In Surviving Spanish Conquest: Indian struggle, Flight, and Cultural Transformation in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, Karen F. Anderson-Córdova attracts on archaeological, ancient, and ethnohistorical resources to clarify the affects of sixteenth-century Spanish conquest and colonization on indigenous peoples within the better Antilles. relocating past the traditional narratives of the fast dying of the local populations due to pressured hard work and the unfold of previous international ailments, this ebook exhibits the complexity of the preliminary trade among the outdated and New Worlds and examines the myriad methods the indigenous peoples spoke back to Spanish colonization.

Focusing on Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, the 1st Caribbean islands to be conquered and colonized by way of the Spanish, Anderson-Córdova explains Indian sociocultural transformation in the context of 2 particular strategies, out-migration and in-migration, highlighting how inhabitants shifts contributed to the diversification of peoples. for instance, because the growing to be presence of “foreign” Indians from different components of the Caribbean complex the diversity of responses by means of Indian teams, her research finds that Indians who have been subjected to slavery, or the “encomienda system,” accommodated and absorbed many Spanish customs, but resumed their very own rituals whilst allowed to come back to their villages. different Indians fled in line with the arriving of the Spanish.

The fruits of years of study, Surviving Spanish Conquest deftly contains archaeological investigations at touch websites copious use of archival fabrics, and anthropological tests of the touch interval within the Caribbean. eventually, realizing the strategies of Indian-Spanish interplay within the Caribbean complements comprehension of colonization in lots of different components of the realm. Anderson-Córdova concludes with a dialogue concerning the resurgence of curiosity within the Taíno humans and their tradition, specifically of people who self-identify as Taíno. This quantity offers a wealth of perception to historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and people attracted to early cultures in contact.