第一章 美洲原住民

Source / 原文: https://www.americanyawp.com/text/01-the-new-world/

I. Introduction

一、引言

Europeans called the Americas “the New World.” But for the millions of Native Americans they encountered, it was anything but. Humans have lived in the Americas for over ten thousand years. Dynamic and diverse, they spoke hundreds of languages and created thousands of distinct cultures. Native Americans built settled communities and followed seasonal migration patterns, maintained peace through alliances and warred with their neighbors, and developed self-sufficient economies and maintained vast trade networks. They cultivated distinct art forms and spiritual values. Kinship ties knit their communities together. But the arrival of Europeans and the resulting global exchange of people, animals, plants, and microbes—what scholars benignly call the Columbian Exchange—bridged more than ten thousand years of geographic separation, inaugurated centuries of violence, unleashed the greatest biological terror the world had ever seen, and revolutionized the history of the world. It began one of the most consequential developments in all of human history and the first chapter in the long American yawp.

欧洲人称美洲为“新世界”。但对于他们所遇到的数百万土著美洲人来说，这一称呼并不恰当。人类在美洲生活了超过一万年。这片土地上充满活力和多样性，土著美洲人讲着数百种语言，创造了数千种独特的文化。他们建立了定居的社区，遵循季节性的迁徙模式，通过联盟维护和平，与邻近的部落进行战争，发展自给自足的经济，维持广泛的贸易网络。他们培育了独特的艺术形式和精神价值观，亲属关系将他们的社区紧密联系在一起。然而，欧洲人的到来以及由此引发的全球人、动物、植物和微生物的交流——学者们友好地称之为“哥伦布大交换”——打破了超过一万年的地理隔离，开启了几个世纪的暴力历史，释放了人类历史上最大的生物恐慌，并彻底改变了世界的历史。这一事件开始了人类历史上最重要的发展之一，也开启了漫长的“美利坚呐喊”的第一章。

II. The First Americans

二、第一批美洲人

American history begins with the first Americans. But where do their stories start? Native Americans passed stories down through the millennia that tell of their creation and reveal the contours of Indigenous belief. The Salinan people of present-day California, for example, tell of a bald eagle that formed the first man out of clay and the first woman out of a feather. According to a Lenape tradition, the earth was made when Sky Woman fell into a watery world and, with the help of muskrat and beaver, landed safely on a turtle’s back, thus creating Turtle Island, or North America. A Choctaw tradition locates southeastern peoples’ beginnings inside the great Mother Mound earthwork, Nunih Waya, in the lower Mississippi Valley. Nahua people trace their beginnings to the place of the Seven Caves, from which their ancestors emerged before they migrated to what is now central Mexico. America’s Indigenous peoples have passed down many accounts of their origins, written and oral, which share creation and migration histories.

美国历史始于第一批美洲人。但是，他们的故事从何而起？土著美洲人通过千年传承的故事讲述了他们的创世和土著信仰的轮廓。例如，现今加利福尼亚州的萨利南人讲述了一只秃鹰用粘土塑造了第一个男人，用一根羽毛塑造了第一个女人。根据列那佩族的传统，天空女人在一个水世界中坠落，借助海狸和麝鼠的帮助，安全降落在一只乌龟的背上，从而创造了“乌龟岛”或北美洲。乔克托族的传统则将东南部人民的起源置于位于下密西西比谷的伟大母土丘“Nunih Waya”之内。纳瓦族人追溯他们的起源到七个洞穴之地，从那里他们的祖先走出，然后迁移到如今的墨西哥中部。美国的土著民族传承了许多关于他们起源的记载，包括书面和口头的，分享着创世和迁徙的历史。

Archaeologists and anthropologists, meanwhile, focus on migration histories. Studying artifacts, bones, and genetic signatures, these scholars have pieced together a narrative that claims that the Americas were once a “new world” for Native Americans as well.

考古学家和人类学家则专注于迁徙历史。通过研究文物、骨骼和基因特征，这些学者拼凑出了一种叙述，声称美洲对土著美洲人来说也是一个“新世界”。

The last global ice age trapped much of the world’s water in enormous continental glaciers. Twenty thousand years ago, ice sheets, some a mile thick, extended across North America as far south as modern-day Illinois. With so much of the world’s water captured in these massive ice sheets, global sea levels were much lower, and a land bridge connected Asia and North America across the Bering Strait. Between twelve and twenty thousand years ago, Native ancestors crossed the ice, waters, and exposed lands between the continents of Asia and America. These mobile hunter-gatherers traveled in small bands, exploiting vegetable, animal, and marine resources into the Beringian tundra at the northwestern edge of North America. DNA evidence suggests that these ancestors paused—for perhaps fifteen thousand years—in the expansive region between Asia and America. Other ancestors crossed the seas and voyaged along the Pacific coast, traveling along riverways and settling where local ecosystems permitted. Glacial sheets receded around fourteen thousand years ago, opening a corridor to warmer climates and new resources. Some ancestral communities migrated southward and eastward. Evidence found at Monte Verde, a site in modern-day Chile, suggests that human activity began there at least 14,500 years ago. Similar evidence hints at human settlement in the Florida panhandle and in Central Texas at the same time. On many points, archaeological and traditional knowledge sources converge: the dental, archaeological, linguistic, oral, ecological, and genetic evidence illustrates a great deal of diversity, with numerous groups settling and migrating over thousands of years, potentially from many different points of origin. Whether emerging from the earth, water, or sky; being made by a creator; or migrating to their homelands, modern Native American communities recount histories in America that date long before human memory.

在最后一个全球冰河时期，世界的大部分水被困在巨大的大陆冰川中。大约两万年前，冰层（有些厚达一英里）扩展到北美，南至现代伊利诺伊州。由于如此多的水被这些巨大冰层捕获，全球海平面大幅降低，一条陆桥连接了亚洲和北美，跨越白令海峡。在大约一万两千年至两万年前，土著祖先跨越了冰川、海水和大陆之间暴露的土地。这些流动的狩猎采集者以小群体的形式旅行，利用北美西北边缘的白令冻原的植物、动物和海洋资源。DNA证据表明，这些祖先在亚洲和美洲之间的广阔地区停留了大约一万五千年。此外，其他祖先则通过海洋航行，沿着太平洋海岸旅行，利用河流并在当地生态系统允许的地方定居。大约一万四千年前，冰川开始退缩，打开了通往更温暖气候和新资源的走廊。一些祖先社区向南和向东迁移。在现代智利的蒙特维尔德遗址发现的证据表明，那里的人类活动至少开始于14500年前。类似的证据也表明，在同一时期，佛罗里达州的潘哈德尔和德克萨斯州中部也有人的定居。考古学和传统知识来源在许多方面交汇：牙齿、考古、语言、口述、生态和基因证据显示出极大的多样性，许多群体在数千年间定居和迁移，可能来自许多不同的起源地。无论是从土地、水域或天空中涌现，还是被创造者造出，或迁移到故乡，现代土著美洲社区讲述的美国历史早于人类的记忆。

In the Northwest, Native groups exploited the great salmon-filled rivers. On the plains and prairie lands, hunting communities followed bison herds and moved according to seasonal patterns. In mountains, prairies, deserts, and forests, the cultures and ways of life of paleo-era ancestors were as varied as the geography. These groups spoke hundreds of languages and adopted distinct cultural practices. Rich and diverse diets fueled massive population growth across the continent.

在美国西北部，土著群体充分利用了富含鲑鱼的大河。在平原和草原地带，狩猎社区追随野牛群，根据季节性模式迁徙。在山区、草原、沙漠和森林中，古代祖先的文化和生活方式与地理环境一样多样化。这些群体讲着数百种语言，并采用独特的文化习俗。丰富多样的饮食促进了整个大陆的人口大幅增长。

Agriculture arose sometime between nine thousand and five thousand years ago, almost simultaneously in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Mesoamericans in modern-day Mexico and Central America relied on domesticated maize (corn) to develop the hemisphere’s first settled population around 1200 BCE. Corn was high in caloric content, easily dried and stored, and, in Mesoamerica’s warm and fertile Gulf Coast, could sometimes be harvested twice in a year. Corn—as well as other Mesoamerican crops—spread across North America and continues to hold an important spiritual and cultural place in many Native communities.

农业大约在九千到五千年前开始出现，几乎是同时在东西半球发展。今天的墨西哥和中美洲的美索美洲人依靠驯化的玉米（玉米）来发展半球的第一个定居人口，约在公元前1200年。玉米含有高热量，易于干燥和储存，并且在美索美洲温暖肥沃的海湾沿岸，有时一年可以收获两次。玉米和其他美索美洲作物向北美扩散，至今在许多土著社区中仍占有重要的精神和文化地位。

Agriculture flourished in the fertile river valleys between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean, an area known as the Eastern Woodlands. There, three crops in particular—corn, beans, and squash, known as the Three Sisters—provided nutritional needs necessary to sustain cities and civilizations. In Woodland areas from the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River to the Atlantic coast, Native communities managed their forest resources by burning underbrush to create vast parklike hunting grounds and to clear the ground for planting the Three Sisters. Many groups used shifting cultivation, in which farmers cut the forest, burned the undergrowth, and then planted seeds in the nutrient-rich ashes. When crop yields began to decline, farmers moved to another field and allowed the land to recover and the forest to regrow before again cutting the forest, burning the undergrowth, and restarting the cycle. This technique was particularly useful in areas with difficult soil. In the fertile regions of the Eastern Woodlands, Native American farmers engaged in permanent, intensive agriculture using hand tools. The rich soil and use of hand tools enabled effective and sustainable farming practices, producing high yields without overburdening the soil. Typically in Woodland communities, women practiced agriculture while men hunted and fished.

