Unit 1: Period 1: 1491-1607

1.1 Context: European Encounters in the Americas

Period 1 (1491-1607)

Christopher Columbus Arrival

• Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492
• He was not the first European to reach North America, the Norse had arrived in modern Canada around 1000
• But his arrival marked the beginning of the Contact Period, during which Europe sustained contact with the Americas.
• The period ends in 1607 because that is the year of the first English settlement.

Bering Land Bridge

Bering Land Bridge (Connected Eurasia and North America)

• First people to inhabit North and South America came across Bering Land Bridge.
• Ancestors of the Native Americans could walk across the Bering land bridge from Siberia (in modern Russia) to Alaska.
• During this period, the planet was significantly colder.
• Much of the world's water was locked up in vast polar ice sheets, causing sea levels to drop.
• As the planet warmed, sea levels rose, and this bridge was submerged forming the Bering Strait.

Native Americans in Pre-Columbian North America

• The Pre-Columbian era refers to the period before Christopher Columbus' arrival in the "New World".
• North America was populated by Native Americans, not to be confused with native-born Americans.

Culture clash between European settlers and Native Americans

• European settlers brought different culture, religion, and technology.
• Native Americans had their own complex societies, cultures, and religions.
• Conflicts and misunderstandings occurred between the two groups.

Conflicts throughout American history

• Native Americans resisted European colonization and expansion.
• Many wars and battles between Native Americans and European settlers.
• Enslaved Africans by European settlers first arrived in 1501.
• Policies of forced relocation and assimilation were implemented by the US government.
• Native American populations were greatly reduced and their cultures were suppressed.

1.2 Native American Societies Before European Contact

• The marker of 1491 serves as a division between the Native American world and the world that came after European exploration, colonization, and invasion.
• North America was home to hundreds of tribes, cities and societies.
• Indigenous societies in North America before Europeans were definitely very complex.

Permanent Settlements

• The spread of maize cultivation from present-day Mexico northward into the present-day American Southwest and beyond supported economic development.
• Along Northwest coast and in California, tribes developed communities along ocean to hunt whales and salmon, totem poles, and canoes.
• In the northeast, the Mississippi river valley, and along the Atlantic seaboard, some indigenous societies developed.

Nomadic Hunting and Gathering Tribes

• Natives in the Great Plains and surrounding grasslands retained the nomadic lifestyles.
• In Southwest, people had fixed lifestyles.
• The Great Plains was more suitable for hunting and gathering food sources.

1.3 European Exploration in the Americas

Columbus Sails Circa 1492

• New ships, such as caravel allowed for longer exploratory voyages.
• In August of 1492, Colombus used three caravels, supplied and funded by the Spanish crown, to set sail toward India.
• After voyage, when reached land and found a group of people called the Taino and renamed their island San Salvador and claimed it for Spain.

The Age of Exploration

• Columbus voyage pleased the Spanish Monarchs.
• Other European explorers also set sail to the New World in search of gold, glory and spread the word of their God.

1.4 Columbian Exchange, Spanish Exploration, and Conquest

The Columbian Exchange

• Period of rapid exchange of plants, animals, foods, communicable diseases, and diseases.
• Europe had the resources and technology to establish colonies far from home.

Flow of Trade

• It’s between the Old world and the New world.
• Old world refers to Africa, Asia, and Europe.
• Old World to New World: horses, pigs, rice, wheat, grapes
• New World to Old World: corn, potatoes, chocolate, tomatoes, avocado, sweet potatoes.
• The introduction of new crops to Europe helped to increase food production and stimulate growth.

Colonization

• A colony is a territory settled and controlled by a foreign power.
• Columbus arrival initiated a long period of European expansion and colonialism in the Americas.

Spanish Colonial Power

• During the next century, Spain was the colonial power in the Americas.
• Spanish founded a number of coastal towns in Central and South America and in the West Indies
• Conquistadors collected and exported as much of the area's wealth as they could.

