Comprehensive US Colonial History: Cultures, Economies, and Conflicts

Bering Strait

A strait connecting the Pacific and Arctic oceans between Russia and the United States.

Beringia

A land bridge that connected Asia and North America during the last Ice Age.

Clovis People

Considered the first human inhabitants of the Americas, named after their distinctively shaped spear points.

Paleo-Asiatic peoples

The ethnic background of the first migrants who crossed into North America from Siberia and Northeast Asia.

The Archaic Period

The history of humans in America from around 8000 B.C. to 1000 B.C.

Inca

A powerful civilization in South America, centered in the Andes Mountains of Peru.

Maya

A civilization known for developing a written language, complex calendar system, and advanced mathematics.

Mexica (Aztecs)

The term the Aztecs used for themselves, a powerful civilization in central Mexico.

Tenochtitlán

The magnificent capital city of the Mexica (Aztecs) located on an island in Lake Texcoco.

Chaco Canyon

The center of a powerful Ancestral Puebloan civilization in modern New Mexico.

Woodland Indians

Native American cultures that inhabited the eastern third of the United States, known for mound-building and agriculture.

Cahokia

The largest city of the Mississippian mound-building culture, located near modern-day St. Louis, Missouri.

Algonquian

A language group that dominated the Atlantic seaboard from Canada to Virginia.

Iroquois

A powerful political confederacy of five (later six) nations centered in upstate New York.

Muskogean

A language group that included tribes in the southernmost region of the eastern seaboard.

Agriculture

Most societies practiced agriculture, focusing on the 'three sisters': corn, beans, and squash, which were grown together to enrich the soil. Farming was often handled by women.

Religion

Native American religions were deeply tied to the natural world. They believed in a multitude of spirits inhabiting plants, animals, and the earth, and their ceremonies were focused on maintaining harmony with nature.

Gender Roles

Roles were divided by gender but often complementary. Men were typically responsible for hunting, fishing, and warfare. Women were responsible for farming, gathering, raising children, and maintaining the household.

Matrilineal

In many societies, particularly the Iroquois, family lineage was traced through the mother, giving women significant social and political influence.

Leif Eriksson

Around 1000 A.D., Norse seaman Leif Eriksson made a voyage to the North American continent and established a short-lived settlement.

Black Death

The bubonic plague, which killed more than a third of Europe's population in the 1340s, had a paradoxical effect. The drastic population loss led to a severe labor shortage, increasing the value of labor and allowing surviving workers to demand higher wages.

Marco Polo

A 13th-century Venetian merchant whose travels to Asia and accounts of its riches (like spices and silks) spurred a strong European desire for a faster, safer trade route to the East.

Prince Henry the Navigator

A prince of Portugal who, in the 15th century, sponsored numerous expeditions down the coast of Africa to find a sea route to Asia and gain access to West African gold and slaves.

Christopher Columbus's Incorrect Beliefs

Columbus made two critical miscalculations: he believed the world was much smaller in circumference than it actually is and that the Asian continent extended much farther east than it does.

Ferdinand & Isabella

The King and Queen of Spain who completed the Reconquista in 1492 and agreed to sponsor Columbus's westward voyage.

Columbus's First Voyage

In 1492, Columbus sailed west with three ships (the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria) and landed in the Bahamas, initiating the first lasting and large-scale contact between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.

Amerigo Vespucci

An Italian explorer and cartographer who argued that the lands discovered by Columbus were not part of Asia but a new, previously unknown continent.

Martin Waldseemüller

The German mapmaker who named the continents 'America' in honor of Amerigo Vespucci.

Vasco de Balboa

A Spanish explorer who, in 1513, crossed the Isthmus of Panama and became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean from the New World.

Ferdinand Magellan

A Portuguese explorer sailing for Spain whose expedition (1519-1522) was the first to circumnavigate the globe.

Hernando Cortés

A Spanish conquistador who led the expedition that conquered the Aztec (Mexica) Empire in Mexico between 1519 and 1521.

