Key Concepts in Pre-Columbian and Colonial American History

Columbian Exchange

The global exchange of people animals plants and microbes that bridged more than ten thousand years of geographic separation + It unleashed centuries of violence brought the greatest biological terror the world had ever seen and revolutionized world history

Three Sisters

Corn beans and squash grown together in the Eastern Woodlands + They sustained cities and civilizations by meeting nutritional needs and supporting intensive agriculture

Matrilineal

Family and clan identity proceeding along the female line through mothers and daughters + It gave women enormous influence in local communities and shaped kinship marriage and inheritance

Pre Columbian environmental disasters

Ecological challenges such as deforestation overirrigation and droughts that weakened societies like Chaco Canyon and Cahokia + They show how environment and population pressures led to collapse migration and new political formations

Cahokia

A Mississippian city east of modern St Louis that at its peak held between ten thousand and thirty thousand people + It rivaled European cities in size and shows the scale complexity and influence of Indigenous civilizations in North America

Native American slavery

Captivity in which enslaved people were those without kinship networks and could be integrated into a community through adoption or marriage + It was central to warfare and power but differed from European chattel slavery because it was not always permanent

Kinship

Networks of family and clan ties that bound Native communities together + It organized politics society and economy and shaped authority and obligations in most Native cultures

Potlatch

Elaborate feasts in the Pacific Northwest where hosts gave away goods to celebrate births weddings and status + It created social prestige reinforced bonds and reflected surplus from salmon based economies

Crusades

Religious wars that linked Europe with the wealth power and knowledge of Asia + They sparked the Renaissance increased trade and laid foundations for European expansion

Reconquista

The centuries of warfare that ended in 1492 with the expulsion of Muslim Moors and Iberian Jews from Spain + It consolidated Spanish royal power and freed resources for overseas exploration

Sugar cultivation

The labor intensive process of growing sugar on Atlantic islands using enslaved workers + It created the first great Atlantic plantations and became a model for colonization and slavery in the Americas

Christopher Columbus

A Genoese sailor backed by Spain who crossed the Atlantic in 1492 and landed in the Bahamas + His voyage began sustained European colonization forced labor systems and epidemic disease in the Americas

Encomienda

A Spanish system in which land and Indigenous laborers were granted to colonists + It brutalized Native workers and institutionalized exploitation across Spain's empire

Bartolomé de Las Casas

A Spanish Dominican priest who described the destruction and abuses against Indigenous people + His writings influenced debates in Europe and led Spain to reform labor systems though exploitation continued

Tenochtitlán

The Aztec capital city built on islands in Lake Texcoco founded in 1325 + Its size markets and temples showed the sophistication of Mesoamerican civilization destroyed by conquest and disease

Aztecs

A powerful empire in central Mexico that ruled through tribute alliances and military strength + Their defeat by Cortés opened vast wealth to Spain and reshaped the history of the hemisphere

La Malinche

A Native translator called Doña Marina who guided Cortés + She enabled Spanish alliances and conquest and became a lasting figure in Mexican memory

Inca

A Quechua empire in the Andes with roads terraces and millions of subjects + Disease civil war and conquest toppled one of the largest empires in the Americas

Sistema de Castas

A racial hierarchy in Spanish America that ranked people by ancestry and supposed purity of blood + It structured access to wealth and power and codified inequality in colonial society

Virgen de Guadalupe

The Virgin Mary's appearance to Juan Diego in 1531 as a dark skinned Nahuatl speaking figure + She became a central symbol of mestizo Christianity and Mexican identity