The century after the discovery of silver in 1545 marked the high point of Iberian immigration to the Americas. Although the first migrants were men — conquistadors, priests, and colonial officials — soon whole families began to cross the Atlantic, and the European population began to increase through natural reproduction. By 1600 American-born Europeans, called Creoles, outnumbered immigrants. By 1650 European-born and Creole Spaniards numbered approximately 200,000 in Mexico and 350,000 in the remaining colonies. Portuguese immigration to Brazil was relatively slow, and Portuguese-born settlers continued to dominate the colony.

Iberian settlement was predominantly urban in nature. Spaniards settled into the cities and towns of the former Aztec and Inca Empires as the native population dwindled through death and flight. They also established new cities, such as Santo Domingo on Hispaniola and Vera Cruz in Mexico. Settlers were quick to establish urban institutions familiar to them from home: city squares, churches, schools, and universities.

Despite the growing number of Europeans and the rapid decline of the native population, Europeans remained a small minority of the total inhabitants of the Americas. Cortès and his followers had taken native women as concubines and, less frequently, as wives. This pattern was repeated with the arrival of more Iberians, leading to a substantial population of mixed Iberian and Indian descent known as mestizos (meh-STEE-zohz). The large-scale arrival of enslaved Africans, starting in Brazil in the mid-sixteenth century, added new ethnic and racial dimensions to the population (see “The Transatlantic Slave Trade” in Chapter 20).