APUSH Period1/2

Aztec Empire

A powerful Mesoamerican empire dominated by the Mexica people in central Mexico from the 1400s until the Spanish conquest in 1521. Its capital was Tenochtitlan, and it became wealthy by collecting tribute from conquered peoples.

Mayan Empire

More accurately called the Maya civilization: a group of advanced but independent city states in present day southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. The Maya developed writing, mathematics, astronomy, calendars, trade networks, and large ceremonial cities.

Inca Empire

A vast, centralized Indigenous empire in the Andes Mountains of South America, centered in present day Peru. The Incas built roads, terraced farms, and a labor tax system called the mita before Francisco Pizarro conquered them in the 1530s.

Vikings

Norse seafarers, traders, settlers, and raiders from Scandinavia. Around the year 1000, Vikings reached North America and established a short lived settlement at Vinland, probably in Newfoundland.

Christopher Columbus

An Italian navigator sailing for the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. His 1492 voyage to the Caribbean began sustained contact between Europe and the Americas, leading to conquest, colonization, disease, and the Columbian Exchange.

Hernán Cortés

A Spanish conquistador who led the expedition that conquered the Aztec Empire from 1519 to 1521. He succeeded partly because of Indigenous allies hostile to the Aztecs, European weapons, and deadly diseases such as smallpox.

Conquistadores

Spanish soldiers and explorers who conquered Indigenous American societies and claimed land, wealth, and labor for Spain. Major conquistadores included Hernán Cortés in Mexico and Francisco Pizarro in Peru.

Tenochtitlan

The capital of the Aztec Empire, built on islands in Lake Texcoco in central Mexico. It was a large and sophisticated city with canals, marketplaces, temples, and chinampa agriculture before Cortés captured it in 1521.

Francisco Pizarro

A Spanish conquistador who conquered the Inca Empire in the 1530s. He captured Inca ruler Atahualpa and benefited from internal Inca conflict, Spanish weapons, and epidemic disease.

Encomienda System

A Spanish colonial labor and tribute system that gave colonists the right to demand work or payments from Indigenous communities. Encomenderos were supposed to protect and convert Indigenous people to Christianity, but the system often caused severe exploitation.

Bartolomé de Las Casas

A Spanish Dominican friar who condemned the cruel treatment of Indigenous peoples under Spanish colonial rule. He argued that Native Americans had rights and helped encourage the 1542 New Laws, which attempted to limit the encomienda system.

Hernando de Soto

A Spanish conquistador who explored the southeastern region of North America from 1539 to 1542. His expedition was the first recorded European expedition to cross the Mississippi River and spread disease among Native communities.

Reformation

A sixteenth century religious movement that challenged the authority and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. It led to the creation and growth of Protestant churches and intensified religious conflict throughout Europe.

Martin Luther

A German monk and theologian whose objections to Catholic Church practices helped begin the Protestant Reformation. He argued that salvation came through faith rather than through good works or Church rituals.

95 Theses

Martin Luther’s 1517 arguments criticizing the Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences and other abuses. Their rapid circulation challenged papal authority and helped launch the Protestant Reformation.

John Calvin

A French Protestant reformer who led a religious community in Geneva, Switzerland. His ideas about predestination, disciplined religious life, and church government strongly influenced Puritans and other Protestant groups.

Calvinism

A branch of Protestant Christianity based on John Calvin’s teachings. It emphasized God’s absolute power, predestination, the moral discipline of believers, and the idea that only the elect were chosen for salvation.

Henry VIII

The English king who broke England from the Roman Catholic Church after the pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy made Henry head of the Church of England.

Queen Elizabeth

Thie person from 1558 to 1603, restored Protestantism after the reign of her Catholic half sister Mary I. Her reign saw the defeat of the Spanish Armada and increased English interest in overseas colonization.

Puritans

English Protestants influenced by Calvinism who wanted to purify the Church of England of remaining Catholic practices. Many migrated to New England in the 1630s to create communities based on their religious beliefs.

