Worksheet

Gold, Sugar and Smallpox: Two Accounts of Hispaniola

Grade 7 geography: how animals, crops, disease and people crossed to Hispaniola, with an adapted Las Casas excerpt and a second account to corroborate against Spanish counts.

Grade 7Social StudiesInteractive · Printable

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12 questions
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Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 7
Subject: Social Studies
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Matching, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students explain how plants, animals, people and disease moved to and from Hispaniola and what changed as a result.
Students corroborate two accounts that disagree using a timeline and population counts.

How to use

Read the passage together, then have partners compare the two accounts with the timeline before each student writes the final claim on their own.

Curriculum

C3 Framework standard covered

GEO.7.2

Explain the Columbian Exchange: how plants, animals, people and diseases moved between the hemispheres and what changed as a result.

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Gold, Sugar and Smallpox: Two Accounts of Hispaniola

Corroborate two accounts that disagree about what the Columbian Exchange did to the Taíno.

The exchange on one island

Read the passage. Then answer the questions.

Hispaniola After 1492

1Before 1492, the island the Spanish later called Hispaniola, now shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, was home to the Taíno people. Taíno farmers planted cassava, sweet potatoes, maize, beans and squash in fields of piled-up earth mounds called conucos. They grated and squeezed cassava roots and baked them into a flat bread that kept for months. The Taíno also fished and grew cotton and tobacco.

2Columbus reached the island in 1492. On his second voyage, in 1493, his ships carried horses, cattle, pigs and sugarcane. Pigs and cattle multiplied quickly on the island. They roamed loose across the land, and the Taíno's conucos had no fences.

3Spanish colonists came looking for gold. The Spanish crown gave many colonists groups of Taíno to work for them, under a system called the encomienda. Taíno men were sent to dig and wash gold in the mines for months at a time, often far from home, while others farmed for the colonists. In late 1518, smallpox, a disease from the Eastern Hemisphere that the Taíno had never faced, broke out on the island. Many Taíno resisted. Some fled to the mountains, and from 1519 to 1533 a Taíno leader named Enriquillo led a revolt that ended in a peace agreement with Spain.

4As the number of Taíno workers fell, colonists turned to other workers and other products. Ships brought growing numbers of enslaved Africans to work in the mines, on ranches and in the fields. By the 1520s, sugar mills worked mostly by enslaved Africans were running on the island, and cattle ranches shipped hides to Spain. Plants and words crossed the ocean the other way as well: tobacco became popular in Europe, and English words such as hammock, canoe and hurricane come from the Taíno language. Today, many people in the Caribbean have Taíno ancestors, and some identify as Taíno.

Based on paragraph 2, how would the new animals most likely affect Taíno farming?

A. The animals stayed in Spanish pens, far from Taíno fields.
B. Loose pigs and cattle could eat and trample conuco crops.
C. The pigs and cattle died out quickly in the island's heat.
D. Taíno farmers began plowing their mounds with horses.

In 1510, most of the men of a Taíno village have been sent to the gold mines for several months. Based on paragraph 3, what problem would the village most likely face?

A. The village would be put in charge of a Spanish sugar mill.
B. Smallpox would break out in the village that same year.
C. The village would have more cassava bread than it could eat.
D. Fewer people would be left to tend the village's own crops.

Draw a line from each thing that crossed the ocean to a result the passage describes.

Sugarcane
Cattle
Smallpox
Tobacco

A. An outbreak on the island in 1518
B. Became popular in Europe
C. Hides shipped from ranches to Spain
D. Mills worked by enslaved Africans

Which statement about the direction of the exchange does the passage support?

A. The Taíno sent sugarcane and pigs to Spain.
B. Smallpox spread from the Taíno to Europe.
C. Living things and words crossed in both directions.
D. Spain brought cassava and tobacco to the Taíno.

Two accounts that disagree

Read the timeline and the two accounts. Then answer the questions.

Note: Spanish officials counted the Taíno people who were assigned to colonists, so they probably missed people who had fled to the mountains. Historians' estimates of the island's population in 1492 range from about 100,000 to several million, and many recent estimates fall in the hundreds of thousands.

Timeline and Spanish Counts of the Taíno on Hispaniola
Year	Event or count
1492	Columbus reaches Hispaniola
1493	Horses, cattle, pigs, sugarcane arrive
1502	Las Casas arrives as a young colonist
1508	Officials count about 60,000 Taíno
1514	Officials count about 26,000 Taíno
1518–1519	Smallpox outbreak on the island
1520s	Sugar mills worked by enslaved Africans
1542	Las Casas writes his account
1552	Las Casas's account is printed

Account A: adapted and shortened from A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de las Casas.
"On this island there were once more than three million people; now there are not two hundred. The Spaniards sent the men to the mines, where they worked for months with little to eat, and set the women to dig and plant on the farms. Husbands and wives did not see each other for months, so few children were born, and many babies died because their mothers were too hungry to feed them. In this way many Taíno died of hunger and overwork. The cause of it all was the Spaniards' greed for gold."

Account B: written for this worksheet in the style of a modern history book.
"Many Taíno died after the Spanish arrived, but the main killer was disease. The Taíno had never been exposed to illnesses such as smallpox, so their bodies had no defenses against them. When smallpox struck in 1518, it swept through the villages. Las Casas's figure of three million is much too high: the island held far fewer than three million people."

On which point do Account A and Account B disagree most?

A. What mainly caused so many Taíno deaths
B. Whether the Taíno lived on the island before 1492
C. Whether colonists put Taíno to work in mines
D. Whether many Taíno died after the Spanish came

Use the timeline.

Between 1508 and 1514, the Spanish count of Taíno fell by about people.

How do the counts for 1508 and 1514 help a historian corroborate the two accounts?

A. They support neither: the timeline gives no counts before 1518.
B. They support B: the count fell after smallpox arrived in 1518.
C. They support A: the count fell by over half before smallpox came.
D. They support B: the count rose between 1508 and 1514.

Use only the two accounts. Sort each idea: is it in both accounts, only Account A, or only Account B?

Many Taíno died after the Spanish came.Greed for gold caused the destruction.Smallpox swept through the villages in 1518.Work in mines and on farms kept husbands and wives apart.The island held far fewer than three million people.

Both accounts	Only Account A	Only Account B

Source and decide

Read the sourcing note about Account A. Then answer the questions.

Sourcing note on Account A. Circle the sentence that best explains WHY Las Casas would stress the colonists' cruelty.

Bartolomé de las Casas came to Hispaniola in 1502 as a young colonist and was given Taíno workers.He later became a priest, and in 1514 he gave up his workers.For the rest of his life, he urged Spain's rulers to end the forced labor of Native peoples.He wrote this account in 1542 for Prince Philip of Spain, and it was printed in 1552.

10.

Las Casas's figure of three million may be too high. Why might a historian still trust his description of forced labor?

A. He wrote it in a modern history book, using today's research.
B. He saw the system himself and once held Taíno workers.
C. He wrote it before any Spanish ships reached the island.
D. He made the 1508 and 1514 counts of the Taíno himself.

11.

Which change on Hispaniola is best supported by the passage and the timeline together?

A. As Taíno numbers fell, colonists turned to enslaved Africans and sugar.
B. Cassava brought from Europe replaced the Taíno's own crops.
C. Taíno farmers began growing sugarcane to sell in Spain by 1500.
D. The Spanish left the island once smallpox broke out in 1518.

12.

Claim: Disease by itself does not explain why the Taíno population fell. Do you agree? Use evidence from both accounts and the timeline, and explain how each account's source affects how much you trust it.