农业在密西西比河与大西洋之间的肥沃河谷中蓬勃发展，这个地区被称为东部森林地带。在这里，特别是玉米、豆类和南瓜三种作物，统称为“三姐妹”，提供了维持城市和文明所需的营养。在从五大湖和密西西比河到大西洋海岸的森林地区，土著社区通过燃烧灌木丛来管理森林资源，创造出广阔的类似公园的狩猎场，并为种植三姐妹作物清理土地。许多团体采用了轮作耕作的方式，农民砍伐森林，烧掉灌木丛，然后将种子种在富含营养的灰烬中。当作物产量开始下降时，农民会转移到另一个田地，让土地恢复和森林再生，之后再度砍伐、烧灌木，并重新开始这个循环。这种技术在土壤条件艰难的地区特别有效。在东部森林肥沃的地区，土著美国农民利用手工工具进行永久性、密集的农业。丰富的土壤和手工具的使用使得高效和可持续的耕作实践成为可能，在不使土壤过度负担的情况下生产出高产量的作物。通常在森林社区中，女性负责农业，而男性则进行狩猎和捕鱼。

Agriculture allowed for dramatic social change, but for some, it also may have accompanied a decline in health. Analysis of remains reveals that societies transitioning to agriculture often experienced weaker bones and teeth. But despite these possible declines, agriculture brought important benefits. Farmers could produce more food than hunters, enabling some members of the community to pursue other skills. Religious leaders, skilled soldiers, and artists could devote their energy to activities other than food production.

农业带来了显著的社会变革，但对于一些人来说，它可能还伴随着健康状况的下降。对古人类遗骸的分析显示，过渡到农业的社会往往经历了骨骼和牙齿的弱化。这种现象被一些研究认为与饮食结构的变化有关，农业的单一作物种植可能导致营养不均衡，从而影响健康 。尽管存在这些可能的健康问题，农业仍然带来了重要的好处。农民能够比猎人生产更多的食物，使得社区中的某些成员可以追求其他技能，如宗教领袖、熟练的士兵和艺术家能够将精力投入到非食物生产的活动中 。

North America’s Indigenous peoples shared some broad traits. Spiritual practices, understandings of property, and kinship networks differed markedly from European arrangements. Most Native Americans did not neatly distinguish between the natural and the supernatural. Spiritual power permeated their world and was both tangible and accessible. It could be appealed to and harnessed. Kinship bound most Native North American people together. Most people lived in small communities tied by kinship networks. Many Native cultures understood ancestry as matrilineal: family and clan identity proceeded along the female line, through mothers and daughters, rather than fathers and sons. Fathers, for instance, often joined mothers’ extended families, and sometimes even a mother’s brothers took a more direct role in child-raising than biological fathers. Therefore, mothers often wielded enormous influence at local levels, and men’s identities and influence often depended on their relationships to women. Native American culture, meanwhile, generally afforded greater sexual and marital freedom than European cultures. Women, for instance, often chose their husbands, and divorce often was a relatively simple and straightforward process. Moreover, most Native peoples’ notions of property rights differed markedly from those of Europeans. Native Americans generally felt a personal ownership of tools, weapons, or other items that were actively used, and this same rule applied to land and crops. Groups and individuals exploited particular pieces of land and used violence or negotiation to exclude others. But the right to the use of land did not imply the right to its permanent possession.

北美的土著人民在一些广泛的特征上有共同点。其精神实践、对财产的理解以及亲属关系网络与欧洲的安排有显著不同。大多数美洲原住民并不明确区分自然与超自然的界限。精神力量渗透在他们的世界中，既是有形的也是可接近的，可以通过祈祷和仪式来运用和利用。亲属关系将大多数北美土著人民紧密联系在一起，他们通常生活在由亲属网络交织的小社区中。许多土著文化理解祖先的传承是母系的：家族和宗族的身份沿着女性的血脉传递，通过母亲和女儿，而不是父亲和儿子。例如，父亲往往会加入母亲的大家庭，有时甚至母亲的兄弟在抚养孩子方面的参与程度超过生物父亲。因此，母亲在地方层面通常拥有巨大的影响力，而男性的身份和影响力往往依赖于与女性的关系。与此同时，土著文化普遍赋予了更大的性别与婚姻自由度，相比之下，欧洲文化则显得更为保守。比如，女性通常可以选择自己的配偶，离婚的过程也相对简单直接。此外，大多数土著人民的财产权概念与欧洲人有显著不同。一般来说，土著人感到对工具、武器或其他正在使用的物品有个人所有权，这种规则同样适用于土地和作物。群体和个人会开发特定的土地，并通过暴力或谈判来排除他人。然而，对土地的使用权并不意味着对其永久占有的权利。

Native Americans had many ways of communicating, including graphic ones, and some of these artistic and communicative technologies are still used today. For example, Algonquian-speaking Ojibwes used birch-bark scrolls to record medical treatments, recipes, songs, stories, and more. Other Eastern Woodland peoples wove plant fibers, embroidered skins with porcupine quills, and modeled the earth to make sites of complex ceremonial meaning. On the Plains, artisans wove buffalo hair and painted on buffalo skins; in the Pacific Northwest, after the arrival of Europeans, weavers wove goat hair into soft textiles with particular patterns. Maya, Zapotec, and Nahua ancestors in Mesoamerica painted their histories on plant-derived textiles and carved them into stone. In the Andes, Inca recorders noted information in the form of knotted strings, or khipu.

北美土著人民拥有多种沟通方式，包括图形沟通。其中一些艺术和沟通技术至今仍在使用。例如，讲阿尔贡基语的奥吉布韦人使用桦树皮卷轴记录医疗治疗、食谱、歌曲、故事等内容。其他东部林地的民族则用植物纤维编织、用豪猪刺刺绣皮革，或用泥土塑造出具有复杂仪式意义的地点。在大平原地区，工匠用水牛毛编织并在水牛皮上绘画；在太平洋西北部，欧洲人到来后，编织者用山羊毛编织成具有特定图案的柔软纺织品。玛雅、萨波特克和纳瓦特尔祖先在中美洲将他们的历史绘制在植物纤维制成的纺织品上，或雕刻在石头上。在安第斯山脉，印加记录者用打结的绳索（khipu）记录信息。

Two thousand years ago, some of the largest culture groups in North America were the Puebloan groups, centered in the current-day Greater Southwest (the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico), the Mississippian groups located along the Great River and its tributaries, and the Mesoamerican groups of the areas now known as central Mexico and the Yucatán. Previous developments in agricultural technology enabled the explosive growth of the large early societies, such as that at Tenochtitlán in the Valley of Mexico, Cahokia along the Mississippi River, and in the desert oasis areas of the Greater Southwest.

两千年前，北美一些最大的文化群体包括以现今大西南地区（美国西南部和墨西哥西北部）为中心的普韦布洛群体、位于密西西比河及其支流沿岸的密西西比群体，以及现在被称为中墨西哥和尤卡坦半岛的地区的中美洲群体。这些大型早期社会的爆炸性增长得益于农业技术的进步，如位于墨西哥谷地的特诺奇蒂特兰、密西西比河沿岸的卡霍基亚以及大西南地区的沙漠绿洲地区。

Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico was home to ancestral Puebloan peoples between 900 and 1300 CE. As many as fifteen thousand individuals lived in the Chaco Canyon complex in present-day New Mexico. Sophisticated agricultural practices, extensive trading networks, and even the domestication of animals like turkeys allowed the population to swell. Massive residential structures, built from sandstone blocks and lumber carried across great distances, housed hundreds of Puebloan people. One building, Pueblo Bonito, stretched over two acres and rose five stories. Its six hundred rooms were decorated with copper bells, turquoise decorations, and bright macaws. Homes like those at Pueblo Bonito included a small dugout room, or kiva, which played an important role in a variety of ceremonies and served as an important center for Puebloan life and culture. Puebloan spirituality was tied both to the earth and the heavens, as generations carefully charted the stars and designed homes in line with the path of the sun and moon.

查科峡谷位于新墨西哥州北部，曾是祖先普韦布洛人（Ancestral Puebloan Peoples）在公元900年至1300年间的重要居住地。该地区曾容纳多达15,000人，得益于成熟的农业实践、广泛的贸易网络以及动物（如火鸡）的驯化，使得当地人口迅速增长。查科峡谷的建筑非常壮观，使用从远处运输来的砂岩块和木材建造了大规模的住宅结构，能够容纳数百名普韦布洛人。例如，普韦布洛博尼托（Pueblo Bonito）是一个占地超过两英亩、五层高的建筑，拥有600多个房间，房间内装饰有铜铃、绿松石装饰和亮丽的金刚鹦鹉。这些住宅通常包括一个小的地下室房间，称为基瓦（kiva），在各种仪式中起着重要作用，并成为普韦布洛人生活和文化的中心。普韦布洛人的精神信仰与大地和天空密切相关，几代人精确地观测星星，并根据太阳和月亮的轨迹设计他们的家园。

The Puebloan people of Chaco Canyon faced several ecological challenges, including deforestation and overirrigation, which ultimately caused the community to collapse and its people to disperse to smaller settlements. An extreme fifty-year drought began in 1130. Shortly thereafter, Chaco Canyon was deserted. New groups, including the Apache and Navajo, entered the vacated territory and adopted several Puebloan customs. The same drought that plagued the Pueblo also likely affected the Mississippian peoples of the American Midwest and South. The Mississippians developed one of the largest civilizations north of modern-day Mexico. Roughly one thousand years ago, the largest Mississippian settlement, Cahokia, located just east of modern-day St. Louis, peaked at a population of between ten thousand and thirty thousand. It rivaled contemporary European cities in size. No city north of modern Mexico, in fact, would match Cahokia’s peak population levels until after the American Revolution. The city itself spanned two thousand acres and centered on Monks Mound, a large earthen hill that rose ten stories and was larger at its base than the pyramids of Egypt. As with many of the peoples who lived in the Woodlands, life and death in Cahokia were linked to the movement of the stars, sun, and moon, and their ceremonial earthwork structures reflect these important structuring forces.

