history 7a

virgin land

the West was viewed as an untouched, agrarian utopia meant for yeoman farmers to inhabit

beaver

beaver pelts became extremely popular in Europe so Indigenous communities traded beavers for firearms and the population began to decline rapidly

domesticated animals

the people of the Great Plains domesticated dogs for hunting assistance but horses were reintroduced to Western Hemisphere after their extinction during the Pleistocene era when Spanish colonists introduced them to New Mexico shortly after 1600

ownership vs. sovereignty

colonists believed they had complete private ownership of whatever land they claimed, but the Indigenous people took care of the land as a community and had sovereignty over the land was challenged

land as a commodity

wealthy colonists saw land through a capitalist lens as something to be bought and sold, but the Indigenous people saw land as something to be shared and used as a community

freehold property

under English law, the monarch owned all the land, but the colonists decided to implement a system in which land could be freely bought and sold

subsistence farming

early Americans raised crops and livestock purely to sustain their households rather than for profit, and traded with their neighbors instead of using cash

empire of goods

a system of commercial exchange that linked a widely dispersed population through the things they bought, consumed, displayed, and coveted

colonial cities

Boston, Massachusetts and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania are port cities where goods were exchanged and they served as the center of politics in the colonies

George Whitefield

Anglican priest who preached outdoors throughout the colonies in a very theatrical manner to tens of thousands of people

Haudenosaunee

an Iroquois League consisting of five native groups located south of Lake Ontario: Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga and governed by a council of chiefs appointed by clan matrons in each of the five nations

Santa Fe

a new capital of New Mexico built largely by Native American laborers for the Spanish-speaking population in 1610

Puritans

strict Calvinist Protestants who claimed the English Reformation did not fully purge itself from Catholic heresy

Pequot War

a conflict with the Pequot people and Puritans from 1636-1637 which resulted in many Pequots being killed, sold into slavery, or being delivered as captives to other Native American tribes

Pueblo Revolt

a revolt in 1680 when about seventeen thousand Pueblos from more than twenty-five independent villages across the Rio Grande Valley rose up in an armed rebellion against Spanish rule and restored Pueblo autonomy in the Southwest for 12 years

Bacon’s Rebellion

in 1675 Nathaniel Bacon led land-hungry English settlers on a series of attacks “against all Indians in general,” which Governor William Berkeley renounced as he declared Bacon a rebel to which he responded with more raids against the Native Americans

King Philip’s War

a massive uprising involving many indigenous groups in which over twenty five New England towns were attacked due to a conflict between the colonists and the Wampanoag chief Metacom, also known as King Philip

Middle Passage

the Atlantic crossing enslaved Africans had to endure from Africa to the Americas

chattel slavery in the Americas

a system that treats individuals as personal property that can be bought and sold based on race

transition to slavery in the Chesapeake

in the 1660s, Chesapeake landowners began to turn from indentured servitude and toward race-based chattel slavery

African diaspora

a community of Africans in British North America who are connected by a remembered or envisioned relationship to their distant homeland

crusades

a series of wars against non-believes to wrest control of Jerusalem from Muslims between 1095 and 1291

Reconquista

armies from Aragon, Castile, Catalonia, and Portugal waged a prolonged holy war from the eighth century onward to “reconquer” the Iberian peninsula from Muslims

Limpieza de Sangre

a doctrine in Spain that required individuals to prove they have no Jewish or Muslim ancestry to hold public office, enter universities, and join religious and military organizations

Sao Tome and Principe

two islands claimed by Portugal in the Gulf of Guinea in 1471 where a large group of Jewish children who were taken from there parents were to be raised as Christians and enslaved Africans began to work on sugar plantations

Adelantados

advance men sent by King Enrique III of Castile to organize and fund raids on the Canary Islands in 1402

Tainos

Arawak-speaking indigenous peoples who lived on the Canary Islands and fulfilled few of Columbus and the visitors’ expectations of what people from Asia or the East Indies were like

The Great Dying

the collapse of 95% of Indigenous populations from the 16th and 17th centuries after the arrival of Europeans

Columbian Exchange

the widespread, complex process through which new flows of people, information, goods, flora, fauna, and microbes was transported between the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean

Ayuba Suleiman Diallo

a wealthy man from Bondou, between the Senegal and Gambian Rivers, who was enslaved in 1731 and made to work as a cattle herder in Annapolis, but was freed after a letter he wrote to his father in Arabic was discovered

Beringia

a vast, unglaciated region that included the land bridge as well as hundreds of miles of land on both sides, from Siberia to the Yukon

North Atlantic Warming Period

period in which farming spread throughout North America

medieval American cities

complex Indigenous cities that flourished during the European medieval period

Chaco Canyon

a city in the Four Corners area of northwestern New Mexico where a population of several thousand lived in elaborate stone housing blocks

Cahokia

a metropolitan center near present-day East St. Louis, Illinois that connected to much of the continent’s interior through a vast water transportation network

Chunkey

a Cahokian version of an older hoop-and-pole game that involved throwing a stone disk across a clay playing field, which became a prominent feature of Mississippian culture

Covenant Chain

a pattern of councils and treaties between New York and the Iroquois League following the events of 1676-1677

Great Lakes Region—Pays d’en Haut

the region where French Catholic established their own missions for spreading the faith in the northern part of the continent

balance-of-power diplomacy

European empires and Indigenous nations competed for regional dominance in North America to prevent any single power from becoming too strong