Defeat of the Spanish Armada

The 1588 defeat of Spain’s massive invasion fleet by the English navy and severe storms. It weakened Spain’s reputation for naval invincibility and encouraged English colonization and competition with Spain overseas.

Roanoke Island

The site of an English colony established off the coast of present day North Carolina in 1587. When English supplies arrived in 1590, the settlers had disappeared, creating the mystery of the Lost Colony.

Sir Walter Raleigh

An English courtier, explorer, and colonization promoter who received a royal charter to establish colonies in North America. He sponsored the failed Roanoke settlements but did not personally lead a permanent colony.

Virginia Company

A London based joint stock company that received a royal charter from King James I in 1606. It founded Jamestown in 1607 in hopes of earning profits for investors through resources, trade, and settlement.

Powhatan

Wahunsenacawh, commonly called Powhatan by the English, was the leader of a powerful Algonquian political alliance in the Chesapeake region. Powhatan can also refer to the Native confederacy he led around Jamestown.

Captain John Smith

An English soldier and leader who helped Jamestown survive during its early years. He promoted strict work rules, explored the Chesapeake region, and negotiated with Powhatan peoples for food and assistance.

Jamestown

The first permanent English settlement in North America, founded in Virginia in 1607 by the Virginia Company. It survived early disease, hunger, conflict, and instability and later became economically successful through tobacco cultivation.

Bacon’s Rebellion

A 1676 uprising in Virginia led by frontier planter Nathaniel Bacon against Governor Sir William Berkeley. It resulted from frontier violence, land hunger, class tensions, and resentment of Berkeley’s policies toward Native peoples.

Proprietary Colony

A colony granted by the English monarch to an individual or group of proprietors, who had broad rights to govern and distribute land. Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and early Georgia were proprietary colonies.

Plymouth

A New England colony founded in 1620 by Pilgrims, Separatist Puritans who wanted to leave the Church of England completely. It was governed initially under the Mayflower Compact and later merged into Massachusetts Bay.

John Winthrop

A Puritan lawyer and longtime governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. In his City upon a Hill sermon, he argued that Puritan New England should serve as a model Christian community for the world.

Roger Williams

A Puritan dissenter banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony for challenging religious and political authority. He founded Rhode Island in 1636 and supported religious liberty, separation of church and state, and fair treatment of Native peoples.

Anne Hutchinson

A Massachusetts Bay religious dissenter who challenged Puritan ministers by emphasizing that salvation came through God’s grace and faith rather than obedience to religious laws. She was banished in 1637 and helped establish Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

Pequot War

A conflict from 1636 to 1637 in New England between the Pequot people and English colonists allied with the Mohegan and Narragansett. The English victory, including the Mystic Massacre, devastated the Pequot and expanded English control.

Metacom’s War

Also called King Philip’s War, a devastating conflict from 1675 to 1676 between New England colonists and Native peoples led by Wampanoag leader Metacom. The English victory killed many people, destroyed towns, and greatly weakened Native power.

Iroquois Confederacy

Also called the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, a powerful alliance of Native nations in the Northeast. It originally united the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, later joined by the Tuscarora, to coordinate diplomacy, trade, and warfare.

Quaker

A member of the Religious Society of Friends, a Protestant group that emphasized the inner light, equality before God, pacifism, and direct spiritual experience. Quakers rejected formal clergy and often opposed war and slavery.

William Penn

An English Quaker who received a proprietary charter for Pennsylvania in 1681. He promoted religious toleration, representative government, and peaceful relations with Native peoples, making Pennsylvania a major destination for immigrants.

Indentured Servants

People, often poor English migrants, who signed labor contracts agreeing to work for a colonial employer for a set period, usually five to seven years. In return, they received passage to America, food, shelter, and sometimes land or money after service.

Slavery

A system in which human beings are legally treated as property and forced to labor without freedom. In British North America, slavery became increasingly racial, lifelong, and hereditary, especially for Africans and their descendants.

Protestant

A Christian who belongs to a church that developed from the Protestant Reformation rather than the Roman Catholic Church. Protestant groups included Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Puritans, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Quakers.

