The New World

Flashcards covering the key people, places, and events in the 'The New World' chapter.

Columbian Exchange

The exchange of people, animals, plants, and microbes between Europe and the Americas, which began with the arrival of Europeans.

How long have Native Americans lived in the Americas?

Native Americans have lived in the Americas for over ten thousand years, developing dynamic and diverse cultures.

What is Turtle Island?

According to a Lenape tradition, the earth was made when Sky Woman fell into a watery world and landed safely on a turtle’s back.

How do archaeologists and anthropologists study the first Americans?

Archaeologists and anthropologists use artifacts, bones, and genetic signatures to study the migration histories of the first Americans.

What caused the Bering Strait land bridge to form?

The last global ice age trapped water in glaciers, leading to a land bridge connecting Asia and North America across the Bering Strait.

When did Agriculture arise?

Agriculture arose between nine thousand and five thousand years ago in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.

What are the Three Sisters crops?

Corn, beans, and squash, which provided the nutritional needs necessary to sustain cities and civilizations.

What were the gender roles in the Woodland communities?

Women practiced agriculture and men hunted and fished.

What was the role of spiritual power?

Spiritual power permeated the world and was both tangible and accessible.

What is matrilineal ancestry?

Family and clan identity proceeded along the female line, through mothers and daughters.

What was the purpose of birch-bark scrolls used by Algonquian-speaking Ojibwes?

They could record medical treatments, recipes, songs, stories, and more.

What were some of the largest culture groups in North America 2,000 years ago?

The Puebloan groups, Mississippian groups, and Mesoamerican groups.

What ecological challenges did the Puebloan people of Chaco Canyon face?

They faced deforestation, overirrigation, and a fifty-year drought, leading to the community's collapse.

What is a chiefdom?

A hierarchical, clan-based system that gave leaders both secular and sacred authority.

Where and what was Cahokia?

Located just east of modern-day St. Louis, peaked at a population of between ten thousand and thirty thousand.

How could a slave become a fully integrated member of the community in Cahokia?

People who lacked kinship networks could regain status through adoption or marraige.

What contributed to the collapse of Cahokia?

Warfare and internal political tensions.

What bound Lenape communities together?

Oral histories, ceremonial traditions, consensus-based political organization, kinship networks, and a shared clan system.

Who wielded authority over marriages, households, and agricultural production in Lenape communities?

Lenape women.

What did Lenape Women plant?

They planted tobacco, sunflowers, and gourds, harvested fruits and nuts, and cultivated medicinal plants

Name some of the peoples in the pacific Northwest.

The Kwakwaka’wakw, Tlingits, and Haidas.

What did the image of the salmon represent?

It represented prosperity, life, and renewal.

What are potlatches?

Elaborate feasts that celebrated births and weddings and determined social status.

Why did the Norse colony in Newfoundland fail?

The Norse colony failed due to limited resources, inhospitable weather, food shortages, and Native resistance.

Why did Spain and Portugal explore the Atlantic?

They sought a more direct route to Asia to access wealth and bypass Mediterranean traders.

What is the astrolabe?

A tool to calculate latitude.

What is the caravel?

A rugged ship with a deep draft capable of making lengthy voyages on the open ocean.

What was the importance of Islands such as the Azores, Canary Islands, and Cape Verde Islands?

They became training grounds for the later colonization of the Americas and saw the first large-scale cultivation of sugar by enslaved laborers.

How did the Portuguese acquire slaves for sugar plantations?

Portuguese merchants looked to African slaves, trading guns, iron, and manufactured goods for war captives.

Why was Columbus wrong about sailing west from Europe to reach Asia?

Columbus underestimated the size of the globe by a full two thirds.

What did Columbus promise the Spanish crown?

Gold and slaves.

How did the Spanish treat the Arawaks People.

The Spanish embarked on a vicious campaign to extract every possible ounce of wealth from the Caribbean, decimating the Arawaks.

What percentage of the population of the Americans perished due to disease?

90 percent of the population of the Americas perished within the first century and a half of European contact due to disease.

What is the encomienda?

An exploitive feudal arrangement in which Spain tied Indian laborers to vast estates.

What are the Maya known for?

Built massive temples, sustained large populations, and constructed a complex civilization with a written language.

What was Tenochtitlán?

Awe-inspiring city built on a series of natural and man-made islands in the middle of Lake Texcoco.

Describe what Tenochtitlán was like when the Spaniards arrived

70,000 buildings, housing perhaps 200,000–250,000 people, built on a lake and connected by causeways and canals.

Who is Hernán Cortés?

He organized an invasion of Mexico in 1519.

How was a Million-person-strong empire toppled?

Disease (Small Pox), dissension, and a thousand European conquerors.

What are the Inca known for?

They built an empire that stretched around the western half of the South American continent.

What spread in advance of Spanish conquerors of the Incan Empire?

Smallpox.

Name the social classes in the Spanish New World.

Peninsulares, criollos, and mestizos.

Who are the mestizos?

Those of mixed Spanish and Indian heritage.

What did the Virgen de Guadalupe become

It became a national icon for a new mestizo society.

Why did Spain expand northward?

Spanish expeditions scoured North America for another wealthy Indian empire.

Who are two Spanish Explorers?

Juan Ponce de León and Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.

What effects did diseases have on the New World?

Smallpox, typhus, bubonic plague, influenza, mumps, measles ravaging the population resulting in the death of approximately 95 percent of indiginous people.

How were global diets transformed because of the Columbian Exchange.

The Americas’ calorie-rich crops revolutionized Old World agriculture and spawned a worldwide population boom.

What animals transformed Native American life in the vast North American plains?

Horses.