Native vs. European Views

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

Introduction of Slavery in the American Colonies

• Extensive use of enslaved Africans began when colonists from the Caribbean settled the Carolinas
• Until then, indentured servants and, in some situations, enslaved Native Americans had mostly satisfied labor requirements

Expansion of Labor Needs

• As tobacco-growing and, in South Carolina, rice-growing operations expanded, more laborers were needed than indenture could provide
• Events such as Bacon’s Rebellion showed landowners it was not in their best interest to have an abundance of landless, young, white males in their colonies either

Challenges with Enslaving Native Americans

• They knew the land, so they could easily escape and subsequently were difficult to find
• In some Native American tribes, cultivation was considered women’s work, so gender was another obstacle to enslaving the natives
• Europeans brought diseases that often decimated the Native Americans, wiping out 85 to 95 percent of the native population

Turn to Enslaved Africans

• Southern landowners turned increasingly to enslaved Africans for labor
• Unlike Native Americans, enslaved Africans did not know the land, so they were less likely to escape
• Removed from their homelands and communities, and often unable to communicate with one another because they were from different regions of Africa, enslaved Black people initially proved easier to control than Native Americans
• Dark skin of West Africans made it easier to identify enslaved people on sight
• English colonists associated dark skin with inferiority and rationalized Africans’ enslavement

The Slave Trade

• Majority of the slave trade, right up to the Revolution, was directed toward the Caribbean and South America
• More than 500,000 enslaved people were brought to the English colonies (of the over 10 million brought to the New World)
• By 1790, nearly 750,000 Black people were enslaved in England’s North American colonies

The Middle Passage

• Shipping route that brought enslaved people to the Americas
• Was the middle leg of the triangular trade route among the colonies, Europe, and Africa
• Conditions for the Africans aboard were brutally inhumane
• Some committed suicide, many died of sickness or during insurrections
• It was not unusual for one-fifth of the Africans to die on board
• Most reached the New World, where conditions were only slightly better

End of the Atlantic Slave Trade

• Mounting criticism (primarily in the North) of the horrors of the Middle Passage led Congress to end American participation in the Atlantic slave trade on January 1, 1808
• Slavery itself would not end in the United States until 1865

Slavery in the South

• Flourished in the South due to nature of land and short growing season
• Chesapeake and Carolinas farmed labor-intensive crops such as tobacco, rice, and indigo
• Plantation owners bought enslaved people for this arduous work
• Treatment at the hands of the owners was often vicious and at times sadistic

Slavery in the North

• Did not take hold in the North the same way it did in the South.
• Used on farms in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
• Used in shipping operations in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
• Used as domestic servants in urban households, particularly in New York City
• Northern states would take steps to phase out slavery following the Revolution.
• Still enslaved people in New Jersey at the outbreak of the Civil War

Ownership of Slavery

• Only the very wealthy owned enslaved people.
• The vast majority of people remained at a subsistence level.

Slavery in the South

• Flourished in the South due to nature of land and short growing season.
• Chesapeake and Carolinas farmed labor-intensive crops such as tobacco, rice, and indigo.
• Plantation owners bought enslaved people for this arduous work.
• Treatment at the hands of the owners was often vicious and at times sadistic.

Slavery in the North

• Did not take hold in the North the same way it did in the South.
• Used on farms in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania
• Used in shipping operations in Massachusetts and Rhode Island
• Used as domestic servants in urban households, particularly in New York City

Efforts to end slavery

• Northern states would take steps to phase out slavery following the Revolution.
• Still enslaved people in New Jersey at the outbreak of the Civil War

Ownership of Slavery

• Only the very wealthy owned enslaved people

The vast majority of people remained at a subsistence level.

1.6 Cultural Interactions Between Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans

The Birth of a New Society

Spanish Colonial Power

• During the next century, Spain was the colonial power in the Americas.
• Spanish founded a number of coastal towns in Central and South America and in the West Indies
• Conquistadors collected and exported as much of the area's wealth as they could

Encomienda System

• Under Spain's encomienda system, the crown granted colonists authority over a specified number of natives
• Colonist was obliged to protect those natives and convert them to Catholicism
• In exchange, the colonist was entitled to those natives' labor for such enterprises as sugar harvesting and silver mining.
• This system sounds like a form of slavery because it was a form of slavery.

Competition for Global Dominance

New World Exploration

• Once Spain had colonized much of modern-day South America and the southern tier of North America, other European nations were inspired to try their hands at New World exploration
• They were motivated by a variety of factors such as desire for wealth and resources, clerical fervor to make new Christian converts, and the race to play a dominant role in geopolitics.
• The vast expanses of largely undeveloped North America and the fertile soils in many regions of this new land, opened up virtually endless potential for agricultural profits and mineral extraction

Navigational Advancements

• Improvements in navigation, such as the invention of the sextant in the early 1700s, made sailing across the Atlantic Ocean safer and more efficient.

Joint-Stock Companies

• Intercontinental trade became more organized with the creation of joint-stock companies, corporate businesses with shareholders whose mission was to settle and develop lands in North America
• The most famous ones were the British East India Company, the Dutch East India Company, and later, the Virginia Company, which settled Jamestown.

