Native American Societies and European Arrival Notes

Native American Societies Before European Arrival

• Diverse societies shaped by their environments.

Pueblo People

• Location: Present-day Utah and Colorado.
• Lifestyle: Farmers cultivating beans, squash, and maize.
• Advanced irrigation systems.
• Small urban centers from hardened clay bricks.
• Famous for cliff dwellings.

Great Basin and Great Plains People

• Location: Present-day Colorado up to Canada.
• Lifestyle: Nomadic hunter-gatherers hunting buffalo.
• Small, egalitarian kinship bands.
• Example: The Ute people.

Pacific Coast People

• Lifestyle: Permanent settlements due to abundant fish, small game, and plant life.
• Example: Chumash people in present-day California.
  • Villages sustaining nearly a thousand people.
  • Participation in regional trade networks.
• Example: Chinook peoples in the Pacific Northwest.
  • Similar lifestyle to Chumash.
  • Extensive plank houses for whole families.

Iroquois People

• Location: Northeast.
• Lifestyle: Farmers living communally in longhouses constructed from timber.

Mississippi River Valley People

• Lifestyle: Farmers thriving due to rich soil, participating in trade along waterways.
• Example: The Cahokia civilization.
  • Population: 10,000 to 30,000.
  • Centralized government led by powerful chieftains.

Native American Trading Networks

• Distinct and complex societies shaped by their environments.
• Vast trading networks stretching from South America to North America.

European Arrival in the Americas

Political Unification and the Quest for Trade

• 1300s-1400s: European kingdoms underwent political unification.
• Stronger, centralized states.
• Growing wealthy upper class with a taste for luxury goods from Asia.
• Muslims controlled land-based trading routes from Europe to Asia.
• Europeans sought sea-based routes.

Portugal's Maritime Ventures

• Pioneered sea-based effort, establishing trading posts around Africa (trading post empire).
• Gained a foothold in the Indian Ocean trade network.
• Enabled by new and adapted maritime technology.
• Maritime: Having to do with the sea.
• Examples of maritime technologies:
  • Updated astronomical charts
  • Astrolabe
  • Smaller, faster, nimble ships devoted to trade.
  • Borrowed technology like the Latin sail and stern post rudder.

Spain's Entry into the Maritime Game

• Entered after finishing the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from North African Muslim Moors.
• Two important consequences:
  • Desire to spread Catholic Christianity.
  • New power led to a search for economic opportunities in the east.

Christopher Columbus

• Sought sponsorship from the Spanish court of Ferdinand and Isabella to sail west to find new wealth in Asian markets.
• 1492: Columbus set sail and landed in the Caribbean.
• Found wealth among the inhabitants.
• Tales of this wealth spread, creating competition among European nations like Portugal, France, and England to explore these lands.

The Columbian Exchange

• Columbus's landing on San Salvador in the Bahamas marked a turning point in world history.
• Massive ecological changes resulted from the meeting of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
• The transfer of people, animals, plants, and diseases from the East to the West and from the West to the East.

The Columbian Exchange

• The transfer of plants, animals, people, cultures, and diseases between the Americas, West Africa, and the Old World in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Exchange of Goods and Resources

• From the Americas to Europe:
  • Food: Potatoes, tomatoes, maize (corn).
  • Europeans were delighted by the taste of maize.
• From Europe to the Americas:
  • Food: Wheat, rice, soybeans
  • Animals: Cattle, pigs, horses
  • Other: Gold and silver

Animal Exchanges

• Americas to Europe: Turkeys
• Europe to the Americas: Cattle, pigs, horses

Economic Impact

• Gold and Silver: Significant amounts extracted from the Americas and transferred to Europe, driving economic changes.
• People: Europeans established permanent settlements in the Americas and brought enslaved Africans to the continents.

Disease Exchange

• Smallpox: Introduced by Europeans to the Americas, devastating Native American populations due to their lack of immunity.
  • On some islands, entire populations were nearly extinguished.
• Syphilis: Possibly transmitted from Native Americans to Europeans.

Shift in European Economic Systems

From Feudalism to Capitalism

• Feudalism: A system where peasants lived and worked on a noble's land in exchange for protection.
• Influx of wealth from the Americas shifted feudalism towards a more capitalistic system.
• Capitalism: An economic system based on private ownership and free exchange.

Joint Stock Companies

• Rise of joint stock companies to fund exploration.
• Joint Stock Company: A limited liability organization where investors pool money to fund a venture.
• If the venture fails, no one suffers entirely; if it succeeds, everyone shares in the profits.
• This model differed from state-sponsored exploration like that of Spain.

Spanish Colonization

The Encomienda System

• Spanish realized agriculture would lead to extreme wealth.
• Encomienda System: Spaniards forced natives to work on plantations and extract gold and silver.
• Problems encountered:
  • Difficulty keeping natives subservient due to their ability to escape.
  • Continued deaths of natives due to smallpox.
• Solution: Importation of African slave laborers, who were less likely to escape and had more immunity to European diseases due to prior interactions as part of vast trade networks in Afro-Eurasia.

Casta System

• A new system of social classes introduced by Spain, categorizing people based on racial ancestry.

Cultural Exchange and Conflict

Native and European Interactions

• Europeans viewed Native Americans as good for exploitation, military alliances, forced labor, and Christian conversion.
• Both groups adopted practices and customs from each other.
• Natives taught the English how to hunt and cultivate maize.
• Natives adopted iron tools and weapons from the English.
• Relationship between Europeans and natives was largely difficult and brutal.

Justifications for Treatment

• Europeans developed belief systems to justify their treatment of natives and Africans.
• Spaniards believed Native Americans were ontologically less than human.

Debates and Laws

• Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda: Argued that Native Americans were less than human and benefited from harsh labor.
• Bartolomé de las Casas: Defended the humanity of Native Americans and persuaded the king to pass laws ending their slavery.
• Wealthy nobles had the king repeal these laws.

Biblical Justifications

• Europeans used the Bible to justify the exploitation of African laborers.
• Based on the story of Noah cursing Ham's son Canaan, they concluded that black skin was the mark of Ham, and Africans were destined to be slaves.
• This was a misinterpretation of the Bible.