Period 1 Notes

🔑 Key Concept 1.1: Native American Societies Before European Contact (1491-1607)

🌽 Native Societies

  • Native Americans moved around and adapted to their environments.

  • They developed different cultures based on where they lived.

  • Innovations: farming, using resources wisely, and social organization.

🏯 Central & South America

  • Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas: advanced societies with calendars and trade.

  • Mayans/Aztecs: grew corn.

  • Incas: grew potatoes.

🏕 North America

  • Smaller and less advanced than Central/South American empires.

  • Corn spread slowly to this area.

  • Most people lived in small, semi-permanent villages.

  • Men hunted and made tools. Women gathered food and farmed.

🗣 Language

  • 20 major language families, 400+ languages!

🏜 Southwest (e.g., Arizona, New Mexico)

  • Tribes: Hohokam, Anasazi, Pueblos.

  • Used irrigation for farming.

  • Lived in cliff dwellings or multi-story homes.

  • Drought and conflict weakened them before Europeans came.

🌲 Northwest (Pacific Coast)

  • Lived in longhouses, ate fish and berries.

  • Used totem poles to tell stories.

  • Mountains isolated them from other tribes.

🐃 Great Plains

  • Either nomads (moved around) or settled farmers.

  • Hunted buffalo for food, tools, clothes.

  • Nomads lived in tepees (easy to move).

  • Farmers lived in mud homes, grew corn, beans, squash.

  • Horses (after 1600s) helped tribes like Lakota Sioux follow buffalo.

🌾 Midwest (Ohio & Mississippi Valleys)

  • Rich food supply from hunting and farming.

  • Known for earthen mounds (like at Cahokia, near St. Louis).

🌲 Northeast

  • Iroquois lived in New York, formed the Iroquois Confederacy (5 tribes united).

  • Moved often because farming drained the soil.

🌊 Atlantic Seaboard (NJ to FL)

  • Built homes along rivers, lived off river/ocean food.

  • Descended from mound-building tribes.

🔑 Key Concept 1.2: Contact Between Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans (1491–1607)

🌍 European Exploration — Why did they explore?

  • New tech: better ships, maps, compass, and printing press (spread ideas).

  • Religious conflicts: Catholics vs. Protestants — both wanted to spread their version of Christianity.

  • Trade: especially with Africa and Asia.

  • Slave trade: started in 1400s with Africans, used on sugar plantations.

  • New nations wanted wealth and power.

🌱 Columbian Exchange (what was traded)

  • To Europe: corn, potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco, and syphilis.

  • To Americas: horses, pigs, sugarcane, guns, smallpox and measles (killed ~90% of Native Americans).

✝ Dividing the New World

  • Spain & Portugal asked the Pope to help.

  • Treaty of Tordesillas (1494): Portugal got Brazil, Spain got everything else.

🇪🇸 Spanish Conquest

  • Cortes took over Aztecs. Pizarro took over Incas.

  • Spain got rich from gold/silver — became most powerful country.

  • Encomienda system: land and Native labor given to Spaniards.

  • When Natives died, African slaves were brought (asiento system: tax per slave).

🇫🇷 French Exploration

  • Took longer due to religious conflict.

  • Champlain started permanent settlement.

  • Built fur trading posts along rivers.

🇳🇱 Dutch Claims

  • Claimed the Hudson River area.

  • Dutch West India Company ran trade.

🇪🇸 Spanish Settlements

  • St. Augustine (FL) - oldest U.S. city.

  • Santa Fe (NM) - harsh Christianizing led to Pueblo Revolt.

  • Spread to Texas and California later.

🔥 Conflicts Between Europeans & Natives

🇪🇸 Spanish

  • Enslaved Native Americans.

  • Set up racial class systems (Spaniards at the top).

  • Las Casas argued for Native rights — led to New Laws of 1542 ending slavery.

  • Valladolid Debate: Las Casas vs. Sepulveda (who believed Natives were less than human).

🇬🇧 English

  • At first: traded and shared knowledge with Natives.

  • Later: pushed them off land, caused tension.

🇫🇷 French

  • Good relations: traded furs, sought allies, converted some to Catholicism.

  • Less threatening because they didn’t want to settle large numbers.

🧠 Native Reactions

  • Different tribes = no unified resistance.

  • Traded with Europeans at first.

  • Later: got sick, died, or changed strategies (migrated, allied with powers).

📚 Causation of Exploration and Settlement

SOCIAL Causes

  • Spread Christianity.

  • Justified slavery and discrimination.

  • Created racial hierarchies (Natives and Africans at the bottom).

Effects:

  • Native slavery → later banned by New Laws of 1542.

  • African slavery increased.

  • Forced religious conversion.

POLITICAL Causes

  • Countries like Spain and England wanted power.

Effects:

  • Natives lost land and died from disease.

  • Some tribes traded and gained knowledge.

  • Treaty of Tordesillas divided land between Spain & Portugal.

  • Created social ranks based on race.

ECONOMIC Causes

  • France & Dutch wanted trade (furs, ports).

  • Spain wanted gold/silver.

  • Need for labor = slavery.

Effects:

  • Spain got super rich ($$$).

  • More European countries came to explore.

  • Trade companies (like Dutch West India Company) ran colonies for profit.