Unit 1

1.1-1.7

1.1 - Explain the context for European encounters in the Americas from

1491 to 1607.

Answer: …

● The first people arrived in America at least 10,000 years ago

● Columbus’ first voyage was a turning point in world history

○ “...because it initiated lasting contact between people on opposite

sides of the

Atlantic Ocean.”

● 1607

○ Founding of the first permanent English settlement in Jamestown.

● Columbus reached America, cultures and distinctive traits varied because of

climate.

○ Ppl in dry areas used irrigation systems, ppl in forested regions used

fire.

○ “from tropical islands where sugar grew to forests rich in

animal life to land with fertile soil for growing corn (maize). Native

Americans

also transformed their environments.”

● European explorers competed for land in the Americas

○ Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and finally English.

● Why?

○ To spread Christianity
 ○ To become wealthy

■ Fur trading posts

■ Finding an all water route to asia

■ Operating gold or silver mines

■ Developing plantations

● Europeons often used violence to clear away the Natives of the area

● Contact between Natives and Europeons made the Columbian Exchange.

○ Transatlantic trade in animals

○ Germs

○ Food - (Corn [maize], Potatoes, Tomatoes)

● Germs caused epidemics in the Americas

○ Population declined by 90% a century past the Europeans' arrival

● Enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas

○ Resisted domination like Indians by maintaining culture

○ “3 groups influenced the others’ ideas and ways of life”

● A century after the arrival of Columbus, Spanish, Portuguese, explorers and

settlers…

○ Developed colonies

■ Depended on the natives and africans for labor (agriculture) and

mining metals
1.2 - Explain how various native populations interacted with the natural
environment in North America in the period before European contact.

Answer: …

● Original discovery of North & South America began 10,000-40,000 years ago

● Migrants from asia might have crossed a land bridge connected to Siberia

and Alaska

○ Land low submerged under the bering sea

● People migrated from near the arctic circle to the southern tip of South

America

● When adapting to the environment, they…

○ Evolved into hundreds of diff tribes

○ Spoke hundreds of languages

● By 1491 the population was 50 million to 100 million people

● The natives divided into 3 highly developed civilizations

○ Between 300 and 800, the Mayas build good cities in yucatan

peninsula (modern day Guatemala, Belize, and southern Mexico).

○ Several centuries after the decline of Mayans, the Aztecs from central

Mexico developed a powerful empire.

■ Tenotichlan (capital) had about 200,000, = to the population of

the largest cities in europe.

○ During Mayas domination of central america and mexico, the Incas in

Peru had a large empire in western South America

● The natives developed into 3 highly developed civilizations

○ Extensive trade

○ Calendars (based on accurate scientific observations)

 ○ “All three cultivated crops that provided a stable food supply,

particularly corn (maize) for the Mayas and Aztecs and potatoes for the

Incas.”

● Population in region north of mexico in 1490s might have been under 1

million or over 10 million

● Societies in region included fewer people and had less social structures than

in Mexico and South america

● These differences bcs cultivation of corn (maize) spread northward from

Mexico. Nutrition provided by corn allowed larger and denser settled

populations. That led to more socially diverse societies in which people

specialized in their work.

● Populous societies in North America disappeared by the 15th century. Why?

Don't know.

● By time of columbus people in the americas, now USA and canada, lived in

settlements

○ Semi permanent

○ Exceeded 300 ppl

○ Men made tools and hunter 4 games

○ Women gathered plants, nuts, or grew crops like beans, tobacco, and

corn(maize)

● Indian american cultures were diverse

○ 20 language families.

■ Algonquian in the northeast

■ Siouan on the Great Plains

■ Athabaskan in the southwest.

● 20 families together = More than 400 distinct languages.

● In dry regions, like new mexico and arizona, groups like Hohokam, Anasazi,

and Pueblos evolved into multifaceted societies.

● People lived in…

○ Caves

○ Under cliffs
 ○ Multi-storied buildings

● By the time Europeons arrived, extreme drought and hostile natives took toll

on groups

● Descendents continue to live in the region though, arid climate helps

preserve stone and masonry dwellings

● Pacific coast - northern cali and alaska, ppl lived in permanent longhouses or

plank houses

● Rich diet by

○ Hunting

○ Fishing

○ Gathering nuts

○ Berries

○ Roots

● Carved totem poles to help ppl remember myths, stories, and legends

● High mountain ranges isolated tribes, barriers to development

● Ppl adapted to dry climate by developing mobile ways of living

● Nomadic tribes survived by hunting buffalo

● It supplied food, decorations, crafting tools, knives, and clothing.

● Lived in Teepees, easily disassembled and transported.

● Some lived in permanent earthen lodges by rivers

● Raised corn (maize), beans, squash, actively trading with other tribes

● Not until 17th century Indian Americans got horses by trading or stealing

from Spanish settlers.

● Tribes like lakota could easily follow herds

● Woodland indian americans had rich food supply

● Hunting fishing and agriculture helped

● Famous for large earthen mounds, some 300 feet long

● 30,000 inhabitants

● Adena Hopewell culture combined into hunting and farming

● Farming techniques exhausted soil quickly, had to move a lot

 ● Several tribes near the Great Lakes and NY York—the Seneca, Cayuga,

Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and later the Tuscaroras—formed a powerful

political union, the Iroquois Confederation, or Haudenosauanee.

● From the 16th century through the American Revolution, this powerful union

battled rival American Indians as well as Europeans.