查科峡谷的普韦布洛人面临多种生态挑战，包括森林砍伐和过度灌溉，这些问题最终导致社区的崩溃及其居民向更小的定居点迁移。1130年开始的一场长达五十年的极端干旱使得查科峡谷在短时间内被遗弃。随后，阿帕奇（Apache）和纳瓦霍（Navajo）等新群体进入这个空旷的地区，并采纳了几项普韦布洛人的习俗。与普韦布洛人面临相似干旱的还有美国中西部和南部的密西西比人（Mississippian peoples）。密西西比人发展了北美最大的文明之一。大约一千年前，最大的密西西比定居点卡霍基亚（Cahokia）位于现代圣路易斯以东，最高人口在十万到三万之间，规模与当时的欧洲城市相当。事实上，直到美国革命后，没有任何城市的北方地区能够与卡霍基亚的高峰人口水平相媲美。卡霍基亚的城市面积达到两千英亩，中心是僧侣丘（Monks Mound），这是一个高达十层的土丘，其基础面积比埃及的金字塔还大。正如生活在森林地区的许多人一样，卡霍基亚的生与死与星星、太阳和月亮的运动密切相关，他们的仪式土木建筑也反映了这些重要的结构性力量。

Cahokia was politically organized around chiefdoms, a hierarchical, clan-based system that gave leaders both secular and sacred authority. The size of the city and the extent of its influence suggest that the city relied on a number of lesser chiefdoms under the authority of a paramount leader. Social stratification was partly preserved through frequent warfare. War captives were enslaved, and these captives formed an important part of the economy in the North American Southeast. Native American slavery was not based on holding people as property. Instead, Native Americans understood the enslaved as people who lacked kinship networks. Slavery, then, was not always a permanent condition. Very often, a formerly enslaved person could become a fully integrated member of the community. Adoption or marriage could enable an enslaved person to enter a kinship network and join the community. Slavery and captive trading became an important way that many Native communities regrew and gained or maintained power.

卡霍基亚的政治组织围绕着首领制运作，这是一种等级分明、以宗族为基础的系统，赋予领导者世俗和神圣的权威。城市的规模及其影响力表明，卡霍基亚依赖多个较小的首领国，在一位至高无上的领导者的权威下进行统治。社会分层部分通过频繁的战争得以维持，战俘被奴役，这些战俘在北美东南部的经济中占有重要地位。与基于财产的奴役制度不同，北美的原住民对奴役的理解是奴隶缺乏亲属关系网络。因此，奴隶的身份并非总是永久的。一个曾被奴役的人可以通过被收养或结婚的方式，重新融入社区和亲属网络。奴役和俘获交易成为许多原住民社区恢复、获得或维持权力的重要途径。

Around 1050, Cahokia experienced what one archaeologist has called a “big bang,” which included “a virtually instantaneous and pervasive shift in all things political, social, and ideological.” The population grew almost 500 percent in only one generation, and new people groups were absorbed into the city and its supporting communities. By 1300, the once-powerful city had undergone a series of strains that led to collapse. Scholars previously pointed to ecological disaster or slow depopulation through emigration, but new research instead emphasizes mounting warfare, or internal political tensions. Environmental explanations suggest that population growth placed too great a burden on the arable land. Others suggest that the demand for fuel and building materials led to deforestation, erosion, and perhaps an extended drought. Recent evidence, including defensive stockades, suggests that political turmoil among the ruling elite and threats from external enemies may explain the end of the once-great civilization.

在1050年左右，卡霍基亚经历了一次考古学家称之为“大爆炸”的事件，这一事件包括“政治、社会和意识形态各方面几乎瞬间而普遍的转变”。在仅仅一代人内，卡霍基亚的人口几乎增长了500%，新的人群被吸纳进这个城市及其支持社区。然而，到1300年，这座曾经强大的城市经历了一系列压力，最终导致了其崩溃。学者们曾指出，生态灾难或因移民而导致的人口缓慢减少是导致崩溃的原因，但新的研究更强调不断升级的战争或内部政治紧张关系。环境解释认为，人口增长对可耕地施加了过大的负担。另一些学者则提出，对燃料和建筑材料的需求导致了森林砍伐、土壤侵蚀，甚至可能导致了长时间的干旱。最近的证据，包括防御工事，表明统治精英之间的政治动荡和来自外部敌人的威胁可能解释了这座曾伟大文明的终结 。

North American communities were connected by kin, politics, and culture and sustained by long-distance trading routes. The Mississippi River served as an important trade artery, but all of the continent’s waterways were vital to transportation and communication. Cahokia became a key trading center partly because of its position near the Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri Rivers. These rivers created networks that stretched from the Great Lakes to the American Southeast. Archaeologists can identify materials, like seashells, that traveled over a thousand miles to reach the center of this civilization. At least 3,500 years ago, the community at what is now Poverty Point, Louisiana, had access to copper from present-day Canada and flint from modern-day Indiana. Sheets of mica found at the sacred Serpent Mound site near the Ohio River came from the Allegheny Mountains, and obsidian from nearby earthworks came from Mexico. Turquoise from the Greater Southwest was used at Teotihuacan 1200 years ago.

北美的社区通过亲属、政治和文化连接在一起，并且通过长途贸易路线得以维持。密西西比河作为重要的贸易动脉，但整个大陆的水道对于交通和沟通同样至关重要。卡霍基亚之所以成为一个关键的贸易中心，部分原因是其靠近密西西比河、伊利诺伊河和密苏里河。这些河流形成了从五大湖到美国东南部的广泛网络。考古学家发现，像贝壳这样的材料可以追溯到超过一千英里外的地方，抵达这个文明的中心。例如，在现今路易斯安那州的贫穷点（Poverty Point）社区，早在3500多年前就能够获得来自加拿大的铜和来自印第安纳州的燧石。发现于俄亥俄河附近的圣蛇冢（Serpent Mound）遗址的云母片来自阿勒格尼山脉，而附近土工建筑中的黑曜石则源自墨西哥。1200年前，来自大西南地区的绿松石被用于特奥蒂瓦坎（Teotihuacan）中。

In the Eastern Woodlands, many Native American societies lived in smaller, dispersed communities to take advantage of rich soils and abundant rivers and streams. The Lenapes, also known as Delawares, farmed the bottomlands throughout the Hudson and Delaware River watersheds in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Their hundreds of settlements, stretching from southern Massachusetts through Delaware, were loosely bound together by political, social, and spiritual connections.

在东部森林地区，许多美洲土著社会生活在规模较小、分散的社区中，以利用肥沃的土壤和丰富的河流与溪流。以列拿皮族（Lenapes）为例，他们在纽约、宾夕法尼亚、新泽西和特拉华州的哈德逊河和特拉华河流域的底地上进行农业耕作。列拿皮族的数百个定居点从南马萨诸塞州延伸到特拉华州，彼此之间通过政治、社会和精神上的联系松散地结合在一起。

Dispersed and relatively independent, Lenape communities were bound together by oral histories, ceremonial traditions, consensus-based political organization, kinship networks, and a shared clan system. Kinship tied the various Lenape communities and clans together, and society was organized along matrilineal lines. Marriage occurred between clans, and a married man joined the clan of his wife. Lenape women wielded authority over marriages, households, and agricultural production and may even have played a significant part in determining the selection of leaders, called sachems. Dispersed authority, small settlements, and kin-based organization contributed to the long-lasting stability and resilience of Lenape communities. One or more sachems governed Lenape communities by the consent of their people. Lenape sachems acquired their authority by demonstrating wisdom and experience. This differed from the hierarchical organization of many Mississippian cultures. Large gatherings did exist, however, as dispersed communities and their leaders gathered for ceremonial purposes or to make big decisions. Sachems spoke for their people in larger councils that included men, women, and elders. The Lenapes experienced occasional tensions with other Indigenous groups like the Iroquois to the north or the Susquehannock to the south, but the lack of defensive fortifications near Lenape communities convinced archaeologists that the Lenapes avoided large-scale warfare.

分散且相对独立的列拿皮族社区通过口述历史、仪式传统、共识政治组织、亲属网络和共享的氏族系统紧密联系在一起。亲属关系将不同的列拿皮族社区和氏族联系在一起，社会组织呈现出母系血统的特征。婚姻通常发生在不同氏族之间，已婚男性会加入妻子的氏族。列拿皮族女性在婚姻、家庭和农业生产中拥有权威，甚至在领导者（称为 sachem）的选拔中可能发挥了重要作用。列拿皮族的分散权威、小型定居点和以亲属为基础的组织形式，促进了其社区的持久稳定和韧性。一个或多个 sachem 在社区内以人民的同意进行治理。列拿皮族的 sachem 通过展现智慧和经验来获取权威，这与许多密西西比文化的等级组织有所不同。尽管如此，分散的社区及其领导者仍会为仪式活动或重要决策而聚集。sachems 在更大会议上代表其人民发言，这些会议包括男性、女性和长老。列拿皮族与其他土著群体，如北部的易洛魁人和南部的萨斯奎汉纳克族，偶尔会产生紧张关系，但列拿皮族社区缺乏防御工事，使考古学家相信他们避免了大规模战争 。

The continued longevity of Lenape societies, which began centuries before European contact, was also due to their skills as farmers and fishers. Along with the Three Sisters, Lenape women planted tobacco, sunflowers, and gourds. They harvested fruits and nuts from trees and cultivated numerous medicinal plants, which they used with great proficiency. The Lenapes organized their communities to take advantage of growing seasons and the migration patterns of animals and fowl that were a part of their diet. During planting and harvesting seasons, Lenapes gathered in larger groups to coordinate their labor and take advantage of local abundance. As proficient fishers, they organized seasonal fish camps to net shellfish and catch shad. Lenapes wove nets, baskets, mats, and a variety of household materials from the rushes found along the streams, rivers, and coasts. They made their homes in some of the most fertile and abundant lands in the Eastern Woodlands and used their skills to create a stable and prosperous civilization. The first Dutch and Swedish settlers who encountered the Lenapes in the seventeenth century recognized Lenape prosperity and quickly sought their friendship. Their lives came to depend on it.

