APUSH - Period 1
Native American societies: Diverse cultures and social structures existed before European contact, each adapted to their environments. These societies practiced various forms of agriculture, hunting, and gathering, which influenced their settlement patterns and trade networks.
I. Early Inhabitants of the Americas
The original discovery and settlement of North and South America began at least 10,000 and potentially up to 40,000 years ago. Migrants from Asia likely crossed a land bridge that once connected Siberia and Alaska (now submerged under the Bering Sea). Over time, these populations migrated southward, adapting to diverse environments and evolving into hundreds of distinct tribes speaking hundreds of languages. By 1491, the estimated population in the Americas ranged from 50 million to 100 million people.
A. Cultures of Central and South America
The native population was concentrated in three highly developed civilizations:
Mayas (300-800 CE): Constructed remarkable cities in the rain forests of the Yucatán Peninsula (present-day Guatemala, Belize, and southern Mexico).
Aztecs: Flourished centuries after the Mayas, developing a powerful empire in central Mexico with their capital, Tenochtitlán, supporting a population of approximately 200,000—comparable to Europe's largest cities.
Incas: Based in Peru, they developed a vast empire spanning western South America while the Aztecs dominated Mexico and Central America.
All three civilizations developed highly organized societies, engaged in extensive trade, and created calendars based on accurate scientific observations. They cultivated crops that provided a stable food supply, with corn (maize) being central for the Mayas and Aztecs, and potatoes for the Incas.
B. Cultures of North America
The population in the region north of Mexico (present-day United States and Canada) in the 1490s varied from under 1 million to over 10 million.
General Patterns: Native societies in this region were generally smaller and had less complex social structures compared to those in Mexico and South America. This difference was partly due to the slower northward spread of corn (maize) cultivation; its nutritional benefits allowed for larger, more densely settled, and socially diversified populations.
By the time of Columbus, most people lived in semipermanent settlements, typically not exceeding 300 individuals. Men primarily made tools and hunted, while women gathered plants and nuts or cultivated crops like corn, beans, and tobacco.
Language Differences: American Indian languages were highly diverse, forming more than 20 distinct language families, in contrast to most European languages belonging to a single Indo-European family. Major language families included Algonquian (northeast), Siouan (Great Plains), and Athabaskan (southwest), encompassing over 400 distinct languages.
C. Regional Settlements:
Southwest Settlements: In dry regions like present-day New Mexico and Arizona, groups such as the Hohokam, Anasazi, and Pueblos evolved multifaceted societies. Many lived in caves, under cliffs, and in multistoried buildings. Maize cultivation from Mexico fostered economic growth and the development of irrigation systems, leading to more complex societies with greater social and economic stratification. While extreme drought and other hostile natives took their toll, descendants continue to live in the region, with arid conditions preserving ancient stone and masonry dwellings.
Northwest Settlements: Along the Pacific coast from Alaska to northern California, people lived in permanent longhouses or plank houses. Their rich diet came from hunting, fishing, and gathering nuts, berries, and roots. Large totem poles were carved to preserve stories, legends, and myths. However, high mountain ranges isolated tribes, creating barriers to development.
Great Basin and Great Plains: People adapted to dry climates by developing mobile lifestyles. Nomadic tribes primarily hunted buffalo, which supplied food, decorations, tools, and clothing. They lived in easily transportable tepees (pole frames covered in animal skins). Some tribes, while also hunting buffalo, lived permanently in earthen lodges, often along rivers, where they cultivated corn, beans, and squash and actively traded with other tribes. American Indians acquired horses from Spanish settlers in the 17th century, enabling plains tribes like the Lakota Sioux to more easily follow buffalo herds. Migration and tribal mergers/splits were common.
Mississippi River Valley: East of the Mississippi River, Woodland American Indians thrived with abundant food supplies from hunting, fishing, and agriculture, establishing permanent settlements. The Adena-Hopewell culture in Ohio is known for large earthen mounds. Cahokia, near present-day East St. Louis, Illinois, was one of the largest settlements with up to 30,000 inhabitants.
