Unit 1: Period 1: 1491-1607 

1.1: Contextualizing Period 1

• The US now is a combination of people around the world
  • The indigenous people arrived at least 10,000 years ago and they lived there peacefully until the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492, sparking European exploration in the Americas
• Columbus’ first voyage is significant because it initiated lasting contact between two groups of people
• Across the Atlantic Ocean
  • his voyages had profound results on how people on each continent lived
• 1607: Founding of the first permanent English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia
  • Marked the beginning of the framework of a new nation

Cultural Diversity in the Americas

• When Columbus arrived in the Americas, there was already a great variety of culture
  • Partially due to geography and climate
  • Each culture developed certain practices and traits to adapt to their environment, like the crops they grew or the materials they built their homes from
  • Native Americans had also transformed their environments
  • Ex. building irrigation systems in dry climates or clearing out forests for agriculture

Motives for Exploration

• European explorers competed for land in the Americas
  • First Spanish and Portugal, then France and the Netherlands, then Great Britain
• Some were motivated to spread the word of God
• Some wanted to become wealthy by
  • Establishing an all water trade route
  • Establishing fur-trading posts
  • Operating gold and silver mines
  • Developing plantations
• Europeans used violence to drive away native inhabitants

Transatlantic Exchange

• This contact between the Europeans and the Native Americans sparked a transatlantic trade of animals, plants, and germs
  • Known as the Columbian Exchange
• This trade altered the lives of many around the globe
• Crops from the Americas (maize, tomatoes, potatoes, etc.) revolutionized the diet of the Europeans
• The transfer of germs from the Europeans, however, caused epidemics along the Native American populations
  • After the arrival of Europeans, a region’s native population will decline by 90%

Addition of Enslaved Africans

• Enslaved Africans added to the diversity of the Americas
• They were brought to the Americas as low-cost laborers by the Europeans
  • They worked in mines and plantations
• Africans, just like Native Americans, resisted European domination by maintaining elements of their culture
• The three groups influenced each others’ ideas and ways of life

European Colonies

• Spanish and Portuguese explorers developed colonies in the Americas
  • They depended on the physical labor of Native Americans and enslaved Africans for agriculture and mining of precious metals
• Mines in South America and Mexico produced vast amounts of silver
  • Made Spain the wealthiest European empire in the 16th and 17th centuries

1.2: Native American Societies Before European Contract

• Original settlement of North and South America began at least 10,000 years ago
  • Theorized that it could’ve been up to 40,000 years ago
• Possibility that migrants from Asia crossed a land bridge that once connected Siberia and Alaska
  • Submerged under the Bering Sea

Cultures of Central and South America

• They all built highly organized societies, carried on extensive trade, and created calendars based on accurate scientific observation
• Cultivated crops that were based on a stable food supply
  • Corn (maize) for the Aztecs and Mayas
  • Potatoes for the Incas

Cultures of North America

• 1490: The population north of Mexico (present-day United States and Canada) ranges from under one million to more than ten million

General Pattern

• Native societies in this region included fewer people and their societies weren’t as highly organized as those down south
• Reason for this: the spreading of cultivation of corn (maize) from Mexico to the North
  • Nutrition of corn allowed populations to grow and to become highly organized and socially diversified societies
  • People specialized in their trade in this society
• By 1500, some of the most populous societies in North America had died down and disappeared
  • Reasons are still unknown to this day
• During the time of Columbus’ arrival, Native Americans lived in semipermanent settlements
  • Men made tools and hunted for game
  • Women gathered plants and nuts or grew crops such as corn (maize), beans, and tobacco

Language Differences

• Cultures were diverse within the Native Americans
• English, Spanish, and any other European language has one language family, but Native American languages have more than 20 language families
• Largest language families included
  • Algonquian in the Northeast
  • Siouan in the Great Plains
  • Athabaskan in the Southwest
• Together, these 20+ language families included more than 400 languages