列拿皮族的社会持续存在，始于欧洲接触之前几个世纪，这与他们作为农民和渔民的技能密切相关。除了种植“三姐妹”作物（玉米、豆类和南瓜），列拿皮族的女性还种植烟草、向日葵和葫芦，收获树木的水果和坚果，并熟练地培养多种药用植物。他们组织社区以利用生长季节和动物及鸟类的迁徙模式，这些都是他们饮食的一部分。在种植和收获季节，列拿皮族会聚集在一起，协调劳动以利用当地的丰富资源。作为熟练的渔民，他们组织季节性捕鱼营地，以捕捞贝类和青鱼。列拿皮族用沿溪流、河流和海岸生长的芦苇编织网、篮子、垫子及各种家庭用品。他们在东林地一些最肥沃和丰富的土地上建立家园，运用这些技能创造出一个稳定而繁荣的文明。首次与列拿皮族接触的荷兰和瑞典定居者在十七世纪认识到列拿皮族的繁荣，并迅速寻求与他们的友谊，因为他们的生活开始依赖这种关系。

In the Pacific Northwest, the Kwakwaka’wakw, Tlingits, Haidas, and hundreds of other peoples, speaking dozens of languages, thrived in a land with a moderate climate, lush forests, and many rivers. The peoples of this region depended on salmon for survival and valued it accordingly. Images of salmon decorated totem poles, baskets, canoes, oars, and other tools. The fish was treated with spiritual respect and its image represented prosperity, life, and renewal. Sustainable harvesting practices ensured the survival of salmon populations. The Coast Salish people and several others celebrated the First Salmon Ceremony when the first migrating salmon was spotted each season. Elders closely observed the size of the salmon run and delayed harvesting to ensure that a sufficient number survived to spawn and return in the future. Men commonly used nets, hooks, and other small tools to capture salmon as they migrated upriver to spawn. Massive cedar canoes, as long as fifty feet and carrying as many as twenty men, also enabled extensive fishing expeditions in the Pacific Ocean, where skilled fishermen caught halibut, sturgeon, and other fish, sometimes hauling thousands of pounds in a single canoe.

在太平洋西北地区，Kwakwaka’wakw、Tlingits、Haidas及其他数百个民族在温和的气候、丰盛的森林和众多河流的环境中繁荣发展。这些民族依赖鲑鱼生存，并赋予其重要的文化价值。鲑鱼的形象装饰着图腾柱、篮子、独木舟、桨及其他工具。鲑鱼受到精神上的尊重，其形象象征着繁荣、生命和更新。可持续的捕捞实践确保了鲑鱼种群的存续。沿海萨利希人（Coast Salish）和其他一些民族庆祝“第一次鲑鱼仪式”，以纪念每个季节首次发现的迁徙鲑鱼。长辈们密切观察鲑鱼的数量，并延迟捕捞，以确保足够的鱼能存活并返回繁殖。男性通常使用网、钩和其他小工具在鲑鱼迁徙回游至产卵河流时捕捞。此外，巨大的雪松独木舟长达五十英尺，能容纳多达二十人，使得他们能够在太平洋进行广泛的捕鱼活动，捕获比目鱼、鲟鱼等，往往一次可以装载数千磅的鱼。

Food surpluses enabled significant population growth, and the Pacific Northwest became one of the most densely populated regions of North America. The combination of population density and surplus food created a unique social organization centered on elaborate feasts, called potlatches. These potlatches celebrated births and weddings and determined social status. The party lasted for days and hosts demonstrated their wealth and power by entertaining guests with food, artwork, and performances. The more the hosts gave away, the more prestige and power they had within the group. Some men saved for decades to host an extravagant potlatch that would in turn give him greater respect and power within the community.

食物盈余使得人口显著增长，使得太平洋西北地区成为北美最稠密的居住区之一。人口密度与食物盈余的结合促成了以精致宴会为中心的独特社会组织，这种宴会被称为 potlatch。Potlatch 用于庆祝出生和婚礼，并决定社会地位。这种聚会通常持续数天，主办方通过提供食物、艺术品和表演来展示自己的财富和权力。主办者赠送的越多，在群体中的声望和权力就越大。有些男性甚至为了举办盛大的 potlatch 而节省数十年，以获得更高的尊重和权力。

Many peoples of the Pacific Northwest built elaborate plank houses out of the region’s abundant cedar trees. The five-hundred-foot-long Suquamish Oleman House (or Old Man House), for instance, rested on the banks of Puget Sound.21 Giant cedar trees were also carved and painted in the shape of animals or other figures to tell stories and express identities. These totem poles became the most recognizable artistic form of the Pacific Northwest, but people also carved masks and other wooden items, such as hand drums and rattles, out of the region’s great trees.

太平洋西北地区的许多民族利用当地丰富的雪松树木建造了复杂的木板房屋。例如，长达五百英尺的Suquamish Oleman House（或Old Man House）就坐落在普吉特海湾的岸边。这些巨大的雪松树木不仅用于建筑，还被雕刻和绘制成动物或其他形状，以讲述故事和表达身份。这些图腾柱成为太平洋西北地区最具代表性的艺术形式，但人们也雕刻面具和其他木制物品，如手鼓和沙锤。

Despite commonalities, Native cultures varied greatly. The New World was marked by diversity and contrast. By the time Europeans were poised to cross the Atlantic, Native Americans spoke hundreds of languages and lived in keeping with the hemisphere’s many climates. Some lived in cities, others in small bands. Some migrated seasonally; others settled permanently. All Native peoples had long histories and well-formed, unique cultures that developed over millennia. But the arrival of Europeans changed everything.

尽管美洲原住民文化中存在一些共同特征，但它们的差异性也非常显著。新大陆充满了多样性和对比。在欧洲人即将横渡大西洋之际，北美的原住民们已经说着数百种语言，生活方式与美洲大陆的多种气候环境相适应。一些部落住在城市中，另一些则生活在小型游牧团体中。有些部落根据季节变化进行迁徙，而另一些则定居于永久的地点。所有原住民群体都有着悠久的历史，经过数千年的发展，形成了独特的文化。然而，随着欧洲人的到来，一切都发生了改变。

III.  European Expansion

三、欧洲扩张

Scandinavian seafarers reached the New World long before Columbus. At their peak they sailed as far east as Constantinople and raided settlements as far south as North Africa. They established limited colonies in Iceland and Greenland and, around the year 1000, Leif Erikson reached Newfoundland in present-day Canada. But the Norse colony failed. Culturally and geographically isolated, the Norse were driven back to the sea by some combination of limited resources, inhospitable weather, food shortages, and Native resistance.

斯堪的纳维亚海员（主要包括今天的挪威、瑞典和丹麦人）在哥伦布之前便已抵达了新大陆。在他们的鼎盛时期，这些北欧海员向东航行至拜占庭帝国的首都君士坦丁堡（现今的伊斯坦布尔），向南劫掠北非的定居点，还在冰岛和格陵兰建立了小型殖民地。大约在公元1000年左右，挪威探险家雷夫·埃里克森（Leif Erikson）到达了今天的加拿大纽芬兰地区。这些被称为“维京人”的探险家以航海技术著称，但由于资源匮乏、恶劣的气候条件、食物短缺，以及来自当地原住民的抵抗，他们未能在美洲大陆建立长期的殖民地，最终不得不返回北欧。

Then, centuries before Columbus, the Crusades linked Europe with the wealth, power, and knowledge of Asia. Europeans rediscovered or adopted Greek, Roman, and Muslim knowledge. The hemispheric dissemination of goods and knowledge not only sparked the Renaissance but fueled long-term European expansion. Asian goods flooded European markets, creating a demand for new commodities. This trade created vast new wealth, and Europeans battled one another for trade supremacy.

在此之后，十字军东征为欧洲打开了通往亚洲财富、权力和知识的大门。欧洲人重新发现并采用了希腊、罗马和伊斯兰的知识。这些跨半球的贸易和知识传播不仅催生了文艺复兴，还推动了欧洲的长期扩张。来自亚洲的商品涌入欧洲市场，创造了对新商品的巨大需求。此时，欧洲列强之间为争夺贸易主导权展开了激烈竞争。

European nation-states consolidated under the authority of powerful kings. A series of military conflicts between England and France—the Hundred Years’ War—accelerated nationalism and cultivated the financial and military administration necessary to maintain nation-states. In Spain, the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile consolidated the two most powerful kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula. The Crusades had never ended in Iberia: the Spanish crown concluded centuries of intermittent warfare—the Reconquista—by expelling Muslim Moors and Iberian Jews from the Iberian peninsula in 1492, just as Christopher Columbus sailed west. With new power, these new nations—and their newly empowered monarchs—yearned to access the wealth of Asia.

欧洲各个民族国家在强大国王的权威下逐渐统一。英法之间的“百年战争”加速了民族主义的兴起，并推动了维持民族国家所需的财政和军事管理能力的发展。在西班牙，阿拉贡的费迪南德和卡斯蒂利亚的伊莎贝拉联姻，统一了伊比利亚半岛上最强大的两个王国。十字军东征在伊比利亚半岛从未真正结束，西班牙王室通过完成“光复运动”（Reconquista），在1492年驱逐了穆斯林摩尔人和伊比利亚半岛上的犹太人。就在同一年，克里斯托弗·哥伦布启航向西寻找通往亚洲的航路。随着这些新兴国家和新近拥有权力的君主们的崛起，他们渴望获取亚洲的财富。

Seafaring Italian traders commanded the Mediterranean and controlled trade with Asia. Spain and Portugal, at the edges of Europe, relied on middlemen and paid higher prices for Asian goods. They sought a more direct route. And so they looked to the Atlantic. Portugal invested heavily in exploration. From his estate on the Sagres Peninsula of Portugal, a rich sailing port, Prince Henry the Navigator (Infante Henry, Duke of Viseu) invested in research and technology and underwrote many technological breakthroughs. His investments bore fruit. In the fifteenth century, Portuguese sailors perfected the astrolabe, a tool to calculate latitude, and the caravel, a ship well suited for ocean exploration. Both were technological breakthroughs. The astrolabe allowed for precise navigation, and the caravel, unlike more common vessels designed for trading on the relatively placid Mediterranean, was a rugged ship with a deep draft capable of making lengthy voyages on the open ocean and, equally important, carrying large amounts of cargo while doing so.

意大利的航海贸易商主导了地中海，并控制了与亚洲的贸易往来。而位于欧洲边缘的西班牙和葡萄牙不得不依赖中间商购买亚洲商品，并因此支付更高的价格。为了找到更直接的贸易路线，这些国家将目光转向了大西洋。葡萄牙在探索方面投入巨大。葡萄牙的航海王子亨利（Infante Henry，杜克·维塞乌）在葡萄牙的萨格里什半岛——一个富饶的港口——支持了大量的航海研究和技术发展，并资助了多项技术突破。在15世纪，葡萄牙水手们完善了星盘（astrolabe）和卡拉维尔帆船（caravel），这两项发明对海洋探索至关重要。星盘是一种用于计算纬度的工具，使得航海导航变得更加精准。而卡拉维尔帆船则是一种深吃水的耐用船只，适合在广阔的大洋上进行长途航行，同时还能携带大量货物。

Blending economic and religious motivations, the Portuguese established forts along the Atlantic coast of Africa during the fifteenth century, inaugurating centuries of European colonization there. Portuguese trading posts generated new profits that funded further trade and further colonization. Trading posts spread across the vast coastline of Africa, and by the end of the fifteenth century, Vasco da Gama leapfrogged his way around the coasts of Africa to reach India and other lucrative Asian markets.

