American History: New World Beginnings and Early Colonization

This flashcard set covers the migration of native populations, the impact of the Columbian Exchange, Spanish colonial systems, and early interactions between Europeans and Native Americans from 1491 to 1807.

Maize cultivation

An agricultural practice that spread from present-day Mexico into the American Southwest, supporting economic development, settlement, advanced irrigation, and social diversification.

Great Basin and Western Great Plains societies

Native populations that developed largely mobile lifestyles in response to the aridity of the Great Basin and the grasslands of the Western Great Plains.

Mixed agricultural and hunter-gatherer economies

Economic systems developed in the Northeast, the Mississippi River Valley, and along the Atlantic Seaboard that favored the development of permanent villages.

Columbian Exchange

The transfer of new crops, mineral wealth, and diseases between the Americas, Europe, and Africa that stimulated European population growth and facilitated the shift from feudalism to capitalism.

Joint-stock companies

More organized methods for conducting international trade that, alongside improvements in maritime technology, helped drive economic changes in Europe and the Americas.

Encomienda system

A system in which Spanish colonial economies marshaled Native American labor to support plantation-based agriculture and extract precious metals.

Portugal

The European country that dominated the African slave trade in the 15th-century, associated with Henry the Navigator.

Spanish caste system

A social hierarchy that incorporated and carefully defined the status of the diverse population of Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans in the Spanish Empire.

Pueblo Revolt / Pap Rebellion of 1680

An American Indian resistance effort in the Southwest that led to Spanish accommodation of some aspects of Native American culture.

Atlantic economy

A trade network in which goods, enslaved Africans, and American Indians were exchanged between Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

California missions

Spanish settlements supported by the bonded labor of local Indians that provided opportunities for social mobility among soldiers and led to new cultural blending.

Mestizo culture

A culture formed from the blending of Spanish and American Indian populations.