Native American Societies and European Colonization

Native American Societies Pre-Contact

  • Diverse and not monolithic.
  • Adapted to their environment, which dictated:
    • Society type
    • Economy
    • Social hierarchy
    • Religious ideas
  • Connected by religious and spiritual ideas, specifically animism.
  • Animism: Belief in interaction with nature and its spiritual construct; nonhuman things possess spiritual connections with humans.
  • Depended on the environment.
  • Unique environments led to unique Native American groups and interactions.

Examples of Native American Adaptations

  • Southwest (Pueblos):
    • Relied on irrigation to grow maize (corn).
    • Complex irrigation systems.
    • Permanent structures and villages.
  • Great Basin and Great Plains: Nomadic groups that hunted buffalo for economic and cultural needs.
  • Northeast (Iroquois):
    • Mix of agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies.
    • Permanent villages.
    • Staple crops (mostly grains).
    • Sophisticated government systems (Iroquois Confederacy).
      • Grand council made decisions for the entire community.
      • Influenced colonial governments.

European Colonization

  • Motivated by the "Three G's": Gold, Glory, and God.
  • Different European groups prioritized these goals differently.
  • Columbian Exchange: Transatlantic exchange of people, diseases, food, trade, and ideas between the Western Hemisphere, Africa, and Europe.
    • Created the first trade system between Europe, the Americas (Caribbean), and Africa.
    • Movement of goods and enslaved people across the Atlantic.

New Spain

  • First major European empire in the Americas (starting 1565 with the colonization of Saint Augustine, Florida).
  • Main goal: Spreading Christianity (God).
  • Converted Native Americans to Roman Catholicism.
  • Used Native Americans and Africans as forced slave labor in mines (gold and silver).
  • Encomienda System: Spanish colonizers received land from the Spanish government in exchange for bringing enslaved labor and economic resources (gold and silver) into the Spanish empire.
    • Incentivized colonization.
    • Gave power to peninsulares (people from Spain settling in the New World).
      • Created plantations for agriculture, gold, and silver.

Spanish Caste System (Encomienda System)

  • Stratified social hierarchy based on race and connection to Mainland Spain/Europe.
  • Peninsulares at the top, followed by other groups, with slaves at the bottom.
  • Favored Europeans and discriminated against non-Europeans.
  • Example of a rigid stratified system.

Debate on Treatment of Native Americans

  • Bartolomé de las Casas: Argued against the poor treatment of Native Americans.
    • Viewed Native Americans as inferior but believed they shouldn't be abused.
  • Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda: Supported the Spanish treatment of Native Americans.
    • Viewed them as "barbarians" lacking humanity and skill.
    • Mirrored through the colonial treatment of Native Americans throughout U.S. history.

Native American Responses to European Colonization

  • Varied responses:
    • Trading relationships
    • Tribalization (connecting with other tribes to resist European expansion).
    • Resistance led to easing of demands from the Spanish to the Pueblos.
    • Reform movement by the Spanish.

African Slave Trade

  • Began in the early 1500s.
  • Most African slaves brought to the Caribbean region for cash crops (rice, indigo, sugar).
  • Slave trade expanded from the Caribbean into North America (English involvement starting in the early 1600s).

Transatlantic Voyages

  • Evaluate the impact of transatlantic voyages (1491-1607) on the Americas.

Period 2: Colonization (1607-1754)

  • Establishment of the English (British) system.
  • Diverse patterns of colonization: Spanish, British, French, and Dutch.

Colonization Goals

  • Spanish: Primary goal was spreading Christianity.
    • Employed Christopher Columbus.
    • Leads to the Columbian Exchange.
    • Treaty of Tordesillas (split the world into hemispheres).
    • Encomienda system.
    • Mercantilism (colonies for raw materials traded back to the mother country).
    • Spanish missionary system (convert Native Americans to Christianity).
    • Caste system.
    • Pueblo Revolt, changing Spanish practices.
    • Located in Mexico, Central America, and the Southwest.
  • French and Dutch: Primary goal was trade (fur trade).
    • Established trading posts.
    • Dutch in New Amsterdam (New York City).
    • Increase trade in and out of Europe.
    • Trade relationships with Native Americans; intermarriage between French and Native Americans.
    • Native Americans sided with the French due to positive trade relationships.
    • Trading for companies (Dutch East and West India Company), mainly trading beaver furs.
  • British: Primary goal was creating neo-European societies.
    • Transplanting European society to the New World.
    • Farming: cash crop in the South and shipbuilding in the North.
    • Permanent settlers.
    • Hostile relationships with Native Americans.
    • Permanent economic settlements.
    • Large numbers of men (initially) and women.

Colonial Regions

  • Three colonial regions: New England, Middle, and Southern colonies.

