Early American Societies and Colonial Encounters Flashcards

The First Americans and the Settling of the Western Hemisphere

• Initial Migration: Anthropologists and archaeologists suggest that migrants from Asia arrived in the Americas between $13,000$ and $3000\,b.c.e.$. They crossed a $100$-mile-wide land bridge called Beringia, which connected Siberia and Alaska during the last Ice Age.
• Migratory Waves:
  • First Wave: Occurred between $15,000$ and $11,000$ years ago.
  • Second Wave: Around $8,000$ years ago, travelers crossed the Bering Strait by water; these were the ancestors of the Navajo and Apache peoples.
  • Third Wave: Around $5,000$ years ago, the ancestors of the Aleut and Inuit (Eskimo) peoples arrived.
• Isolation and Expansion: For approximately three hundred generations, these populations remained isolated from the rest of the world. By $10,000\,b.c.e.$, descendants of these original migrants reached as far south as present-day Florida and central Mexico, eventually settling the entire Western Hemisphere.
• Agricultural Revolution: Around $6000\,b.c.e.$, Native peoples in Mexico and Peru began domesticating crops.
  • Mesoamerica: Cultivated maize (corn), which provided higher yields per acre than European cereals like wheat or barley.
  • Andes: Developed the potato, a root crop of high nutritional value.
  • Impact: Agricultural surpluses led to population growth and the development of wealthy, urbanized civilizations.

American Empires: The Aztecs and Incas

• Aztec Empire (Mesoamerica):
  • Capital: Tenochtitl!n, founded in $1325$. By $1500$, it had a population of $250,000$.
  • Economy: Thrived on trade and tribute (taxes) collected from subject peoples, including gold, textiles, turquoise, obsidian, and cacao.
  • Governance: Ruled by a hierarchy of priests and warrior-nobles.
  • Religious Practice: Carried out ritual human sacrifice, believing it sustained the cosmos and ensured agricultural fertility.
• Inca Empire (Andes):
  • Capital: Cuzco, situated over $11,000$ feet above sea level with $60,000$ residents.
  • Structure: A $2,000$-mile-long empire along the Andes Mountains connected by a vast network of roads, storehouses, and administrative centers.
  • Governance: A divine king ruled through a bureaucracy of nobles, collecting tribute from conquered subordinate kingdoms.

Chiefdoms and Confederacies of North America

• Mississippi Valley: The introduction of maize around $c.e.\,800$ led to more complex social structures.
  • Cahokia: Peaked around $1000\,c.e.$ with a population of $10,000$ ($30,000$ including satellites). It featured over $120$ mounds, including burial and platform mounds for ceremonies.
  • Decline: Ruinous warfare and environmental changes led to its abandonment by $1350$.
• Eastern Woodlands:
  • Linguistic Groups: Algonquian and Iroquoian speakers. Most practiced a mix of maize agriculture, hunting, and gathering.
  • Environmental Management: Indians utilized regular forest burning (spring and fall) to clear underbrush, facilitating hunting and travel.
  • Political Structure: Ranged from local chiefdoms to paramount chiefdoms like the Powhatan Confederacy (over $30$ subordinate chiefdoms and $20,000$ people).
  • Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee): Formed around $1500$ when the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations united.
  • Iroquois Governance: Decided by councils of sachems. These were matriarchal societies where power and property descended through female lines.
• Great Lakes: Dominated by the Anishinaabeg (Ottawas, Ojibwas, Potawatomis). Their mobility was enhanced by birchbark canoes and a vast network of waterways.
• Great Plains and Rockies:
  • Impact of the Horse: Introduced by Spaniards in New Mexico in the late $16^{th}$ century. Transformed groups like the Comanches and Sioux into powerful mobile warriors and efficient bison hunters.
  • Great Basin: Resource-poor region where Numic-speakers (Bannocks, Paiutes, Shoshones, Utes) traveled long distances to hunt and forage.
• Arid Southwest:
  • Pueblo Cultures: Emerged around $600\,c.e.$. Groups like the Hohokams, Mogollons, and Anasazis developed irrigation systems.
  • Chaco Canyon: Supported a dozen large Anasazi towns until droughts caused abandonment after $1150$.

