hi I'm John Green and this is crash
course US history not stand that's not
gonna work actually I mean we're talking
about the 16th century today when this
was neither United nor States by the way
this globe reflects the fact that I
believe that Alaskan statehood is
illegitimate in fact we're gonna call
this whole show US history but
inevitably it's going to involve other
parts of the world and also not to brag
a small part of the Moon sorry we can be
a little bit self-aggrandizing sometimes
here in America
[Music]
so to begin US history we're not going
to talk about the United States or this
guy we're going to talk about the people
who lived here before any Europeans
showed up
[Music]
North America was home to a great
variety of people so it's difficult to
generalize but here's what we can say
one when the Europeans arrived there
were no classical style civilizations
with monumental architecture and empires
like the Aztec or the Incas and too
native North Americans had no metalwork
no gunpowder no wheels no written
languages and no domesticated animals
however they did have farming complex
social and political structures and
widespread trade networks mr. green mr.
green so they were pretty backwards huh
well I mean or at least primitive
primitive is a funny word me from the
past because it implies a
romanticization these simple people who
never used more than they needed and had
no use for guns
and it also implies an infantilization
it's like you believe that just because
you have a beeper and they didn't they
were somehow less evolved humans but you
can't see the human story is one that
goes from primitive to civilize that's
not just Eurocentric that's contemporary
centric the idea that we're moving
forward as a species implies a linear
progression that just does not reflect
the reality of life on this planet
I get that you like to imagine yourself
as the result of millennia of
advancement and very pinnacle of
humaneness but from where I'm sitting
that worldview is a lot more backwards
than living without the wheel so no one
knows exactly how many people who lived
in North America before the Europeans
gawky some estimates are as high as 75
million but in the present US borders
the guesses are between 2 and 10 million
and like other Native Americans their
populations were decimated by diseases
such as smallpox and influenza actually
it was much worse than decimation as
many of you have pointed out decimation
means 1 in 10 this was much worse than
that it was closer maybe to 8 in 10
which would be an octa summation so
there had been civilizations in North
America but they peaked before the
Europeans arrived the Zuni and Hopi
civilization roundabout here peaked
about 1200 seee they had large multiple
family dwellings and canyons which they
probably left because of drought crash
course world history fans will remember
that environmental degradation often
causes the decline of civilizations I'm
looking at you Indus Valley and also you
entire future earth but complex
civilizations weren't the rule in North
America and now we're about to begin
generalizing a bad habit historians have
partly because there's a limited
historical record but also because
Eurocentric historians have a bad habit
of primitive izing and simplifying
others so I want to underscore that
there was huge diversity in the pre
Columbus America
experience and they're talking about
someone who lived here in 1000 BCE and
talking about someone who lived here
2,000 years later is just inherently
problematic that said let's go to the
thought-bubble
most native groups in most places
organized as tribes and their lives were
dominated by the natural resources
available where they lived so West Coast
Indians primarily lived by fishing
gathering and hunting sea mammals Great
Plains Indians were often buffalo
hunters these tribal fans often united
into loose Confederacy's or leagues the
best-known of which was probably the
Iroquois Confederacy also called the
great league of peace this was kind of
like an upstate New York version of NATO
but without a nuclear weapons or the
incessant international meddling or
Latvians okay it was nothing like NATO
actually religion usually involved a
vibrant spiritual world with ceremonies
geared toward the tribes lifestyle
hunting tribes focused on animals
agricultural tribes on good harvests and
most Indian groups believed in a single
Creator God who stood above all the
other deities but they weren't
monotheistic in the way that Christians
who came to the new world were American
Indians also saw property very
differently from Europeans to First
Peoples land was a common resource that
village leaders could assign families to
use but not to own and most land was
seen as common to everyone as Blackhawk
a leader of the Sauk tribe said the
Great Spirit gave it to his children to
live upon and cultivate as far as
necessary for their subsistence and so
long as they occupy and cultivate it
they have a right to the soil
thanks thought-bubble so many of us tend
to romanticize American Indians as being
immune from greed in class but in fact
there were class distinctions in Indian
tribes rulers tended to come from the
same families for instance that said
wealth was much more evenly distributed
than it was in Europe and while most
tribal leaders were men many tribes were
matrilineal meaning that children became
members of their mother's family also
women were often important religious
leaders women also often doned Wellings
and tools although not land because
again that idea did not exist also in
many tribes women engaging in premarital
skoodilypooping wasn't taboo in general
they were just much less obsessed with
female chastity than Europeans were I
mean I will remind you the first English
settlement in America was called
Virginia the idea that Native Americans
were noble savages somehow purer than
Europeans and untouched by their vices
is not a new one
like some of the earliest European saw
the Indians as Paragons of physical
beauty and innocent of Europeans worst
characteristics but for most Europeans
there was little noble about what they
saw as pure Indian savagery I mean
Indians didn't have writing they
suffered from the terrible character
flaw of being able to have sex without
feeling ashamed and most importantly
they weren't Christians the Spanish were
the first Europeans to explore this part
of the world Juan Ponce de Leon arrived
in what is now Florida in 1513 looking
for gold and the fabled fountain of
youth in 1521 he encountered a collusive
braves poison-tipped arrow and died
before discovering that the Fountain of
Youth is of course delicious died dr.
