1491 and Pre-Columbian Civilizations

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering pre-Columbian Native American civilizations, agricultural domestication, ecological land management, the Columbian Exchange, and Spanish colonial institutions.

John Bakeless

A 20th-century historian whose 1950 work 'The Eyes of Discovery' reflected the traditional view characterizing pre-Columbian America as an undisturbed, thinly populated 'virgin wilderness.'

Cahokia

A massive pre-Columbian Mississippian settlement of 'mound builders' that around 1200 AD had a population as large as medieval London, remaining the largest settlement north of the Rio Grande until the late 1800s.

Etzanoa

A lost Native American settlement unearthed by archaeologists in Kansas, believed to be the remains of a massive pre-contact urban center.

Pueblo Bonito

An Anasazi pueblo in Chaco Canyon constructed between 919 and 1085 AD with 650 to 800 rooms and over 1,000 peak residents, standing as North America's largest apartment building until 19th-century New York City.

Chaco Canyon

A major Ancestral Puebloan center in the American Southwest that supported 5,000 to 15,000 people at its peak around 1100 AD and featured over 400 miles of radiating roads before being abandoned by 1300 AD.

Teosinte

A wild Mesoamerican grass native to areas such as the Balsas River Basin that served as the wild botanical ancestor of domestic maize (corn).

"Three Sisters" Planting Technique

An indigenous intercropping agricultural method where corn, beans, and squash are planted together so that each plant symbiotically supports the growth and soil requirements of the others.

Controlled Burning

The principal ecological management tool used by Native Americans to reduce underbrush, open up park-like forests, and maintain grasslands and the Midwestern prairie for game such as elk, deer, and bison.

Revisionist History

The scholarly practice of re-examining, questioning, or altering orthodox and traditional narratives of the past in light of new historical evidence, perspective, and bias analysis.

Reconquista

The centuries-long military campaign by Christian monarchs to reclaim Islamic-ruled territory in Iberia, culminating in 1492 with the fall of Granada under King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile.

Caravel

A highly maneuverable, lightweight European sailing vessel developed during the Age of Exploration that facilitated long-distance trans-oceanic navigation and exploration.

Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)

A formal diplomatic pact establishing a boundary line that divided the newly discovered non-European lands between Spain and Portugal, moving the 1493 papal Line of Demarcation.

Columbian Exchange

The global transfer of agricultural crops, domestic livestock, human populations, cultures, and communicable pathogens between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres after 1492.

Encomienda

A Spanish colonial labor grant where colonists were assigned indigenous people to Christianize and care for in exchange for labor, but which resulted in harsh unpaid labor, dispossession of land, and high native mortality.

Repartimiento

The Spanish colonial labor allocation system instituted to replace the encomienda following indigenous resistance and protests by clergy, although labor abuses largely continued under it.

Valladolid Debate (1550)

A formal theological and philosophical debate in Spain between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda regarding the treatment, legal standing, and natural rights of indigenous American peoples.

The "Black Legend"

A historical narrative promoted by rival European nations accentuating the cruelty, atrocities, and fanaticism of the Spanish empire in the Americas while downplaying or ignoring their own colonial abuses.

Casta System

A formal, intricate racial classification hierarchy established in Spanish Colonial America that organized individuals into distinct social categories according to their ancestral lineage and ethnic mixture.

Mestizo

A racial classification within the Spanish colonial casta system designating an individual born to one Spanish (European) parent and one Indigenous American parent.

Mulatto

A caste term utilized in Spanish Colonial America to denote a person born of mixed Spanish (European) and African parentage.

Juan de Oñate

The Spanish conquistador and colonial official who established the initial Spanish settlement in New Mexico in 1598, which later included Santa Fe.

Pueblo Revolt (1680)

A coordinated uprising by Pueblo Indians against Spanish colonial and Franciscan religious oppression in New Mexico that succeeded in expelling Spanish colonizers for over a decade.

Maroon Communities

Independent, self-governing settlements established by self-emancipated, escaped formerly enslaved people in remote areas of Jamaica, North America, and Brazil (such as Palmares).