Cortés's Conquest of the Aztecs

Cortés succeeded against a much larger force due to several factors: superior military technology (steel swords, guns, horses), alliances with rival native groups who resented Aztec rule, and, most importantly, the devastating impact of a smallpox epidemic that weakened and demoralized the Aztec population.

Hernando de Soto

A Spanish explorer who led a brutal expedition through the American Southeast in the 1540s in search of gold, leaving a trail of disease and destruction among the native peoples.

Ordinances of Discovery

A set of Spanish laws issued in the 1570s that banned the most brutal forms of conquest. It shifted Spanish colonization policy from violent military campaigns to a focus on colonization and missionary work.

Describe how the Spanish used the Americas to enrich themselves

The Spanish Empire's primary goal was the extraction of wealth. They established vast silver and gold mines in Mexico and Peru, using forced native and later African labor. They also established large agricultural estates (haciendas) to produce goods for export, making Spain the wealthiest and most powerful nation in Europe during the 16th century.

What was the role of the Catholic church in the Spanish colonization of the Americas?

The Catholic Church was inseparable from the Spanish colonial project. Its primary mission was to convert Native Americans to Christianity. Missionaries often accompanied conquistadors, establishing missions that became centers of religion, agriculture, and social control. While some clergy, like Bartolomé de Las Casas, advocated for more humane treatment of natives, the Church was generally an instrument of colonial power.

St. Augustine

Founded in Florida in 1565, it is the oldest permanent European settlement in the present-day United States. It served as a military outpost to defend Spanish shipping lanes.

Don Juan de Oñate

A Spanish conquistador who established the colony of New Mexico in 1598. He treated the Pueblo Indians with extreme brutality, famously severing one foot of every surviving male warrior after the Acoma Pueblo revolt.

encomiendas

A grant by the Spanish Crown to a colonist in America conferring the right to demand tribute and forced labor from the Indian inhabitants of an area. In practice, it was a system of near-slavery.

What caused the New Mexico colony to grow and flourish throughout the 1600s?

The colony did not 'flourish' in the traditional sense; it remained a small, isolated outpost. Its growth was slow and based primarily on agriculture and ranching, with Spanish colonists and Catholic missionaries trying to impose their culture on the resilient Pueblo people.

Pueblo Revolt of 1680

An uprising of most of the indigenous Pueblo people against the Spanish colonizers in the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México.

Popé

A Pueblo religious leader who organized the revolt. The Pueblos were tired of Spanish economic exploitation and the violent suppression of their native religion. The revolt successfully drove the Spanish out of New Mexico for 12 years, making it the most successful Native American uprising in North American history.

Compare and contrast the Spanish Empire, and British/French/Dutch colonies in North America

Spanish: Focused on conquest, wealth extraction (gold/silver), and religious conversion. They created a large, centralized empire that directly subjugated and intermarried with native populations, creating a rigid, racially mixed class structure. French/Dutch: Focused primarily on trade, especially the fur trade. They established smaller, more scattered settlements and relied on alliances and partnerships with Native Americans rather than large-scale conquest. British: Focused on settlement and agriculture. They arrived in large numbers, including families, and sought to establish permanent societies. Their relationship with Native Americans was generally one of exclusion and displacement rather than subjugation or integration.

Exchange of Disease between Europe and the Americas

The single most impactful aspect of the Columbian Exchange, where Europeans brought smallpox, measles, and influenza to which Native Americans had no immunity, causing a demographic catastrophe that wiped out an estimated 90% of the native population.

Crops from the New World to the Old World

Corn, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, beans, tobacco, and cocoa, which revolutionized European agriculture and diet, leading to a population boom.

Crops from the Old World to the New World

Horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, and wheat, which fundamentally altered the American landscape and transformed life for Plains Indians.

mestizos

A person of combined European and Native American descent, central to the Spanish racial caste system (sistema de castas).

Labor Systems in the Spanish & Portuguese Empires

Initially relied on forced native labor through systems like the encomienda, later shifting to importing enslaved Africans as native populations died from disease.

Guinea

A term Europeans used to refer to the diverse and vibrant region of West Africa, south of the Sahara desert.

Kingdom of Mali

A powerful and wealthy empire in West Africa that flourished before European contact, with its center of trade and Islamic scholarship in the city of Timbuktu.

