02c: The New World - 1500 AD

When the first Western Europeans reached the Americas, they saw it as Terra Nullius - land belonging to nobody and therefore open to exploitation. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The latest estimate of the Americas' population in 1500 AD is 40,000,000 people, which is roughly the estimated population of Western Europe at the same time. Most of this population lived in Central and South America, where mighty empires such as those of the Aztecs and Incas emerged. The Aztec and Inca Empires, as we will see, left behind a large and magnificent legacy. Sadly, we have much less to work with concerning the North American Indians. Yet the original natives of what are now the United States and Canada have left an important legacy of their own.

Empires of Central and South America
The Aztec Empire would be more accurately called the Toltec Empire, for this is the name the so-called Aztecs used for themselves. Around 1250 AD the Aztecs (to avoid confusion) arrived in the vicinity of modern Mexico City and by 1375 they had successfully founded there the capital city of Tenochtitlan. From 1440 to 1500 AD, the Aztecs successfully acquired an empire which they basically exploited for the urban elites of Tenochtitlan, a city which reached a population of around 300,000 people. One of the Aztecs' conquests was the fabled Mayan Empire, which some date as far back as 400 BC. The Aztec king ruled his empire with a strong and bloodthirsty hand, backed by a strong military. Yet the empire was already beginning to disintegrate when the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez arrived in 1519. Although he had been ordered not to attack Tenochtitlan, he did just that in 1519; after kidnapping King Moctezuma II, he conquered it in 1522. Once the capital fell, the empire crumbled around it. Spain got busy shaping its newly acquired terra nullius into a full-fledged overseas empire.

The beginnings of the Inca Empire are mysterious. It seems that their rise to power began around 1200 AD as they gradually acquired power over neighboring peoples. At its high point, the Inca Empire extended for roughly 2,500 miles along the western coast of South America, encompassing much of modern Peru and Chile, with parts of Ecuador. Its population at that time is estimated at about a million people. The Incas were usually satisfied to rule by proxy and gradual assimilation – that is, they allowed local rulers to retain control over their peoples, as long as the local rulers paid their taxes and otherwise obeyed the Incas. The city of Cuzco, in the Peruvian highlands, was the center of a large, bureaucratic government connected by an excellent road system. At the center of the government was the Inca – son of the almighty Sun God and supreme master of all his subjects. In 1521, the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro set out with a mere two hundred soldiers to conquer the Incas. Pizarro emulated Cortez's sleazy tactics without enjoying Cortez's success. Pizarro started by kidnapping the chief Inca, Atuahalpa, whom he tried to use as a puppet ruler but finally executed in 1533. By the 1560s, after a long and difficult fight, the Inca Empire had fallen to the Spaniards, adding to the territory taken from the Aztecs. Having wiped out two great American empires, the Spaniards were free to exploit their terra nullius as they saw fit.

The Indians of North America
The earliest known Indian culture in the eastern United States is that of the Adena, which appeared in the Ohio River valley around 1000 BC. The Adena began building burial sites and fortifications around 600 BC. The Adena culture was replaced (or absorbed) by the more advanced Hopewell culture, who built more prolifically and and seems to have traded extensively. Around 500 BC, the Hopewell culture gave way to the Mississipian or "Temple Mound" culture, best represented today by the ruins surviving at Cahokia, Illinois - a city across the Mississippi River from Saint Louis. In fact, the term "Cahokian" has sometimes been used to denote this culture. By the 1100s, Cahokia may have had as many as 20,000 inhabitants living in a town centered around a huge earth mound. Like the Hopewell culture, the Mississippian culture relied on hunting, agriculture and trading; the Mississippians may even have held slaves. For some unknown reason, Cahokia is thought to have been abandoned by 1400 BC, but its remains are a mere three hour drive from the Missouri State University campus.

In what is now the southwestern United States, the Anasazi culture, ancestors of the modern Hopi Indians, settled down in the "Four Corners" region around 500 BC. They lived in stone and adobe "pueblos," often across cliff faces. In the Pacific Northwest, the tribes of inventively named Northwestern culture, known for their "potlatch" festivals, enjoyed plentiful supplies of food and fish and may have formed villages as early as 1000 BC. In the eastern half of the modern United States, a diverse grouping of Indian tribes lived in the heavily forested regions back from the sea, exhibiting equally diverse type of cultures. As a general rule, Indian cultures across the modern United States had a particular reverence for the earth. The earth not only provided them with their livelihood (whether hunted, planted, or gathered), but it played an important role in their various religions, to judge from surviving myths and legends. To them, the earth didn't belong to anyone in particular but to everyone in common. This conception, of course, was totally alien to the Western Europeans. Neighboring tribes maintained relations with each other much as European lands did - sometimes peaceful, sometimes not. The major difference, of course, was that the Europeans brought guns, horses, and alcohol to the Americas.