葡萄牙人在15世纪将经济和宗教动机结合起来，在非洲的大西洋沿岸建立了一系列堡垒，开启了欧洲对非洲数百年的殖民统治。葡萄牙的贸易站带来了新的利润，进一步推动了更多的贸易和殖民活动。这些贸易站沿着非洲广阔的海岸线逐渐扩展，成为重要的商业节点。到了15世纪末，瓦斯科·达·伽马（Vasco da Gama）成功绕过非洲的海岸，直接到达印度及其他利润丰厚的亚洲市场。

The vagaries of ocean currents and the limits of contemporary technology forced Iberian sailors to sail west into the open sea before cutting back east to Africa. So doing, the Spanish and Portuguese stumbled on several islands off the coast of Europe and Africa, including the Azores, the Canary Islands, and the Cape Verde Islands. They became training grounds for the later colonization of the Americas and saw the first large-scale cultivation of sugar by enslaved laborers.

由于海洋洋流的不确定性以及当时技术的局限，伊比利亚的航海家们不得不先向西航行，进入大海，再折返东行到达非洲。在此过程中，西班牙和葡萄牙的水手意外发现了几个位于欧洲和非洲沿海的岛屿，包括亚速尔群岛、加那利群岛和佛得角群岛。这些岛屿成为了后期美洲殖民活动的训练场，并首次出现了大规模以奴隶劳工种植糖的现象。

Sugar was originally grown in Asia but became a popular, widely profitable luxury item consumed by the nobility of Europe. The Portuguese learned the sugar-growing process from Mediterranean plantations started by Muslims, using imported enslaved labor from southern Russia and Islamic countries. Sugar was a difficult crop. It required tropical temperatures, daily rainfall, unique soil conditions, and a fourteen-month growing season. But on the newly discovered, mostly uninhabited Atlantic islands, the Portuguese had found new, defensible land to support sugar production. New patterns of human and ecological destruction followed. Isolated from the mainlands of Europe and Africa for millennia, Canary Island natives—known as the Guanches—were enslaved or perished soon after Europeans arrived. This demographic disaster presaged the demographic results for the Native American populations upon the arrival of the Spanish.

糖最早种植于亚洲，后来成为欧洲贵族的奢侈品，因其高利润而广受欢迎。葡萄牙人从穆斯林在地中海地区建立的种植园学会了种植糖的技术，这些种植园使用从南俄和伊斯兰国家进口的奴隶劳工。种植糖十分困难，它需要热带的高温、每日的降雨、特殊的土壤条件，以及长达十四个月的生长期。葡萄牙人在新发现的、几乎无人居住的大西洋岛屿上找到适合糖生产的防御性土地。然而，这种种植方式带来了人类和生态的破坏模式。与欧洲和非洲大陆隔离了数千年的加那利群岛的原住民瓜切人（Guanches）在欧洲人抵达后，要么被奴役，要么很快灭亡。这场人口灾难预示了西班牙人抵达美洲后，土著美洲人所面临的类似命运。

Portugal’s would-be planters needed workers to cultivate the difficult, labor-intensive crop. They first turned to the trade relationships that Portuguese merchants established with African city-states in Senegambia, along the Gold Coast, as well as the kingdoms of Benin, Kongo, and Ndongo. The Portuguese turned to enslaved Africans from the mainland as a labor source for these island plantations. At the beginning of this Euroafrican slave-trading system, African leaders traded war captives—who by custom forfeited their freedom if captured during battle—for Portuguese guns, iron, and manufactured goods. It is important to note that slaving in Africa, like slaving among Indigenous Americans, bore little resemblance to the chattel slavery of the antebellum United States.

葡萄牙的潜在种植者需要工人来种植这种艰难且劳动密集的作物。他们首先求助于葡萄牙商人与塞内加尔、黄金海岸及贝宁、刚果和恩东戈王国的非洲城邦建立的贸易关系。葡萄牙人开始从大陆引进被奴役的非洲人作为这些岛屿种植园的劳动力。在这一欧洲与非洲的奴隶贸易体系开始时，非洲领导人用战争俘虏进行交易——根据习俗，战斗中被俘者会丧失自由——以换取葡萄牙的火枪、铁器和制造商品。值得注意的是，非洲的奴隶制度与美洲原住民的奴隶制度，和美国南北战争前的财产奴隶制有很大不同。

From bases along the Atlantic coast, the Portuguese began purchasing enslaved people for export to the Atlantic islands of Madeira, the Canaries, and the Cape Verdes to work the sugar fields. Thus, were born the first great Atlantic plantations. A few decades later, at the end of the 15^th century, the Portuguese plantation system developed on the island of São Tomé became a model for the plantation system as it was expanded across the Atlantic.

葡萄牙人在大西洋沿岸的基地开始购买被奴役的人口，以便将他们出口到马德拉、加那利群岛和佛得角等大西洋岛屿，来耕种糖田。因此，第一批大西洋种植园应运而生。几十年后，到了15世纪末，葡萄牙在圣托梅岛上建立的种植园制度成为大西洋种植园系统扩展的模范。

Spain, too, stood on the cutting edge of maritime technology. Spanish sailors had become masters of the caravels. As Portugal consolidated control over African trading networks and the circuitous eastbound sea route to Asia, Spain yearned for its own path to empire. Christopher Columbus, a skilled Italian-born sailor who had studied under Portuguese navigators, promised just that opportunity.

西班牙同样在海洋技术的前沿。西班牙水手已成为卡拉维尔船的高手。当葡萄牙巩固了对非洲贸易网络的控制以及曲折的东向海路时，西班牙渴望拥有自己的帝国道路。克里斯托弗·哥伦布是一位熟练的意大利出生的水手，他曾在葡萄牙的航海家门下学习，正好承诺了这一机会。

Educated Asians and Europeans of the fifteenth century knew the world was round. They also knew that while it was therefore technically possible to reach Asia by sailing west from Europe—thereby avoiding Italian or Portuguese middlemen—the earth’s vast size would doom even the greatest caravels to starvation and thirst long before they ever reached their destination. But Columbus underestimated the size of the globe by a full two thirds and therefore believed it was possible. After unsuccessfully shopping his proposed expedition in several European courts, he convinced Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain to provide him three small ships, which set sail in 1492. Columbus was both confoundingly wrong about the size of the earth and spectacularly lucky that two large continents lurked in his path. On October 12, 1492, after two months at sea, the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María and their ninety men landed in the modern-day Bahamas.

在十五世纪，受过教育的亚洲人和欧洲人都知道世界是圆的。他们也知道，从欧洲向西航行到达亚洲是技术上可行的，这样可以避免意大利或葡萄牙的中介，但地球的巨大尺寸意味着即使是最好的卡拉维尔船也会在到达目的地之前就因饥饿和口渴而垮掉。哥伦布却低估了地球的大小，认为自己可以成功。在多次向欧洲多个法院提出航行计划未果后，他最终说服了西班牙的伊莎贝拉女王和费尔南多国王，获得了三艘小船的支持，并于1492年启航。哥伦布对于地球的大小极其错误的判断，加上他在航行中获得的巨大的运气，才使得他在航行的路径上遇到了两大洲。1492年10月12日，经过两个月的海上航行，西班牙船队的尼尼亚号、平塔号和圣玛丽亚号终于在今天的巴哈马群岛登陆。

The Indigenous Arawaks, or Taíno, populated the Caribbean islands. They fished and grew corn, yams, and cassava. Columbus described them as innocents. “They are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor the sins of murder or theft,” he reported to the Spanish crown. “Your highness may believe that in all the world there can be no better people. . . . They love their neighbors as themselves, and their speech is the sweetest and gentlest in the world, and always with a smile.” But Columbus had come for wealth and he could find little. The Arawaks, however, wore small gold ornaments. Columbus left thirty-nine Spaniards at a military fort on Hispaniola to find and secure the source of the gold while he returned to Spain, with a dozen captured and branded Arawaks. Columbus arrived to great acclaim and quickly worked to outfit a return voyage. Spain’s New World motives were clear from the beginning. If outfitted for a return voyage, Columbus promised the Spanish crown gold and enslaved laborers. Columbus reported, “With fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them.”

原住民阿拉瓦克人或泰诺人居住在加勒比海岛屿上。他们以捕鱼和种植玉米、山药和木薯为生。哥伦布形容他们为“天真无邪”。他向西班牙王室报告：“他们非常温和，不知道什么是邪恶；也没有谋杀或盗窃的罪行。陛下可以相信，世界上没有比他们更好的人……他们像爱自己一样爱邻居，他们的言语是世界上最甜美和温柔的，总是带着微笑。”然而，哥伦布来此是为了财富，却发现收获不多。不过，阿拉瓦克人佩戴着小金饰。于是，哥伦布在海地建立的一个军事基地留下一些西班牙士兵，自己带着十几个被捕的阿拉瓦克人返回西班牙，试图寻找金子的来源。哥伦布回到西班牙时受到了热烈欢迎，并迅速开始准备返回的航程。西班牙在新世界的动机从一开始就非常明确。如果能够装备齐全，他承诺西班牙王室金子和奴隶劳动力。哥伦布甚至声称：“用五十个人就能征服他们，让他们做所需要的工作。”

Columbus was outfitted with seventeen ships and over one thousand men to return to the West Indies (Columbus made four voyages to the New World). Still believing he had landed in the East Indies, he promised to reward Isabella and Ferdinand’s investment. But when material wealth proved slow in coming, the Spanish embarked on a vicious campaign to extract every possible ounce of wealth from the Caribbean. The Spanish decimated the Arawaks. Bartolomé de Las Casas traveled to the New World in 1502 and later wrote, “I saw with these Eyes of mine the Spaniards for no other reason, but only to gratify their bloody mindedness, cut off the Hands, Noses, and Ears, both of Indians and Indianesses.” When the enslaved laborers exhausted the islands’ meager gold reserves, the Spaniards forced them to labor on their huge new estates, the encomiendas. Las Casas described European barbarities in cruel detail. By presuming the natives had no humanity, the Spaniards utterly abandoned theirs. Casual violence and dehumanizing exploitation ravaged the Arawaks. The Indigenous population collapsed. Within a few generations the whole island of Hispaniola had been depopulated and a whole people exterminated. Historians’ estimates of the island’s pre-contact population range from fewer than one million to as many as eight million (Las Casas estimated it at three million). In a few short years, they were gone. “Who in future generations will believe this?” Las Casas wondered. “I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it.”

