Introduction

• Humans have lived in the Americas for 10,000 years

• 100s of languages, 1000s of cultures built communities, maintained peace, waged wars, and established economics and networks of exchange

The First Americans

• Native Americans tell stories of creation

• Salinians (Present-day California) tell of a bald eagle that formed the first man out of clay and first woman from a feather

• Lenape tradition states that a sky woman fell into a watery world and with the help of a muskrat and beaver landed safely on a turtle’s back created Turtle Island or North America

• Choctaw tradition located beginnings in the Greater Mother Mound Earthwork Nanihwaya in the lower Mississippi Valley

• Nahua trace back to the 7 caves, before migrating to Central Mexico

Anthropology

• The last global ice age lead to the lower of global sea levels, connecting Asia and North America across the Bering Strait

• Between 12,000 and 20,000 years ago Native ancestors would cross this bridge in small scavenger bands

• While some stopped on the land bridge, other would continue traveling on riverways

• Glacial sheets would recede allowing warmer climates and exposing new resources

• Evidence in Chile, Florida, and Texas hint at human activity 14,500 years ago

• Many points of modern science and tradition converge

Agriculture and Hunting

• Northwest used salmon rivers, plains, and prairie followed bison leading to varied cultures and language

• Modern Mexico and Central America would rely on corn as it was high in calories, easily stored, and could sometimes be harvested twice

• Eastern Woodlands: Mississippi and Atlantic Ocean River Valleys

  • 3 sisters: corn, beans, and squash

  • Shifting Cultivation: Cutting, burning, and planting in forests → move to different area and repeat

  • Farmers engaged in intensive agriculture with hand tools

  • Agriculture allowed members to pursue other skills that may have lead to weaker health

  • Women practiced agriculture while men hunted and fished

Differences From Europeans

• Spiritual power was tangible and could be harnessed

• Kinship bound most people together

• Ancestry was matrilineal → mothers would have enormous influence at local levels and men relied on their relationship with women

• Greater sexual and marital freedom → Women chose their husbands and divorce was simple

• Most Native Americans felt a general ownership of tools, land, and crops

• Many ways of communication, including graphic

  • Algonquian - Speaking Ojibwes used birch bark scrolls

  • Eastern Woodland - Plant fibers, embroidered skin with procupine quills, and modeled earth for complex ceremonies

  • Plains - Wove buffalo hair and painted on Buffalo skin

  • Pacific Northwest - Wove goat hair into soft textiles

  • Maya, Zapotec, Nahua - Plant-derived textiles and stone

  • Inca (Andes) - Knotted String on Khipa

Large Cultures

• Some of the largest culture group were the Puebloan (SW USA and NW Mexico), the Mississippian along the Great River, the Mesoamerican (Central Mexico) and the Yucatan

Chao Canyon (900 - 1300 CE)

• Agricultural practices, trading networks and domestication of plants and animals allowed the population to swell

• Massive residential structures made from lumber and sandstone

• Kiva (small dugout room) - role in ceremonies and center for Puebloan life and culture

• Spirituality tied to earth and heavens: charting the starts and designing homes in line with the sun and moon

• Ecological challenges: Deforestation and over-irrigation

• Apache and Navajo entered the area and adopted several Puebloan customs

Cahokia

• Mississippians developed on eof hte largest civilization north of modern-day Mexico, Cahokia between 10,000 - 30,000 people

• Centered on Monks Mound

• Life and death were related to the stars, earth, and moon

• Chiefdoms - secular and sacred authority

  • Smaller number of chiefdoms would exist under 1 leader

• Social Stratification through War:

  • Slaves were captured and lacked kinship, which distinguished normal people

  • Slaves could become integrated through adoption or marriage

• 1050 - Old theories suggest a rapid shift in politics, social life, and ideology

  • Population grew 500% in 1 generation

  • Too great of a burden on arable land, deforestation, erosion, and extended droughts

  • New evidence suggest turmoil among elites and external threats

Trade Routes

• Cahokia become key trading center because it was near Mississippi River, Illinois, and Missouri Rivers

• Louisiana had access to copper from Canada and Flint and Missouri Rivers from Indiana

