AP US History Notes: Period 1 (1491-1607 C.E.)

Flashcards for the key topics of AP US History Period 1 (1491-1607 C.E.)

What are the Three Sisters in the context of Native American agriculture?

Corn, beans, and squash, which were staple crops favored by many native tribes in North America due to their interdependence.

What is the Great League of Peace?

A political confederation of five (later six) Iroquois tribes that sought to coordinate collective action while maintaining their own political systems and religious beliefs, believed to have formed around 1450.

Who was Christopher Columbus?

An Italian explorer who, while seeking a westward sea route to East Asia, reached the Bahamas in 1492 and was the first European to visit Hispaniola and Cuba.

Who was Amerigo Vespucci?

An Italian explorer and cartographer whose voyages along the South American coast between 1499 and 1502 led to the recognition of the New World as a continent distinct from Asia.

What was the Columbian Exchange?

The transmission of plants, animals, diseases, cultures, human populations, and technologies between the New World and the Old World, significantly impacting both but causing catastrophe for American Indian populations and cultures.

Who was Jacques Cartier?

A French explorer who cultivated a fur trade with American Indians and named the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and its surroundings as 'the Country of Canadas.'

Who was Samuel de Champlain?

A French explorer known as 'The Father of New France' who founded Quebec in 1608 and created the first accurate maps of modern-day Eastern Canada.

What was the Treaty of Tordesillas?

A treaty signed between Spain and Portugal in 1494 that divided the newly discovered lands of the New World, giving Portugal influence over what would become Brazil.

What was the Spanish Requirement of 1513?

Spain's assertion of its divine right to conquer the New World, claiming its main concern was rescuing natives from hedonism.

Who was Vasco Núñez de Balboa?

A Spanish explorer who led the first European expedition to reach the Pacific Ocean overland in 1513, crossing the Isthmus of Panama.

Who was Juan Ponce de León?

A Spanish explorer who led the first European expedition to Florida in 1513, which he named, and is mythically known for seeking the Fountain of Youth.

Who was Ferdinand Magellan?

A Portuguese explorer who led a Spanish expedition from 1519 to 1522 that was the first to circumnavigate the Earth, though he died in the Philippines in 1521.

Who was Hernán Cortés?

A Spanish conquistador who conquered the Aztec Empire and brought large parts of modern-day Mexico under Spanish control, known for destroying his own ships to prevent retreat.

Who were the Conquistadores?

A general term for Spanish and Portuguese soldiers and explorers who colonized Latin America from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.

What was the Encomienda system?

A legal system established by the Spanish crown where conquistadores were granted a number of American Indians from whom they would extract tribute while instructing them in the Roman Catholic faith, effectively a form of slavery.

What was the Repartimiento system?

A system that replaced the encomienda system, where American Indians living in native villages were legally free, allowed land, received pay for labor, and could not be bought and sold, though they were still abused.

Who was Juan de Oñate?

A conquistador born in New Spain who established the first permanent colonial settlement in the modern-day American Southwest, infamous for the Acoma Massacre in 1599.

Who was Sir Walter Raleigh?

An English polymath granted permission by Queen Elizabeth I to explore and colonize the New World, founding Roanoke.

What was Roanoke?

The 'Lost Colony,' the first attempted English colony in the New World, founded in 1585 off the coast of modern-day North Carolina, whose inhabitants vanished by 1590.

What was the Virginia Company?

The collective name for two joint stock companies chartered in 1606 by King James I to settle the North American eastern coastline.