New England Colonies

  • Settled by Puritans (Pilgrims) seeking separation from the European hierarchy and religious societies.
    • Mayflower Compact (1620): Early form of democracy, an agreement between people on the ship and government.
    • City Upon a Hill (John Winthrop, 1630): Ideal society, an example of American exceptionalism.
    • Town hall meetings: Direct democracy.
    • Not religiously tolerant. Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams were expelled and formed Rhode Island (religious toleration in 1636).

Middle Colonies

  • "Breadbasket Colonies": New York, Delaware, New Jersey.
    • Diverse settlers (Huguenots, Quakers, Dutch Reformed, Roman Catholics).
    • William Penn's "Holy Experiment" in Pennsylvania: Religious tolerance and pacifism.
    • Peaceful treaties with Native Americans regarding land exchange.
    • Grew grains (corn, wheat, barley) traded to other colonies.
    • Grains became currency.

Southern Colonies

  • Chesapeake Bay: Virginia and Maryland.
    • Virginia: Economic motives (Jamestown, Virginia Joint Stock Company aiming for profit).
      • John Smith saved the colony.
      • John Rolfe perfected tobacco growing (1612).
    • Labor force:
      • Indentured servants: people signing contracts for passage to the New World (4-7 years of labor in exchange for passage and freedom).
      • Bacon's Rebellion (1676): Rebellion against Virginia government.
        • Led to a move away from indentured servitude and towards race-based slavery.
    • Virginia House of Burgesses (1619): Representative democracy (aristocracy).
  • Southern Colonies (South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina): Plantations growing tobacco, rice, etc.
    • West Indies slave trade: Importing enslaved people from the Caribbean to work in sugar and rice plantations.
    • Headright system: Benefited rich plantation owners.

Bacon's Rebellion (1676)

  • Led to the expansion of the slave labor system starting around 1680.

Conflicts with Native Americans

  • Europeans wanted land, leading to conflict with Native Americans.
    • Pequot War (1636): Between the Pequot and English.
      • Treaty of Hartford (1638): Ended the war, gave Pequot land to the English and declared that the Pequot no longer existed.
    • King Phillips War and later on the Anglo Powhatan War of the sixteen forties

Slave Rebellions

  • Stono Rebellion (1739) in the Carolina region.
  • Rebellions led to reinforcement of stricter slave codes (starting with the Barbados Slave Code of 1660).
  • Slavery existed in every colony, though concentrated in the Southern Colonies.

Slavery in the Colonies

  • Strict racial hierarchy similar to the Spanish colonies.
  • Chattel Slavery (1619): Enslaved people treated as property.
    • Gave rights to "slave owners" and removed rights from enslaved people.
    • Slave codes.
    • White supremacy, racial and cultural superiority.
    • Both overt (slave rebellions) and covert (slowing down work, breaking tools, running away) resistance to slavery.
    • Middle Passage: Dehumanizing conditions on ships transporting enslaved people (disease, suicide, sexual assault).

Cultural Changes

  • First Great Awakening (1730s-1740s): Religious revival.
    • Response to people turning away from religion.
    • Led to new religious Christian sects (Baptists, Methodists).
    • Did not include an age of reform.
  • The Enlightenment: Questioning old ways of doing things.
    • Enlightenment philosophers (Jean-Jacques Rousseau).
    • Spread ideas through the press.
    • Evolution of three branches of government, social contract, and people's natural rights to life, liberty, and property.

Period 3: Revolution and Early Republic (1754-1800)

  • French and Indian War: a conflict over land in the Ohio River Valley between the French (and their Native American allies) and the British (and the colonies).
  • mercantilist policies: The Navigation Acts of 1650 and 1660, which regulated colonial trade, favored British ships and trade with the British only.
  • Salisbury Neglect: a time when the British kind of ignored the navigation acts of seventeen sixteen fifty, and they allowed the British colonies to set up their own like trade systems and their own systems of like like, government systems.
  • Treaty of Paris of 1763: Ended the French and Indian War.
  • Albany Plan of Union: Proposed unified colonial government (rejected).
  • Pontiac's Rebellion: Native American rebellion against the British.
  • Proclamation Line of 1763: Restricted colonial expansion west of the Appalachian Mountains.
  • "No taxation without representation" vs. Virtual representation.
  • The British passed all of these acts: The Stamp Act of 1765, Declaratories Act of 1766, the Townsend Act of 1767. That leads to the Boston Massacre, the first violent interaction that we see between the British and the Americans in March of nineteen seventy seventy in Boston.

Key Documents

  • Common Sense (Thomas Paine, 1776): Advocated independence based on enlightenment ideas, natural rights, self-government, republican virtue.
  • Declaration of Independence: Based on enlightenment ideas of self-government and natural rights.
  • American Revolution vs. Revolutionary War: American Revolution (ideals/values) and the Revolutionary War (fighting).