Triangular Trade

A term for Atlantic trade networks connecting Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and the American colonies. Manufactured goods, enslaved Africans, sugar, molasses, tobacco, and raw materials moved through these routes.

Columbian Exchange

The exchange of plants, animals, diseases, people, technologies, and ideas between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres after Columbus’s voyages. European diseases devastated Native populations, while American crops such as corn and potatoes transformed diets worldwide.

Half Way Covenant

A 1662 policy adopted by some New England Puritan churches. It allowed the baptized children of church members to receive baptism for their own children even if they had not experienced conversion and could not become full church members.

Salem Witch Trials

A series of witchcraft accusations, trials, and executions in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 and 1693. More than 150 people were accused, 19 were hanged, and the crisis revealed social tensions and the dangers of religious extremism.

Enlightenment

An eighteenth century intellectual movement that emphasized reason, science, natural laws, individual rights, and skepticism of traditional authority. Enlightenment ideas influenced colonial political thought and later arguments for American independence.

Benjamin Franklin

A colonial printer, writer, scientist, inventor, diplomat, and civic leader who represented Enlightenment ideals. He conducted electrical experiments, founded institutions such as libraries and fire companies, and promoted practical knowledge and self improvement.

Great Awakening

A series of Protestant religious revivals in the 1730s and 1740s that emphasized emotional preaching, personal conversion, and the new birth. It challenged established churches, created divisions between Old Lights and New Lights, and encouraged new denominations.

George Whitefield

A British Anglican minister and one of the most famous preachers of the First Great Awakening. He traveled throughout the colonies, delivered dramatic outdoor sermons to huge crowds, and promoted the idea of personal conversion.

Jonathan Edwards

A Massachusetts Congregational minister and important Great Awakening preacher. His sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God stressed human sinfulness, God’s power, and the need for an emotional conversion experience.

Joint Stock Company

A business organization in which multiple investors pool money, share financial risk, and divide profits. The Virginia Company used this model to raise funds for English colonization in North America.

Mayflower Compact

A 1620 agreement signed by male passengers aboard the Mayflower before settlement at Plymouth. It created a self governing civil body politic and established the principle that colonists could govern through mutual consent.

James Oglethorpe

An English reformer and military leader who founded Georgia in 1733. He hoped the colony would provide a fresh start for the worthy poor, limit slavery and alcohol, and serve as a defensive buffer between British colonies and Spanish Florida.

House of Burgesses

Virginia’s elected representative assembly, first convened in 1619. It was the first representative legislature in English North America and established a precedent for colonial self government.

Navigation Acts

A series of English trade laws beginning in 1651 that regulated colonial commerce for England’s benefit. They required many goods to travel on English ships and required certain colonial products, such as tobacco, to be sold first in England.

Mercantilism

The economic theory that a nation should build wealth and power by exporting more than it imported, accumulating precious metals, and controlling colonial trade. Colonies existed mainly to provide raw materials and markets for the mother country.

Salutary Neglect

Britain’s unofficial policy of loosely enforcing many colonial trade laws, especially during the early 1700s. This allowed colonial merchants and legislatures to gain experience with self government and economic independence.

Sir William Berkeley

The royal governor of Virginia whose policies were challenged during Bacon’s Rebellion. Wealthy planters and frontier settlers criticized him for limiting westward expansion and refusing to support more aggressive warfare against Native peoples.

Pueblo Revolt

A successful 1680 uprising in present day New Mexico in which Pueblo peoples, led by Po’pay, revolted against Spanish colonists, missionaries, forced labor, and religious oppression. The Pueblo expelled the Spanish for about twelve years.

Headright System

A land grant policy used in Virginia that gave settlers 50 acres of land for paying their own passage to the colony or paying for another person’s passage. It encouraged immigration, indentured servitude, and the growth of large plantations.

Subsistence Farming

Farming intended mainly to feed the farmer’s household and local community rather than to produce a large surplus for sale. It was common in many New England and backcountry settlements.

Hereditary Aristocracy

A social system in which wealth, land, social rank, and political influence are passed down through family inheritance. In the colonial South, wealthy plantation owning families often formed an inherited elite with major political power.