pepper mmm oh I can taste all 23 flavors
there were many more Spanish explorers
in the first half of the 16th century
including one Alvar nuñez Cabeza de Vaca
who wandered through the American
Southwest looking for gold which I
mentioned entirely because I think that
guy's last name means cow head of course
none of these people found any gold but
they did make later European
colonization easier by bringing over the
microbes that wiped out most native
populations so the Spanish wanted to
colonize Florida to set up military
bases to thwart the Pirates who preyed
on silver Laden Spanish galleons coming
out of Mexico but Spanish missionaries
also came over hoping to convert local
native populations this of course worked
out magnificently just kidding it went
terribly and many of the missions were
destroyed by an uprising of guol Indians
in 1597 and I will remind you
mispronouncing things is my thing in
general colonizing Florida sucked
because it was hot and mesquita we Spain
was much more successful at colonizing
the American Southwest in 1610 Spain
established its first permanent
settlement in the southwest at Santa Fe
New Mexico and you couldn't really say
that it flourished since Santa faz never
got much above 3000 but it had a great
small-town feel and New Mexico is really
important because it's the site of the
first large-scale
uprising by Native Americans against
European I mean the native people who
the Spanish called pueblos had seen
their fortunes declined significantly
since the arrival of Europeans how much
decline well between 1600 and 1680 their
population went from about 60,000 to
about 17,000 also the Franciscan friars
who came to convert the indigenous
people became increasingly militant
about stamping out all native religion
the Spanish Inquisition just wasn't very
keen on the kind of cultural blending
that made early conversion efforts
successful so while the Spanish saw all
the pueblos as one people they also knew
there were tribal
differences that made it difficult for
the Indians to unite and rise up against
the Spanish but nothing unites like a
common enemy and in 1680 a religious
leader named Pope a organized an
uprising to drive the Spaniards out
hope-a organized about 2,000 warriors
who killed 400 Spanish colonists and
forced the rest to leave Santa Fe so the
Spanish colony in New Mexico was
effectively destroyed the pueblos tore
down all the Christian churches and
replaced them with Kiva's their places
of worship but like most awesome
uprisings it didn't last after the
revolt the Spanish were much more
tolerant of indigenous religion and they
also abandoned the forced labor practice
called in comiendo oh it's time for the
new crash course teacher the mystery
document how mysterious the rules here
are simple I read an attempt to identify
the mystery document if I am right I do
not get shocked by this shock pen and if
I am wrong I do okay what do we have
here
the Indians were totally deprived of
their freedom and were put in the
harshest fiercest most horrible
servitude and captivity which no one who
has not seen it can understand even
beasts enjoy more freedom when they are
allowed to graze in the fields but our
Spaniards gave no such opportunity to
Indians and truly considered them
perpetual slaves I sometimes came upon
dead bodies on my way and upon others
who were grasping and moaning in their
death agony repeating hungry hungry and
this was the freedom the good treatment
and the Christianity the Indians
received well that's nice okay so the
mystery document is always a primary
source and since the writer refers to
our Spaniards I'm gonna guess that he or
she probably he is European and to
Spaniards sympathetic to the Indians
which narrows the list of suspects
considerably so it probably wasn't a
Sepulveda for instance who argued that
the Indians might not even be human okay
Stan I'm actually pretty confident here
I believe it is from a short account of
the destruction of the Indies by
Bartolome de las casas Oh Stan just told
me I have the author right but the book
wrong it's a history of the Indies oh I
hate shocks both literal and
metaphorical so we focused a lot on the
brutality of the Spanish toward the
Indians but at least one Spaniard de las
casas recognized that his countrymen
we're terrible this realisation is a
good thing obviously but it leads us to
one of the big problems when it comes to
studying this time in place the black
legend is the tale dat the Spanish
unleashed unspeakable cruelty on the
Indians now that tale is true but that
idea was used by later settlers
especially the English to justify their
own settlements like part of the reason
they needed to expand their empire was
to save the Indians from the awful
Spanish but were the English so much
better yeah probably not as we mentioned
at the beginning of today's episode
American Indians didn't have writing so
we don't have records of their
perspective now some Europeans like de
las Casas were critical of the Spaniards
but most considered the Indians heathens
and implied or even outright said that
they deserved whatever horrible things
befell them so at the beginning of our
series I want to point out something
that we need to remember throughout one
of the great things about American
history is that we have a lot of written
sources this is the advantage of the
u.s. coming onto the scene so late in
the game historically speaking but every
story we hear comes from a certain point
of view and we always need to remember
who is speaking why they are speaking
and especially which voices go unheard
and why thanks for watching I'll see you
next week
crash course is produced and directed by
Stan Muller our script supervisor is
Meredith Danko the Associate Producer is
Danica Johnson the show is written by my
high school history teacher Raoul Meyer
and myself and our graphics team is
thought bubble
if you have questions about today's
video you should ask them in comments
everybody who works on crash course as
well as a team of historians will be
there to answer them thanks for watching
please make sure you're subscribed to
crash course and as we say in my
hometown don't forget to be awesome
you
[Music]