Northeast Settlements: Descendants of the Adena-Hopewell culture spread into New York. Their economy combined hunting and farming, though farming techniques quickly exhausted soil, necessitating frequent relocation. Multiple families, related through the mother’s lineage, resided in longhouses up to 200 feet long. The Iroquois Confederation (Haudenosaunee)—comprising the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and later Tuscaroras—formed a powerful political union from the 16th century through the American Revolution, battling rival American Indians and Europeans.
Atlantic Seaboard Settlements: From New Jersey south to Florida, people of the Coastal Plains, such as the Cherokee and Lumbee (many descendants of Woodland mound builders), built timber and bark lodgings along rivers, utilizing rivers and the Atlantic Ocean as rich food sources.
Overall Diversity: The varied landforms and climates in North America prior to 1492 led to vastly different cultures. While Europeans often grouped these cultures, each tribe had distinct systems and traditions. A shared identity as "Native Americans" developed much later.
II. European Exploration in the Americas
Until the late 1400s, the peoples of the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia existed in isolation from each other. Beginning in the 1400s, religious and economic motives propelled Europeans to explore distant regions, leading to the eventual global interconnectedness.
Overarching Motives (God, Gold, Glory): European powers were driven by a desire to spread Christianity (God), acquire wealth (Gold) through new trade routes and resources, and gain national prestige and power (Glory).
Mercantilism: An economic theory adopted by European imperial powers, which held that a country’s wealth and power were measured by the amount of gold and silver in its treasury. To achieve this, colonies were established to provide raw materials (e.g., timber, furs, minerals) exclusively to the mother country and to serve as markets for manufactured goods, creating a favorable balance of trade. This system justified strict government regulation of trade and limited colonial manufacturing.
Changes in Thought and Technology:
The Renaissance (15th-16th centuries) in Europe revived classical learning, fostering artistic and scientific advancements.
Technological improvements included using Chinese inventions like gunpowder and the sailing compass (adopted from Arab merchants), major advancements in shipbuilding (e.g., the caravel) and mapmaking, and the invention of the printing press in the 1450s which facilitated knowledge dissemination.
Religious Conflict:
The late Renaissance was marked by intense religious fervor and conflict. The Roman Catholic Church’s dominance in Western Europe was challenged by Muslim Ottoman Turks and rebellious Christians.
The unification of Spain under Isabella and Ferdinand in 1469, their conquest of the last Moorish stronghold in Granada in 1492, and their funding of Columbus’s voyage symbolized a new era of Catholic power.
In the early 1500s, the Protestant Reformation in northern Europe (Germany, England, France, Holland) saw Christians revolt against papal authority, leading to centuries of religious wars and millions of deaths. This conflict fueled a desire among both Catholics and Protestants to spread their versions of Christianity globally, adding a religious motive to exploration and colonization.
Expanding Trade:
Economic motives arose from fierce competition for trade with Africa, India, and China. Traditional overland routes via Italian city-states and Constantinople were blocked after the Ottoman Turks seized Constantinople in 1453.
This prompted the search for new sea routes: either south along the West African coast and then east, or west across the Atlantic. Portugal, led by Prince Henry the Navigator, pioneered the longer sea route around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, with Vasco da Gama reaching India via this route in 1498.
Columbus, meanwhile, erroneously pursued what he believed would be a shorter westward route to Asia.
Slave Trading:
Building on ancient practices of enslavement, the Portuguese began trading for enslaved people from West Africa in the 15th century, using them on newly established sugar plantations on the Madeira and Azores islands.
This highly profitable system became a model for European colonization and labor in the Americas.
Developing Nation-States:
The 15th century saw political shifts in Europe, with small kingdoms uniting (e.g., Castile and Aragon forming Spain) and large multiethnic empires (like the Holy Roman Empire) fragmenting.
Emerging nation-states—countries where the majority shared a common culture and loyalty to a central government—were led by powerful monarchs (e.g., Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, and monarchs of France, England, and the Netherlands) who relied on trade for revenue and the church to legitimize their rule.
III. Developing Claims in the Americas
Western European monarchs used their power to seek overseas riches and spread Christianity, leading to competition for control of land in the Americas.
