Unit Period 1 (1491-1607) History Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering the migration of native populations, North American cultural regions, the Spanish conquest, the Columbian Exchange, and the characteristics of New Spain.

Land Bridge

A connection between Siberia and Alaska used by the earliest North American residents to cross into the continent between $15,000$ and $30,000$ years ago.

Haida

A Pacific Northwest tribe that collected shellfish from beaches and hunted the ocean for whales, sea otters, and seals.

Kwakiutl

A tribe in the Pacific Northwest known for carving magnificent totems that included symbols of ancestral spirits.

Pueblo (People)

Native Americans in the Desert Southwest who built settlements near the Rio Grande and lived in multi-story houses made of adobe.

Adobe

A building material used to construct multi-story houses in the sun-parched regions of the Desert Southwest.

Maize

Also known as corn, this crop was cultivated by various groups including the Pueblo, Pawnee, and tribes of the Eastern Woodlands.

Tepees

Portable houses made of buffalo skin used by the Pawnee while on spring buffalo hunts in the Great Plains.

Eastern Woodlands

A cultural region dominated by hardwood forests stretching from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, where tribes such as the Creek and Choctaw lived.

Secotan

An Algonquian village on the Pamlico River depicted in an engraving by John White as a complex, permanent agricultural settlement.

Hernán Cortés

The Spanish conquistador who conquered the Aztec Empire in $1521$.

Francisco Pizarro

The Spanish conquistador who conquered the Inca Empire in $1533$.

Columbian Exchange

The exchange of plants, animals, and germs between the New World and Europe following the discovery of America in $1492$.

Potosi Mines

Rich mines in modern-day Bolivia that produced $200$ tons of silver a year for two centuries.

Encomienda System

A license granted by the Spanish crown to royal officials to extract labor and tribute from native peoples in exchange for Christianizing them.

Bartolomé de las Casas

A Dominican priest who became an eloquent critic of the Spanish mistreatment of native peoples and renounced his own encomienda.

Mestizos

A racial category in New Spain's hierarchy referring to individuals of mixed Spaniard-Indian descent.

Mulattos

A racial category in New Spain's hierarchy referring to individuals of mixed Spaniard-African descent.

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda

A Spanish nobleman who justified the stratified society of New Spain and debated Bartolomé de las Casas in the $1550s$.

Popé

A dynamic Pueblo leader who led a revolt in $1680$ to expel the Spanish and return to traditional ways of life.

Pueblo Revolt

A $1680$ uprising where the Pueblo people killed hundreds of Spaniards and destroyed their buildings; it later resulted in a Spanish policy of greater cultural accommodation.

Cultural Accommodation

The policy adopted by the Spanish in New Mexico after the reconquest following Popé's death, where they no longer tried to eradicate Pueblo culture.