APUSH VOCAB (UNIT ONE!)

horticulture

a form of agriculture in which people work small plots of land with simple tools

Three Sisters

Native American agricultural practice of beneficially planting corn, beans, and squash together, resulting in higher yields and a healthy diet.

Maya

A people and civilization that established large cities on the Yucatán peninsula with strong irrigation and agricultural techniques, astronomical knowledge, and mathematical and writing systems.

Aztecs

Spanish term for the Mexica, an indigenous people who built an empire in present-day Mexico in the centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards.

Tenochtitlan

Capital city of the Aztec empire beginning in t he 14th century

Incas

Andean people who built a complex bureaucratic empire ruled by aristocrats in the centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards

pueblo

Native American peoples in present-day New Mexico and Arizona who share common religious and agricultural practices. Dwellings were made from clay (adobe)

Renaissance

A cultural and intellectual flowering that began in fifteenth-century Italy and then spread north throughout the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some well-known characteristics of this era were dramatic changes in art, cultivated knowledge, and the questioning of old forms of authority.

Missionary

A religious person who travels to foreign lands with the goal of converting those they meet to a new religion

Caravel

a narrow, small, and swift sailing ship invented by the Portuguese during the fifteenth century, particularly useful because it allowed sailors to sail into the wind much faster than traditional vessels

Astrolabe

A tool originally invented by Greek astronomers and sailors for navigation or astronomical calculations that allowed sailors to identify distance and time based on the location of the sun and stars in relation to the horizon

Inquisition

A religious judicial institution established by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, designed to find and eliminate heretical beliefs that did not align with official Catholic practices. The Spanish Inquisition was first established in 1478

Columbian Exchange

The biological exchange of people, plants, animals, and diseases between the Americas and the rest of the world between 1492 and the end of the sixteenth century.

Atlantic World

The social, intellectual, economic, and biological interactions among the peoples, plants, and animals bordering the Atlantic Ocean, mainly Africa, the Americas, and Western Europe, beginning in the late fifteenth century.

Conquistadors

Spanish name for conqueror. The title was applied to Spanish and Portuguese military leaders who invaded and conquered the lands of Native Americans in Central and South America.

Feudalism

A social and economic system organized by a hierarchy of hereditary classes, in which lower social orders owed loyalty to the social classes above them and, in return, those who worked the land, vassals, received from the nobility a guarantee of protection.

Capitalism

an economic system based on the private ownership of wealth, which is invested and reinvested in order to produce profit

Aristocrat

Member of the highest class of society, typically nobility who inherited their ranks and titles

Encomienda

System established by Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean by which Spanish leaders in the Americas received land and the labor of all resident Native Americans. For Native Americans, the encomienda system amounted to enslavement.

Requerimiento

A statement read by Spanish conquerors to native peoples claiming the religious authority of the Catholic Church and the secular authority of the Spanish Crown to rule in the name of the pope. This statement was typically read in Latin and threatened that Indians who did not embrace Spanish rule and Christian conversion faced enslavement and other harsh punishments.

Spanish Caste System

A system developed by the Spanish in the sixteenth century that defined the status of diverse populations based on racial hierarchy that privileged Europeans

Mission System

Organizational system established by the Spanish in 1573 in which Catholic missionaries, rather than soldiers, directed all new settlements in the Americas.

Huegenots

A French Protestant who subscribed to the theology of John Calvin

Colonization

The process of settling and controlling an already inhabited area for the economic benefit of the settlers, or colonizers

Calvinisim

A branch of Protestantism developed by John Calvin that influenced Protestants in France, England, and Switzerland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy)

A group of allied American Indian nations that included the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and later the Tuscarora. The Confederacy had largely dissolved by the final decade of the 1700s.