Spanish and Portuguese Claims:
As the first European kingdoms to claim American territories, their overlapping claims were resolved by the pope. In 1493, the line of demarcation was drawn vertically on a world map, granting Spain all lands west of the line and Portugal all lands east. In 1494, Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, moving the line a few degrees west to pass through what is now Brazil, thus establishing Portugal’s claim to Brazil and Spain’s claim to the rest of the Americas. Other European countries, however, soon challenged these claims.
English Claims:
England's earliest territorial claims were based on Italian sea captain John Cabot's 1497 voyage, exploring the coast of Newfoundland under contract to King Henry VII. England delayed substantial follow-up expeditions in the 1500s due to internal issues, primarily the religious conflict following King Henry VIII’s break with the Roman Catholic Church. In the 1570s and 1580s, under Queen Elizabeth I, England actively challenged Spanish shipping (e.g., Sir Francis Drake seizing gold and silver, attacking Peruvian settlements) and attempted colonial settlement (Sir Walter Raleigh’s failed Roanoke Island venture in 1587).
French Claims:
French interest in exploration began in 1524 with Giovanni da Verrazzano’s voyage, searching for a northwest passage to Asia and exploring parts of North America's eastern coast, including New York harbor. French claims were also based on Jacques Cartier’s extensive explorations of the St. Lawrence River (1534–1542). Like the English, the French were slow to establish colonies in the 1500s, preoccupied with European wars and internal religious conflicts between Roman Catholics and French Protestants (Huguenots). French efforts to colonize North America intensified in the next century.
IV. Columbian Exchange, Spanish Exploration, and Conquest
Christopher Columbus’s westward voyages in the 1490s, aimed at finding a sea route to Asian trade, ultimately led to a profound and lasting transformation of the world.
Christopher Columbus: An Italian explorer from Genoa, Columbus spent eight years seeking financial support for his plan to sail west to the “Indies.” In 1492, Isabella and Ferdinand, at the height of their power after defeating the Moors in Granada, agreed to finance his three ships and appointed him governor, admiral, and viceroy of all claimed lands. He landed in the Bahamas on October 12 after sailing from the Canary Islands on September 6. While his initial success brought glory, his three subsequent voyages were disappointing, yielding little gold or spices and no practical route to China and India.
The Columbian Exchange: The contact between Europeans and the inhabitants of the Americas, who had evolved vastly different cultures over millennia, resulted in the Columbian Exchange—an unprecedented transfer of plants, animals, and germs across the Atlantic. These biological and cultural exchanges permanently reshaped the world, ending centuries of hemispheric isolation.
Impact on Europe: Europeans gained knowledge of new plants and foods, including beans, corn, sweet and white potatoes, tomatoes, and tobacco, which transformed diets across Eurasia and fueled rapid population growth from Ireland to West Africa to eastern China. Europeans also contracted a new disease, syphilis.
Impact on Americas: Native Americans received sugar cane, bluegrasses, pigs, horses, and new technologies like the wheel, iron implements, and guns. However, lacking immunity to European diseases such as smallpox and measles, the native population suffered catastrophic declines. For example, Mexico’s native population plummeted from approximately 22 million in 1492 to around 4 million by the mid-16th century.
The Rise of Capitalism: In Europe, population growth and access to new resources stimulated trade, leading to significant economic, political, and social changes. The medieval system of feudalism, where monarchs granted land to nobles for military service, gave way to capitalism—an economic system prioritizing control of capital (money and machinery) over land. Increased trade shifted political power from landowners to wealthy merchants.
To finance expensive and dangerous ocean voyages more safely, Europeans developed the joint-stock company, a business owned by multiple investors. This de-risked individual investments, encouraging broader participation and promoting economic growth.
Spanish Exploration and Conquest: Feats by conquistadores like Vasco Núñez de Balboa (crossing Isthmus of Panama), Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation (completed by his crew), Hernán Cortés’s conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico, and Francisco Pizarro’s conquest of the Incas in Peru secured Spain’s initial supremacy. Ships loaded with gold and silver from Mexico and Peru flooded Spain, making it the richest and most powerful European kingdom and inspiring other states.
