The Spanish Mission System
The Spanish conquistadors found incredible wealth in South and Central America with the Mesoamerican empires such as the Inca, Maya and Aztec. They expected to find such wealth in North America and were sorely disappointed. What they found instead was land, which could yield treasure of a different sort in the shape of crops and plenty of people to farm them, willingly or not. Beginning in the late 16th century, Spanish outposts cropped up in what is now Florida, Texas, New Mexico and Texas. The Spanish reach would extend as far as South Carolina, but those missions wee short-lived. With exploration came settlement, as well as missionaries, both of which proved deadly and disastrous for the Native populations. The Spanish utilized a land-grant system called the encomienda to disburse large parcels of land to wealthy adventurers who had the capital and influence to bring settlers onto the land. These land grants also entitled the encomendero to the se...