1. Columbus likely brought cattle, sheep, and horses with him to aid in the colonization and development of the newly discovered lands. These animals would have served multiple purposes, such as providing transportation, labor, and a reliable food source for the colonists.
2. Without cattle or horses, the Taino culture would have been significantly different. These domesticated animals would have brought about major changes in the Taino way of life. For example, horses would have allowed for faster and more efficient transportation, making it easier for the Taino people to travel longer distances and establish trade networks. Cattle would have provided a reliable source of milk and meat, improving their diet and nutritional intake. Additionally, cattle could have been used for agricultural purposes, such as plowing fields or pulling carts, thus enhancing their farming practices. Overall, the absence of cattle or horses would have hampered the Taino's ability to develop certain aspects of their culture and economy.
Text Analysis
Excerpt 1
In this excerpt, Mann offers an overview of the Columbian Exchange
with examples.
…Colon [Columbus] and his crew did not voyage alone. They
were accompanied by a menagerie of insects, plants, mammals, and
microorganisms. Beginning with La Isabela [Colon’s first settlement],
European expeditions brought cattle, sheep, and horses, along with crops like sugar cane
(originally from New Guinea), wheat (from the Middle East), bananas (from Africa), and
coffee (also from Africa). Equally important, creatures the colonists knew nothing about
hitchhiked along for the ride. Earthworms, mosquitoes, and cockroaches; honeybees,
dandelions, and African grasses; rats of every description — all of them poured from the
hulls of Colon’s vessels and those that followed, rushing like eager tourists into lands that
had never seen their like before.
Cattle and sheep ground the American vegetation between their flat teeth, preventing
the regrowth of native shrubs and trees. Beneath their hooves would sprout grasses from
Africa, possibly introduced from slave ship bedding; splay-leaved [with wide leaves] and
dense on the ground, they choked out native vegetation. (Alien grasses could withstand
grazing better than Caribbean groundcover plants because grasses grow from the base of
the leaf, unlike most other species, which grows from the tip. Grazing consumes the growth
zones of the latter but has little impact on those in the former.) Over the years forests of
Caribbean palm, mahogany, and ceiba [the silk-cotton tree] became forest of Australian
acacia [small tree of the mimosa family], Ethiopian shrubs, and the Central American
logwood. Scurrying below, mongooses from India eagerly drove Dominican snakes toward
extinction. The changes continue to this day. Orange groves, introduced to Hispaniola
from Spain, have recently begun to fall to the depredation of lime swallowtail butterflies, a citrus
pest from Southeast Asia that probably came over in 2004. Today Hispaniola has only small fragments of its original forest.
1. Why do you believe Columbus brought cattle, sheep or horses with him?
2. What would the Taino culture have been like without cattle or horses?
1 answer
1 answer