Spanish Interactions With Native Americans

The Spanish and English cultures were scarcely similar and notably different because of the interaction with indigenous people and the timing in which the interactions occurred. The Spanish and English were very different in how they interacted with the indigenous people. The Spanish main reason for coming to North America was to spread Catholicism. In the Catholic church if two people were both Catholic then the two people would receive the sacrament of marriage. After marriage the two would create a Catholic of their own. This had created 5 new races of people. The races of humanity was then looked at as social classes. The highest social class was a full white European, then a mestizos, which was a someone who was European and an Indian, followed by Indians, African slaves, and lastly a Zambos,

The Spanish and English were also very different because of the timing of the interaction with the indigenous people. The Spanish had come to the Americas in 1492. This was one of the first main interactions between non native people for the Indians. The Spanish believed that if the Natives were not Catholic then the Natives were to be tortured or killed. In result of this treatment of the Indians the population had dropped from about three million to roughly sixty thousand. This had then lead to a difference in the interaction of the Indians with the English. The English had come to the Americas in 1607 about one hundred years after the Spanish. This changed the interaction because since it was years later there was not as many Indians to interact with the English. The English had not felt threatened by the Indians and thus treated them poorly. The English had also brought in diseases such as bubonic plague, chicken pox, pneumonic plague, cholera, diphtheria, influenza, measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, typhus, tuberculosis, and whooping