How were the Americas mapped and settled so quickly?

I was reading this page, and the maps that I see on there are somewhat shocking to me. I know that the Spanish managed to take down the native Aztecs and Inca in the early half of the 1500's, but how did they discover the coast and map it out so quickly? I'm also looking at these maps, and I'd like to know how the explorers did it so efficiently and seemingly so fast. As for settlement, I was also wondering how Cuba and New Spain were claimed and settled within only 20 years of Columbus' first voyage, as well as how Argentina, Peru, and Chile were settled within 100 years. It just seems so fast. :)
 

Saphroneth

Banned
I was reading this page, and the maps that I see on there are somewhat shocking to me. I know that the Spanish managed to take down the native Aztecs and Inca in the early half of the 1500's, but how did they discover the coast and map it out so quickly? I'm also looking at these maps, and I'd like to know how the explorers did it so efficiently and seemingly so fast. As for settlement, I was also wondering how Cuba and New Spain were claimed and settled within only 20 years of Columbus' first voyage, as well as how Argentina, Peru, and Chile were settled within 100 years. It just seems so fast. :)
The mapping was done by literally sailing along the coast. By that point they could take reasonable latitude and longitude readings, and that coupled with draftsmanship was enough. Remember a ship of those days could essentially rebuild itself in a good bay with enough trees using only the men on board the ship, so they could voyage for a good long while at a time.

The settling... well, they just took one shipload of people and dumped them on the shore to set up an early town, and from then they shipped new people in in fleets every year.

500 people a year adds up, and that will fit on only a few ships.

But the real key? They actually just layered themselves on top of existing power structures.
 
New Spain and Peru were still full of indigenous people, and even today are still largely mestizo and indigenous. Chile and Cuba also have a large indigenous element in their ethnic make-up.
 
Can't say too much about how they were mapped, but as far as settled? Most of the land south of the Rio Bravo del Norte still has a ton of people of indigenous descent. The Spanish and Portuguese basically just mixed with them. The US thought it had a God-given mandate to explore and settle from coast to coast, and Canada's population isn't all that big. And slaves. Everybody shipped in lots and lots of slaves.

When you look at it that way, I don't see it as being too remarkable.
 
Also, lands like Patagonia and Chaco were settled (by Europeans) very late in Argentina's history, for example. For a long time, Peru and Mexico were the greatest population centers in Spanish America, due to intermarriage with the already large native population.

Let's just say that, in Argentina's case, the Spanish liked to go and found new cities with pompous names wherever they could plant their flag, and just hope they would survive. For example, the first founding of Buenos Aires fell to Indian raids and starvation. Many other early cities in Argentina were destroyed by Indians tired of the mistreating brought by the Spanish. Most colonists came from Peru or Paraguay, where populations and power structures were well stablished, and the rest came from Spain itself as a trickle. For the most part, the early population of Argentina were mestizos from the native populations, sometimes by Spaniards taking native wives, other times by Jesuitic missions who built pretty sophisticated settlements.

And the sailing and mapping wasn't what we could call... efficient... There are many bays and geographic points called Puerto del Hambre, for example in Patagonia (I'll leave the translation to you...), and for a long time, Tierra del Fuego was tought to be part of a larger Terra Australis that did not exist. Many early maps of South America are deformed too.
 
Last edited:
Top