Give Me Liberty! : Chapter 1 - A New World

The First Americans Focus Question

What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?

The Settling of America

Indians settled in the new world between 15,000 or 60,000 years ago, before the glaciers submerged the land bridge between Asia and North America

Gradual Settlement Across Americas

North and South American societies built roads, trade networks, and irrigation systems

Indians North of Mexico

lacked literacy, wheeled vehicles, metal tools, and scientific knowledge for long distance navigation

Mound Builders of the Mississippi Valley

-built along the Mississippi River in modern day Louisiana, a community known today as Poverty Point was a trading center for The Mississippi and Ohio River valleys

-city of Cahokia flourished, extensive trade network, featured large human-built mounds

Western Indians

-Hopi and Zuni ancestors settled around present day Arizona and New Mexico & built large towns with multiple family dwellings, traded w/ people as far away as Mississippi and central Mexico

Western Indians (Pacific Northwest)

lived primarily by fishing and gathering

Great Plains Indians

Indians hunted buffalo or lived in agricultural communities

Indians of Eastern North America

(Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca (Tuscarona)

1-sustained themselves with a diet of corn, squash, and beans and supplemented it by fishing and hunting

2- Native Americans believed spirits could be found in living and inanimate things like animals, plants, trees, water, wind (animism)

3-Tribes frequently warred w/ one another, but some loose alliances

4- Indians saw themselves as one group among many; the sheer diversity seen by the Europeans upon their arrival was remarkable

Native American Religion

1. Religious ceremonies were often directly related to farming and hunting

2. Those who were believed to hold special spiritual powers held positions of respect and authority

3. Indian religion did not pose a sharp distinction between the natural and the supernatural

(notes) single creator, respect to deity

Land and Property

1. the idea of owning private property was foreign to the Indians

2. Indians believed land was a common resource, not an economic commodity

3. Wealth mattered little in Indian societies and generosity was far more important

(notes) believed communal access to land; Indians cared about how much influence they had more than how much land they had

Indian Gender Relations

Women could engage in premarital sex and choose to divorce their husbands, and most indian societies were matrilineal

Since men were often away on hunts, women attended to the agricultural duties as well as the household duties

European views on this: men's hunting was lazy & women were enslaved bc the worked in the fields

European Views of the Indians

1. Europeans felt that Indians lacked genuine religion

2. Europeans claimed that Indians did not "use" the land, thus had no claim to it.

3. Europeans viewed Indian men as weak and Indian women as mistreated

Indian Freedom , European Freedom - How did Indian and European Ideas of freedom differ on the eve of contact??

focus question

Indian Freedom

1. Europeans concluded that the notion of freedom was alien to Indian societies.

2. Europeans concluded that Indians were barbaric because they were too free.

3. European understanding of freedom was based in ideas of personal independence and the ownership of private property-ideas foreign to Indians.

Christian Liberty

1. Europeans believed that to embrace Christ was to provide freedom from sin

2. "Christian liberty" had no connection to religious tolerance (free=servant to God, not free to choose religion)

Freedom and Authority

1. Europeans claimed that obedience to law was another definition of freedom: law was liberty's salvation

2. Under English law, women held very few rights and were submissive to their husbands

(ordered hierarchy, men>women: women's identity is covered by a man's)

Liberty and Liberties

1. Liberty came rom knowing one's place in a hierarchal society & fulfilling duties appropriate to his/her rank

2. Numerous modern civil liberties did not exist (such as freedom of worship and freedom of the press)

(The Europeans came from very non-free societies, but felt superior to the Indians anyways)

The Expansion of Europe - What prompted European explorers to look west across the atlantic?

focus question

Chinese and Portuguese Navigation

Chinese Admiral Zheng He led several naval expeditions to the Indian Ocean

-caravel, compass, and the quadrant made travel along the African coast possible for the Portuguese

Portugal and West Africa

1. Africa was a wealthy continent and the search for African gold drove the early explorers

2. The Portuguese established trading posts, "factories", along the Western coast of Africa

Freedom and Slavery in Africa

1. Slavery was already one form of labor in Africa before the Europeans came.

2. Europeans textiles and guns for African slaves; this greatly disrupted African society

3. By the time Vasco de Gama sailed to India, Portugal had established a vast trading empire

The Voyages of Columbus

1. Both commercial trade and religious conversions motivated Columbus

2. Christopher Columbus, an Italian, got financed by the King and Queen of Spain (Ferdinand & Isabella)

3. In the same year, 1942, the king and queen completed the reconquista, ordering all Muslims and Jews to convert to Catholicism or leave the country of Spain.

Contact - What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with the Europeans?

focus question

Colombus in the New World

1. Columbus landen on Hispaniola in 1942 and colonization began the next year

Nicholas de Ovando established a permanent base in Hispaniola in 1502

Settlements in Hispaniola

Nicholas de Ovando established a permanent base in Hispaniola in 1502

Explorations of Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci sailed along the coast of South America between 1498 and 1502, and the New World became to be called America

Exploration And Conquest

1. News could now travel quickly, esp. with the invention of Johann Gutenberg's movable printing press

John Cabot

John Cabot had travelled to Newfoundland in 1497 and soon many Europeans were exploring the new world

Vasco Nunez de Balboa

de Balboa trekked across Panama and was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean

Ferdinand Magellan

led an expedition to sail around the world

Hernan Cortes conquest of the Aztecs

Two Spanish conquistadores, Hernan Cortez and Francisco Pizarro, led devastating expeditions against the Aztec and Inca civilizations respectively

Francisco Pizarro's conquest of the Incas

defeat, devastation for the Incas

The Demographic Disaster / The "Colombian Exchange" of goods and people

1. the Colombian exchange transferred not only plants and animals but also diseases, such as smallpox and influenza

2. The native populations were significantly depleted through wars, enslavement, and disease* most devastating

The Spanish Empire - What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America?

focus question

Governing Spanish America

(Catholic Church)

-Spain established a stable government modeled after Spanish home rule and absolutism

a. Power flowed from the king to the Council of the Indies to viceroys to local officials

-The Catholic Church played a significant role in administration of Spanish colonies

Colonists in Spanish America

Gold and silver mining was the primary economy in Spanish America.

a. mines were worked by Indians

b. Many Spaniards came to the New World for easier social mobility / large scale farms (haciendas)

Colonists and Indians; Exploitation of Indian Labor

1. Indian inhabitants always outnumbered European colonists and their descendants in Spanish America

2. Spanish America evolved into a hybrid culture - part Indian, part Spanish, and in places part African

3. Mestizos - persons of mixed Spanish and Indian origin

Justifications for Conquest

1. To justify their claims to land that belonged to someone else, the Spanish relied on….

a. cultural superiority

b. missionary zeal

c. violence

Justifications for Conquest (cont. )

1. perception of cultural superiority