APUSH Ch.1 Notes

By the People AP Edition

Bering Land Bridge

• Dry Land between Siberia and Alaska

• Appeared 36,000-32,000 years ago and again 25,000-14,000 years ago

• Disappeared when glaciers melted under Bering Sea

• Transported migrants

Clovis people

• “First” immigrants to Americas

• 13,000 years ago

• Arrow / Spear points

Anasazi “Ancient ones”

• Chaco Canyon in New Mexico (Southwest)

• Adobe and log buildings

• Traded turquoise

• Abandoned after prolonged drought in early 1100s

Mesa Verde

• Descendants of Anasazi

• Canyon wall

• Abandoned after prolonged drought in 1300s

Acoma Pueblo

• Descendants of Anasazi

• Oldest continuously inhabited city in current United States

Hohokam

• Arizona (Southwest)

• Extensive agricultural system using canals

• Grew cotton, tobacco, Three Sisters

• Slowly declined and now gone

Cahokia “Mound Builders”

• Mississippi Valley

• Earth mounds up to 100 feet built by priests, chiefs, and workers

  • Temples and tombs

• P. 20,000-40,000 (largest settlement in US)

• Advanced agricultural practices due to warming trend around 900

• Farming for women and hunting for men

Native population when Europeans arrived

50-70 million (maybe as high as 100 million)

Present-day Native American Population

~7 million

Pueblo / Hopi

• Southwest

• Canals, dams, and terracing for agriculture in dry climate

• Three Sisters

Little Ice Age

• Colder climate in around 1350

• Made agriculture suffer

• Cahokia gone by 1400 (greatly shrank population of Mississippi Valley)

  • smaller chiefdoms developed and fought with each other

Cherokee and Tuscarora

• Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina (Mississippi Valley / Southeast)

• Traded corn / meat with neighboring villages

Tribes in Mississippi Valley Traits

• Dakota, Sioux, and Fox

• Women farm and men hunt

• Usually comprised of few families and surrounded by sturdy wall

Ojibwe

• Immigrated from Atlantic coast to Great Lakes

• Hunted moose, bear, elk deer

• Used deer and elk skin for clothing

• Experienced first contact with Europeans by end of 1600s

Pacific Northwest Tribe Traits

• Shasta

• Plank houses

• Lived off abundant Salmon

California Tribe Traits

• Yakut, Miwok, Maidu, Pomo

• Class of extended families

• Economy based on hunting and gathering (NO agriculture)

Iroquois Confederacy

• Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayuga, and Seneca

• Northeast

• Developed alliances against other tribes

• Meeting place near present day Syracuse, New York

• Longhouses

Deganawida (Dekanawidah)

• Great Peacemaker who convinced Iroquois Confederacy tribes to live under Great Law of Peace

• Eclipse around 1142 strengthened plea

Aztecs

• Capital Tenochtitlan on Lake Texcoco

• Decimated Toltecs

• Maize = staple crop

• Mid-1400s - attacked former allies who helped Spanish conquer them

Maya

• Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, Honduras, Belize, and Guatemala

• Fully function written language, mathematics, calendars, agricultural system

• Cotton

Inca

• Pacific coast of South America

• Capital: Cuzco from mountain fortress and religious center Machu Picchu

• Encountered by Europeans in early 1500s

Vikings

• Sailors from Norway and Denmark interacted with local Inuit people

• Established Vineland in 1001

• Little Ice Age brought colonies and all European contact with North America to an end

Ships

Cogs: New ship with single sail and centerline rudder

Carracks (Santa Maria): Larger ship with 2-3 masts and 5 sails

Navigational instruments

• Early compasses in 1250

• Mariner’s astrolabe - determined latitude

• Printing press in 1440s for Bibles

Black death (1300s-1400s)

• Bubonic plague spread by rats by ships trading in Black Sea

• Wiped out 1/3-1/5 of people

Ottoman Empire

• Conquered Constantinople in 1453 (renamed Istanbul)

• Cut people off from using land and sea routes across eastern Mediterranean

  • Led to people seeking new ways to reach Asia

Prince Henry of Portugal “The Navigator”

• Trade route to Asia by sailing around Africa

• Voyages he sponsored helped make new ship designs and navigational instruments

Bartolomeu Dias

Reached southern tip of Africa

Vasco de Gama (1498)

• Followed Dias’s route and reached India

• Route led to flourishing trade with Asia and Africa by early 1500s

• Reinvented African slave trade in Europe

Reconquista “reconquest”

• Political, cultural, and religious unification of Spain

• Divided by Muslim invaders but Christianity slowly returned

  • Muslim culture came into Europe through Spain

Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon

• Married in 1469

• Defeated Muslim Granada in January 1492

• Commissions Christopher Columbus to find a different route to Asia in 1492

Ghana

• Governed West Africa

• Metalworking, slaves, gold, ivory, spices

• Dominated by King Barmandana of Mali in 1050

Mansa Musa

• Made pilgrimage to Meca in 1325

• Lowered value of gold in Cairo

• Built new mosques, schools, universities, Muslim institutions, etc.

Kongo

• King converted to Catholicism by Portuguese missionaries in 1490s

• Led to close relations with papacy

Slavery

• Significant part of economy to accumulate wealth

• Traded with Portuguese

• Enslaved for crime, debt, but mostly war

• Accompanied earliest explorers of North and South America

China in 1400s

• United in single empire for 2000 years

• Emperor Zhu Di commissioned Chinese fleets > center of geographic studies in early 1400s

  • led to loss of wood resources

• Voyages stopped by 1424 > isolated from rest of the world