Southern African Kingdoms vs. Kingdom of Mali

Southern kingdoms like Benin, Congo, and Songhay were more geographically accessible to European traders, while Mali's wealth was based on trans-Saharan trade.

matrilinialism

A social system in which a person's descent is traced through their mother and maternal ancestors, common in many West African societies.

Portuguese exploration and the African slave trade

Portuguese mariners were the first Europeans to explore the West African coast, initially trading for gold and ivory before shifting to the slave trade.

Growth of the African Slave Trade

The demand for labor in the Americas, particularly for sugar cultivation in Brazil and the Caribbean, caused the slave trade to explode in the 16th and 17th centuries.

John Cabot

An Italian navigator sailing for England who explored the coast of Newfoundland in 1497, giving England its first claim to territory in the New World.

Economic Distress in England

England suffered from economic problems, including a surplus population and widespread poverty, leading to migration to the Americas.

Search for New Markets

English merchants sought new markets for their goods, especially wool, during the 1500s.

Mercantilism

A desire to acquire new resources and raw materials to enrich England.

The Enclosure Movement

A process in England where landlords enclosed common lands for sheep grazing, displacing thousands of tenant farmers and creating a landless, unemployed population.

Chartered Companies

Organizations like the Muscovy Company and the East India Company were precursors to colonial ventures. They were joint-stock companies, where investors pooled their capital to fund large-scale enterprises.

Richard Hakluyt

An English writer and propagandist for colonization. He argued that colonies would create new markets for English goods, help alleviate poverty and unemployment, and allow England to acquire resources without being dependent on rivals like Spain.

John Calvin

A French theologian and a leader of the Protestant Reformation. His teachings, known as Calvinism, were highly influential among English Puritans.

Predestination

A core tenet of Calvinism. It is the belief that God has already determined who is saved (the 'elect') and who is damned before they are born.

King Henry VIII and Christianity

When the Pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s and established the Church of England.

Bloody Mary

Queen Mary I, Henry VIII's Catholic daughter. She briefly restored Catholicism as the state religion and earned her nickname by burning hundreds of English Protestants at the stake for heresy.

Puritans

A group of English Protestants who emerged during the reign of Elizabeth I. They believed the English Reformation had not gone far enough and wanted to 'purify' the Church of England.

King James I and the Puritans

James I, who took the throne in 1603, believed in the divine right of kings and was hostile to the Puritans, leading many to believe that their only option was to leave England.

English view of the Irish

The English viewed the native Irish, who were Catholic and had different customs, as savage, uncivilized barbarians.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert

An early English colonizer who used brutal tactics to subdue the Irish and later attempted to establish a colony in Newfoundland but was lost at sea.

The Plantation Model

The English approach to colonizing Ireland, which involved transplanting English society by creating 'plantations'—self-contained English settlements—on land seized from the native population.

French colonial population in North America

The French population was relatively small, driven by the fur trade, consisting mainly of traders, trappers, and missionaries who lived among and often intermarried with Native Americans.

Coureurs de Bois

French for 'runners of the woods.' They were independent fur traders and trappers who ventured deep into the North American interior.

French Fur Trade

The economic backbone of the French empire in North America (New France), involving extensive trade networks and alliances with Algonquian tribes.

Henry Hudson

An English explorer sailing for the Dutch. In 1609, he sailed up the river that now bears his name, giving the Netherlands its claim to the region.

New Amsterdam

The capital of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. It was a diverse, commercially vibrant port town located on Manhattan Island. It was later seized by the English in 1664 and renamed New York.

Spanish Armada

King Philip II of Spain launched the Spanish Armada against England in 1588 to end English support for the Dutch revolt, stop English privateers, and restore Catholicism to England.

The Roanoke Colony

England's first attempt at a permanent colony in North America, established by Sir Walter Raleigh in the 1580s. The final group of settlers vanished without a trace.

Colonial Charter of 1606

King James I issued this charter, which authorized the London Company and the Plymouth Company to establish colonies in Virginia, guaranteeing colonists the same rights as English citizens.