Conflict and Prejudice

• Increased trade and development in the New World also led to increased conflict and prejudice
• Europeans debated how Native Americans should be treated
• Spanish and Portuguese thinkers proposed wildly different approaches to the treatment of Native populations, ranging from peace and tolerance to dominance and enslavement
• The belief in European superiority was nearly universal

Native American Resistance and Adaptation

• Some Native Americans resisted European influence, while others accepted it
• Intermarriage was common between Spanish and French settlers and the natives in their colonized territories (though rare among English and Dutch settlers)
• Many Native Americans converted to Christianity
• Spain was particularly successful in converting much of Mesoamerica to Catholicism through the Spanish mission system

Enslavement and African Adaptation

• Explorers, such as Juan de Oñate, swept through the American Southwest, determined to create Christian converts by any means necessary—including violence
• As colonization spread, the use of enslaved Africans purchased from African traders from their home continent became more common
• Much of the Caribbean and Brazil became permanent settlements for plantations and their enslaved people
• Africans adapted to their new environment by blending the language and religion of their masters with the preserved traditions of their ancestors
• Religions such as voodoo are a blend of Christianity and tribal animism
• Enslaved people sang African songs in the fields as they worked and created art reminiscent of their homeland
• Some, such as the Maroon people, even managed to escape slavery and form cultural enclaves
• Slave uprisings were not uncommon, most notably the Haitian Revolution

The English Arrive

English Colonization

• Unlike other European colonizers, the English sent large numbers of men and women to the agriculturally fertile areas of the East
• Despite our vision of the perfect Thanksgiving table, relationships with local Native Americans were strained, at best.

Intermarriage and Ethnic Groups

• English intermarriage with Native Americans and Africans was rare
• So no new ethnic groups emerged, and social classes remained rigid and hierarchical.

English Attempts to Settle North America

• England’s first attempt to settle North America came a year prior to its victory over Spain, in 1587, when Sir Walter Raleigh sponsored a settlement on Roanoke Island (now part of North Carolina).
• The colony had disappeared by 1590, which is why it came to be known as the Lost Colony.
• The English did not try again until 1607, when they settled Jamestown.

Jamestown and the Virginia Company

• Jamestown was funded by a joint-stock company, a group of investors who bought the right to establish New World plantations from the king
• The company was called the Virginia Company—named for Elizabeth I, known as the Virgin Queen—from which the area around Jamestown took its name.
• The settlers, many of them English gentlemen, were ill-suited to the many adjustments life in the New World required of them, and they were much more interested in searching for gold than in planting crops.

Early Struggles

• Within three months, more than half the original settlers were dead of starvation or disease
• Jamestown survived only because ships kept arriving from England with new colonists.
• Captain John Smith decreed that “he who will not work shall not eat,” and things improved for a time, but after Smith was injured in a gunpowder explosion and sailed back

John Rolfe and the Development of Tobacco

• One of the survivors, John Rolfe, was notable in two ways. First, he married Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas, briefly easing the tension between the natives and the English settlers.
• Second, he pioneered the practice of growing tobacco, which had long been cultivated by Native Americans, as a cash crop to be exported back to England.
• The English public was soon hooked, so to speak, and the success of tobacco considerably brightened the prospects for English settlement in Virginia.

Development of Plantation Slavery

• Because the crop requires vast acreage and depletes the soil (and so requires farmers to constantly seek new fields), the prominent role of tobacco in Virginia’s economy resulted in rapid expansion.
• The introduction of tobacco would also lead to the development of plantation slavery.

Expansion in the Chesapeake

• As new settlements sprang up around Jamestown, the entire area came to be known as the Chesapeake (named after the bay).
• That area today comprises Virginia and Maryland.
• English colonies in North America, such as Jamestown, were largely motivated by financial reasons and the desire for wealth and resources
• Indentured servitude, in which individuals agreed to work for a period of time in exchange for passage to the colonies, was a common way for people to migrate to the Chesapeake
• Indentured servitude was difficult and many did not survive their term, but it provided a path to land ownership and voting rights for working-class men in Europe
• Over 75% of the 130,000 Englishmen who migrated to the Chesapeake during the 17th century were indentured servants
• The success of tobacco as a cash crop in the Chesapeake led to rapid expansion and the development of plantation slavery.

The Headright system

• In 1618, the Virginia Company introduced the headright system as a means of attracting new settlers to the region and addressing the labor shortage created by the emergence of tobacco farming.
• A "headright" was a tract of land, usually about 50 acres, that was granted to colonists and potential settlers.

