Ch. 1: Columbus

Canadian Shield:

Basic geological structure of North America. It’s made of ancient rock, and probably the first part of North America’s land to emerge above sea level (and create land in the process

Earliest Americans

Agriculture- especially corn growing—accounted for size and sophistication of Native AMerican civilizations in Mexico and South America
Corn became foundation of agriculture and transformed nomadic hunting bands into settled agricultural villagers
Incas: Native Americans in Peru, known for their civilization’s feats such as Machu Picchu, city-states that eventually emerged all throughout South America.
Aztecs: Native Americans in Mexico, known for civilization feats such as their pyramids, human sacrifices, and agriculture/irrigation technology
Nation-states: states with rulers, whose citizens are related through common languages or ancestral descent
Cahokia: An area near present-day East St. Louis near Mississippi, which natives inhabited.
Three-sister farming: a farming system where beans grow on corn stalks and squash covering the planting mounds in order to achieve soil moisture. This aided in the natives’ rich diet, and the nutrition created larger native communities.

Europeans Enter Africa

Because of Marco Polo’s description of his travels, other explorers were motivated to see the other parts of the world themselves as well. The explorers’ first founded area was the Sub-Saharan and the Sahara areas themselves, which were especially prominent to the Portuguese explorers who took advantage of what the Saharan area had to offer.

Columbus Comes upon a New World

Caravel: A ship that could sail closer to the wind, which aided in exploration so that the explorers were not as afraid to sail.
Ferdinand of Aragon: King of Spain, who played a part in the reuniting of Spain by marrying Isabella; Columbus asked for his and Isabella’s permission to go to the Indies and he allowed him too
Isabella Castile: Queen of Spain, who was the wife of Ferdinand of Aragon. Gave permission to Columbus to go to the Indies
Christopher Columbus: Brutal colonizer who is renowned for his discovery of the Indies, he first discovered San Salvador. He instigated the conquest of the Indies and he is responsible for the millions of Taino’s (Native Americans’) deaths
Columbus was eager to find new land and go to India, so he asked the Spanish King and Queen for supplies. Although he wanted to go to the Indies, he went to San Salvador and misnamed the Native Americans as Indians. He went back to the Caribbeans many times, and each time he instigated the abuse and slavery of the Native Americans.

When Worlds Collide

Considering what the New world had to offer, Columbus took advantage of what they had (and the people there), which was a proponent for the eventual Transatlantic trade between many different worlds (Europe to Africa to the New World, and back). The New World had exotic animals, flora, crops, and natural resources, which Columbus immediately took advantage of.
Native New World had:
gold, silver
Corn, potatoes, pineapples, tomatoes, tobacco, beans, vanilla, chocolate
Syphilis
Old World had:
Wheat, sugar, rice, coffee
Horses, cows, pigs
Smallpox, measles, bubonic, influenza, typhus, diphtheria, scarlet fever
From AFrica, they brought slaves to the New World
Devoid of natural resistance to Old world diseases, millions of Indians died. After Columbus’ landfall, 90% of the Native Americans perished

Columbian Exchange: Columbus’s discovery of the new world led to the usage of international commerce, and goods from all the New World to the Old World (and vice versa) were traded.

The Conquest of Mexico and Peru

Conquistadors: Conquerors that brutally decimated the Native populations by exploiting the Native’s weakness of disease and using brutal massacres to destroy the populations.
Treaty of Tordesillas: A treaty between Spain and Portugal that stated that Portugal can have half of South America (Brazil mostly) and Spain can have the other half
**Encomienda:**Allowed the government to give Native Americans to certain colonists in return for making the Natives Christian--basically, the colonizers wanted to exploit the Native’s for slavery. \n Bartolomé de Las Casas: A social reformer who wrote about the Destruction of the Indies about the awful treatment of Natives