Problems faced by Jamestown

Jamestown was built in a swampy area prone to malaria, had unrealistic expectations from colonists, suffered from starvation, and faced conflict with the Powhatan Confederacy.

Native American assistance to Jamestown

The Powhatan tribes initially traded food with the starving colonists and taught them how to cultivate local crops.

Captain John Smith

A soldier and adventurer who became the leader of Jamestown in 1608, imposing military discipline and establishing trade with the Powhatan.

Charter of 1609

The new charter expanded the London Company's territory, gave it more authority, and launched a campaign to attract new settlers by offering land.

The Starving Time

The winter of 1609-1610 in Jamestown, where colonists suffered severe famine, resorting to cannibalism, with only about 60 of the 500 colonists surviving.

Lord De La Warr

Governor who established a harsh, military-style system of discipline in Virginia, known as 'Dale's Laws,' which imposed order and forced colonists to work.

Tobacco Cultivation in Virginia

John Rolfe experimented with a harsh strain of West Indian tobacco, which became Virginia's first profitable crop and created a massive demand for land and labor.

The Headright System

To encourage immigration, the Virginia Company offered 50 acres of land to any colonist who paid their own passage, with additional land for each person they paid for.

House of Burgesses

In 1619, the Virginia Company allowed the colonists to elect representatives to an assembly. The House of Burgesses was the first elected legislature in the English colonies, setting a precedent for representative government.

Status of women in Virginia in 1619

The first shiploads of women arrived in 1619. They were sold as wives to male colonists for the price of their passage (120 pounds of tobacco). Because there were far more men than women, women had more social leverage and choice in marriage than they did in England.

Black slaves vs. English indentured servants

No. In the early and mid-1600s, English indentured servants were far more common. Slaves were more expensive, and their legal status was initially unclear. Indentured servants were a cheap and plentiful labor source from England's surplus population.

Pocahontas

Daughter of Chief Powhatan. She was a key intermediary between the colonists and the Powhatan people. She was captured by the English, converted to Christianity, and married John Rolfe, which brought a temporary peace between the two groups.

Powhatan Uprisings of 1622 & 1644

As the tobacco economy expanded, the English relentlessly encroached on Native American land. In 1622, Powhatan's successor, Opechancanough, led a surprise attack that killed over 300 colonists. A final uprising in 1644 was also defeated.

End of the Virginia Company

The 1622 uprising was a major blow to the Virginia Company, which was already in debt. In 1624, King James I, disgusted by the mismanagement and high death rates, revoked the company's charter and made Virginia a royal colony, directly under his control.

Agricultural techniques borrowed from Native Americans

The English learned to cultivate native crops like corn and beans. They adopted the technique of planting corn in neat rows with beans and squash in between, which enriched the soil and provided a balanced diet.

Calvert family's motivation for Maryland colony

George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, was an English Catholic who wanted to create a colony that would be both a real estate venture and a refuge for English Catholics, who faced persecution in Protestant England.

Maryland's relationship with Native Americans

The Calverts, having learned from Virginia's bloody experience, were careful to maintain peaceful relations with local tribes. They avoided conflict and purchased land rather than seizing it.

Religious Toleration in Maryland

To attract Protestant settlers (who were needed to make the colony profitable), Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, drafted the 'Act Concerning Religion' (or Toleration Act) of 1649. This act granted freedom of worship to all Christians, though it did not protect non-Christians.

Sir William Berkeley

The royal governor of Virginia for over 30 years in the mid-17th century. He was a dominant figure who ruled on behalf of the wealthy tidewater planters.

Impact of Virginia's population growth during the mid-1600s

As the population grew, settlers pushed westward from the tidewater region into the backcountry (or piedmont). This expansion created tensions over land and increased the likelihood of conflict with Native Americans.

Political life in Tidewater vs. Backcountry Virginia

Tidewater: This coastal region was dominated by a small elite of wealthy planters who owned the best land and controlled the colonial government (the House of Burgesses). Backcountry: This western region was settled by newer arrivals, many of whom were poor former indentured servants.

Nathaniel Bacon

A wealthy young planter who had recently arrived in the backcountry.