Unit 1 APush

• 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 established a trading post empire around Africa and gained a foothold in the Indian Ocean trade network
• Maritime technology used by the Portuguese

  • Updated astronomical charts
  • Astrolabe
  • Smaller, faster, and more nimble ship designs
  • Latin sail
  • Stern post rudder
• After seeing Portugal's success, Spain also jumped into maritime exploration
• 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, an Italian sailor, 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 from the Americas to Europe (potatoes, tomatoes, maize)
  • Foods from Europe to the Americas (wheat, rice, soybeans)
  • Animals from Europe to the Americas (cattle, pigs, horses)
  • Gold and silver from the Americas to Europe
  • Enslaved Africans to the Americas
  • Diseases like smallpox from Europe to the Americas
• The influx of wealth from the Americas induced a profound societal and economic shift in European states, moving from feudalism to capitalism
• Joint stock companies


  • Limited liability organizations where investors pooled money to fund ventures
• Spanish colonization in the Americas

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


  Spanish colonial social hierarchy based on racial ancestry
• Relationships between Europeans and natives were largely difficult and brutal, with Europeans developing belief systems to justify their treatment of natives
• Europeans also developed belief systems to justify the exploitation of African laborers, based on a misinterpretation of the Bible