AP Unit 1: Pre-Columbian and Colonial America Terms

Powhatan Indians

inhabited the Atlantic seaboard in coastal Virginia. Encountered colonists, like John Smith, when Jamestown was created. Pocahontas was part of this tribe. Hunted and fished for food.

Paiute Indians

inhabited the Great Basin desert (modern Utah area). Ate birds, reptiles and insects.

Sioux Indians

inhabited the Great Plains (Minnesota, Nebraska & Dakotas). Lived off the buffalo and lived in tee-pees.

Iroquois Confederacy

American Indian alliance which started pre-Colombian contact in order to stop wars between their tribes. Most powerful Indian group on the east coast during the colonial period.

Mexica Indians

inhabited central Mexico. Lived in adobe houses and farmed. Had one of the most powerful Indian empires at European contact. Destroyed by Cortes and his men.

Wampanoag Indians

inhabited the Atlantic seaboard in the Northeast (Massachusetts) and encountered the Pilgrims when they arrived. Led by Massasoit at the time of contact. Hunted and fished for food.

Chinook Indians

inhabited the Pacific Northwest (Oregon & Washington) in long houses with ceremonial totem poles. Ate salmon and hunted.

Pueblos Indians

inhabited the American Southwest (four corners of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico & Arizona). Lived in adobe houses and cliff dwellings. Hunted small animals and subsistence farming.

Christopher Columbus

voyager whose four transatlantic voyages (1492-93, 1493-96, 1498-1500, and 1502-04) opened the way for European exploration, exploitation, and colonization of the Americas. Columbus made his transatlantic voyages under the sponsorship of Ferdinand II and Isabella I in Spain

Francisco Pizarro

a Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that conquered the Inca Empire. He captured and killed Incan emperor Atahualpa and claimed the lands for Spain.

Hernando Cortes

a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Mexica Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of Spain.

Jacques Cartier

French mariner, whose explorations of the Canadian coast and the St. Lawrence River (1534, 1535, 1541-42) laid the basis for later French claims to North America (see New France).

Enlightenment

the period in the history of western thought and culture characterized by dramatic revolutions in science, philosophy, society and politics; these revolutions swept away the medieval world-view and ushered in our modern western world.

John Locke

an English philosopher, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism". Believed in the concept of "natural rights."

Mercantilism

the economic theory that trade generates wealth and is stimulated by the accumulation of profitable balances, which a government should encourage by means of protectionism.

Navigation Acts

a series of Acts passed in the English Parliament starting in 1651 and on through the 17th century. They were designed to regulate colonial trade and enabled England to collect duties (taxes) in their colonies.

Protestant Reformation

the 16th-century religious movement that splintered Catholic Europe, setting in place the structures and beliefs that would lead to many Europeans leaving the Catholic church to create smaller Christian denominations.

Salutary Neglect

refers to the seventeenth and eighteenth-century British Crown policy of avoiding strict enforcement of parliamentary laws meant to keep American colonies obedient to England.

Spanish Inquisition

judicial institution established to combat heresy in Spain. In practice, the Spanish Inquisition served to consolidate power of the Spanish monarchy, but was achieved through infamously brutal methods.

African Chattel Slavery

the owning of human beings of African descent as property able to be bought, sold, given, and inherited. They have no personal freedom or recognized rights and the institution is generational.

Anne Hutchinson

Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony because she believed women should be able to preach and believed God directly communicates with humans.

George Whitefield

an English Anglican cleric who was one of the founders of Methodism and the evangelical movement which started the First Great Awakening.

Indentured servitude

were men and women who signed a contract (also known as an indenture) by which they agreed to work for a certain number of years in exchange for transportation to Virginia and, once they arrived, food, clothing, and shelter

John Rolfe

one of the early English settlers of North America. He is credited with the first successful cultivation of tobacco as an export crop in the Colony of Virginia and married Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan.

John Smith

a British soldier or explorer who was a founder of the Jamestown colony in the early 1600s. Taken captive by Chief Powhatan and became a friend of chief's daughter, Pocahontas.

John Winthrop

an English Puritan lawyer and one of the leading figures in founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second major settlement in New England, following Plymouth Colony.

Mulatto

a person of mixed white and black ancestry, especially a person with one white and one black parent (part of the Spanish racial gradation system).

Mestizo

used in Spain and Latin America to mean a person of combined European and American Indian descent (part of the Spanish racial gradation system).

Pilgrims/Separatists

English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who wished to separate from the perceived corruption of the Church of England and form independent local churches. Some of these people left England to create the Plymouth Colony.

Puritans

English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to "purify" the Church of England from its "Catholic" practices. However, they wanted to remain within the Church of England. Some of these people left England to start the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Roger Williams

a Puritan who was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony because officials thought that he was spreading "dangerous ideas" such as separation of church and state. He began the settlement of Providence Colony in 1636 as a refuge offering freedom of conscience.

