AP US History: American Pageant Chapter 1

Corn or Maize

Staple crop that formed the economic foundation of Indian civilizations.

Portugal

First European nation to send explorers around the west coast of Africa.

Horse

Animal introduced by Europeans that changed Indian way of life on the Great Plains

Treaty of Tordesillas

Treaty that secured Spanish title to lands in Americas by dividing them with Portugal.

Mestizos

Person of mixed European and Indian ancestry.

St. Augustine

Founded in 1565, it's the oldest continually inhabited European settlement in US territory

Black Legend

Belief that the Spanish only killed, tortured, and stole in the Americas while doing nothing good

Roanoke Island, NC

Colony founded by Sir Walter Raleigh that mysteriously disappeared in the 1580's.

Joint-stock

Forerunner of the modern corporation that enabled investors to pool financial capital for colonial ventures.

Charter

Royal document granting a specified group the right to form a colony and guaranteeing settlers their rights as English citizens.

Indentured Servants

Penniless people obligated to forced labor for a fixed number of years, often in exchange for passage to the New World.

Act of Toleration

Maryland statute of 1649 that granted religious freedom to all Christians, but not Jews and atheists.

Squatters

Poor farmers in North Carolina and elsewhere who occupied land and raised crops without gaining legal title to the soil

House of Burgesses

First representative government in New World.

Ferdinand and Isabella

Financiers and beneficiaries of Columbus's voyages of discovery.

Cortes

Conqueror of the Aztecs.

Pizarro

Conqueror of the Incas.

Dias and DaGama

Portuguese navigators who led early voyages of discovery.

Columbus

Italian-born explorer who believed he arrived off the coast of Asia rather than on an unknown continent.

Montezuma

Powerful Aztec monarch who fell to Spanish conquerors

Elizabeth I

Unmarried English ruler who led England to national glory.

Hiawatha

Legendary founder of the powerful Iroquois Confederation

John Cabot

Italian-born explorer sent by the English to explore the coast of North America in 1498

Georgia

Founded as a refuge for debtors by philanthropists.

North Carolina

Colony that was called "a vale of humility between two mountains of conceit".

Smith and Rolfe

leaders who rescued Jamestown from the "starving time".

Maryland

Founded as a haven for Roman Catholics.

Lord Baltimore

Catholic aristocrat who sought to build a sanctuary for his fellow believers.

South Carolina

Colony that turned to disease-resistant African-American slaves for labor in its extensive rice plantations.

Raleigh and Gilbert

Elizabethan courtiers who failed in their attempts to found New World colonies.

Jamestown

Riverbank site where Virginia Company settlers planted the first permanent English colony.

Cause: The Great Ice Age

Effect: Exposure of a "land bridge" between Asia and North America.

Cause: Cultivation of Maize (corn)

Effect: Formation of large, sophisticated civilizations in Mexico and South America

Cause: New sailing technology and desire for spices

Effect: European voyages around Africa and across the Atlantic attempting to reach Asia.

Cause: Portugal's creation of sugar plantations on Atlantic coastal islands

Effect: Rapid expansion of the African slave trade

Cause: Columbus's first encounter with the New World

Effect: A global exchange of animals, plants, and diseases.

Cause: Native Americans' lack of immunity to various diseases

Effect: Decline of 90% in the New World Indian population

Cause: Spanish conquest of larger quantities of New World gold and silver

Effect: Rapid expansion of global economic commerce and manufacturing.

Cause: Aztec legends of a returning god, Quetzalcoatl

Effect: Cortes' relatively easy conquest of the Aztecs.

Cause: Spanish need to protect Mexico against French and English encroachment

Effect: Establishment of Spanish settlements in Florida and New Mexico

Cause: Franciscan friars' desire to convert Pacific coast Indians to Catholicism

Effect: Formation of a chain of mission settlements in California.

Cause: The English victory over the Spanish Armada

Effect: Enabled England to gain control of the North Atlantic sea-lanes.

Cause: The English law of primogeniture

Effect: Led many younger sons of the gentry to seek their fortunes in exploration and colonization.

Cause: The enclosing of English pastures and crop land

Effect: Forced numerous laborers off the land and sent them looking for opportunities elsewhere.

Cause: Lord DeLa Warr's use of brutal "Irish tactics" in Virginia

Effect: led to the two Anglo-Powhatan wars that virtually exterminated Virginia's Indian population.

Cause: The English government's persecution of Roman Catholics

Effect: Led Lord Baltimore to establish Maryland.

Cause: The slave codes of England's Barbados colony

Effect: Became the legal basis for slavery in North America.

Cause: The introduction of tobacco

Effect: created the economic foundation for most of England's southern colonies.

Cause: The flight of poor farmers and religious dissenters from planter run Virginia

Effect: Led to the founding of independent minded North Carolina.

Cause: John Smith's stern leadership in Virginia

Effect: Whipped gold-hungry, nonworking colonists into line.

Cause: Gorgia's unhealthy climate, restrictions on slavery, and vulnerability to Spanish attacks

Effect: Kept the buffer colony poor and largely unpopulated for a long time.