APUSH - Period 1 - Colonization of North America

• When does American History begin?
• American History begins


  1491
• College board chooses 1491 to point out the fact that there were already people here before Columbus came to North America in 1492
• It doesn't make sense to say Columbus discovered America when there were already people there
• Indigenous people living in the Americas before Europeans arrived

  • Aztec
  • Maya
  • Inca
• The first thing we're gonna learn about is the different tribes that lived in the Americas before Europeans arrived
• Where were the indigenous tribes located?


  How did they live off the land?
• The Europeans depended on the indigenous people to know how to use the land (natives taught them what crops were good, etc.)
• Pueblo


  • Location: Southwest (New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado)
  • How they lived: at first were nomadic then lived cliff dwellings, had ceremonial rooms in the ground (kivas), adobe houses
  • How they adapted: very big on agriculture (corn, beans, squash), trees were important for construction, food, and firewood, corn was also important, had irrigation techniques
• Cheyenne


  • Location: initially lived in the Great Lakes region (by modern day Minnesota & Illinois) → Great Plains
  • How they lived: they lived in permanent earth lodges built w/ wood and packed w earth → some turned towards a nomadic lifestyle once the Europeans came and pushed them west where they then made villages of teepees that were easy to move
  • How they adapted: they were hunters and gatherers; they hunted buffalo, elk, deer, bear, turkey, rabbit, etc., they gathered roots and vegetables; potatoes, herbs, spinach, turni i'll ps, berries, once the Europeans came they were part of a large trading network with other tribes & whites, they also grew corn along the rivers that they lived near after the Europeans came
• Cheyenne social structure/cultural practices


  the Cheyenne people were based their social structure around a chief kinship but there were different groups of people that also coexisted including trade, military, and sacred, they believed in 2 deities: the Wise One Above (Maheo) and one that lived underground, they held an elaborate Sun Dance every spring and believed that a guardian spirit would grant powers on the performer, the buffalo was a very important animal to the Cheyenne as they used it for food, shelter, and clothing
• Spanish are the first settlers, then the British
• Context for what motivated the Europeans to explore

  • Increased power of nation-state
  • Desire for trade goods from East Asia
  • Search for new sea routes to bypass middle-eastern middle-men
  • Desire to break monopoly of Italian commercial cities
  • Claiming land could give them great rewards
  • Religious competition: catholicism vs protestantism
  • Population increase
  • Science and technology provided the means
  • Renaissance spirit
  • Competition among countries
• Columbian Exchange = the transfer of animals, crops, plants, foods, diseases (and even people) between the Old World and the New world
• Old World


  What people knew before columbus; europe,africa asia
• New World


  The Americas
• The Columbian Exchange is NOT a TRADE NETWORK, it is more of a natural exchange/natural contact since stuff from the old world is being brought into the new world and vice versa
• Impact of Columbian Exchange on America (New World)

  • Enslavement of natives to extract resources (precious metals, crops)
  • Massive depopulation either by disease, warfare or forced labor
  • Termination or relocation of some indian tribes
  • Cultural changes (religion)
  • Changed ways of life because of livestock (cattle, horses)
  • Ecological and environmental changes/devastation due to settlements and mining
• Impact of Columbian Exchange on Europe and Africa (Old World)

  • Increased competition among European nations for new sources of wealth
  • Population growth due to improved diets because of new crops
  • Completes the transition in Europe from feudalism to capitalism (joint-stock companies)
  • A renewed need for the african slave trade to provide labor in the colonies
  • European cultural, economic, and political supremacy (empire building)
• The number of animal & plant species diminished after Columbus
• The Columbian Exchange remade the population of animals, even people
• Four groups of columbian exchange

  • Diseases
  • Plants
  • Animals
  • People
• Disease caused a huge majority of the deaths of indigenous people
• Starvation also was a huge problem because there was not enough people to grow crops
• Syphilis was a disease brought from the americas to the old world
• The diseases that were brought to the New World were more dangerous to the indigenous because they had never experienced it/didn't have immunity
• The indigenous couldn't stand against the Spaniards because many of them died because of disease
• Animals like pigs, horses, and cattle were revolutionary to the New world


  The main reason Europeans came to Americas was to eat so they brought animals to this rich land, used for transportation and transformed culture; Indians used horses after the Europeans brought them, New animals brought from old world to new world had an overall positive impact (for cultivation, transportation, etc.)
• Plants


  Crops brought from the new world changed cultures in the old world (tomatoes brought to italy, curry brought to india, corn brought to persia), Corn and potatoes were grown on soil in the old world that couldn't grow anything else
• People


  Mostly one-way with Europeans and Africans, The worldwide population increased, Fewer people have starved due to the Columbian exchange but the diversity of the population diminished
• Spanish establishes the first permanent settlements; first empire
• Spanish Motivation: 3 G's

  • Gold
  • Glory
  • God
• Spain is going to possess the largest of empires on the map however there are not a lot of people coming from Spain to come live there
• Encomienda system


  Created to give out land and laborers led to profits for Spain, but abuse for Indians
• Spain believed they had the authority to divide up the land however they want → divided them into encomiendas where each one was given to a wealthy Spaniard
• All the indigenous people who were living in the borders of each encomienda automatically became property of the owner → start of forced labor
• Missions system


  Had a religious focus but shared some of the same characteristics as the encomienda system, the native Americans who lived on the lands where the missions were built became servers of the land, underwent forced conversion
• The Spanish had the largest (& most systematic) motivation to convert the Native Americans
• Mestizo


  A person of mixed European and indigenous American ancestry
• Spanish colonial caste system

  • People born in Spain living in Americas
  • People born of Spanish parents IN America
  • Mestizos (one Spanish parent, one native parent)
  • Mulattos (mix of Spanish and African blood)
  • Africans
  • Native Americans