The American Yawp Chapter 1: Indigenous America

Columbian Exchange

The exchange of plants, animals, diseases, and technologies between the Americas and the rest of the world following Columbus's voyages.

Three Sisters

corn, beans, squash

Matrilineal

relating to a social system in which family descent and inheritance rights are traced through the mother

Cahokia

an ancient settlement of southern Indians, located near present day St. Louis, it served as a trading center for 40,000 at its peak in A.D. 1200.

Native American Slavery

At first Spanish settlers relied on forced labor of Native Americans to work their plantations.

Kinship

A social bond based on common ancestry, marriage, or adoption

Potlach

elaborate redistribution ceremony practiced among the Kwakiutl of the Pacific Northwest

Reconquista

Beginning in the eleventh century, military campaigns by various Iberian Christian states to recapture territory taken by Muslims. In 1492 the last Muslim ruler was defeated, and Spain and Portugal emerged as united kingdoms.

Sugar Cultivation

Drove slave trade. Ruled by absentee landlords. More English residents in West Indies than in Chesapeake and New England. Profitable crop.

Christopher Columbus

He mistakenly discovered the Americas in 1492 while searching for a faster route to India.

Encomienda

A grant of land made by Spain to a settler in the Americas, including the right to use Native Americans as laborers on it

Bartolome de Las Casas

First bishop of Chiapas, in southern Mexico. He devoted most of his life to protecting Amerindian peoples from exploitation. His major achievement was the New Laws of 1542, which limited the ability of Spanish settlers to compel Amerindians to labor.

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.

Aztecs

Also known as Mexica, they created a powerful empire in central Mexico (1325-1521 C.E.). They forced defeated peoples to provide goods and labor as a tax.

La Malinche

She was the interpreter for Cortes. She helped the Spanish make their way into Tenochtitlan.

Inca

Largest and most powerful Andean empire. Controlled the Pacific coast of South America from Ecuador to Chile from its capital of Cuzco.

Sistema de Castas

the way that the Spanish differentiated between themselves and peoples of mixed blood