William Penn

English Quaker leader and advocate of religious freedom, who oversaw the founding of the Pennsylvania Colony as a refuge for Quakers and other religious minorities of Europe.

Colonial Quebec (1608)

Trading post created by Samuel de Champlain on the St. Lawrence River which started New France.

Fort Duquesne

a fort established by the French in 1754, at the convergence point of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. The siege of Fort Duquesne helped start the French and Indian War.

Jamestown (1607)

first permanent English settlement in North America, located on the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.

Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630)

originally settled by a group of about 1,000 English Puritans under Gov. John Winthrop by those seeking religious refuge.

New Netherlands (1624)

a Dutch colony in North America, which served as a trading post (especially for furs). The colony eventually became New York when it was seized by the British.

Charter colony

a colony, such as Virginia or Massachusetts, created by royal authorization under the control of a trading company or corporate colonies, and exempt from interference by the Crown.

House of Burgesses

the first legislative assembly in the American colonies. The first assembly met on July 30, 1619, in the church at Jamestown.

Mayflower Compact

document signed on an English ship prior to its landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts. The document was meant to legitimize a colony that sailed too far north of the royal colonial charter. It was the first system of self-government in the colonies.

Proprietary colony

Owned by a person (always a white male) or family, who could make laws and appoint officials as he or they pleased.

Royal colony

colonies that were under the direct control of the King, who usually appointed a Royal Governor.

Virginia Company

was a joint-stock company chartered by King James I in 1606 to establish a colony on the Chesapeake Bay. The colony allowed the Crown to reap the benefits of colonization—natural resources, new markets for English goods, leverage against the Spanish—without bearing the costs.

Bacon's Rebellion

an armed rebellion in 1676 by Virginian poor farmers, white indentured servants and black slaves against the rule of Governor William Berkeley. Berkeley won but a long-term consequence was the phasing out of indentured servitude in favor of increased slavery.

French and Indian War

phase of a worldwide nine years' war (1754-63) fought between France and Great Britain. (The more-complex European phase was the Seven Years' War [1756-63].) It determined control of the vast colonial territory of North America.

King Philip's War

war that pitted Wampanoag Indians against English settlers that was one of the bloodiest conflicts (per capita) in U.S. history. Philip (Metacom) was a son of Chief Massasoit, the chief who had greeted the first colonists of New England at Plymouth.

Stono Rebellion

a slave rebellion that began in September 1739, in the colony of South Carolina. It was the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies, with 42-47 whites and 44 blacks killed.

Pueblo Revolt

was an uprising of most of the indigenous people against the Spanish colonizers in the province of Santa Fe, New México. It was the most successful native uprising in North America.

Anglicization

the process of converting something to more "English" norms.

"City on a Hill"

phrase from the parable of Salt and Light in Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, "You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden." John Winthrop stated that the Massachusetts Bay Colony was going to be created under this model.

Encomienda System

in colonial Spanish America, it was a labor system, rewarding conquerors with the labor of particular groups of people. Indians were made to work the land for their conquerors.

Folkways in pre-1763 America

The paths taken by European immigrants into British North America. Example: the Scotch-Irish moved through the ports of the Middle Colonies into the Southern back country.

Foraging

search widely for food or provisions. American Indians adapted to their environment to hunt and forage based on the availability of resources.

Great Puritan Migration

immigration in this period of English religious dissidents to Massachusetts. They came in family groups rather than as isolated individuals and were motivated chiefly by a quest for freedom to practice their strict faith.

Halfway Covenant

an agreement extending partial church membership to church members' children who had not yet experienced conversion. This was done to keep more people in the Puritan faith.

Harvard College

Founded in 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and one of the most prestigious in the world.

Headright System

originally created in 1618 in Jamestown, Virginia. It was used as a way to attract new settlers to the region and address the labor shortage. New settlers who paid their way to Virginia received 50 acres of land.

Middle Passage

refers to the part of the trade where Africans, densely packed onto ships, were transported across the Atlantic to the West Indies.

Protestant Evangelism

was an evangelical and revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America, especially the American colonies, in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American Protestantism. Also known as the Great Awakening.

Triangular Trade

describes the Atlantic trade routes between three different destinations, or countries, in Colonial Times. The routes, covered England, Europe, Africa, the Americas and the West Indies. The West Indies supplied slaves, sugar, molasses and fruits to the American colonies.

Johnathan Edwards

Minister during the First Great Awakening. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” emphasizes “free will.” Credited as a Enlightenment thinker.

Hernan Cortes

Spanish explorer and conquistador who led the conquest of Mexica (Aztec) Mexico 1519-1521 for Spain.

Racial caste system under Spanish

Based one’s social status on the amount of African, Indian and Spanish blood. (Mestizo, Mullato, etc.)

Samuel de Champlain

Established Quebec. First permanent French colony in the Americas.

Tenochtitlan

Capital of the Aztec Empire, located on an island in Lake Texcoco. Its population was about 150,000 on the eve of Spanish conquest. Mexico City was constructed on its ruins.