Overall Diversity

• Variety of landforms and climate allowed for tremendous diversity in cultures in North American Natives (prior to 1492)
• Europeans often grouped these varied cultures together when each tribe had its different systems and traditions
  • They soon developed a shared identity as Native Americans

1.3: European Exploration in the Americas

• Up until 1400s, people of the Americas traded amongst each other, but had no connection to the rest of the world
  • Starting in the 1400s, Europeans started to explore more for religious and economic purposes, which brought the two worlds into contact

The European Context for Exploration

• Vikings from Scandinavia had visited Greenland and North America years prior, but these voyages had no lasting impact
• Columbus’ voyage brought people into lasting contact with the Atlantic
• Many factors that made exploration desirable in late 15th century

Changes in Thought and Technology

• Renaissance: rebirth of classical learning which promoted an outburst of scientific and artistic activity in the 15th and 16th centuries
• Several of the technological advancements made during this time were improvements of inventions made by others
  • Gunpowder (originally invented by the Chinese)
  • Sailing compass (originally made by the Chinese, adopted by Arab merchants)
• Europeans made major improvements in shipbuilding and mapmaking
• Invention of printing press in the 1450s helped spread knowledge across Europe

Religious Conflict

• Later years of Renaissance were a period of intense religious zeal and conflict
• Roman Catholic Church and its leader, the pope, dominated western Europe for a long time
  • Power was threatened by Ottoman Turks in 15th and 16th centuries (Muslims)
  • Also threatened by rebellious Christians who challenged the Pope’s authority
• Catholic Victory in Spain
  • 8th century: Moors (Islamic invaders from North Africa) quickly conquered most of modern-day Spain
  • Over the next centuries, Spanish Christians reconquered much of the land and set up independent kingdoms
  • 2 of the largest kingdoms merged when Isabella (queen of Castile) and Ferdinand (king of Aragon) married in 1469
  • 1492: Spanish conquered the last Moorish stronghold in Spain (Granada) under the leadership of Isabella and Ferdinand
  • They also funded Christopher Columbus on his historic first voyage
  • These events signaled new leadership, hope, and power for Europeans that followed the Roman Catholic faith
• Protestant Revolt in Northern Europe
  • Early 1500s: certain Christians in Germany, England, France, Holland, and other Northern European countries revolted against the authority of the pope in Rome
  • Known as the Protestant Reformation
  • Conflicts between the Protestants and the Catholics led to a series of wars that killed millions in the 16th and 17th century
  • Also caused Roman Catholics of Spain and Portugal and Protestants of England and Holland to want to spread their version of Christianity to countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia
    • Religious motive to explore and colonize was added to political and economic motives

Expanding Trade

• Economic motives grew from a fierce competition among European kingdoms for increased trade with Africa, India, and China
• In the past route, there was a land route from Venice and Constantinople all the way to eastern China
  • This land route becomes blocked in 1453 when the Ottoman Turks seized Constantinople
• New Routes
  • Challenge: finding a new way to Asian trade appeared by sailing either south along the West African coast and then east to China, or sailing west across the Atlantic ocean
  • Voyages were sponsored by Portugal’s Prince Henry the Navigator
  • Eventually succeeded in opening up a long sea route around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope
  • 1498: Portuguese sea captain Vasco da Gama was the first European to reach India via this route
  • By this time, Columbus had attempted what he thought would be a shorter route to Asia
• Slave Trading
  • Since ancient times people in Europe, Africa, and Asia had enslaved war prisoners and other people captured in wars
  • 15th century: Portuguese began trading for enslaved people from West Africa
  • They used the enslaved workers in sugar plantations on the Madeira and Azores islands on the island coast
  • Producing sugar with enslaved labor was so profitable that Europeans used a similar system when they made colonies in the Americas

