stake to terrorize others into submission, and the remainder taken into captivity as slaves.
Within a few decades of Columbus's first discovery of the major islands, Arawak populations had dropped to a tenth of what they had been, or less. Smaller islands were completely depopulated and their residents brought to the main islands as slaves. The Arawak, as Columbus knew them, are now extinct. Their descendants, through marriages to Spanish settlers, survive today, but their culture is known only through a few artifacts and the accounts of Columbus and others.
The Aztec were one of the two most advanced civilizations in the Americas at the time of the European invasion. Their empire was a hierarchy of city-states in the center of modern Mexico dominated by the three largest city-states: Tenochitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. The most powerful of the three was Tenochitlan, one of the largest and most beautiful cities in the world at the time. It occupied 2 islands that had been melded into one in the center of a large lake. The ruler of Tenochitlan and the Aztec Empire was Moctezuma II, later called Montezuma by the Spaniards.
Spreading out from the central Mexican plateau and down into the surrounding lowlands were smaller city-states, vassals of the mexicas, as the Aztec called themselves. The farther one traveled from the center at Tenochitlan, the looser were the bonds that bound the empire together. In the outlying regions, war was common—even between various cities of the Aztec Empire. Alliances were made and broken, rivals for control of the empire rose and fell.
The foundation of Aztec civilization was the food crop maize, primarily stored and consumed in the form of corn meal. The soil of the valley at the center of the empire was rich, and water was available from lakes formed by runoff from surrounding mountains. Intense agriculture and irrigation provided crop yields that supported one of the largest populations in the world.
The Aztec were skilled engineers, creating large ceremonial pyramids that seemed to rise from the lake. Fresh water was brought into the city from the mountains by aqueducts, rivaling the vaunted water works of the Roman Empire. Most streets in the capital were canals, and the city itself was connected to the mainland by three massive stone causeways.
One of the most astonishing, if brutal, aspects of Aztec culture was the prominent role of human sacrifice in their religious ritual. They believed their past and future success depended on continual offerings of human hearts cut from living victims. In one instance, 20,000 or more victims were sacrificed in this manner. Skulls were piled in racks around the temples, and the city reeked for weeks despite the profusion of fragrant flowers. The bow and arrow actually fell out of favor because hand-held weapons more easily facilitated the capture of prisoners destined for sacrifice.
Contact with Europeans came in 1519 when Hernán Cortéz landed near modern Vera Cruz with a small army of Spanish conquistadors, Cuban natives, and slaves. The Spanish invaders could have been crushed by the mighty Aztec armies, but Moctezuma hesitated because he wondered if Cortéz was a legendary god from the past returning as prophesied. Cortéz shrewdly took advantage of Moctezuma's hesitation and made alliances with lowland enemies of the Aztec. Cortéz eventually conquered Tenochitlan in a campaign remarkable for its audacity, duplicity, and brutality. He was aided by an epidemic of European diseases that swept the Aztec Empire, killing nearly half the population and causing chaos and disorder.
The Spanish sacked the Aztec Empire and carted off its gold and silver. The beautiful white-washed city of Tenochitlan was almost entirely destroyed in the final struggle. The Aztec people became slaves, laborers, silver miners, and peasants on Spanish estates.
In Mexico today, there has been a reawakening of the native culture. Descendants of Aztec and other natives form the majority of the population, and they are asserting their influence in politics and the arts.
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