Early Americans & European Exploration

DCUSH-Unit 1

Improvements in Technology

Gunpowder, improved shipbuilding and mapmaking

Religious Conflicts

Catholic Re-Conquista in Spain (1492) and the Protestant Reformation in Northern Europe.

Expanding Trade

Desire to find new, more efficent sea-routes to Asia + Indian

Developing Nation States

Monarchs want to increase nation’s wealth and power

Christopher Colombus

Sails towards America in 1492 and Lands in Caribbean; thinks he is in India

The Colombian Exchange

Transfer of plants, animals, and germs (smallpox)—Radical environmental and agricultural changes

The “Great Dying”

Smallpox

Treaty of Tordesillas (1484)

Spain gets the West side and Portugal gets the East side

(English Claims) John Cabot sent to explore in:

1497

First Permanent French Settlement:

Quebec (1608)

(Dutch Claims) Henry Hudson explores and names the:

Hudson River

Spanish—

Creates coerced labor systems and force natives to adopt Christianity

(Spanish) Bartolome de Las Casas-

Wants to give natives a “voice”

English—

Initially try to live peacefully with natives-increasingly difficult by late 1600s

French—

view natives as potential allies, thriving fur trade $$$, military alliances (French & Indian War)

Native Responses—

1600s=King Phillip’s War

• Form alliances, fight back, or move West

Apache and Lakota Sioux (The Great Plains)

highly nomadic; buffalo + teepee

The First Americans-

Crossed land bridge from Siberia into Alaska