Currently reading: James Axtell, The Indians’ New South: Cultural Change in the Colonial Southeast (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997)
Axtell briefly argues that the exceptional nature of sixteenth-century Mississippian societies was the reason the Spanish conquistadors never meaningfully conquered the region — and while I don’t buy Axtell’s specific argument, I did find it refreshing to encounter a take on La Florida that emphasizes Indigenous power over Spanish incompetence.
Similarly, I was both perplexed and delighted by his throwaway portrayal of the early Spanish Caribbean:
“…the Caribbean chiefdoms, situated in tropical, often mountainous terrain and led by astute and powerful caciques, foiled Spanish grabs for power and gold longer and more effectively than would the more populous Aztecs and Incas, at a punishing cost in Spanish blood and treasure.” [5]
Hmmm! He cites Samuel M. Wilson’s Hispaniola for this claim; this is not an argument that Wilson makes in Hispaniola. (I just pulled down my copy of the book to double-check.) And I can think of half a dozen ways to refute this claim. But! I’m so used to seeing the early Spanish Caribbean being portrayed apologetically as insignificant, unimportant, and a frail prelude to a more important history. (Caribbeanists write this way because they have been traumatized by the jeers and scorn of the Mexicanists and Andeanists, who are always beating up the Caribbeanists for their lunch money.) It’s unexpected to encounter any description of the early Spanish Caribbean as a triumphant success.