Native and Spanish New Worlds: Sixteenth-Century Entradas in the American Southwest and Southeast ed. by Clay Mathers, Jeffrey M. Mitchem, Charles M. Haecker (review)

This interesting volume, which had its genesis in the 2008 and 2009 meetings of the Society for American Archaeology, brings us a series of informative essays that compares Spanish-Native interactions in the American Southwest and Southeast during the sixteenth century. Comparison of these two very different types of societies helps illuminate the salient features of each and creates an opportunity to present new research. Five themes serve as the basis of comparison: climate, demography, disease, political organization, and conflict.

A major point of comparison between the Southeast and the Southwest is the prevalence of the chiefdom as the form of indigenous political organization in the former and its absence in the latter. In the Southeast the Spaniards found in these hierarchically organized societies a form they recognized and through which they could impose their control. However, it was only in the latter decades of the sixteenth century, after abandoning a policy of direct military subjugation that resulted in ongoing conflict in favor of missionization that the Spaniards found a stable relationship with the Native people. By building alliances with chiefs, using Franciscan friars as culture brokers, they could enhance the status of the former and secure the food, labor, and other goods they needed and thus maintain their presence.

Spaniards entering the Southwest in the sixteenth century expected to take over a prosperous agricultural society, one that would have a leadership structure through which they could readily take control. But the fluid nature of Pueblo life that involved families dispersing seasonally from their villages to take advantage of the limited subsistence opportunities offered by their desert environment did not require such leadership. The absence of an easily coopted hierarchy and the scarcity of exploitable resources led the Spanish to withdraw. The colonizing efforts of the late sixteenth century suffered from the same disconnect between the nature of Pueblo society and the Spaniards’ colonial practices, resulting in rebellions and eventually to the revolt that drove the Spaniards from the colony for a short period.

Climate played an important role in the Spanish entradas into the Southwest and the Southeast, and recent dendroclimatic reconstructions have contributed to a more nuanced analysis of Native-Spanish interactions in this period. The techniques employed by the Pueblo people to produce crops in their extreme environment are described, and evidence shows that the peoples of the Southeast had to contend with periodic droughts as well as tropical storms.

Spanish expeditions entering the Southwest in the sixteenth century found a population that was sparse and spread out, even in the Pueblo provinces, while in the Southeast the Spaniards encountered lands both in Florida and in the Mississippi River Valley that were well populated. This difference is one of a number discussed that might account for the absence of epidemic disease events in the Southwest at that time compared with the Southeast.

Although the Southwest and Southeast were both peripheral to the more important parts of Spanish territory in the New World, the strategic location of the Southeast in relation to the Mississippi River Valley and the sea lanes of the Spanish treasure ships past the Florida coast made it considerably less so than the remote inland Southwest (mainly the Pueblo lands of New Mexico). These areas are not treated in isolation but are linked to global economics, European military power, and competing imperial designs. These chapters provide detailed and thoughtful analyses of the internal dynamics created by the Spanish entradas, bringing together studies based on the investigation of archaeological sites and the interpretation of historical documents—particularly the journals of the expeditions.