哥伦布被装备了十七艘船和超过一千名船员，准备返回西印度群岛（哥伦布共进行了四次前往新世界的航行）。他仍然相信自己已经抵达东印度，并承诺回报伊莎贝拉和费尔南多的投资。然而，当物质财富的到来进展缓慢时，西班牙展开了一场残酷的运动，以榨取加勒比地区的每一分财富。他们对阿拉瓦克人进行了严重的屠杀。巴尔托洛梅·德·拉斯卡萨斯于1502年抵达新世界，后来写道：“我亲眼看到西班牙人出于无其他理由，仅仅是为了满足他们血腥的本性，割掉印第安人和印第安女人的手、鼻和耳朵。”当被奴役的劳动者耗尽了岛上微薄的金矿资源时，西班牙人强迫他们在自己的大庄园——恩科米恩达（encomienda）上劳动。拉斯卡萨斯详细描述了欧洲人的残暴行为。他们认为原住民没有人性，因此彻底抛弃了自己的良知。随意的暴力和非人道的剥削使阿拉瓦克人遭受重创。原住民的人口崩溃。在短短几代人之间，整个海地岛就被彻底灭绝。历史学家对岛上接触前人口的估计从不到一百万到多达八百万不等（拉斯卡萨斯估计为三百万）。在短短几年内，他们便消失了。拉斯卡萨斯感叹道：“未来的世代谁会相信这一切？”“我这个作为见证者的作者，自己都难以置信。”

Despite the diversity of Native populations and the existence of several strong empires, Native Americans were wholly unprepared for the arrival of Europeans. Biology magnified European cruelties. Cut off from the Old World, its domesticated animals, and its immunological history, Native Americans lived free from the terrible diseases that ravaged populations in Asia, Europe and Africa. But their blessing now became a curse. Native Americans lacked the immunities that Europeans and Africans had developed over centuries of deadly epidemics, and so when Europeans arrived, carrying smallpox, typhus, influenza, diphtheria, measles, and hepatitis, plagues decimated Native communities. Many died in war and slavery, but millions died in epidemics. All told, in fact, some scholars estimate that as much as 90 percent of the population of the Americas perished within the first century and a half of European contact.

尽管土著人群多样且存在几大强大的帝国，但美洲原住民在欧洲人到来时完全没有准备。生物因素加剧了欧洲人的残酷。由于与旧大陆隔绝，美洲原住民生活在没有驯养动物和免疫历史的环境中，未曾经历过亚洲、欧洲和非洲肆虐的可怕疾病。然而，这种“祝福”如今却变成了诅咒。美洲原住民缺乏与欧洲人和非洲人经过数百年的致命流行病所发展出的免疫力，因此，当欧洲人携带天花、斑疹伤寒、流感、白喉、麻疹和肝炎到达时，瘟疫便摧毁了土著社区。许多人在战争和奴役中丧生，但数以百万计的人死于流行病。事实上，一些学者估计，在与欧洲人接触的前一个半世纪内，美洲人口的90%可能已经死亡。

Though ravaged by disease and warfare, Native Americans forged middle grounds, resisted with violence, accommodated and adapted to the challenges of colonialism, and continued to shape the patterns of life throughout the New World for hundreds of years. But the Europeans kept coming.

尽管遭受了疾病和战争的严重打击，美洲原住民仍然设法在殖民主义的挑战中寻找折衷之道，通过暴力抵抗、适应和调整，继续在新世界的生活模式中发挥着重要作用。然而，欧洲人仍不断涌入。

IV. Spanish Exploration and Conquest

四、西班牙的探索与征服

As news of the Spanish conquest spread, wealth-hungry Spaniards poured into the New World seeking land, gold, and titles. A New World empire spread from Spain’s Caribbean foothold. Motives were plain: said one soldier, “we came here to serve God and the king, and also to get rich.” Mercenaries joined the conquest and raced to capture the human and material wealth of the New World.

随着西班牙征服的消息传播，渴望财富的西班牙人纷纷涌入新世界，寻找土地、黄金和头衔。西班牙在加勒比地区的势力范围迅速扩展，建立了一个新世界帝国。动机非常明显：一位士兵曾说：“我们来到这里是为了服务上帝和国王，同时也为了发财。”雇佣兵们也加入了征服的行列，争先恐后地获取新世界的人力和物质财富。

The Spanish managed labor relations through a legal system known as the encomienda, an exploitive feudal arrangement in which Spain tied Indigenous laborers to vast estates. In the encomienda, the Spanish crown granted a person not only land but a specified number of natives as well. Encomenderos brutalized their laborers. After Bartolomé de Las Casas published his incendiary account of Spanish abuses (The Destruction of the Indies), Spanish authorities abolished the encomienda in 1542 and replaced it with the repartimiento. Intended as a milder system, the repartimiento nevertheless replicated many of the abuses of the older system, and the rapacious exploitation of the Native population continued as Spain spread its empire over the Americas.

西班牙通过一个名为“恩贡米恩达”（encomienda）的法律体系来管理劳工关系。这是一个剥削性的封建安排，在该制度下，西班牙将大量土地和一定数量的土著劳工授予某些人（被称为“恩贡米恩德罗”）。这些恩贡米恩德罗对土著劳工实施了残酷的压迫。著名神职人员巴尔托洛梅·德·拉斯·卡萨斯（Bartolomé de Las Casas）出版了一本控诉西班牙暴行的书《印第安人的毁灭》（The Destruction of the Indies），引发了强烈反响。最终，西班牙当局在1542年废除了恩贡米恩达制度，取而代之的是“再分配制”（repartimiento）。尽管该制度旨在更温和地对待土著居民，但实际上，它仍然延续了许多早期制度中的虐待行为，随着西班牙帝国的扩展，土著人口的剥削持续了下来。

As Spain’s New World empire expanded, Spanish conquerors met the massive empires of Central and South America, civilizations that dwarfed anything found in North America. In Central America the Maya built massive temples, sustained large populations, and constructed a complex and long-lasting civilization with a written language, advanced mathematics, and stunningly accurate calendars. But Maya civilization, although it had not disappeared, nevertheless collapsed before European arrival, likely because of droughts and unsustainable agricultural practices. But the eclipse of the Maya only heralded the later rise of the most powerful Native civilization ever seen in the Western Hemisphere: the Aztecs.

随着西班牙新世界帝国的扩展，西班牙征服者遇到了中美洲和南美洲的庞大帝国，这些文明的规模远超北美发现的任何文明。在中美洲，玛雅人建造了巨大的庙宇，维持了大规模的人口，建立了一个拥有文字语言、先进数学体系和极为精确的日历的复杂而持久的文明。然而，尽管玛雅文明并未完全消失，但在欧洲人到来之前，它已逐渐衰落，可能是由于干旱和不可持续的农业实践所致。玛雅文明的衰退预示了西半球历史上最强大的原住民文明的崛起：阿兹特克文明。

Militaristic migrants from northern Mexico, the Aztecs moved south into the Valley of Mexico, conquered their way to dominance, and built the largest empire in the New World. When the Spaniards arrived in Mexico they found a sprawling civilization centered around Tenochtitlán, an awe-inspiring city built on a series of natural and man-made islands in the middle of Lake Texcoco, located today within modern-day Mexico City. Tenochtitlán, founded in 1325, rivaled the world’s largest cities in size and grandeur.

阿兹特克人是来自墨西哥北部的军事化移民，他们向南迁移至墨西哥谷地，通过征服逐步取得了统治地位，并建立了新世界中最大的帝国。当西班牙人抵达墨西哥时，发现了一个庞大的文明，其中心是特诺奇蒂特兰——一座令人惊叹的城市，建在特斯科科湖中央的天然和人工岛屿上，今天这座城市位于现代墨西哥城内。特诺奇蒂特兰建于1325年，规模与宏伟程度堪比当时世界上最大的城市。

Much of the city was fed by crops grown on large artificial islands called chinampas, which the Aztecs constructed by dredging mud and rich sediment from the bottom of the lake and depositing it over time to form new landscapes. A massive pyramid temple, the Templo Mayor, was located at the city center (its ruins can still be found in the center of Mexico City). When the Spaniards arrived, they could scarcely believe what they saw: 70,000 buildings, housing perhaps 200,000–250,000 people, all built on a lake and connected by causeways and canals. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a Spanish soldier, later recalled, “When we saw so many cities and villages built in the water and other great towns on dry land, we were amazed and said that it was like the enchantments. . . . Some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream? . . . I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about.”

这座城市的大部分食物来自于种植在浮岛（chinampas）上的作物。阿兹特克人通过从湖底挖掘泥土和富含养分的沉积物，并将其逐渐堆积成新土地，建造了这些人工岛屿。城市中心矗立着一座巨大的金字塔神庙，称为大神庙（Templo Mayor），其遗址至今仍位于墨西哥城的中心。当西班牙人抵达时，他们几乎不敢相信自己的眼睛：这座城市有70,000座建筑，容纳了大约20万到25万人，整个城市建在湖上，通过堤道和运河相连。西班牙士兵贝尔纳尔·迪亚斯·德尔·卡斯蒂略后来回忆道：“当我们看到这么多建在水上的城市和村庄，以及陆地上的其他大城镇时，我们感到惊讶，并说这简直像魔法一般……一些士兵甚至问，我们看到的这些景象是不是在做梦？……我不知道该如何形容它，因为我们所看到的东西是以前从未听说过、见过，甚至连梦中都不曾想象的。”

From their island city the Aztecs dominated an enormous swath of central and southern Mesoamerica. They ruled their empire through a decentralized network of subject peoples that paid regular tribute—including everything from the most basic items, such as corn, beans, and other foodstuffs, to luxury goods such as jade, cacao, and gold—and provided troops for the empire. But unrest festered beneath the Aztecs’ imperial power, and European conquerors lusted after its vast wealth.