Labor Systems:
Indian Labor: In Mexico and Peru, the Spanish integrated surviving indigenous populations into their empire after diseases decimated many. The encomienda system granted individual Spaniards control over natives living on a tract of land, forcing them to farm or work in mines, with the fruits of their labor going to the Spanish in exchange for their “care.”
Enslaved African Labor: The Portuguese model of using enslaved Africans on sugar plantations proved profitable. As Native American populations declined due to disease and brutal treatment, Spain adopted the asiento system, requiring colonists to pay a tax to the Spanish king for each enslaved person imported. During the colonial era, millions of Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic via the Middle Passage (a 10-15% mortality rate), surpassing the number of Europeans who crossed.
African Resistance: Despite brutal repression and forced displacement, Africans resisted slavery through various means, including running away, sabotaging work, and revolting. They also maintained vital aspects of their African culture, particularly in music, religion, and folkways.
Spanish Caste System: The ethnic diversity created by European, Native American, and African populations led to many people of mixed heritage, as most Spanish colonists were single men. In response, Spain developed a rigid caste system to define status based on heritage:
At the top: Pure-blooded Spaniards.
In the middle: Various levels based on mixtures of European, Native American, and African heritage.
At the bottom: People of pure Indian or Black heritage.
V. Cultural Interactions in the Americas
History documents numerous instances of contact between diverse peoples, often violent and localized. The interaction between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans in the Americas was unique in its vast scale and prolonged duration.
Conflicting Worldviews: Europeans and Native Americans held fundamentally different perspectives. Europeans generally believed in a single God, while many Native Americans honored multiple deities. European women had limited public roles, while some Native American tribes granted women significant decision-making power. Europeans relied on legal documents for land rights, whereas Native Americans used tradition for land use decisions.
European Treatment of Native Americans: European colonizers generally viewed Native Americans as inferior, suitable for economic exploitation, conversion to Christianity, and military alliance. However, their approaches to ruling natives and operating colonies varied.
Spanish Policy: The Spanish largely subjugated Native Americans (e.g., encomienda system). However, Spanish scholars debated the status and treatment of natives.
Bartolomé de Las Casas: Initially a land and slave owner who fought in wars against Indians, this Spanish priest became a staunch advocate for better Indian treatment. He persuaded the king to institute the New Laws of 1542, which aimed to end Indian slavery, halt forced Indian labor, and gradually dismantle the encomienda system. Conservative Spaniards, keen to preserve the encomienda, successfully lobbied for the repeal of parts of these laws.
Valladolid Debate (1550-1551): This formal debate in Spain saw Las Casas argue for Indians as fully human and morally equal to Europeans, deeming their enslavement unjust. Another priest, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, countered that Indians were less than human and benefited from serving Spaniards in the encomienda system. Though neither side definitively prevailed, Las Casas established foundational arguments for Indian justice.
The Black Legend: A widespread historical interpretation, often propagated by Spain's European rivals (England, France, Netherlands), that depicted Spanish treatment of Native Americans as exceptionally cruel and inhumane, emphasizing their greed and brutality. While Spanish abuses were real, the Black Legend selectively highlighted them to undermine Spain's global influence and justify rival colonization efforts.
English Policy: Unlike the Spanish, the English settled in areas lacking large native empires for forced labor. By the 1600s, European diseases had already significantly reduced indigenous populations. English colonists often arrived as families, making intermarriage less common. Initially, in places like Massachusetts, English settlers and American Indians coexisted, traded (furs for iron tools/weapons), and exchanged knowledge (e.g., new crops like corn). However, peaceful relations soon deteriorated into conflict and warfare as most English colonists disrespected American Indian cultures, viewing them as “savage.” The English seized native land for their growing populations and primarily expelled smaller, scattered tribes from coastal areas to inland territories rather than subjugating them.
French Policy: The French sought furs and converts to Catholicism, viewing American Indians as potential economic and military allies. Compared to the Spanish and English, the French maintained generally good relations. They built trading posts throughout the St. Lawrence Valley, Great Lakes region, and along the Mississippi River, exchanging French goods for furs. With fewer colonists, farms, or towns, the French posed less demographic threat than other Europeans. French soldiers also assisted the Huron people in their conflicts with the traditional enemy, the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee).
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