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   mspari Teacher
   High School - 10th Grade

   The word Conquistador refers to the Spanish explorers and soldiers who, by crossing the Atlantic Ocean, opened up the colonization (and, some have said, exploitation) of much of the Americas in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

   Colonies were set up by many. Spain colonized the largest part of the Americas, including a large portion of what later became the United States. A colony is primarily defined in Merriam-Webster Online as "a body of people living in a new territory but retaining ties with the parent state." All of the Americas were at first colonies of their respective European parent states, sending back agricultural products, goods, metals, and slaves as tribute, or taxes.

   Encomienda comes from the Spanish verb meaning "to place in trust." It was the legal system created by the Spanish that entrusted the Native Peoples living in a specific area of the colonies to the care of a Spaniard (the encomendero). The encomienda system was set up in order to instruct the Native Peoples in reading, writing, and religion, in order to convert them to the faith of the devoutly Catholic monarchs of Spain (Ferdinand and Isabella). It was never meant to include the land of the Native Peoples, but the system became corrupt very quickly and the encomenderos considered it their due.
   A mestizo is the resulting ethnicity of a person born of a mixed European and Native American union.
   A peninsular is a person born in Spain but living in the colonies.

   Sources:

   http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colony

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   Posted by mspari on Saturday November 22, 2008 at 8:30 PM