U.S History Semester Exam Terms (Chapters 1-6)

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Incas

Highly advanced South American civilization that occupied present-day Peru until it was conquered by Spanish forces under Francisco Pizarro in 1532. They developed sophisticated agricultural techniques, such as terrace farming.

Aztecs

Native American empire that controlled present-day Mexico until 1521, when they were conquered by Spanish Hernán Cortés. They maintained control over their vast empire through a system of trade and tribute.

Hernan Cortes

Spanish conquistador who defeated the Aztec empire and claimed Mexico for Spain.

Francisco Pizzaro

Spanish conquistador who crushed the Incas in 1532 and founded the city of Lima, Peru.

De Las Casas

Reform-minded Spanish missionary who worked to abolish the encomienda system and documented the mistreatment of Indians in the Spanish colonies.

Encomienda

Spanish government’s policy to commend or give Indians to certain colonists in return for the promise to Christianize them. Part of a broader Spanish effort to subdue Indian tribes in the West Indies and on the North American mainland.

3-Sisters Farming

Agricultural system employed by North American Indians where maize, beans, and squash were grown together to maximize yields.

Capitalism

Economic system characterized by private property, generally free trade, and open and accessible markets.

Mercantilism

Economic theory that closely linked a nation’s political and military power to its bullion reserves. Generally favored protectionism and colonial acquisition as means to increase exports.

Juniper Sera

Franciscan priest who established a chain of missions along the California coast, beginning in San Diego in 1769, with the aim of christianizing and civilizing native peoples.

De La Salle

French explorer who led an expedition in the Mississippi River in the 1680s.

Giovanni Cabato

Italian explorer sent by England’s King Henry VII to explore the northeastern coast of North America in 1497 and 1498.

Pueblo Revolt

Indian revolt that drove Spanish settlers from New Mexico.

Black Legend

False notion that Spanish conquerors did little but butcher the Indians and steal their gold in the name of Christ.

Conquistadores

Sixteenth-century Spaniards who fanned out across the Americas, from Colorado to Argentina, eventually conquering the Aztec and Incan empires.

Huegenots

French Protestant dissenters who were granted limited toleration under the Edict of Nantes. After King Louis XIV outlawed Protestantism in 1685, many of them fled elsewhere, including to British North America.

Edict of Nantes

Decree issued by the French crown granting limited toleration to French Protestants. Ended religious wars in France and inaugurated a period of French preeminence in Europe and across the Atlantic.

Spanish Armada

Spanish fleet defeated in the English Channel in 1588. The defeat of the Armada marked the beginning of the decline of the Spanish Empire.

Roanoke Island

Sir Walter Raleigh’s failed colonial settlement off the coast of North Carolina.

Joint stock Company

Short-term partnership between multiple investors to fund a commercial enterprise; such arrangements were used to fund England’s early colonial ventures.

Jamestown

First permanent English settlement in North America founded by the Virginia Company.

Sir Francis Drake

English sea captain who completed his circumnavigation of the globe in 1580.

John Smith

English adventurer who took control of Jamestown in 1608 and ensured the survival of the colony by directing gold-hungry colonists toward more productive tasks.

Powhatan

Chief of the Powhatan Indians and father of Pocahontas. As a show of force, He staged the kidnapping and mock execution of Captain John Smith in 1607. Later leading the Powhatan Indians in the first Anglo-Powhatan War, negotiating a tenuous peace in 1614.

Pocahontas

Daughter of Chief Powhatan, she "saved" Captain John Smith in a dramatic mock execution and served as a mediator between Indians and the colonists. Married John Rolfe

John Rolfe

English colonist whose marriage to Pocahontas in 1614 sealed the peace of the First Anglo-Powhatan War.

Raleigh

English courtier and adventurer who sponsored the failed settlements of North Carolina’s Roanoke Island in 1585 and 1587.

Once a favorite of Elizabeth I, he fell out of favor with the Virgin Queen after secretly marrying one of her maids of honor. He continued his colonial pursuits until 1618, when he was executed for treason.

De la War

Colonial governor who imposed harsh military rule over Jamestown after taking over in 1610. He applied harsh Irish tactics in his war against the Indians, sending troops to torch Indian villages and seize provisions. A colony of Delaware was named after him.

Act of Toleration

Passed in Maryland, it guaranteed toleration to all Christians but decreed the death penalty for those, like Jews and atheists, who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Squatters

Frontier farmers who illegally occupied land owned by others or not yet officially opened for settlement.

Buffer

A territory between two antagonistic powers, intended to minimize the possibility of conflict between them.

Georgia was established as a buffer colony between British and Spanish territory.

Calvinism

Dominant theological credo of the New England Puritans based on the teachings of John Calvin.

Calvinists believed in predestination—that only “the elect” were destined for salvation.

Predestination

Calvinist doctrine that God has foreordained some people to be saved and some to be damned.

Mayflower Compact

Agreement to form a majoritarian government in Plymouth, signed aboard the Mayflower. Created a foundation for self-government in the colony.

Puritans

English Protestant reformers who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic rituals and creeds. Some believed that only “visible saints” should be admitted to church membership.

Separatists

Small group of Puritans who sought to break away entirely from the Church of England; after initially settling in Holland, a number of English Separatists made their way to Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts, in 1620.

Salutary Neglect

Unofficial policy of relaxed royal control over colonial trade and only weak enforcement of Navigation Laws. Lasted from the Glorious Revolution to the end of the French and Indian War in 1763.

Blue Laws

Also known as sumptuary laws, they are designed to restrict personal behavior in accord with a strict code of morality.

