The Spanish Colonies

Kamani Lynch

Battles over claims • By the 1500s several European nations including

Spain had sent explorers to claim land in the Americas.

• Most explorers would just step onto a beach and claim all the land for hundreds of miles around

• They often claim land they knew nothing about• American Indians also lived in most places the

explorers claimed• Some of their lands were ruled by other counntries

New Spain• Very few Spanish people settled in New Spain• After they discovered gold and silver though they

could’ve been rich they still farmed• By the 1550, there were about 100,000 Spanish

colonist spread across the Americas• The Spanish needed many workers to grow crops,

and mine gold and silver so they forced Indians to slavery

• Many Indian slaves died from diseases such as measles, influenza, and smallpox

• The borderlands stretched across what are today northern Mexico and the southern United States from Florida to California

• Some the Spanish soldiers led the way by building presidios or forts

• 1500 Soldiers, Sailors, and Settlers from Spain and reached St. Augustine Florida

• In Florida they built the first permanent European settlement

• The missionaries built religious settlements called missions in much of the southern half of north Americas

Settling the borderlands