Developing Nation-States

• Europe was also changing politically in the 15th century
  • Small kingdoms were uniting to form larger kingdoms
  • Ex. Castile and Aragon to form the core of the modern country of Spain
  • Enormous multiethnic empires were beginning to break up
  • Ex. Most of the states that formed modern-day Germany were once part of the Holy Roman Empire
• Replacing these small kingdoms and multiethnic empires were nation-states
  • Nation states: countries in which the majority of people shared both a common culture and common loyalty to a certain government
• The monarchs of the emerging nation-states depended on trade to bring in needed revenues and on the church to justify their right to rule
  • Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, and similar monarchs of France, England, and the Netherlands

Dividing the Americas

• Western European monarchs used their power to search for riches abroad and spread their version of Christianity to new land
  • Led to competition for control of land in the Americas
• Spanish and Portuguese Claims
  • Spain and Portugal were the first kingdoms to claim territories in the Americas
  • Their claims overlapped, causing disputes
  • Catholic monarchs of the two nations turned to the pope to resolve their issues
  • 1493: The pope drew a vertical, north-south line on a world map (line of demarcation)
  • Granted Spain all lands to the west of the line and Portugal all lands east of the line
  • 1494: Treaty of Tordesillas: treaty where Spain and Portugal moved the pope’s line a few degrees west
  • Line passed through modern-day Brazil
  • This treaty, along with Portuguese exploration established Portuguese claim to Brazil while Spain claimed the rest of the Americas
    • Other European countries soon challenged these claims
• English Claims
  • Earliest claims to territory were based on the voyages by John Cabot
  • He explored Newfoundland in 1497
  • England didn’t follow up with voyages for exploration and settlement
  • Other problems that they had to sort through
  • Queen Elizabeth I encouraged exploration and settlement during in the later 16th century
  • The English challenged the Spanish shipping in both the Atlantic and Pacific
  • Attempted to establish the Roanoke Island colony but the venture failed
• French Claims
  • Showed interest in exploration in 1524
  • Sponsored a voyage by an Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazano
    • Trying to find the northwest passage from Americas to Asia
  • Also based on the voyages of Jacques Cartier in1534-1542
  • Explored the St. Lawrence River
  • Like the English, the French were also slow to develop colonies in the Atlantic
  • Also occupied with other things

1.4: Columbian Exchange, Spanish Exploration, and Conquest

• Purpose of Columbus’s voyage: finding a sea route the lucrative trade with Asia which has been limited by long and dangerous land route
  • What Columbus found was of far greater importance

Christopher Columbus

• Social, economic, and political conditions allowed for the idea of exploration to be supported by many in Europe
• Exploration was supported by the improvements in shipbuilding and in navigations with better compasses and mapmaking
• Plans to Reach Asia
  • One of the explorers from the Italian coast of Genoa was Christopher Columbus
  • Spent 8 years seeking financial support for his plan to sail West from Europe to the “Indies”
  • 1492: (Isabella and Ferdinand) 2 Spanish monarchs who were at the height of their power defeated the Moors in Granada
  • Agreed to outfit 3 ships and to make Columbus governor, admiral, and victory of all the land that he would claim for Spain
  • After sailing from the Canary Islands on Sept. 6, Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas on October 12
  • His success on reaching land brought him a burst of glory in Spain
  • The subsequent voyages across the Atlantic were disappointing
    • He found little gold, few spices , and no route to China and India

The Columbian Exchange

• With the maintained contact between the Europeans and the original inhabitants of the Americas, we see something called the Columbian Exchange occurring
  • Columbian Exchange: the trade and transfer of plants, animals, and germs from one side of the Atlantic to the other for the first time
• Europeans learned about many new plants foods such as beans, corn, sweet and white potatoes, tomatoes, and tobacco
  • Transformed the diet of many in Eurasia
  • Sparked rapid population growth within Eurasia and Africa
• Europeans also contracted a new disease called syphilis
• People in the Americas learned about sugarcane, bluegrasses, pigs, and horses
• They also learned about the wheel, iron implements, and guns
• While the Columbian Exchange was beneficial to the Europeans, it was not the same way for the Native Americans
  • They had no immunity to the germs brought by the Europeans, which resulted in many of them dying from diseases such as smallpox and measles
  • As a result, the native population severely declined

