APUSH: Chapter 1 Vocabulary

African slave trade

African people were taken as slaves to be sold in America, in America they would work in mines & plantations.

Aztecs

Also known as Mexica, they created a powerful empire in central Mexico (1325-1521 C.E.). They forced defeated peoples to provide goods and labor as a tax.

Bartolomé de Las Casas

Spaniard who fought against the enslavement and colonial abuse of native Americans.

Cahokia

Mississippian settlement trading center near present-day East St. Louis, where residents traded crops, hand made tools, and pottery. It was also one of the largest and most populous urban centers at that time.

Christopher Columbus

An Italian navigator who mistakenly discovered the Americas in 1492 while searching for a faster route to India.

Colony

A territory that is legally tied to a sovereign state rather than completely independent.

Conquistador

A Spanish conqueror of the Americas.

Columbian Exchange

The exchange of plants, animals, diseases, and technologies between the Americas and the rest of the world following Columbus's voyages.

Colonial charters

Legal documents drawn up by the British Crown that defined the relationship of the colony to the mother country; Charters gave colonists the rights to live in the area and established the rules for governing the colony

Encomienda

The rights to extract tribute and labor from native peoples on large tracts of land granted to favored Spaniards.

Globalization

Actions or processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide in scope.

Hernando Cortés

Spanish conquistador who defeated the Aztecs and conquered Mexico (1485-1547)

Imperialism

A policy of extending a country's power and influence through diplomacy or military force.

Mayans

1500 B.C. to 900 A.D. This is the most advanced civilization of the time in the Western Hempishere. Famous for its awe-inspiring temples, pyramids and cities. A complex social and political order.

Mercantalism

Economic system of trading nations; belief that a nation's power was directly related to its wealth and that one nation could grow rich only at the expense of another.

Mesoamerica

A geographic region in the western hemisphere that was home of the Mayan and Aztec civilizations.

Mestizo

A person of mixed Spanish and Native American ancestry.

Montezuma

Powerful Aztec monarch who was defeated by Cortés and the Tlaxcalans.

Popé

A Pueblo religious leader who became the main organizer of an uprising that aimed to drive the Spanish from their colony and restore the Indians' traditional autonomy.

Protestant Reformation

A religious movement of the 16th century that started with Martin Luther; began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the creation of Protestant churches.

Puritans

A religious group who wanted to purify the Church of England. They came to America for religious freedom and settled Massachusetts Bay.

Roanoke

Established in 1587. Called the Lost Colony. It was financed by Sir Walter Raleigh, and its leader in the New World was John White. All the settlers disappeared, and historians still don't know what became of them.

Smallpox

A highly contagious disease that spread from the Old World to the New World, killing many Native Americans.