How did conquest and settlement affect indigenous populations and the ecology of the Americas? Conquest and settlement affected indigenous populations and the ecologies of the Americas by creating change. Examples of this change would include the decrease in the population of the indigenous people, unfair treatment of the indigenous people by their conquerors, and the force of new practices on the indigenous people. Once the indigenous people were exploited to a high degree people began to look for other people to replace their labor, increasing the popularity of the slave trade.
Additionally, the indigenous populations and the ecologies of the Americas were greatly affected with change due to conquest and settlement. Mainly the indigenous
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According to the reading, “Spanish systems for exploiting the labor of indigenous peoples were both a cause of and a response to the disastrous decline in their population that began soon after the arrival of Europeans” (Wiesner-Hanks et al., 2021, p. 473). The indigenous population experienced numerous amounts of mistreatment by the Spanish people. This mistreatment included various types of abuse, forced labor, and forced financial tributes.
Furthermore, the Spanish also forced the indigenous people to live by new practices which were enforced on them. The encomienda system is an example of how the indigenous people were forced into labor and religious work. The encomienda system resulted in more decrease in population of the indigenous people which caused there to be less labor available, sparking the beginning of the slave trade. With the increase of the slave trade during that time more immigrants especially from Iberia and Africa became present in the Americas. With the increase of immigration to the Americas more people began to blend with the indigenous