JJC US History 103: Chapter 1 Study Guide Flashcards

A complete vocabulary flashcard deck based on the key terms, individuals, and events listed in the JJC US History 103 Chapter 1 Study Guide.

conquistadores

Spanish conquerors and explorers who led military expeditions in the Americas to claim land, wealth, and empire for Spain.

Pueblo Revolt

A 1680 uprising of Pueblo Native Americans against Spanish colonizers in present-day New Mexico, temporarily driving the Spanish out of the region.

African slave trade

The transatlantic trade system that forcibly transported millions of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to labor in the Americas.

Columbian Exchange

The transatlantic transfer of plants, animals, cultures, human populations, communicable diseases, and technology between the Old World (Europe) and the New World (Americas) following 1492.

Black Legend

The style of propaganda that portrayed the Spanish Empire as uniquely cruel, intolerant, and abusive toward Native Americans, often used by European rivals to justify their own colonial ambitions.

Cahokia/mound builders

A pre-Columbian Native American city and culture near modern-day St. Louis known for constructing massive earthen mounds and complex urban centers.

Christopher Columbus

An Italian navigator who sailed for Spain in 1492, initiating sustained European contact with, exploration of, and colonization of the Americas.

Zheng He

A Chinese admiral who led massive naval expeditions across the Indian Ocean in the early 15th century prior to European Atlantic exploration.

Bartolomé de Las Casas

A Spanish Dominican friar and former encomendero who criticized Spanish atrocities against Native Americans and advocated for indigenous rights.

Hernán Cortés

A Spanish conquistador who led the expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large parts of mainland Mexico under Spanish rule.

Amerigo Vespucci

An Italian explorer and cartographer whose voyage logs demonstrated that the lands Columbus reached were part of a distinct, unknown continent, leading mapmakers to name America after him.

John Cabot

An Italian navigator who sailed for England in 1497 and made the earliest documented European exploration of coastal North America since the Norse.

Samuel de Champlain

A French explorer and navigator who founded Quebec in 1608 and helped establish New France in North America.

Juan Ponce de Léon

A Spanish explorer and conquistador who led the first official European expedition to Florida in 1513.

Vasco da Gama

A Portuguese navigator who became the first European to reach India by sea, sailing around the southern tip of Africa.

Clovis

An early prehistoric Paleo-American culture identified by distinctive fluted stone spear points, long considered among the earliest human inhabitants of the Americas.

Anasazi

An ancient Native American culture located in the American Southwest known for constructing complex cliff dwellings and multi-story stone structures.

Pueblo/Hopi

Indigenous agricultural peoples of the southwestern North American desert known for constructing multi-story stone and adobe dwellings.

Great League of Peace/Iroquois Confederacy

An alliance of Native American nations in northeastern North America formed to maintain peace, mutual defense, and political cooperation.

Creoles

In the context of colonial Spanish America, individuals of Spanish descent born in the New World.

Mestizos

Persons of mixed Native American and European ancestry in the colonial Spanish social hierarchy.

chattel slavery

A system of servitude in which one person has total legal ownership of another as personal property, buyable and sellable.