SOME NOTES FROM OUR FIRST COUPLE OF DAYS.

A note on language:

         “Indian” versus “Native American”

Indian Origins:

SCIENTIFIC:

--75,000 to 45,000 years ago=land bridge

--25,000 to 14,000 years ago=land bridge

COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

By the time of Cortés' assault on the mainland, the Spaniards had created in the Caribbean a perfect base camp for that assault. When the conquistadors moved into Mexico, Honduras, Florida, and elsewhere, they carried smallpox and many other maladies, freshened by recent passage through the bodies of the Arawaks. The Spaniards rode on horses bred in the Antilles, and wardogs from the same islands trotted beside them. Their saddlebags were packed with cakes of Caribbean cassava. Behind the conquistadors, herded along by Indian servants, came herds of swine, cattle and goats all of which had been born in the islands. In the span of the first post-Columbian generation, the Spanish had created in the Caribbean the wherewithal to conquer half a world.          ALFRED CROSBY

Who had the advantage upon contact?

Native Ams                or                   Europeans?

ONE EXAMPLE OF CONTACT:

            The Spanish Conquest of Mexico

                        1519-1521