Native and Spanish New Worlds: Sixteenth-Century Entradas in the American Southwest and Southeast

15. History, Prehistory, and the Contact Experience

The Contact Period, or when different cultures meet and interact, is arguably one of the most interesting to anthropologically oriented archaeologists . Is the encounter hostile or conciliatory? Does one culture change or are both affected? If they change, what aspects of their culture do they retain and what do they discard? In the southern United States, the area Herbert Bolton (1921) called the Spanish Borderlands, this involves the meeting of European (primarily Spanish) cultures with the Indigenous inhabitants (see Foster 1960; Spicer 1962). The degree and direction of change that was brought about by the encounter has been scrutinized by archaeologists for decades. Yet, as this volume shows, there is still much to be learned. There are many obstacles facing the Contact Period scholar. There is the lack of documents, as well as the inherent bias in those documents that do exist. On the material side, there is the paucity of archaeological sites and the bias of the archaeologists interpreting those sites. To make the most of the skimpy and often ephemeral data on this period, a multidisciplinary approach is mandated and cherished concepts must be reexamined. This means moving beyond the dogmatic beliefs about the Contact Period (mostly gleaned from the documentary record) and surveying the material record for new insights. One of the most commonly held views of the Encounter is that of the conquering microbe. That is, Europeans brought with them devastating diseases for which the Native inhabitants had no immunity. This resulted in an immediate, tragic, and tremendous population loss. The following quotes by respected scholars document this belief: The most spectacular period of mortality among the American Indians occurred during the first hundred years of contact with the EuroHistory , Prehistory, and the Contact Experience Charles R. Ewen  History, Prehistory, and Contact 275 peans and Africans. Almost all of the contemporary historians of the early settlements, from Bartolomé de las Casas to William Bradford of Plymouth Plantation, were awed by the ravages of epidemic disease among the native populations of America. (Crosby 1972:37–38) From before the beginning of European colonization on the continent until the twentieth century, more Indians had died every year than were born, and for a simple reason. Colonists brought with them Old World pathogens that escaped from their original hosts to invade new territory. Because the native population lacked immunity to viruses and germs that evolved in the Old World, Indians succumbed in large numbers to ailments that scarcely afflicted the immune colonists. (Dobyns 1983:8) Precontact societies were changed, and most quite radically so, by a century of lethal epidemics introduced from 1493 on that so devastatingly reduced their numbers—at least by two-thirds; the latest researches suggest perhaps by as much as 95 percent—that no aspect of life remained untouched. (Sale 1990:304) These are bold statements, and have been the basis of our understanding of the Contact Period for over a generation. Even as I was preparing this chapter, I attended a lecture by a noted historian on my campus regarding the Native inhabitants of eastern North Carolina. She led off her talk with the assertion that it was “a well-known fact” that disease had decimated the local Native population in North Carolina even before the English could establish a foothold on the coast. This is the accepted wisdom of today, but is it accurate? On what data is this assertion based? Evidence in the ground, or oftrepeated interpretations of past explorer accounts? What else might we be missing as we follow along the well-worn ruts of past scholarship? This volume addresses this very question, and provides some surprising answers. The Symposium The primary goal of the seminar convened at the SAA meetings in Atlanta in 2009 was a better understanding of the interactions between sixteenth-century Native and European communities in what is now the Southwestern and Southeastern United States. The organizers 276 Discussion wanted to explore the many factors that affected this contact, including social, economic, political, military, environmental, and demographic influences. The contributors to the seminar focused on how these factors varied between the Southeastern and Southwestern United States and influenced the Contact experience in both regions. The aim was to better understand the processes of societal change that resulted from the interaction between the Spanish explorers, priests, and settlers and the Native communities on the southern borderlands of North America . Evaluating...