APUSH Unit 1 Review Notes

Native Societies in the Americas before European Arrival

  • Diverse societies shaped by environment.
  • Not a monolithic group.
  • Coastal regions: fishing villages.
  • Hunter-gatherer nomadic groups.
  • Magnificent cities and empires.

Pueblo People

  • Location: Utah and Colorado.
  • Farmers: beans, squash, maize.
  • Advanced irrigation systems.
  • Urban centers made of hardened clay bricks.
  • Magnificent cliff dwellings.

Great Basin and Great Plains Region

  • Location: Colorado to Canada.
  • Nomadic hunter-gatherers (buffalo).
  • Small egalitarian kinship bands.
  • Example: Ute people.

Northwest and Pacific Coast

  • Permanent settlements due to abundant resources.
  • California: Chumash people.
    • Villages of nearly 1,000 people.
    • Regional trade networks.
  • Pacific Northwest: Chinook peoples.
    • Extensive plank houses for families.

Northeast: Iroquois People

  • Farmers with abundant timber.
  • Communal living in longhouses.

Mississippi River Valley

  • Farmers due to rich soil.
  • Trade along waterways.
  • Cahokia: 40,000 people.
    • Centralized government, powerful chieftains.

Native Societies Summary

  • Distinct and complex societies shaped by environment.
  • Vast trading networks throughout the Americas.

European Arrival

European Kingdoms

  • 1300s-1400s: Political unification.
  • Stronger, centralized states governed by monarchs.
  • Wealthy upper class desire luxury goods from Asia.

Trade Routes

  • Muslims controlled land routes to Asia:
    • Europeans sought sea-based routes for trade.

Portugal

  • First to establish trading posts around Africa.
  • Trading post empire in the Indian Ocean trade network.
  • New maritime technology:
    • Updated astronomical charts.
    • Astrolabe.
    • New ship designs: smaller, faster.
    • Borrowed technology: Latine sail, stern post rudder.

Spain

  • Finished reconquest of Iberian Peninsula.
    • Desire to spread Catholic Christianity.
    • Seek new economic opportunities in the East.
Christopher Columbus
  • Sought sponsorship from Ferdinand and Isabella to sail west.
  • Landed in the Caribbean in 1492.
  • Major turning point in world history.

Columbian Exchange

  • Transfer of people, animals, plants, diseases from East to West and West to East.
Food
  • From the Americas to Europe: potatoes, tomatoes, maize.
  • From Europe to the Americas: wheat, rice, soybean.
Animals
  • From the Americas to Europe: turkeys.
  • From Europe to the Americas: cattle, pigs, horses.
Resources
  • Gold and silver from the Americas to Europe.
People
  • Europeans to the Americas.
  • Enslaved Africans to the Americas.
Diseases
  • Smallpox from Europe to the Americas (devastating).
  • Syphilis from the Americas to Europe (speculated).

Economic Shift in Europe

  • Influx of wealth from the Americas.
  • Shift from feudalism to capitalism.
    • Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership and free exchange.
  • Rise of joint stock companies to fund exploration.

Spanish Colonization

  • Agriculture becomes primary source of wealth.
  • Encomienda system: Spaniards force natives to work on plantations and extract gold/silver.
Problems with the Encomienda system:
  • Natives escape enslavement.
  • Natives die from smallpox.
Solution:
  • Importation of African enslaved laborers.

Casta System

  • Social classes based on racial ancestry.
    • Peninsularis: Spaniards born in Spain.
    • Criollos (Creoles): Spaniards born in the Americas.
    • Castas: mestizos (Spanish and Native American), mulatos (Spanish and African).
    • Africans.
    • Native Americans.
Belief Systems
  • Europeans viewed natives as good for exploitation, forced labor, and conversion.
  • Cultural exchange: natives taught English hunting and cultivation; natives adopted iron tools.
  • Europeans developed belief systems to justify their treatment of natives.
Philosophical Justification and Debate
  • Juan Guines Sepulveda: Native Americans benefited from harsh labor conditions, were less than human.
  • Bartolome de las Casas: Defended the humanity of Native Americans and advocated for ending their slavery.
Justification for Enslaving Africans
  • Europeans used the Bible to justify the exploitation of African laborers, citing Noah's curse on Ham's descendants.