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