THE NEVADA TRAVERSE - Nevada Association of Land Surveyors

Terra Incognita
Surveying On New Spain’s
Northern Frontier Part I
by Paul S. Pace, PLS
T
(End Notes begin on Page 40)
he Age of Discovery, often called the Age of Exploration,
quickly became as well an age of colonialism. In the
New World, European monarchies including Holland,
England, France, Portugal, Spain and later Russia all vied for
land in the Americas. So quickly did the rush for territories in
the New World occur that beginning as soon as 1493 a series
of papal decrees and treaties1 between Spain and Portugal
were written to demark ownership. Based on longitudes no one
could accurately determine, and confused with differing units
of measure, these treaties were intended to relieve tensions
regarding title to the new lands.
Portugal eventually won control over millions of square miles
in South America, creating Brazil, now the 5th largest country
in the world. 2 Apart from territories claimed by England and
France, Spain took the bulk of the New World. In the process
she became a superpower, demolishing otherwise advanced and
sophisticated civilizations and creating one of the largest empires
the world had ever seen. By the middle of the 16th Century she
had subjugated vast stretches of the three American continents,
wasting little time exploiting the land and the indigenous
peoples there to her advantage. After Spain’s conquest, often
seen as a lethal mix of gold rush and religious zealotry, came a
dramatic demographic collapse 3 and the inexorable latinization
of the Americas.
Vestiges of Spain’s vast empire are today widespread in the New
World. Indeed, remnants from her American colonies appear
throughout the globe, as do echoes from their exploitation and
eventual collapse. Perhaps some of the more ubiquitous, more
tangible symbols of Spain’s American empire were the eight
reale silver coins, the famous “pieces of eight”. Coined in their
millions from the mines of New Spain and above all, Potosí, the
Silver Mountain in what is now Bolivia, they are found to this
day virtually around the world. The torrent of silver from Spain’s
American colonies began as a trickle of 326 pounds in the 1520’s.
It grew to 661,000 pounds in the 1550’s and over 6,000,000
pounds by the 1590’s. 4 By the 1570’s the coins were minted in the
Americas and shipped then to Spain, the Philippines and all the
other Spanish colonies. And it was used universally, becoming
the world’s first truly global currency. Widely circulated in the
United States, the reale was legal tender here until 1857. 5
The human cost of mining those quantities of silver was fearful.
Located at 13,000 feet above the sea in the severe Andean
climate, the mines at Potosí employed the forced labor of the
indigenous population. When the Indians died in ever increasing
numbers, African slaves were imported to continue mining.
They died as well. So much silver was produced that it had a
major impact on world economies. Importing ever more silver,
while hemorrhaging pieces of eight to finance her endless wars
and growing colonial empire, Spain ultimately faced economic
hardship from the resulting deflation of the reale. Despite the
flow of silver, she was unable to generate enough revenue to pay
her enormous armies; Spain was forced to declare bankruptcy in
1575 and again in 1595.
But discoveries in the Age of Exploration contributed in other,
less lethal ways. In fact, the
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The Nevada Traverse Vol. 39, No. 2, 2012 5