Early Native Cultures, European Religions, and Key Historical Movements

Hunters & gatherers

Hunters and gatherers were Native people who did not farm and got food by hunting animals, fishing, and picking wild plants. They moved based on where they were able to find food. Due to their non-sedentary lifestyle, they were harder for the Europeans to conquer.

Semi-sedentary societies

groups of people that occupied permanent settlements in the summer, and dispersed into smaller, nomadic/migrant groups for the rest of the year to fish, gather, and hunt.

Mississippian culture

a corn-farming way of life that grew along the Mississippi River and across the Southeast around A.D. 1000. Corn fed large populations, so towns became cities with kings and priests in charge, the largest being Cahokia, with more than 10,000 people. They built huge dirt mounds topped with temples and rulers' homes.

Eastern woodlands

A large forest region that extended from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic. Semi-sedentary tribes (Algonquians and Iroquoians) lived in seasonal villages there. They burned the forest seasonally to clear it for hunting and farming and were known as "nature's architects."

Algonquian cultures/languages

Groups: Powhatan Chiefdom (dominated the Chesapeake Bay), Lenni Lenape (Delaware), Munsee, Narragansetts, Wampanoags, Mohegans, Pequots

Iroquoian cultures/language

Groups: Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas

Iroquois confederacy

a political alliance of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations.

Great Lakes

The region west of the eastern woodlands that Algonquian-speaking peoples dominated: the Ottawas, Ojibwas and Potawatomis, who collectively "thought of themselves as a single people: the Anishinaabe.

Great Plains

farther west of the Great Lakes "lies the vast, arid steppe region known as the Great Plains, which was dominated by the hunting and gathering activities of small, dispersed groups," the book says.

Rocky Mountains

No definition in the text. It's only located, not defined: "the Crow moved to its "eastern slope," and the Great Basin lies on its far side.

Great Basin

A dry area of land between the Rockies and the Sierra Mountains, home to Numic-speaking peoples in three broad groups: Bannocks and Northern Paiutes in the north, Shoshones in the middle, Utes and Southern Paiutes in the south. Resources were varied and spread thin in the area.

Peasants

farmworkers who lived in small villages surrounded by fields that they farmed cooperatively by different families. This was the class that most Europeans were in in 1450.

Republic

states that had no prince or king but instead were governed by merchant coalitions

Christianity

a religion heavily inspired by Jewish monotheism. Believed that Jesus Christ was himself divine.

Islam

a religion where its followers known as Muslims considered Muhammad to be God's last prophet. Christian rulers were required to combat this religion from spreading. Converts to Islam knew the Koran and worshipped only a single God. Some of their cities, like Timbuktu, the legendary commercial center on the Niger River, became centers of Islamic learning and instruction.

Crusades

a series of military campaigns undertaken by Christian armies between A.D. 1096 and 1291 to reverse the advance of the Muslim religion (Islam) into Europe and to win back the holy lands where Christ had lived.

Protestant Reformation

a movement starting in 1517 triggered by German monk Martin Luther's criticisms against the Catholic Church. Sparks century of religious warfare.

Counter-reformation

took place in the Catholic Church during the 1500s. Triggered by the Protestant reformation, it sought change from within and created new monastic and missionary orders like the Jesuits.