APUSH Unit 1 - 1491 to 1607 ( discoveries and Tribes )

Marco Polo

An Italian adventurer returned to Europe in 1925 and began telling tales of his nearly 20-year voyage in China.

Bartholomeu Días

rounded the southernmost tip of the “dark continent” ( africa )

vasco da gama

he reached India

Christopher Columbus

Skilled Italian seafarer who persuaded the Spanish monarchs to outfit him with three tiny ships. While seeking a new route to the Indies, he bumped into new land, the Bahamas, and soon America.

Vasco Nuñez Balboa

hailed across and discovered the Pacific Ocean

Ferdinand Magellan

Started from Spain in 1519 with 5 tiny ships; the inhabitants of the Philippines slew him; his team returned home and finished the first circumnavigation of Earth

Juan Ponce de león

in 1513 and 1521, explored Florida

Francisco Corondo

went on a quest of fabled golden cities that turned out to be adobe pueblos.

Francisco Pizarro

crushed the Incas of Peru in 1532 and added a huge hoard of booty to Spanish coffers.

Hernán Cortes

Superior firepower took over the Aztecs,

Malinche

indian slave women, who knew Mayan and Nahuatl who helped Hernan cortes

Moctezuma

Chief of the Aztecs when the Spanish took over

Doña Marina

Hernan Cortés’s Spanish name.

Don Juan De Onté

Traversed the barren Sonoran Desert from Mexico into the Rio Grande Valley in 1598.

The Aztecs

Central America; capital city called Tenochtitlan ( 300,000 people ); cultivation of Maize.

Mayas

Central or South America; Yucatan Peninsula; cultivation of maize.

Incas

Central or South America; Andes Mountains; 16 million people; fertile soil, mountain valleys where they grew potatoes, and irrigation systems.

Pueblos

Southwest: present-day Mexico and Arizona; sedentary population; adobe and masonry homes; highly organized societies

Tribes in plains and Great Basin regions

Hunter-gatherer; Ute indians; small, egalitarian, kinship-based bands.

Chinook Indians

Pacific Northwest; fishing villages; used cedar trees to build plankhouses that housed 70 members.

Chumash

Pacific Northwest; Lived in present- day California

Hopewell

Mississippi River Valley; lived in towns of about 4,000 to 6,000 people. Traded extensively with other regions

Cahokia Indians

Mississippi River Valley:10,000 to 30,000 people, led by powerful chieftains who controlled trade from the Great Lakes all the way to the Gulf of Mexico

Iroquois

Northeast Region; grew crops like maize, squash, and beans; built longhouses where they lived with 30 to 50 family members.