American Revolution

  • strengths and weaknesses: Americans had a lot of weaknesses, and the British had a lot of strengths. What was the British strength? Large military, large economy, lots of supplies. What was the British weakness?? They know the They didn't know the land, and they were also more concerned French than they were with the Americans.
  • Battle of Saratoga: Turning point, leading to the Franco-American Alliance of 1778.
  • Treaty of Paris of 1783: Ended Revolutionary War, recognized American independence.
  • Republican Motherhood: Women's role in training new citizens.

Articles of Confederation (1777-1789)

  • A weak federal government with strong state governments.
  • Strengths: Land Ordinance and Northwest Ordinance (banning slavery in Northwest Territories and creating a system for territories to become states).
  • Weaknesses: No power to enforce laws, no executive branch, no taxation, no standing army, no court system.
  • Shays' Rebellion: Demonstrated the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation.

Constitutional Convention (1787)

  • Original purpose: to revise the Articles of Confederation.
  • Great Compromise (bicameral legislature), the 3/5ths Compromise, and the Slave Trade Compromise.
  • Federalists supported the Constitution. Anti-Federalists opposed it, arguing for a Bill of Rights to protect individual liberties (the Bill of Rights) to the US constitution with the ratification debates of 1788 and 1789.
  • Electoral College: System for electing the president.
  • Unwritten Constitution: Customs and traditions (e.g., presidential cabinet).

Hamilton's Financial Plan

  • Hamilton's banking plan: involved four things. The first thing was assumption of state debts. The federal government would literally assume all the state debts that were left over after the revolution.
  • Two-Party System: The First one of which is the Federalists and the other one is called the Democratic Republicans.
  • Federalists (Hamilton) favored a strong federal government, manufacturing-based economy.
  • Democratic-Republicans (Jefferson) favored states' rights, agriculture-based economy.
  • Loose vs. Strict interpretation of the Constitution.

Washington and Adams Administrations

  • George Washington: He put enforces laws using the military in the Whiskey Rebellion, and signs treaties with other countries (neutrality in foreign affairs (Jay's treaty & Pinckney's treaty & the Proclamation of Neutrality). Warned against foreign entanglements in Farewell Address.
  • John Adams: Adams deals with foreign affairs mostly. The xyz affairs was a attempted bribery of American officials during the presidency and eventually this leads to the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions.

Period 4: National Expansion and Reform (1800-1848)

  • Jefferson's presidency marks a of new ideas, and of smaller government. The idea of more states' rights. That idea we're focusing on the yeoman farmer.

Jefferson's presidency

  • Smaller government, states' rights, focus on the yeoman farmer. Democracy, and then eliminate qualifications:Marbury vs. Madison led to judicial review.
  • Louisiana Purchase: Jefferson bought Louisiana Purchase in eighteen o three for $15,000,000 for cheap and the size of the country and led to westward expansion.
  • Embargo Act:Jefferson'sEmbargo Act leads to a huge economic depression.

Madison Administration

  • America continues to struggle with this idea of impressment, and Madison tries to solve it through a whole bunch of different things. The main thing to focus on is the war of eighteen twelve.
  • War of 1812 (impressment and westward expansion).
  • Warhawks Call America to declare war against the British even though we weren't really prepared to do so.
  • Treaty of Ghent (1814): War ends with no clear victory.

Era of Good Feelings (James Monroe's Presidency, 1817-1825)

  • Political unity, nationalism.
  • federalists die out and the Democratic Republicans becoming the number one and only party over the next ten years. And therefore, but it's a feeling bad, not so good feelings because there's a lot of things that happen in this ten year span that cause sectional conflicts as well.
  • "Bad" feelings: the Missouri Compromise
  • ** american System**: The System had 1 New Tariff. Tax income provements and Recharter the US Bank
  • Monroe Doctrine: Opposed European recolonization in the Western Hemisphere.

Sectional Tensions Over Slavery

  • Expansion of slavery (Louisiana Purchase, cotton gin).
  • Missouri Compromise (1820): Resolved the issue temporarily.
    • Balance of power in the Senate was threatened; a line was created that said any territories above that line is gonna be automatically free and vice versa for slaver.

Market Revolution

  • Economic transformation, shift from local to national economies, mass production.

Role of Women

  • Republican Motherhood, Domesticity is only for middle class, and Working and middle class. The lowell of textile mills

Immigration, and Nativism

  • Irish Famine, immigrants coming together and then rising with Nativism.

The Age of Jackson and then

  • spoils system (Jackson, 1828) and of the Democrat. I'm sorry, didn't have a car. The Native American removal.