APUSH UNIT 1 VIDEO GUIDE

• The natives of the American continent were a diverse people that had diverse societies based on the kinds of environments in which they lived
• Native American cultures


  • Pueblo people
  • Hunter-gatherer nomadic groups
  • Coastal fishing villages
  • Groups that congregated in cities and built empires
• Pueblo people


  • Farmers
  • Built small urban centers made of hardened clay bricks
  • Built magnificent cliff dwellings
• Great Basin and Great Plains region groups

  • Nomadic hunter-gatherers
  • Organized into small egalitarian kinship bands
• Chumash and Chinook peoples

  • Built permanent settlements due to abundance of fish, small game, and plant life
  • Chumash built villages capable of sustaining 1000 people
  • Chinook built extensive plank houses
• Iroquois


  • Farmers
  • Lived communally in long houses
• Groups in Mississippi River Valley

  • Farmers
  • Participated in trade up and down waterways
  • Cahokia civilization had centralized government led by powerful chieftains
• The natives of America developed distinct and increasingly complex societies shaped by their environment
• The natives utilized vast trading networks stretching from South America to North America
• From the 1300s to 1400s, European kingdoms went through political unification and developed stronger, more centralized states governed by monarchs
• The growing wealthy upper class in Europe developed a taste for luxury goods from Asia
• Muslims controlled many of the land-based trading routes from Europe to Asia, so Europeans sought sea-based trade routes
• Portugal's trading post empire

  • Established trading posts around Africa
  • Gained foothold in Indian Ocean trade network
• Portuguese maritime technology


  • Updated astronomical charts
  • Used astrolabe
  • Experimented with new, smaller and faster ship designs
  • Used Latin sails and stern post rudders
• Spain jumped into the maritime game after seeing Portugal's success
• Spain had just finished the Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors, which led to a desire to spread Catholicism and seek new economic opportunities
• Christopher Columbus


  Italian sailor who sought Spanish sponsorship to sail west to find new wealth in Asian markets
• Columbus landed in the Caribbean in 1492, sparking fierce competition among European nations to explore the new lands
• Columbian Exchange


  The transfer of people, animals, plants, and diseases between the Eastern and Western hemispheres
• Items transferred in the Columbian Exchange


  • Foods like potatoes, tomatoes, maize from the Americas to Europe
  • Wheat, rice, soybeans from Europe to the Americas
  • Turkeys from the Americas to Europe
  • Cattle, pigs, horses from Europe to the Americas
  • Gold and silver from the Americas to Europe
  • Enslaved Africans brought to the Americas
  • Smallpox from Europe decimating native populations
• The influx of wealth from the Americas induced a shift from feudalism to capitalism in Europe
• Joint stock companies


  Limited liability organizations where investors pooled money to fund ventures, sharing profits and losses
• Spanish colonization in the Americas

  • Focused on agriculture and extraction of precious metals
  • Introduced the encomienda system of forced native labor
  • Imported African slave labor due to native population decline from disease
• Casta system


  Spanish colonial social hierarchy based on racial ancestry, with peninsulares (Spaniards born in Spain) at the top and native Americans at the bottom
• Europeans developed elaborate belief systems to justify the harsh treatment and exploitation of native Americans and Africans
• Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda: 'Native Americans were less than human and benefited from harsh labor conditions'
• Bartolomé de las Casas: 'Defended the humanity of native Americans and persuaded the king to pass laws ending their slavery, though the laws were later repealed'
• Europeans justified the enslavement of Africans by interpreting the biblical story of Noah's curse on Ham's descendants as a divine mandate for black slavery