从他们的岛屿城市出发，阿兹特克人统治着中美洲和南美洲的大部分地区。他们通过一个去中心化的臣民网络来管理帝国，这些臣民定期缴纳贡品——从玉米、豆类等基本食物到玉石、可可和黄金等奢侈品应有尽有，并为帝国提供军队。然而，在阿兹特克帝国的强大表象下，动荡的局势潜伏着，而欧洲征服者们则对其巨大的财富垂涎欲滴。

Hernán Cortés, an ambitious, thirty-four-year-old Spaniard who had won riches in the conquest of Cuba, organized an invasion of Mexico in 1519. Sailing with six hundred men, horses, and cannon, he landed on the coast of Mexico. Relying on a Native translator, whom he called Doña Marina, and whom Mexican folklore denounces as La Malinche, Cortés gathered information and allies in preparation for conquest. Through intrigue, brutality, and the exploitation of endemic political divisions, he enlisted the aid of thousands of Native allies, defeated Spanish rivals, and marched on Tenochtitlán.

埃尔南·科尔特斯是一位雄心勃勃的西班牙人，三十四岁时在征服古巴中获得了财富。他于1519年组织了对墨西哥的入侵。科尔特斯带着六百名士兵、马匹和火炮，登陆墨西哥海岸。他依靠一位名为多娜·玛丽娜的土著翻译，墨西哥民间传说称她为“拉·马林切”，在征服前收集信息和寻找盟友。通过阴谋、残暴和利用内生的政治分裂，他获得了成千上万的土著盟友的支持，打败了西班牙的竞争对手，向特诺奇蒂特兰进军。

Aztec dominance rested on fragile foundations and many of the region’s semi-independent city-states yearned to break from Aztec rule. Nearby kingdoms, including the Tarascans to the north and the remains of Maya city-states on the Yucatán peninsula, chafed at Aztec power.

阿兹特克的统治建立在脆弱的基础之上，许多地区的半独立城邦渴望摆脱阿兹特克的统治。附近的王国，包括北部的塔拉斯坎人以及尤卡坦半岛上残存的玛雅城邦，都对阿兹特克的权力感到不满。

Through persuasion, the Spaniards entered Tenochtitlán peacefully. Cortés then captured the emperor Montezuma and used him to gain control of the Aztecs’ gold and silver reserves and their network of mines. Eventually, the Aztecs revolted. Montezuma was branded a traitor, and uprising ignited the city. Montezuma was killed along with a third of Cortés’s men in la noche triste, the “night of sorrows.” The Spanish fought through thousands of Indigenous insurgents and across canals to flee the city, where they regrouped, enlisted more Native allies, captured Spanish reinforcements, and, in 1521, besieged the island city. The Spaniards’ eighty-five-day siege cut off food and fresh water. Smallpox ravaged the city. One Spanish observer said it “spread over the people as great destruction. Some it covered on all parts—their faces, their heads, their breasts, and so on. There was great havoc. Very many died of it. . . . They could not move; they could not stir.” Cortés, the Spaniards, and their Native allies then sacked the city. The temples were plundered and fifteen thousand died. After two years of conflict, a million-person-strong empire was toppled by disease, dissension, and a thousand European conquerors.

通过劝说，西班牙人和平地进入了特诺奇蒂特兰。科尔特斯随后捕获了皇帝蒙特苏马，并利用他来控制阿兹特克的黄金和白银储备以及他们的矿山网络。最终，阿兹特克人发起了反抗。蒙特苏马被视为叛徒，叛乱在城市中爆发。在“悲痛之夜”（la noche triste）中，蒙特苏马和科尔特斯的三分之一士兵被杀。西班牙人必须在成千上万的土著叛乱者和运河的阻碍下逃离城市，他们在逃离后重新集结，招募了更多的土著盟友，俘获了西班牙增援部队，并在1521年围攻了这个岛屿城市。西班牙人持续了八十五天的围城，切断了食物和淡水的供应。天花在城市中肆虐。一位西班牙观察者描述说，这种疾病“在人民中传播，造成了巨大的破坏。有人全身都被覆盖——脸部、头部、胸部等都有。造成了严重的灾难。很多人因此而死……他们无法移动；无法挣扎。”科尔特斯、西班牙人及其土著盟友随后洗劫了这座城市。寺庙被掠夺，约有一万五千人死于冲突。经过两年的战争，一个拥有百万人的帝国被疾病、内部分裂和一千名欧洲征服者推翻。

Farther south, along the Andes Mountains in South America, the Quechuas, or Incas, managed a vast mountain empire. From their capital of Cuzco in the Andean highlands, through conquest and negotiation, the Incas built an empire that stretched around the western half of the South American continent from present day Ecuador to central Chile and Argentina. They cut terraces into the sides of mountains to farm fertile soil, and by the 1400s they managed a thousand miles of Andean roads that tied together perhaps twelve million people. But like the Aztecs, unrest between the Incas and conquered groups created tensions and left the empire vulnerable to invaders. Smallpox spread in advance of Spanish conquerors and hit the Incan empire in 1525. Epidemics ravaged the population, cutting the empire’s population in half and killing the Incan emperor Huayna Capac and many members of his family. A bloody war of succession ensued. Inspired by Cortés’s conquest of Mexico, Francisco Pizarro moved south and found an empire torn by chaos. With 168 men, he deceived Incan rulers, took control of the empire, and seized the capital city, Cuzco, in 1533. Disease, conquest, and slavery ravaged the remnants of the Incan empire.

在南美洲的安第斯山脉更南方，印加人（或称凯楚亚人）管理着一个庞大的山地帝国。从他们位于安第斯高原的首都库斯科出发，印加人通过征服和谈判建立了一个帝国，横跨南美洲西部，从今天的厄瓜多尔延伸到中智利和阿根廷。他们在山坡上修建梯田，耕种肥沃的土壤，并在1400年代管理着一千英里的安第斯道路，连接了大约一千二百万人。但与阿兹特克一样，印加人与被征服群体之间的动荡造成了紧张局势，使这个帝国易受侵略者的攻击。天花在西班牙征服者到达之前传播，并在1525年袭击了印加帝国。流行病肆虐人口，导致帝国人口减半，印加皇帝瓦伊纳·卡帕克和他的许多家族成员因此丧生。随之而来的是一场血腥的继承战争。受到科尔特斯征服墨西哥的启发，弗朗西斯科·皮萨罗向南移动，发现了一个陷入混乱的帝国。他带着168名士兵，欺骗印加统治者，控制了这个帝国，并于1533年夺取了首都库斯科。疾病、征服和奴役摧毁了印加帝国的残余。

After the conquests of Mexico and Peru, Spain settled into its new empire. A vast administrative hierarchy governed the new holdings: royal appointees oversaw an enormous territory of landed estates, and Indigenous laborers and administrators regulated the extraction of gold and silver and oversaw their transport across the Atlantic in Spanish galleons. Meanwhile, Spanish migrants poured into the New World. During the sixteenth century alone, 225,000 migrated, and 750,000 came during the entire three centuries of Spanish colonial rule. Spaniards, often single, young, and male, emigrated for the various promises of land, wealth, and social advancement. Laborers, craftsmen, soldiers, clerks, and priests all crossed the Atlantic in large numbers. Indigenous people, however, always outnumbered the Spanish, and the Spaniards, by both necessity and design, incorporated Native Americans into colonial life. This incorporation did not mean equality, however.

在征服墨西哥和秘鲁后，西班牙进入了新帝国的治理。一个庞大的行政层级管理着新的殖民地：皇室任命的官员监督着辽阔的土地庄园，而土著劳工和行政人员则负责提取黄金和白银，并监管这些贵金属通过西班牙大帆船运送跨越大西洋。与此同时，西班牙移民蜂拥而入新世界。在十六世纪，仅在这段时间内，就有225,000人迁移，而在整个三百年的西班牙殖民统治期间，共有750,000人前往新大陆。西班牙人通常是单身、年轻的男性，他们为了土地、财富和社会进步的各种承诺而移民。劳工、工匠、士兵、文员和神父都大量横渡大西洋。然而，土著人口始终多于西班牙人，西班牙人出于必要和设计将美洲原住民纳入殖民生活中。然而，这种纳入并不意味着平等。

An elaborate racial hierarchy marked Spanish life in the New World. Regularized in the mid-1600s but rooted in medieval practices, the Sistema de Castas organized individuals into various racial groups based on their supposed “purity of blood.” Elaborate classifications became almost prerequisites for social and political advancement in Spanish colonial society. Peninsulares—Iberian-born Spaniards, or españoles—occupied the highest levels of administration and acquired the greatest estates. Their descendants, New World-born Spaniards, or criollos, occupied the next rung and rivaled the peninsulares for wealth and opportunity. Mestizos—a term used to describe those of mixed Spanish and Indigenous heritage—followed.

复杂的种族等级制度标志着西班牙在新世界的生活。这一制度在十七世纪中期得到规范，但其根源可追溯至中世纪的做法，称为“种族体系”（Sistema de Castas），将个人按照所谓的“血统纯洁性”划分为不同的种族群体。复杂的分类几乎成为西班牙殖民社会中社会和政治晋升的前提条件。半岛人（Peninsulares）——即出生于伊比利亚半岛的西班牙人，或称 españoles——占据着行政管理的最高层，并拥有最大的土地庄园。他们的后代，即新世界出生的西班牙人，称为克里奥尔人（criollos），则位于次级阶层，并与半岛人争夺财富和机会。混血儿（Mestizos）——这个词用于描述具有西班牙和土著血统的人——紧随其后。

Like the French later in North America, the Spanish tolerated and sometimes even supported interracial marriage. There were simply too few Spanish women in the New World to support the natural growth of a purely Spanish population. The Catholic Church endorsed interracial marriage as a moral bulwark against bastardy and rape. By 1600, mestizos made up a large portion of the colonial population. By the early 1700s, more than one third of all marriages bridged the Spanish-Indigenous divide. Separated by wealth and influence from the peninsulares and criollos, mestizos typically occupied a middling social position in Spanish New World society. They were not quite Indios, or Indigenous people, but their lack of limpieza de sangre, or “pure blood,” removed them from the privileges of full-blooded Spaniards. Spanish fathers of sufficient wealth and influence might shield their mestizo children from racial prejudice, and a number of wealthy mestizos married españoles to “whiten” their family lines, but more often mestizos were confined to a middle station in the Spanish New World. Enslaved and Indigenous people occupied the lowest rungs of the social ladder.