Western Europe: Hierarchy, Peasant Life, and the Renaissance

• Social Hierarchy: Societies were patriarchies where property and identity descended through male lines.
  • Primogeniture: Fathers bestowed all land on the eldest son, leaving younger children landless.
  • Monarchies: Kings and princes owned land but were often challenged by regional nobles.
• Peasant Society: Most Europeans were farmworkers living in small villages.
  • Manorialism: Peasants worked a lord's estate as serfs in exchange for farming rights.
  • Standard of Living: Poverty and disease were rampant; half of peasant children died before age $21$.
• The Renaissance ($1300–1450$):
  • Origin: Profitable commerce in Italian city-states (Venice, Genoa, Florence) created wealthy elites.
  • Civic Humanism: Ideology praising public virtue and service to the state.
  • Economic Impact: Spurred innovation and trade through networks like the Hanseatic League in Northern Europe.
• Religious Structures:
  • Christianity: Evolved from monotheistic Judaism. Became the official religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine in $312\,c.e.$.
  • The Crusades ($1096–1291\,c.e.$): Military campaigns to reclaim the Holy Land from Islam. This intensified Christian identity and introduced Europeans to trade routes to the East and sugar cultivation.
  • Protestant Reformation ($1517$): Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses challenged Catholic corruption and the role of priests. John Calvin promoted the doctrine of predestination (God chooses the elect for salvation before birth).

West and Central Africa: Origins of the Atlantic Slave Trade

• Geography and Climate: Divided into the Sahel (semiarid), savanna (grassland), and tropical rain forest. Major rivers included the Senegal, Gambia, Volta, and Niger.
• Sudanic Civilizations: Began around $9000\,b.c.e.$ with cattle domestication and cereal cultivation (sorghum, millet).
• West African Empires:
  • Ghana ($c.\,800\,c.e.$): Pioneered trans-Saharan trade routes using camels.
  • Mali ($13^{th}$ century): Famously ruled by Mansa Musa, whose $1326$ pilgrimage to Mecca devalued the regional gold supply.
  • Songhai ($15^{th}$ century): Built on the trade of gold, salt, and slaves.
• Trade Networks: West African gold accounted for $1/2$ to $2/3$ of gold in circulation in the Old World by $1450$.
• Spiritual Life: While Islam spread in northern regions (Timbuktu), many practiced animism, acknowledging multiple gods and the spirits of ancestors.

Exploration and Conquest in the Atlantic

• Portuguese Expansion:
  • Prince Henry the Navigator ($1394–1460$): Established a center for navigation.
  • Innovation: The caravel (vessel with lateen sails) allowed sailing into the wind.
  • Routes: Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope ($1488$); Vasco da Gama reached India ($1498$).
• The African Slave Trade:
  • Originally supplying North Africa and the Middle East, the trade shifted after Europeans established sugar plantations on Atlantic islands (Madeira, S#o Tom!).
  • By $1550$, the Atlantic slave trade expanded to serve sugar plantations in Brazil and the West Indies.
• Spanish Invasion:
  • Christopher Columbus: Funded by Ferdinand and Isabella, he reached the Bahamas in $1492$.
  • Amerigo Vespucci: Identified the Americas as a nuovo mundo (new world) around $1500$.
  • Conquest of Empires:
    • Hern!n Cort!s: Led $600$ men to topple the Aztec Empire by $1521$. Captured the capital after a siege and a smallpox epidemic.
    • Francisco Pizarro: Reached Peru with $168$ men in $1532$. Executed Atahualpa and completed the conquest of the Inca Empire by $1535$.