Hernan Cortes: Spanish conquistador/colonizer who brutally wiped out the Aztecs

Cortes set sail from Cuba to Mexico; also found Malinche.
Malinche (Dona Marina): A Native American slave who knew both Mayan and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs and was captured by Hernan Cortes. She later learned Spanish and was baptized with the name Dona Marin
Learned of unrest within Aztec Empire and heard of Aztec Gold in Tenochtitlan
As Cortes proceeded, Montezuma sent ambassadors w/gifts to welcome Spaniards
Moctezuma: Aztec Empire’s Chieftain, became friends with Cortes (because he thought Cortes was their god Quetzacoatl), which was his ultimate downfall (including the diseases that were brought to the Aztec Empire)
Montezuma believed that Hernan was one of their gods (Quetzacoatl). Montezuma allowed Hernan to descend upon their land
Montezuma treated Cortes hospitably at first, but soon the Spaniards’ hunger for gold and power exhausted their welcome
Noche Triste: Sad night of June 30, 1520; Aztecs attacked and drove the Spanish down from Tenochtitlan. Cortes then laid siege to the city, and it fell on August 13, 1521; that same year a smallpox epidemic burned through Valley of Mexico
Conquest and disease took a toll on Native American lives
Temples of Tenochtitlan were destroyed to make Christian cathedrals

Fransisco Pizarro: Brutally conquered the Incas, and stole their resources as well (silver)

Pizarro stole Incan gold and the flood of precious metal to Spain fueled capitalism
Capitalism: An economic system where the country’s trade and industry are controlled privately by owners who want a profit, rather than the government.

The conquistadors also brought crops and animals, language and laws, customs and religion

Mestizos: People of Latin American and Spanish heritage.

The Spread of Spanish America

Spanish Conquistadores such as Fransisco Pizaro and Hernán Cortes brutally conquered the Incas and Aztecs, respectively. They used warfare and disease to manipulate the Natives and kill them all.
Because of the Spanish’s arrival, they influenced many of the people around them with their culture (often by forcing the Natives to do what they wanted). Through Imperialism and Colonialism, they subjugated the Natives to believe in Christianity and follow whatever rules they as Spanish people had created.

Imperial Rivalry:

Vasco Nunez Balboa: European discoverer of Pacific Ocean who crossed Panamanian isthmus into Pacific Ocean. He was the first european to have reached Pacific from New World
Ferdinand Magellan: First circumnavigation of the globe
Juan Ponce de Leon: conquered florida
Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot): Explored the northeast coast of North America.
Robert de La Salle: An expeditioner who explored the Mississippi River
Francisco Coronado: a wanderer, formally marched throughout the land, even going as far as Kansas (he started w/Arizona and New Mexico). He discovered the grand Canyon and enormous herds of buffalo (bison)
Battle of Acoma:
In Mexico, Coronado’s expedition of 1540s to upper Rio Grande and Colorado River Regions motivated Conquistadors to go northward
An expeditionary column traveled through the Sonora Desert from Mexico into the Rio Grande valley in 1598
Led by Don Juan de Onate, the Spaniards cruelly abused the Pueblo peoples they encountered
The Spaniards cruelly abused the Pueblo people, by cutting off the survivors’ feet. They forcefully took New Mexico and proclaimed its capital to be Santa Fe
The Spanish settlers in New Mexico found a few furs and precious little gold, but they found a lot of people to convert to Christianity
Pope’s Rebellion: A rebellion that took place after Roman missionaries were “converting” and destroying Native religious customs. The Pueblo rebels destroyed every Catholic church in the province and killed Spanish settlers and priests. The Native Americans rebuilt the kiva, or ceremonial religious chamber, on the ruins of Santa Fe.
It took the Spanish nearly 50 years to claim New Mexico from the Native Americans
Father Junipero Serra: Roman Catholic priest who established twenty-one missions in California. He Christianized Natives, who converted but also lost their culture and their lives since they were killed by disease.
The misdeeds of the Spanish in the New World obscured their achievements and helped give birth to the Black Legend: A false concept that the Spanish made in order to excuse their treatment of the Native Americans. They tortured and killed the Native Americans, stole their resources, infected them with diseases as a “killing for Christ”

Middlemen: acts as an intermediary; the middlemen bought from producers and sold them to those who wanted the products, though the goods were expensive and purchasers were limited.

Note