RB

APUSH Unit 1

Big Idea - Natives of American continents were a diverse people that had diverse societies based on the environments they lived in.

Native Americans before European

  • Before Europeans arrived, Native Americans were organized into diverse cultures

  • Nomadic hunters, farmers, fishing societies - very diverse set of people to deal with

  • Three major civilizations in central and south America

    • Aztecs/Mexica/Seneca
    • Capital city Tenochtitlan
    • Written language
    • Human sacrifice
    • Mayans
    • Irrigation
    • Powerful stone temples
    • Inca
    • Mountains in Peru
    • Covered around 350,000 square miles
    • Elaborate terrace irrigation
    • All three used maize as a primary crop; helped advance irrigation

  • Southwest Native Americans

    • Pueblo People
    • Farmers, planted maize
    • Sedentary - didn’t move around a lot
    • Pretty advanced
    • Made urban centers out of clay

  • Great Plains/Great Basin

    • Nomadic hunters, not super organized, but stayed in kinship bands
    • Ute
    • Nomadic

  • Northwest

    • Fishing villages
    • Developed permanent settlements
    • Examples
    • Chinook
      • Had extensive trade routes
    • Chumash

  • Mississippi River Valley

    • Good for farming, fertile soil
    • Trade up and down the river
    • Hopewell People - Traded extensively throughout America
    • Cahokia - Largest settlement, peak was 10-30,000 people

  • Northeast

    • Iroquois - Lots of farming, longhouses with extended family living there

European Exploration

  • Reasons for exploration

    • Population increase - population was finally rebounding after the Black plague
    • Political Unification - centralized governments led by monarchs
    • Desire for luxury goods - People want more stuff from Asia

  • Europeans wanted a water based route to Asia because land based route was controlled by Muslims - meant Europeans had no access to these trade routes

  • Prince Henry the Navigator - works for Portugal, wants to use Atlantic Ocean, goes around Africa

    • Updated astronomical charts, easier to keep track of where they were
    • Used Caravels, ships dedicated to trade
    • Astrolabe and Stern-Post Rudder

  • Spain wants to do this as well, and want to spread Christianity

  • Spain’s monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, sponsor Columbus’ project

  • Spain sends Columbus across the Atlantic, he wants to prove the World is round

  • End up discovering the Caribbean

  • Columbus lands in San Salvadore, Natives were kind to Columbus

  • Columbus sees gold, enslaves them

Columbian Exchange

  • Transfer of food, animals, minerals, people, and diseases between Old World and New World
  • Spanish shows up in Americas, want to conquer
  • Hernan Cortes shows up at Tenochtitlan with only around 1000 men, were 200-400 thousand Natives
  • Smallpox - Natives were not exposed to this disease, were not immune, heavily damaged them
    • Hispanola - Arawak and Taino People lost 300,000 people
    • Incas - 9 million to 500k
  • Food
    • Americas to Europe - Maize, Tomatoes, Potatoes, Cacao, Tobacco
    • Europe/Africa to Americas - Rice, Wheat, Soybeans, Rye, Oats, Lemons, Oranges
  • Animals
    • Europe/Africa to Americas - Horses, pigs, cattle, chickens
  • Minerals - Spanish plunder the Native American tribes for silver and gold, transforms their wealth - makes them really rich
  • Unprecedented Economic Growth
  • Europe was mainly defined by Feudalism, work for nobles for protection
  • Capitalism grows, economic system based on private ownership and trade between these people
  • Slave trade prominent as well - Native Americans, but mainly Africans
    • Middle Passage
  • Many European nations would go with Spain to the New World
  • Mercantilism - Depends on heavy government intervention
  • Joint Stock Companies - new model of funding, limited liability organization in which a plurality of investors pool their money to fund a venture

Labor Systems/Societal Restructuring in Americas

  • Europeans get involved in slave trade, change it significantly
  • Before, prisoners of war were made slaves, sometimes had more legal rights, and slave status was very rarely inherited
  • At ports in Africa, Europeans traded goods for people, specifically guns
  • Europeans found Africans weird due to different customs, refused to see them as human to justify slavery
  • Europeans say that Africans are descended from Canan, a Biblical figure who was cursed to be a servant for the rest of his life - use this to justify slavery
  • Europeans bring slaves over to solve labor problems - Native Americans make bad laborers
  • Encomienda System - Encomenderos (leading men) granted land, all natives that lived there are labor force, justified on religious grounds
  • Ferdinand and Isabella, monarchs of Spain, issue Requerimiento - pope granted Spanish monarchs to convert whoever was found in the Americas
  • Priests would be sent to the New World, whoever converted to Christianity would be protected
  • Christian natives would end up being enslaved anyway
  • System wasn’t working because the Natives would escape, die from disease, etc.
  • Africans didn’t know land as well and were immune to these diseases
  • Makes Spanish super wealthy, but mainly the upper class/nobles just getting richer
  • Spanish make a caste system so that they can tax people at the bottom more
  • Caste system was based on race
    • Peninsulares - Spanish and born in Spain
    • Criollos - Spanish, but born in Americas
    • Mestizos - Spanish and Native-American ancestry
    • Mulattoes - Spanish and African ancestry
    • Africans
    • Native Americans

Cultural Interactions between Europeans, Natives, and Africans

  • New society imposed on Americas by Spanish Hegemony
    • Hegemony = Domination of one nation by another
  • Spanish continues American expansion northwards, use missionaries to spread Christianity, known as the Mission system
  • Fundamentally different worldviews
    • Natives
    • Pantheists/Animists - Believe in natural world filled with spirits
    • Land is not a commodity - Cannot be carved up, bought and sold
    • Kinship networks of up to 70 people
    • Spanish
    • Catholic - Belief in single deity
    • Believe land is meant for private ownership
    • Spanish respects kinship, but focus on nuclear family
    • Adopted any ideas that would be useful
  • Natives adopt metal tools and horses, use them for warfare
  • Spain wants in on the fur trade, marry into Native tribes to get into it
  • Pueblo people do convert to Christianity in a way - worship him along with their other gods
  • Conquistadors have forced conversion, Natives see them and their Christ as evil - Pueblo people fight against them, kill 400 conquistadors, burn churches
  • Conquistadors return and once again conquer their land
  • News reaches Spain about the morality of this
  • A lot of people argue that they are bringing the worldview of the Old World to the Natives, and therefore helping them
    • Sepulveda - argues that Natives are less than human, benefit from the labor
  • Others disagree, most important was Bartolome de Las Casas - says that people who allowed this would lose god, Natives would end up hating god
    • de Las Casas saw the awful conditions for Natives with the Encomienda System, doesn’t want it in practice
    • de Las Casas ends up suggesting the use of Africans for labor instead, which is what Spain does