House of Burgesses

• In 1619, Virginia established the House of Burgesses, in which any property-holding, white male could vote.
• Decisions made by the House of Burgesses, however, had to be approved by the Virginia Company.
• 1619 also marks the introduction of slavery to the English colonies.

French Colonization of North America

• French colonized Quebec City in 1608
• French Jesuit priests attempted to convert native peoples to Roman Catholicism but were more likely to spread diseases
• French colonists were fewer in number compared to Spanish and English and tended to be single men
• French settlers intermarried with native women and tended to stay on the move, especially if they were coureurs du bois (“runners in the woods”) who helped trade for furs
• French played a significant role in the French and Indian War (1754-1763) but overall had a much lighter impact on native peoples compared to Spanish and English
• French chances of shaping the region known as British North America were slim due to the Edict of Nantes in 1598

Impact of French Colonization

• Fewer French settlers in North America compared to Spanish and English
• French settlers intermarried with native women
• French settlers tended to stay on the move, especially if they were coureurs du bois
• French played a significant role in the French and Indian War (1754-1763) but overall had a much lighter impact on native peoples compared to Spanish and English
• French chances of shaping the region known as British North America were slim due to the Edict of Nantes in 1598

The Pilgrims and the Massachusetts Bay Company

• English Calvinists led a Protestant movement called Puritanism in the 16th century
• Puritans sought to purify the Anglican Church of Roman Catholic practices
• English monarchs of the early 17th century persecuted the Puritans
• Puritans began to look for a new place to practice their faith
• One group of Puritans, called Separatists, decided to leave England and start fresh in the New World
• In 1620, Separatists set sail for Virginia on the Mayflower, but went off course and landed in modern-day Massachusetts
• The group decided to settle where they had landed and named the settlement Plymouth.

The Pilgrims

• Led by William Bradford
• Signed the Mayflower Compact
• Created a legal authority and assembly
• Government's power derived from consent of governed, not God
• Received assistance from local Native Americans

The Mayflower Compact

• Important for creating legal system for colony
• Asserted government's power from consent of governed

Assistance from Native Americans

• Life-saving assistance
• Pilgrims landed at site of Patuxet village wiped out by disease
• Tisquantum/Squanto, an inhabitant of the village, was captured and brought to Europe as enslaved person
• Returned to homeland, found it depopulated
• Became Pilgrims' interpreter and taught them how to plant in new home.

The Great Puritan Migration

• 1629-1642
• Established by Congregationalists (Puritans who wanted to reform Anglican church from within)
• Led by Governor John Winthrop

Massachusetts Bay

• Developed along Puritan ideals
• Winthrop delivered famous sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity" urging colonists to be a "city upon a hill"

Puritan Philosophy

• Believed in covenant with God
• Concept of covenants central to entire philosophy (political and religious)
• Government as covenant among people
• Work served communal ideal
• Puritan church always to be served

Religious Tolerance

• Both Separatists and Congregationalists did not tolerate religious freedom in their colonies
• Both had experienced and fled religious persecution

Calvinist Principles

• Settlers of Massachusetts Bay Colony were strict Calvinists
• Calvinist principles dictated their daily lives
• Protestant work ethic and relationship to market economy
• Roots of Civil War may be traced back to founding of Chesapeake and New England

Religious Intolerance

• Two major incidents during first half of 17th century
• Roger Williams, a minister in Salem Bay settlement, taught that church and state should be separate
• Banished and moved to Rhode Island, founded colony with charter allowing for free exercise of religion
• Anne Hutchinson, a prominent proponent of antinomianism, banished for challenging Puritan beliefs and authority of Puritan clergy
• Anne Hutchinson was a woman in a resolutely patriarchal society which turned many against her.

Economic and Social Differences

• Plantation economy dependent on slave labor developed in Chesapeake and southern colonies
• New England became commercial center.

Puritan Immigration

• Near halt between 1649 and 1660 during Oliver Cromwell's rule as Lord Protector of England
• Puritans had little motive to move to New World during Interregnum (between kings)
• With the restoration of the Stuarts, many English Puritans again immigrated to the New World, bringing with them republican ideals of revolution

Differences between New England and Chesapeake

• Entire families tended to immigrate to New England, but Chesapeake immigrants were often single males
• Climate in New England was more hospitable, leading to longer life expectancy and larger families
• Stronger sense of community and absence of tobacco as cash crop led New Englanders to settle in larger towns
• Chesapeake residents lived in smaller, more spread-out farming communities
• New Englanders were more religious, settling near meetinghouses
• Slavery was rare in New England, but farms in middle and southern colonies were much larger, requiring large numbers of enslaved Africans
• South Carolina had a larger proportion of enslaved Africans than European settlers