与后来在北美的法国人一样，西班牙人容忍并有时甚至支持跨种族婚姻。新世界的西班牙女性数量实在太少，无法支持一个纯粹西班牙人口的自然增长。天主教会将跨种族婚姻视为对私生子和强奸的道德防线。到1600年，混血儿已占据了殖民地人口的很大一部分。到1700年代初，超过三分之一的婚姻跨越了西班牙人与土著之间的界限。由于财富和影响力的差异，混血儿与半岛人和克里奥尔人之间存在明显的社会隔离，通常在西班牙新世界社会中占据中等的社会地位。他们并非完全是印第安人（Indios），但由于缺乏“血统纯洁性”（limpieza de sangre），无法享受完全西班牙人的特权。拥有足够财富和影响力的西班牙父亲可能会保护他们的混血子女免受种族偏见，且一些富裕的混血儿会与西班牙人（españoles）结婚，以“提亮”自己的家族血统，但更多时候，混血儿被限制在西班牙新世界的中等地位。被奴役的土著人则位于社会阶梯的最低层。

Many manipulated the Sistema de Castas to gain advantages for themselves and their children. Mestizo mothers, for instance, might insist that their mestizo daughters were actually castizas, or quarter-Indigenous, who, if they married a Spaniard, could, in the eyes of the law, produce “pure” criollo children entitled to the full rights and opportunities of Spanish citizens. But “passing” was an option only for the few. Instead, the massive Native populations within Spain’s New World Empire ensured a level of cultural and racial mixture—or mestizaje—unparalleled in British North America. Spanish North America wrought a hybrid culture that was neither fully Spanish nor fully Indigenous. The Spanish not only built Mexico City atop Tenochtitlán, but food, language, and families were also constructed on Indigenous foundations. In 1531, a poor Indigenous man named Juan Diego reported that he was visited by the Virgin Mary, who came as a dark-skinned Nahuatl-speaking Indigenous woman. Reports of miracles spread across Mexico and the Virgen de Guadalupe became a national icon for a new mestizo society.

许多人利用种族体系（Sistema de Castas）为自己和子女谋取利益。例如，混血母亲可能会坚称她们的混血女儿实际上是“卡斯蒂萨”（castizas），即四分之一的土著，如果她们与西班牙人结婚，从法律的角度来看，可以生出“纯种”的克里奥尔子女，享有西班牙公民的全部权利和机会。但“过渡”对于少数人来说才是选择。相反，西班牙新世界帝国内庞大的土著人口确保了文化和种族的混合——或称“混血化”（mestizaje），在英国北美是无与伦比的。西班牙北美形成了一种混合文化，既不完全是西班牙的，也不完全是土著的。西班牙人不仅在特诺奇蒂特兰的遗址上建立了墨西哥城，饮食、语言和家庭也建立在土著的基础之上。1531年，一位名叫胡安·迭戈（Juan Diego）的贫穷土著男子报告说，他遭遇了圣母玛利亚的显现，圣母以一位皮肤黝黑、讲纳瓦特尔语的土著女性的形象出现。关于奇迹的报道迅速传播到墨西哥，瓜达卢佩圣母（Virgen de Guadalupe）成为新混血社会的国家象征。

From Mexico, Spain expanded northward. Lured by the promises of gold and another Tenochtitlán, Spanish expeditions scoured North America for another wealthy Indigenous empire. Huge expeditions, resembling vast moving communities, composed of hundreds of soldiers, settlers, priests, and enslaved people, with enormous numbers of livestock, moved across the continent. Juan Ponce de León, the conqueror of Puerto Rico, landed in Florida in 1513 in search of wealth and enslaved laborers. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca joined the Narváez expedition to Florida a decade later but was shipwrecked and forced to embark on a remarkable multiyear odyssey along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and Texas into Mexico. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, and it remains the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the present-day United States.

西班牙从墨西哥向北扩张。受金子和另一个特诺奇蒂特兰的承诺所吸引，西班牙探险队在北美寻找另一个富有的土著帝国。大规模的探险队像庞大的流动社区，由数百名士兵、定居者、神父和被奴役的人组成，并携带着大量的牲畜，横穿整个大陆。1513年，波多黎各的征服者胡安·庞塞·德·莱昂（Juan Ponce de León）在佛罗里达登陆，寻找财富和被奴役的劳工。十年后，阿尔瓦尔·努涅斯·卡贝萨·德·巴卡（Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca）参加了前往佛罗里达的纳尔瓦埃斯探险，但船只遇难，被迫展开了一段惊人的多年的漫游，沿着墨西哥湾和德克萨斯的海岸一路前行，最终进入墨西哥。1565年，佩德罗·梅嫩德斯·德·阿维莱斯（Pedro Menéndez de Avilés）在佛罗里达创立了圣奥古斯丁，至今仍是美国现存最古老的持续有人居住的欧洲定居点。

But without the rich gold and silver mines of Mexico, the plantation-friendly climate of the Caribbean, or the exploitive potential of large Indigenous empires, North America offered little incentive for Spanish officials. Still, Spanish expeditions combed North America. Francisco Vázquez de Coronado pillaged his way across the Southwest. Hernando de Soto tortured and raped and enslaved his way across the Southeast. Soon Spain had footholds—however tenuous—across much of the continent.

但北美缺乏墨西哥丰富的金银矿、加勒比地区适合种植园的气候，或大型土著帝国的剥削潜力，因此对西班牙官员而言，北美几乎没有什么诱因。然而，西班牙探险队仍然在北美徘徊。弗朗西斯科·瓦斯奎斯·德·科罗纳多（Francisco Vázquez de Coronado）在西南部劫掠前行，而埃尔南多·德·索托（Hernando de Soto）则通过酷刑、强奸和奴役在东南部游荡。很快，西班牙在整个大陆的许多地方建立了立足点——尽管这些立足点极为脆弱。

V.  Conclusion

五、结论

The “discovery” of America unleashed horrors. Europeans embarked on a debauching path of death and destructive exploitation that wrought murder and greed and slavery. But disease was deadlier than any weapon in the European arsenal. It unleashed death on a scale never before seen in human history. Estimates of the population of pre-Columbian America range wildly. Some argue for as much as 100 million, some as low as 2 million. In 1983, Henry Dobyns put the number at 18 million. Whatever the precise estimates, nearly all scholars tell of the utter devastation wrought by European disease. Dobyns estimated that in the first 130 years following European contact, 95 percent of Native Americans perished. (At its worst, Europe’s Black Death peaked at death rates of 35 percent. Nothing else in history rivals the American demographic disaster.) A ten-thousand-year history of disease hit the New World in an instant. Smallpox, typhus, bubonic plague, influenza, mumps, measles: pandemics ravaged populations up and down the continents. Wave after wave of disease crashed relentlessly. Disease flung whole communities into chaos. Others it destroyed completely.

“发现”美洲释放了恐怖。欧洲人踏上了一条充满死亡和破坏性剥削的堕落之路，带来了谋杀、贪婪和奴役。但疾病比欧洲武器库中的任何武器都要致命。它以人类历史上从未见过的规模带来了死亡。关于前哥伦布时期美洲人口的估计差异很大。有些人认为高达1亿，而有些则认为低至200万。1983年，亨利·多宾斯（Henry Dobyns）将这个数字定为1800万。无论具体数字如何，几乎所有学者都讲述了欧洲疾病造成的彻底毁灭。多宾斯估计，在与欧洲接触后的头130年里，95%的美洲土著人丧生。（在最严重的时候，欧洲的黑死病死亡率达到35%。历史上没有其他事件能与美洲的人口灾难相提并论。）长达一万年的疾病历史在瞬间袭击了新世界。天花、伤寒、鼠疫、流感、腮腺炎、麻疹：大流行病肆虐了整个大陆的人口。波浪般的疾病不断袭来，冲击着整个社区。还有一些社区则完全被摧毁。

Disease was only the most terrible in a cross-hemispheric exchange of violence, culture, trade, and peoples—the so-called Columbian Exchange—that followed in Columbus’s wake. Global diets, for instance, were transformed. The Americas’ calorie-rich crops revolutionized Old World agriculture and spawned a worldwide population boom. Many modern associations between food and geography are by products of the Columbian Exchange: potatoes in Ireland, tomatoes in Italy, chocolate in Switzerland, peppers in Thailand, and oranges in Florida are all manifestations of the new global exchange. Europeans, for their part, introduced their domesticated animals to the New World. Pigs ran rampant through the Americas, transforming the landscape as they spread throughout both continents. Horses spread as well, transforming the Native American cultures who adapted to the newly introduced animal. Partly from trade, partly from the remnants of failed European expeditions, and partly from theft, Indigenous people acquired horses and transformed Native American life in the vast North American plains.

疾病只是随哥伦布而来的跨半球暴力、文化、贸易和人民交流中最可怕的一部分——所谓的哥伦布大交换（Columbian Exchange）。例如，全球饮食发生了变革。美洲的高热量作物彻底改变了旧世界的农业，并催生了全球人口的激增。许多现代食物与地理之间的联系都是哥伦布大交换的产物：爱尔兰的土豆、意大利的番茄、瑞士的巧克力、泰国的辣椒以及佛罗里达的橙子，都是这一新全球交换的体现。就欧洲人而言，他们将驯化的动物引入新世界。猪在美洲肆虐，随着它们在两个大陆的传播，改变了土地的面貌。马匹的传播也改变了适应这一新引入动物的土著文化。部分由于贸易，部分由于失败的欧洲探险残余，以及部分由于盗窃，土著人获得了马匹，并改变了广袤北美平原上的土著生活。

The Europeans’ arrival bridged two worlds and ten thousand years of history largely separated from each other since the closing of the Bering Strait. Both sides of the world had been transformed. And neither would ever again be the same.

欧洲人的到来架起了两个世界之间的桥梁，以及自白令海峡关闭以来大约一万年的历史。这两个世界都发生了巨大的变化，而它们再也不会回到从前。