The Rise of Capitalism

• Population growth and and access to new resources caused an increase in trade which further caused social, political, and economic changes to occur
  • The system of feudalism was declined and replaced by capitalism
• Capitalism: an economic system where the control of capital (money and machinery) became more important that the control of land
• As trade increased the political power moved from wealthy landowners to merchants
• One reason for the rise of trade was because of the eagerness of the Europeans being able to possess riches from the Americas, Africa, and Asia
• However, these voyages were expensive and dangerous
  • To fund these expeditions in a safer way, the Europeans came up with a safer method : the joint-stock company
• The joint-stock company worked like this
  • It was owned by many businesses as investors
  • If an expedition failed, the investors only lost the amount they invested in the voyage
• The joint-stock company encouraged more investors, promoting economic growth

1.5: Labor, Slavery, and Caste in the Spanish Colonial System

• Spanish dominance was based on papal ruling (ruling made by the Pope) rather than a treaty
• Led by Ferdinand and Isabella
• The Spanish wealth and power increased through the explorers and conquistadores, as well as the physical labor of the enslaved Africans and Native Americans

Spanish Exploration and Conquest

• Spanish supremacy and domination in the Americas was secured by
  • The journey across Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean by Vasco Núñez de Balboa
  • Circumnavigation of the world by one of Ferdinand Magellan’s ships
  • Conquests of Aztecs in Mexico by Hernán Cortés
  • Conquests of the Inca in Peru by Francisco Pizarro

Indian Labor

• Encountered indigenous population in Mexico and Peru
• Even after diseases like smallpox killed off a majority of the Native American population, millions managed to survive
• Spanish took the remaining native populations into their empire
  • They controlled them using the encomienda system
  • Spain’s king granted natives who lived on a certain part of the land to individual Spaniards
  • Forced to work in farmlands or mines
  • Their efforts and products from their labor were shipped off to Spain and given to the Spanish
  • In return, the Spaniards would have to “take care” of the Native Americans

Enslaved African Labor

• Portuguese had already proved that using enslaved Africans to grow crops was profitable
  • The sugar plantations on islands off the African coast was where this was proved
  • This provided a model for other Europeans looking for a way to strengthen their labor force
• The Spanish needed to add to their labor force as enslaving Native Americans did not prove to be successful
  • They died from disease and brutality in slavery
• The Spanish imported enslaved Africans through the asiento system
  • Required colonists to pay a tax to the king for each enslaved person imported to the Americas
• Other Europeans also established the use of enslaved Africans as a labor force
  • During the colonial era, more Africans came to the Americas than Europeans
• Up until the late 1800s, 10-15 million Africans were put on ships and shipped off to the Americas
  • 10-15% died on the voyage to the Americas
• This voyage was called the Middle Passage

African Resistance

• Despite being transported many miles away from home and being brutally repressed, Africans resisted slavery in many ways
  • They would run away, sabotage work, or revolt
• They would also retain aspects of African culture
  • Music, religion, and folkways

Spanish Caste System

• The combination of Native Americans, Spaniards, and Africans created ethnically diverse colonies
• Many people were also of mixed heritage
• The hierarchy in this society
  • Pure blooded Spaniards at the top
  • People of mixed heritage in the middle
  • People of pure Native American or Black descent on the bottom

1.6: Cultural Interactions in the Americas

• There are many recorded interactions between various ethnic groups in history
  • Romans and Africans in Classical Era
  • Christians and Muslims in Middle Ages
• These conflicts were often violent, but small in regions and didn’t last that long
• Contact between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans in the Americas was violent and lasted for a longer time. it was also on a larger scale
• Europeans and Native Americans had conflicting worldviews
  • Monotheism VS polytheism
  • Most Native Americans believed in multiple deities while Europeans believed in one god
  • The roles of women in each society
  • Women had a limited role in European society while some tribes had leadership positions that women took up
  • The use of legal documents VS tradition for making land decisions