The Early Colonial Order and the Columbian Exchange

• Spanish Tribute Colonies:
  • Encomienda: Grants allowing conquistadors to claim tribute and labor from Indian communities.
  • Mita System: Co-opted from the Incas to force laborers into silver mines like Potos!.
  • Casta System: A legal and social hierarchy based on racial background (Mestizos, Mulattos, Zambos).
• The Columbian Exchange:
  • From Americas to Afro-Eurasia: Maize, potatoes, tomatoes, manioc, tobacco, cacao, and syphilis.
  • From Afro-Eurasia to Americas: Cattle, horses, pigs, wheat, rice, and devastating diseases (smallpox, influenza, measles, yellow fever).
  • Demographic Impact: Native populations in Mesoamerica dropped from $20$ million in $1500$ to $3$ million by $1650$.
• Mercantilism and Imperial Competition:
  • Queen Elizabeth I targeted Spanish fleets through "sea dogs" like Francis Drake.
  • The Spanish Armada ($1588$): King Philip II sent $130$ ships and $30,000$ men to invade England but failed due to storms and English naval resistance.
  • English Mercantilism: State-assisted manufacturing (textiles) aimed at a favorable balance of trade to increase the royal treasury.

The Plantation Colonies

• Brazil: Transformed into a sugar plantation zone. After a smallpox epidemic in $1559$ killed indigenous laborers, Portuguese planters turned to African slaves.
• The Chesapeake Colonies:
  • Jamestown ($1607$): Established by the Virginia Company. Initially successful only through the cultivation of tobacco, pioneered by John Rolfe.
  • Demographics: High death rates ($1,200$ sent by $1611$, fewer than half survived).
  • Maryland: Founded in $1632$ by Lord Baltimore as a Catholic refuge. Enacted the Toleration Act ($1649$).
• Caribbean Islands: English, French, and Dutch colonized the Lesser Antilles for sugar cultivation.
• Labor and Social Changes:
  • Indentured Servitude: Contracts of $4–5$ years in exchange for passage. Half of male servants died before their term ended.
  • Shift to Slavery: By the $1660s$, the collapse of the tobacco boom and the need for cheaper labor led to the legal definition of chattel slavery (hereditary bondage descending through the mother).

Neo-European Colonies and Religious Dissidents

• New France ($1608$): Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec. Focused on the fur trade (beaver pelts) and Jesuit missionary work among the Hurons.
• New Netherland ($1621$): Established by the West India Company. Capital at New Amsterdam (Manhattan). Seized by England in $1664$ and renamed New York.
• The Iroquois Rise: Leveraged their position to wage the "Beaver Wars," destroying neighbors like the Hurons and Eries to control the fur trade.
• New England:
  • Pilgrims ($1620$): Religious Separatists who arrived on the Mayflower. Created the Mayflower Compact.
  • Massachusetts Bay ($1630$): Led by John Winthrop with the goal of being a "City upon a Hill."
  • Social Governance: Power held by church members; established Puritanism as the state-supported religion.
  • Religious Dissidents:
    • Roger Williams: Banished for advocating separation of church and state; founded Rhode Island.
    • Anne Hutchinson: Banished for heresy (Covenant of Grace vs. Covenant of Works).
• Salem Witchcraft Trials ($1692$): Mass hysteria resulting in the execution of $19$ people; marked a turning point toward more rational explanations for natural phenomena.

Late Seventeenth-Century Rebellions

• Metacom's War (King Philip's War, $1675–1676$): Wampanoag leader Metacom attacked English settlements. $1,000$ settlers and $4,500$ Indians died before Metacom was killed. Effectively destroyed Indian independence in southern New England.
• The Pueblo Revolt ($1680$): Pop! led an uprising in New Mexico, killing $400$ Spaniards and forcing $2,100$ to flee. Spanish reconquered the area in $1693$ but subsequently reduced labor demands.
• Bacon's Rebellion ($1676$):
  • In Virginia, Nathaniel Bacon led poor freeholders and former servants in an uprising against Governor William Berkeley.
  • Causes: Falling tobacco prices, political corruption, and restricted voting rights.
  • Outcome: Rebels burned Jamestown; though Bacon died and Berkeley crushed the revolt, the colonial elite shifted further toward African slave labor to prevent future white peasant unrest.