APUSH Unit 1 Review Notes

Native Societies in the Americas Before European Arrival

  • Native American societies were diverse, with varied cultures shaped by their environments.
  • Not a monolithic group; diversity ranged from coastal fishing villages to hunter-gatherer groups and complex urban centers.

Pueblo People

  • Located in present-day Utah and Colorado.
  • Farmers who cultivated beans, squash, and maize.
  • Advanced irrigation systems to divert river water to crops.
  • Built urban centers using hardened clay bricks.
  • Famous for cliff dwellings.

Great Basin and Great Plains Region

  • Nomadic hunter-gatherers.
  • Wandered the Great Plains, hunting buffalo.
  • Organized into small egalitarian kinship bands.
  • Example: Ute people.

Northwest and Pacific Coast

  • Permanent settlements due to abundance of fish, small game, and diverse plant life.
  • Chumash people in California built villages sustaining nearly a thousand people and participated in regional trade.
  • Chinook peoples in the Pacific Northwest built extensive plank houses for whole families.

Northeast: Iroquois People

  • Farmers who lived communally in longhouses constructed from timber.

Mississippi River Valley

  • Farmers due to the rich soil.
  • Participated in trade along waterways.
  • Cahokia civilization was the largest, with around 40,000 people, led by powerful chieftains.

European Arrival

  • From the 1300s to 1400s, European kingdoms unified, creating centralized states governed by monarchs.
  • Wealthy upper class desired luxury goods from Asia, but Muslim control of land routes pushed Europeans to seek sea-based routes.

Portuguese Exploration

  • Established trading posts around Africa, creating a trading post empire.
  • Gained a foothold in the Indian Ocean trade network.
  • Used new maritime technology:
    • Updated astronomical charts.
    • Astrolabe.
    • Smaller, faster ships for trade.
    • Borrowed technology like the lateen sail and stern post rudder.
      • Maritime means having to do with the sea

Spanish Exploration

  • Finished reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from North African Muslim Moors.
    • Motivated to spread Catholic Christianity.
    • Sought new economic opportunities.
  • Christopher Columbus sought sponsorship to sail west to find new wealth in Asian markets.
  • In 1492, Columbus landed in the Caribbean, leading to exploration by other European nations like Portugal, France, and England.

Columbian Exchange

  • Transfer of people, animals, plants, and diseases between the East and West hemispheres.
  • From the Americas to Europe: potatoes, tomatoes, maize.
    • Europeans reacted positively to the new crop: maize.
  • From Europe to the Americas: wheat, rice, soybean.
  • Animals: turkeys from the Americas; cattle, pigs, and horses from Europe.
  • Gold and silver from the Americas to Europe.
  • People: Europeans migrated to the Americas, introducing enslaved Africans.
  • Disease: Europeans brought smallpox to the Americas, decimating native populations. Syphilis may have been introduced to Europeans by Native Americans.

Economic Shift in Europe

  • Influx of wealth from the Americas shifted feudalism to capitalism.
  • Capitalism: economic system based on private ownership and free exchange.
  • Rise of joint stock companies to fund exploration (limited liability organizations).

Spanish Colonization

  • Focused on agriculture and extraction of precious metals.
  • Encomienda system: Spaniards forced natives to work on plantations and extract gold and silver.
  • Problems with the Encomienda system:
    • Difficulty keeping natives subservient (due to escape).
    • Native populations decimated by smallpox.
  • Solution: importation of African enslaved laborers.
    • Africans knew less about American geography, making escape more difficult.
    • Africans had more immunity to European diseases.

Casta System

  • New social class system based on racial ancestry.
    • Peninsulares: Spaniards born in Spain.
    • Criollos/Creoles: Spaniards born in the Americas.
    • Castas:
      • Mestizos: Spanish and Native American blood.
      • Mulatos: Spanish and African blood.
    • Africans.
    • Native Americans.

European and Native American Relations

  • Europeans viewed natives as good for exploitation, military alliances, forced labor, and Christian conversion.
  • Exchange of practices and customs: natives taught the English how to hunt and cultivate maize; natives adopted iron tools and weapons.
  • Belief systems justifying treatment of natives: some Spaniards believed Native Americans were ontologically less than human.
  • Juan Guines de Sepulveda argued Native Americans benefited from harsh labor conditions.
  • Bartolome de las Casas defended the humanity of Native Americans and persuaded the king to pass laws ending slavery, which were later repealed.

Justification for Exploitation of African Laborers

  • Europeans used biblical interpretations to justify enslavement.
  • Noah's curse on Ham's son Canaan was misinterpreted to suggest black skin was a mark of destined slaves.