  • Mica came from Alleghany mountains and obsidian from Mexico

Lenape

• Smaller dispersed communities to use rich soil and abundant water

• Matrilineal: Married men joined his wife’s tribe

  • Women held power over marriages, households, and agriculture

• Sachems might have been an area of power for women

  • Governed people with their consent, through wisdom and experience

  • Differed from the hierarchies of other Mississippian cultures

  • Large gathering existed where Sachems spoke in large councils for their people

  • Occasional tensions with Iroquois to the North and Susavehamock to the North

• Lenape women planted 3 sisters, tobacco, sunflower, and gourds, harvested fruits and nuts, and cultivated medicinal plants

• Groups organized to take advantage of growing seasons

• Proficients fishers organized camps to net shellfish and catch shad

• Dutch and Swedish sought their friendship and prosperity

Pacific Northwest - Kwakwaka’wakw, Tlingits, Haidas

• Moderate climate, lush forests, and many rivers

• Depended on salmon → represented prosperity, life, and renewal

• Sustainable harvesting practices: Elders observed size and delayed harvesting

• Nets, hooks, and other tools were used to catch salmon

• Massive canoes enabled pacific expeditions, catching thousands of pounds of fish

• Food surplus enabled significant population growth

• Potlaches (feasts) determined social status, with the more hosts gave, the more power and prestige they acquired

• Cedars were used to build houses, totem poles, and other items to express identitity

European Expansion

• Scandinavian seafarers reached the New World before Columbus but were driven back by limited resources, weather, food shortages, and resistance

• Crusades linked Europe with Asia, creating new demand and wealth

• European nation-states consolidated under kings: 100 Years War created new financial and military administration, Ferdinand and Isabella consolidate the Iberian Peninsula → want to access Asia’s wealth

• Portugal and Spain wanted a direct route → Prince Henry would invest in technology perfecting the astrolabe and caravel

• Portuguese trading ports were established along Africa

• Spanish and Portugese found smaller islands near Europe and Africa and saw the first large-scale cultivation of sugar by enslaved laborers

• Sugar was grown in Asia but became a luxury to European nobility

• Sugar was a difficult crop, requiring tropical temperatures, daily rainfall, unique soil conditions, and 14 months to grow

• Canary Islands would serve as an example of the demographic change brought by Europeans

• Portugal required workers and turned to African city-states for captured war slaves in return for guns, iron, and manufactured goods

Christopher Columbus

• Columbus convinced Ferdinand and Isabella to provide him with 3 ships, vastly underestimating the size of earth

• Columbus stumbled upon the Indigenous Arowaks or Taino

• Columbus found little wealth except for the gold ornaments the Arawaks wore

• Columbus would leave a fort to find the source of gold while he returned to Spain with captives

• Columbus would promise the Spanish crown gold and labourers

• Columbus would return with ships and men, but be slow to provide new wealth

• Spanish would embark on a campaign to extract every ounce of wealth from the Caribbean

• The Spanish after enslaving the natives would force them to work on enconmiendas

• The barbarianism of the Spanish caused the indigenous population to collapse

• Natives were unprepared for the Biology Europeans would bring with them, including smallpox, typhus, influence, diphtheria, measles, hepatitis, and plagues, killing millions

Spanish Exploration and Conquest

• Wealth hungry Spanish came to the new world seeking land, gold, and titles

• Encomiendas, in which Spanish were given land and native labourers was abolished and replaced with repartimiento, which had the same abuses

• Maya built massive temples, sustained large populations and construct a complex civilization that would collapse due to droughts and agricultural practices

• Aztecs would construct Tenochtitlan, a massive city with chinampas and would dominate central and south mesoamerica by creating a tribute system

• Many states yearned to be free and gladly allied with Cortes

• Cortes would Tenochtitlan peacefully, cpature the emperor, and use him to gain access to vast mineral wealth

• Aztecs would revolt and the Spanish had to retreat out of the city, regroup with more reinforcements and allies, and besiege the city as small pox ravaged it

Inca

• Ruled from Andean highlands, managing a vast trade network

• Unrest among Incas along with disease would weaken the empire

• Pizarro would enter the empire, deceive rulers, and seize the capital city
  Spanish would use royal appointments along with Indigenous administrators to regulate mineral extract and transport

• Young male Spaniards made up the majority of migrants with promises of land, wealth, and social advancement

• Casta system (Blood Purity) was used for social advancement

  • High → Peninsulares → Criollos → Mestizos → Low

• Interracial marriage was supported with Mestizos occupying a middle range in society

• Cultural mixing was unparalleled in British North America and created new culture on top of indigenous origins

• Explorers would continue to search North America for large unexplored empires but would fail to find any