European Treatment of Native Americans

• Europeans generally viewed Native Americans as inferior people that could be exploited for economic gain, converted to Christianity, and used as military allies
• Various approaches were used for ruling Native Americans and operating colonies

Spanish Policy

• Subjugated Native Americans, however, the treatment of Native Americans was debated by Spanish scholars

Bartolomé de Las Casas

• Spanish priest who dissented from the views of most Europeans towards Native Americans
• Though he had owned land and slaves in the West Indies and fought wars against the Native Americans, he eventually advocated for better treatment of the Native Americans
• Persuaded the king to pass the New Laws of 1542
  • These laws ended slavery for the Native Americans, halted forced Native American labor, and started to put a stop to the encomienda system
  • However, conservative Spaniards, who profited off of this system, successfully got the king to repeal certain parts of these new laws

Valladolid Debate

• Debate of the role of Native Americans was a formal debate in 1550-1551 in Valladolid, Spain
• Two sides to this debate
  • Las Casas argued that Native Americans were humans as well, so enslaving them was morally wrong and unjustified
  • Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda believed that Native Americans were less than human, which meant that they benefitted from the encomienda system
• Neither side was able to convince the audience well
• Las Casas was unable to gain equal treatment for Native Americans, but he was able to establish the basic arguments for the justice of Native Americans

English Policy

• The English settled in areas with no large native population that could provide forced labor
• When the English arrived on the scene in the 1600s, most of the Native population was already killed off by various diseases
• Many English colonists came in families rather that single young men
  • marriage with natives was less common
• In Massachusetts, the English and the Native Americans coexisted and shared many things and ideas with each other
  • Natives taught the English how to grow new crops
  • Also showed them how to hunt in the forests
  • Traded furs for English manufactured goods such as iron tools and weapons
• These peaceful relations soon gave way to issues and warfare
  • Most Europeans showed no respect towards the Native American culture, viewing their cultures as “savage”
  • Native Americans felt threatened by the English taking their land and supporting their growing population
• They expelled the natives rather than subjugating them

French Policy

• The French viewed the Native Americans as potential economic and military allies
• Compared to the English and Spanish, the French seemed to have a better relationship with the Native Americans
• They built trading posts throughout the St. Lawrence Valley, the Great Lakes region, and the Mississippi river
• They exchanged French goods for furs at these posts
• The French posed less threat to the native population due to the fewer number of colonists, farms, and towns
• The French soldiers also assisted the Hurons to fight against the Iroquois, their traditional enemy

Survival Strategies by Native Americans

• As European settlements began to increase in number, Native Americans responded to protect themselves and their cultures
• One strategy was to ally with a European power
  • Ex. several tribes in Mexico allied with Spain to help them win their freedom from the Aztecs in the 1500s
• Other tribes migrated west to get away from settlers, which would further lead to conflict between other Native Americans living in that area already
  • Native Americans did not identify as a larger group that included all tribes
• Regardless of how each tribe dealt with European invasion, they would never return to their life prior to 1492

The Role of Africans in America

• They contributed a third cultural tradition in the Americas
• Their experience growing rice made rice an important crop in the South Carolinian and Louisiana colonies
• Musical rhythms and singing styles that shaped the development of American music
  • The banjo would be closely associated with the American culture in the southeast by the 19th century
• Europeans justified slavery in many ways
  • Some used religion to justify slavery, excerpts from the Bible
• Slavery soon became exclusive to Africans, which lead to Europeans arguing that Africans were biologically inferior, which gave them a “justification” for slavery
  • Similar to the argument Sepúlveda used regarding Native Americans