PUEBLO REVOLT

An uprising of Pueblo Indians in 1680 against Spanish forces in New Mexico that led to the Spaniards' temporary retreat from the area. (Caused by mistreatment of Pueblo people, culture and religion)

Inflation

A general and progressive increase in prices

Indentured Servitude

The condition of being bound to an employer for a specific period of time, usually in exchange for the cost of passage to a new land. The labor practice was most commonly used in Britain's American colonies.

joint-stock company

a company in which investors buy stock in return for a share of its future profits

Powhatan Confederacy

Large and powerful confederation of Algonquian-speaking American Indians in Virginia. The Jamestown settlers had a complicated and often combative relationship with the leaders of the Powhatan Confederacy.

cash crop

a crop produced for its commercial value rather than for use by the grower.

Headright System

Created in Virginia in 1618, it rewarded those who imported indentured laborers and settlers with fifty acres of land.

Bacon's Rebellion

1676 - Nathaniel Bacon and other western Virginia settlers were angry at Virginia Governor Berkley for trying to appease the Doeg Indians after the Doegs attacked the western settlements. The frontiersmen formed an army, with Bacon as its leader, which defeated the Indians and then marched on Jamestown and burned the city. The rebellion ended suddenly when Bacon died of an illness.

Protestant reformation

A religious movement of the 16th century that began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the creation of Protestant churches.

Pilgrims

Group of English Protestant dissenters who established Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in 1620 to seek religious freedom after having lived briefly in the Netherlands.

Puritans

English Protestant reformers who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic rituals and creeds. Some of the most devout Puritans believed that only "visible saints" should be admitted to church membership.

Mayflower Compact

Written agreement in 1620 to create a body politic among the male settlers in Plymouth; it was the forerunner to charters and constitutions that were eventually adopted in all the colonies.

Puritan migration

The mass migration of Puritans from Europe to New England during the 1620s and 1630s.

PEQUOT WAR

Conflict between Pequot tribe and English settlers. (1636-1637)

METACOM'S WAR

A conflict between English settler and an alliance of Native Americans led by the Wampanoag tribe (1675-1676)

Covenant chain

The alliance of the Iroquois, first with the colony of New York, then with the British Empire and its other colonies. The Covenant Chain became a model for relations between the British Empire and other Native American peoples.

Mercantilism

an economic system in which nations seek to increase their wealth and power by obtaining large amounts of gold and silver and by establishing a favorable balance of trade

Navigation Acts

Acts passed in 1660 passed by British parliament to increase colonial dependence on Great Britain for trade; limited goods that were exported to colonies; caused great resentment in American colonies.

Consumer Revolution

A process through which status in the colonies became more closely linked to financial success and a refined lifestyle rather than birth and family pedigree during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The consumer revolution was spurred by industrialization and increased global trade.

Anglo-Powhatan Wars

Series of conflicts in the 1620s between the Powhatan Confederacy and English settlers in Virginia and Maryland.

Tuscarora War

War launched by Tuscarora Indians from 1711 to 1715 against European settlers in North Carolina and their allies from the Yamasee, Catawba, and Cherokee nations. The Tuscaroras lost their lands when they signed the peace treaty and many then joined the Iroquois Confederacy to the north.

Yamasee War

A pan-American Indian war from 1715 to 1717 led by the Yamasee who intended, but failed, to oust the British from South Carolina.

Queen Anne's War

Second in a series of conflicts between the European powers for control of North America, fought between the English and French colonists in the North, and the English and Spanish in Florida. Under the peace treaty, the French ceded Acadia (Nova Scotia), Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay to Britain.

Middle Passage

the sea journey undertaken by slave ships from West Africa to the West Indies.

Stono Rebellion

a 1739 uprising of slaves in South Carolina, leading to the tightening of already harsh slave laws

Enlightenment

A European culture movement spanning the late seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, emphasizing rational and scientific thinking over traditional religion and superstition

New Light Clergy

Colonial clergy who called for religious revivals and emphasized the emotional aspects of spiritual commitment. The New Lights were leaders in the Great Awakening.

Old Light Clergy

Colonial clergy from established churches who supported the religious status quo in the early eighteenth century.

First Great Awakening

A series of religious revivals occurring throughout the colonies and prevalent in New England.

Impressment

forcing people into service, as in the navy

Seditious Libel

Conduct or language that incites rebellion against the authority of a state