Lord Baltimore

He established Maryland as a haven for Catholics. Unsuccessfully tried to reconstitute the English manorial system in the colonies and gave vast tracts of land to Catholic relatives, a policy that soon created tensions between the seaboard Catholic establishment and backcountry Protestant planters.

Metacom

Known as King Phillip

James Oglethorpe

Soldier-statesman and leading founder of Georgia, founding Georgia as a haven for debtors seeking to avoid imprisonment.

During the War of Jenkins’s Ear, he successfully led his colonists in battle, repelling a Spanish attack on British territory.

Indentured Servants

Migrants who, in exchange for transatlantic passage, bound themselves to a colonial employer for a term of service, typically between four and seven years.

Headright System

Employed in the tobacco colonies to encourage the importation of indentured servants, this allowed an individual to acquire fifty acres of land if he paid for a laborer’s passage to the colony.

Middle Passage

Transatlantic voyage slaves endured between Africa and the colonies with high mortality rates.

Bacon’s Rebellion

Uprising of Virginia backcountry farmers and indentured servants in response to Governor William Berkeley’s refusal to protect backcountry settlers from Indian attacks, led by planter Nathaniel Bacon

Jeremiad

Often-fiery sermons lamenting the waning piety of parishioners first delivered in New England in the mid-seventeenth century; named after the prophet Jeremiah.

Salem Witch Trials

Series of trials launched after a group of adolescent girls claimed to have been bewitched by certain older women of the town. Twenty individuals were put to death before the trials were put to an end by the governor of Massachusetts.

Slave Codes

Set of laws beginning in 1662 defining racial slavery. They established the hereditary nature of slavery and limited the rights and education of slaves.

Paxton Boys

Armed march on Philadelphia by Scotts-Irish frontiersmen in protest against the Quaker establishment’s lenient policies toward Native Americans.

Regulars

Trained professional soldiers, as distinct from militia or conscripts. During the French and Indian War, British generals, used to commanding experienced soldiers, often showed contempt (worthlessness) for ill-trained colonial militiamen.

Triangular Trade

Exchange of rum, slaves, and molasses between the North American colonies, Africa, and the West Indies. A small but immensely profitable subset of the Atlantic trade.

Molasses Act

Tax on imported molasses passed by Parliament in an effort to squelch the North American trade with the French West Indies. Largely ineffective due to widespread smuggling.

Great Awakening

Religious revival that swept the colonies. Participating ministers, most notably Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, placed an emphasis on direct, emotive spirituality.

Zenger Trial

New York libel case against John Peter Zenger. Established the principle that truthful statements about public officials could not be prosecuted as (Sedicious) libel.

Jonathan Edwards

New England minister whose fiery sermons helped touch off the First Great Awakening. He emphasized human helplessness and depravity and touted that salvation could be attained through God’s grace alone.

Phillis Wheatley

African American poet who overcame the barriers of slavery to publish two collections of her poems. Lived in Boston

Acadians

French residents of Nova Scotia, many of whom were uprooted by the British in 1755 and scattered as far south as Louisiana, where their descendants became known as “Cajuns.”

French and Indian War

Nine-year war between the British and the French in North America. It resulted in the expulsion of the French from the North American mainland and helped spark the wider Seven Years’ War in Europe and elsewhere.

Pontiac’s Revolt

Bloody campaign waged by the Ottawa chief to drive the British out of Ohio Country. It was brutally crushed by British troops, who resorted to distributing blankets infected with smallpox as a means to put down the rebellion.

Proclamation of 1763

Decree issued by Parliament in the wake of Pontiac’s War, prohibiting settlement beyond the Appalachians.

Treaty of Paris of 1763

Treaty that ended the Seven Years' War, establishing Britain's dominance by gaining French territories in North America (east of the Mississippi) but sparking colonial resentment over taxes and expansion limits

Baron Von Steuben

German-born inspector general of the Continental army who helped train the novice colonial militia in the art of warfare.

Sugar Act

First tax levied on the colonists by the crown and was lowered substantially in response to widespread protests. Duty on imported sugar from the West Indies.

Stamp Act

Widely unpopular tax on an array of paper goods, repealed in 1766 after mass protests erupted across the colonies. Colonists developed the principle of “no taxation without representation” that questioned Parliament’s authority over the colonies and laid the foundation for future revolutionary claims.

Sons of Liberty

Patriotic groups that played a central role in agitating against the Stamp Act and enforcing nonimportation agreements.

Quebec Act

Allowed the French residents of Québec to retain their traditional political and religious institutions, and extended the boundaries of the province southward to the Ohio River. Mistakenly perceived by the colonists to be part of Parliament’s response to the Boston Tea Party.

Boston Massacre

Clash between unruly Bostonian protestors and locally stationed British redcoats, who fired on the jeering crowd, killing or wounding eleven citizens.

Boston Tea Party

Rowdy protest against the British East India Company’s newly acquired monopoly on the tea trade. Colonists, disguised as Indians, dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston harbor, prompting harsh sanctions from the British Parliament.

Valley Forge

Encampment where George Washington’s poorly equipped army spent a wretched, freezing winter. Hundreds of men died and more than a thousand deserted.

Crispus Attucks

Runaway slave and leader of the Boston protests that resulted in the "Boston Massacre," in which he was first to die.

De Lafayette

French nobleman who served as major general in the colonial army during the American Revolution and aided the newly independent colonies in securing French support.

Declaratory Act

Passed alongside the repeal of the Stamp Act, it reaffirmed Parliament’s unqualified sovereignty over the North American colonies.

Lord North

Tory prime minister and pliant aide to George III from 1770 to 1782. His ineffective leadership and dogged insistence on colonial subordination contributed to the American Revolution.