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Semisedentary Societies:

Planted and tended crops in spring and summer, fished and hunted, made war, and conducted trade in a small region.

Mississippian culture:

A Native American culture complex that flourished in the Mississippi River basin and the Southeast from around 850 to around 1700. Characterized by maize agriculture, moundbuilding, and distinctive pottery styles, these communities were complex chiefdoms usually located along the floodplains of rivers. The largest of these communities was Cahokia, in modern-day Illinois.

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Eastern woodlands:

A culture area of Native Americans that extended from the Atlantic Ocean westward to the Great Plains, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. This area could be subdivided into the southeastern and northeastern regions. These peoples were generally semisedentary, with agriculture based on maize, beans, and squash. Most, but not all, were chiefdoms.

Algonquian cultures/languages:

A Native American language family whose speakers were widespread in the eastern woodlands, Great Lakes, and subarctic regions of eastern North America. This should not be confused with the people of the same name, who were a single nation inhabiting the St. Lawrence Valley at the time of first contact.

Iroquoian cultures/languages:

A Native American language family whose speakers were concentrated in the eastern woodlands. This language family should not be confused with the nations of the same name, which inhabited the territory of modern-day upstate New York at the time of first contact.

Iroquois Confederacy:

A league of five Native American nations — the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas — probably formed around 1450. A sixth nation, the Tuscaroras, joined around 1720. Condolence ceremonies introduced by a Mohawk named Hiawatha formed the basis for the league. Positioned between New France and New Netherland (later New York), the Iroquois played a central role in the era of European colonization.

Great Lakes:

Five enormous, interconnected freshwater lakes — Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan, and Superior — that dominate eastern North America. In the era before long-distance overland travel, they comprised the center of the continent’s transportation system.

Great Plains:

A broad plateau region that stretches from central Texas in the south to the Canadian plains in the north, bordered on the east by the eastern woodlands and on the west by the Rocky Mountains. Averaging around 20 inches of rainfall a year, this area is made up of primarily grasslands that support grazing but not crop agriculture.

Great Basin:

An arid basin-and-range region bounded by the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Sierra Mountains on the west. All of its water drains or evaporates within the basin. A resource-scarce environment, this region was thinly populated by Native American hunter-gatherers who ranged long distances to support themselves.

Republic:

A state without a monarch or prince that is governed by representatives of the people.

Hiawatha:

a Mohawk man lost his family in one of these wars. Stricken by grief, he met a spirit who taught him a series of condolence rituals. He returned to his people preaching a new gospel of peace and power, and the condolence rituals he taught became the foundation for the Iroquois Confederacy. Once bound by these rituals, the Five Nations began acting together as a political confederacy. They made peace among themselves and became one of the most powerful Native American groups in the Northeast.

Hernan Cortes:

In 1519 this person led an army of 600 men to the Yucatán Peninsula. Gathering allies among Native peoples who chafed under Aztec rule, he marched on Tenochtitlán and challenged its ruler, Moctezuma. Awed by the Spanish invaders, Moctezuma received Cortés with great ceremony. But Cortés soon took the emperor captive, and after a long siege he and his men captured the city. The conquerors cut off the city’s supply of food and water, causing great suffering for the residents of Tenochtitlán. By 1521, Cortés and his men had toppled the Aztec Empire.

Pedro Alvares Cabral:

Portuguese efforts to sail around the southern tip of Africa led to a surprising find. As Vasco da Gama and his contemporaries experimented with winds and currents, their voyages carried them ever farther away from the African coast and into the Atlantic. On one such voyage in 1500, this Portuguese commander and his fleet were surprised to see land loom in the west. This general named his discovery Ihla da Vera Cruz — the Island of the True Cross — and continued on his way toward India. Others soon followed and changed the region’s name to Brazil.

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