APUSH Unit 1 Notes

UNIT I: EARLY CONTACT AMONG GROUPS IN NORTH AMERICA (1491-1607)

Themes:

  • Native American clash

  • Columbus’s Discovery of America

  • Coming of English to America

  • Effect of Europeans on Native Americans

  • Relationship between Spanish and Native Americans

  • Native American resettlement after conquistadores

Vocabulary and Concepts:

  • Columbian Exchange - gold, silver, beans, potatoes, vanilla, pineapple, chocolate, tomatoes, and tobacco => Old World; wheat, sugar, rice, coffee, horses, cows, pigs, and diseases => New World

  • three sister farming - rotating corn, beans, and squash to replenish nutrients in soil

  • encomienda - first form of slavery - Indians given to Spanish to be Christianized

  • terrace farming - transformed hills into huge steps use land and collect water

  • suspension bridges - first developed by Incas

  • Anglicism - the Protestant Church of England created by Henry VIII

  • silk route - the Silk Road in Asia - when closed, it prompted Europe to find a new route to get to India

  • the Black Legend - false legends accusing conquistadores of torturing and killing Indians for Christ, stole their gold, and purposely infected them with smallpox

  • ecological imperialism - introduction of alien plants and animals into a new ecosystem without natural predators (the dandelion)

  • mestizos - people of mixed Native American and European descent

Key Events:

  • Columbus discovers America – 1492, and you definitely should already know this!

  • Noche Triste - June 30th, 1520 - Aztecs attacked conquistadores because they were too greedy - Cortes attacked a year later and conquered golden city of Tenochtitlan

  • Battle of Acoma - between Spanish and Pueblo – Spanish cut off one foot of every survivor

  • Pope’s Rebellion - religious Indian rebellion against Roman Catholics;

Important People:

  • Incas - huge empire based on civil engineering and social classes destroyed by conquistadores led by Pizarro

  • Mayans - highly advanced civilization with agriculture and accurate calendars

  • Aztecs - huge warlike empire based on human sacrifice destroyed by Cortes because the conquistadores wanted gold - the Aztecs believed him to be the god Quetzalcoatl

  • Iroquois Confederacy - greatest band of many tribes who attempted to resist the white men and remain in their homelands

  • Christopher Columbus - Italian who first discovered America; thought he was in India

  • Juan Gines de Sepulveda - ethnocentric renaissance man who believed barbarians to be savage and inferior - like the difference between apes and men

  • Bartolome de las Casas - monk who thought Native Americans were lesser beings because they were uneducated; proposed spreading Christianity

  • Vasco Nunez Balboa - first to discover Pacific Ocean

  • Ferdinand Magellan - died on journey but captain of the first ship to circumnavigate the globe

  • Juan Ponce de Leon - discovered FL

  • Francisco Coronado - found AZ, NM, KS; looking for famed golden cities but found pueblos , buffalo, and Grand Canyon

  • Hernando de Soto - found Mississippi River though seeking gold

  • Francisco Pizarro - destroyed Incas

  • Cortez - destroyed the Aztecs

Likely Documents:

  • Treaty of Tordesillas - between Spain and Portugal; gave most of the New World to Spain, gave Brazil and some holdings in Asia and Africa to Portugal

  • Bartholome DeLas Casas, The Destruction of the Indes – report on the atrocities Spain has committed against Natives in the New World

  • Juan Gines de Sepulveda, The Second Democrates – argument in favor of the Spanish ruling over the “inferior” native peoples

  • Columbus Quotes?

  • Map of indigenous tribes’ regions in America (from the presentation!)

  • Diagram of how the Columbian Exchange works