● New Jersey south to Florida, people of coastal plains lived cherokee and lumbi

● Descendants of woodland mound builders

1.3 - Explain the causes of exploration and conquest of the New World by
various European nations.

Answer: …

● Renaissance

○ Europeons began to use gunpowder

○ Sailing compass

○ Major ship building and map making

○ Printing press -1450

● Renaissance later years were time of zeal

○ Pope dominated western europe

■ 15th and 16th century, pope power threatened by both ottoman

turks, muslims, rebellious christians who challenged pope

authority

● Catholic victory in Spain

○ 8th Century, Islamic invaders from North Africa, Moors, conquered

what is now spain

○ Several centuries later, Spanish christians conquered much of the land

■ Set up several independent kingdoms

 ○ Two largest kingdoms united when Isabella, queen of castile, and

Ferdenand, kind of Aragon, married in 1469

● 1492, under their leadership, the spanish conquered the last Moorish

stronghold in spain, in the city of Granada

● That year, monarchs funded Chrisopher columbus on his first voyage

● Protestant revolt in Northern Europe

○ Early 1500, certain christians in Germany, England, France, Holland,

and other northern European countries revolted against the authority

of the pope in Rome.

○ Called protestant reformation

○ Conflict of Catholics and protestants led to religious wars with millions

of deaths in 16th and 17th century

■ “caused the Roman Catholics of Spain and Portugal and the

Protestants of England and Holland to want to spread their own

versions of Christianity to people in Africa, Asia, and the

Americas. Thus, a religious motive for exploration and

colonization was added to political and economic motives.”

● Protestant revolt in Northern Europe

● Merchants can't go through the land bridge because the Ottoman empire

took control in 1453 because Constantinople got seized.

● New routes. Sailing south and east was the easiest

● Henry the Navigator succeeded in opening up a new route “around South

Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.”

○ Prince of Portugal

● Slave trading in the 15th century to establish sugar plantations in Madeira

and Azores island

● Nation states

○ Common culture

○ Common loyalty towards central gov

● “The monarchs of the emerging nation-states, such as Isabella and Ferdinand

of Spain; Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal; and similar monarchs of

 France, England, and the Netherlands depended on trade to bring in needed

revenues and on the church

to justify their right to rule.”

● Treaty of Tordesillas, 1492, spain and portugal

○ “The line passed through what is now the country of Brazil. This treaty,

together with Portuguese explorations, established Portugal’s claim to

Brazil. Spain claimed the rest of the Americas. However, other

European countries soon challenged these claims.”

● English claims

○ Earlier voyages rested on John Cabot

○ Italian sea king on contract w/ King entry VII

● Sot Walter Raleigh

○ Colonial settlement at Roanoke Island off north carolina coast 1587

○ Venture failed

● French showed interest in

○ 1524

○ Giovanni da Verrazzano

● Claims were based on Jacques Cartier

○ Explore St. Lawrence river extensively

1.4 - Explain causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effect on Europe
and the Americas during the period after 1492.

Answer: …

● Columbus spent 8 years getting support, in 1492,

● First voyage great, voyages afterwards…disappointing. Not many spices, no

easy way to asia

● People of Americas learned about horses

● No immunity to disease

○ Smallpox

○ Measles

● Population declined

○ 22 million 1492 - 4 million mid 16 century

● Feudalism declined, Capitalism grew

○ Ocean voyages are expensive…

 ● Safe voyage

○ “the joint-stock company, a business owned by a large number of

investors. If a voyage failed, investors lost only what they had

invested. By reducing individual risk, joint-stock companies

encouraged investment, thereby promoting economic growth.”

● Columbus

○ Fortunate navigator

○ Conqueror

○ Neither greed or ambition, the unknown.

1.5 - Explain how the growth of the Spanish Empire in North America
shaped the development of social and economic structures over time.

Answer: …

● Explorers, conquistadors, labor by Indians and enslaved…Spain expanded

wealth and power.

● “the conquests of the Aztecs in Mexico by Hernán Cortés, and the conquest of

the Incas in Peru by Francisco Pizarro secured Spain’s initial supremacy in the

Americas.”

● Indian labor in mexico and peru

○ To control, encomienda system

● Enslaved African Labor

○ Spanish imported on asiento system, pay taxes to spanish king on

each person
 ● Transatlantic slave trade ended in 1800

● Middle passage

○ 10 to 15% died across the atlantic ocean

○ Brutal

● African resistance

○ Ran away

○ Sabotaged work

○ Revolted

○ Maintained african culture. Music, religion, and folkways

● Spanish caste

○ Pure bloods

○ Then mixture of native and african

○ Pure blooded indians and africans

1.6 - Explain how and why European and Native American perspectives of
others developed and changed in the period.

Answer: …

● Bartolomé de Las Casas

○ Spanish priest

○ Better treatment 4 indians

○ Persuaded king 2 institute New Laws of 1542

● spaniards were able to persuade the king to repeal some parts

● Valladolid Debate

○ 1550-1551 Valladolid, Spain

○ Bartolome

■ Indians are humans

○ Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda

 ■ Indians are less that human

● Las casas established basic arguments, the audience couldn't pick a side.

1.7 - Explain the effects of the development of transatlantic voyages from

1491 to 1607.

Answer: …

● Summary of entire, too bored to summarize

Unit 2

2.1-2.8

2.1 - Explain the context for the colonization of North America from 1607 to
1754.

Answer: …

● …