Spanish Colonial America

The Third Treaty of San Ildefonso was a secret agreement signed on 1 October 1800 between Spain and the French Republic by which Spain agreed in principle to exchange its North American colony of Louisiana for territories in Tuscany. Three years later, France would sell the Louisiana Territory to…

<p><span class="deck"> One innovation profoundly changed—and prolonged—the culture of the Plains Indians</span> </p>

<p>The Revolution might have ended much differently for the Americans if it weren’t for their ally, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, who helped them wrestle the Mississippi valley from the British. </p>

<p><span class="deck"> No city has more energetically obliterated the remnants of its past. And yet no city has a greater sense of its history.</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck">On their weathered stone battlements can be read the whole history of the three-century struggle for supremacy in the New World.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">After half a millennium, we scarcely feel the presence of Spain in what is now the United States. But it is all around us.</span></p>

<p>As slaves, Cabeza de Vaca and his companions were forced to cope with native North America on its own terms, bridging two worlds that had remained apart for 12,000 years or more.</p>

<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">Some men see the beginnings. The conquistador who first saw the Mississippi also took the Inca highway to fabulous Cuzco.</span> </span></p>