Spanish Influence on the Old Southwest

Download or read book Spanish Influence on the Old Southwest written by Jeremy Agnew and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-11-13 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The traditional narrative of the American West tells of a frontier settled by pioneers emigrating from the east to the Pacific coast. Yet Spanish conquistadors arrived in Central America 150 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. With them came missionaries who tried to convert the Pueblo and Plains Indians to Christianity by force, a suppression of native religious beliefs that led to cultural clashes and outright war. This is the story—fully documented—of how Spanish explorers, soldiers and men of the church pushed north from Mexico in the 1500s, seeking riches and establishing settlements from Texas to California 250 years before the influx of American settlers in the mid–1800s.