APUSH

• Before the Europeans arrived, native American peoples organized themselves into diverse cultures depending on where they live
• Native Americans did not all live the same way - some lived in fishing villages, others roamed as nomadic hunters and gatherers, some settled down and farmed, and others lived in large city-based empires
• Central and South American civilizations


  • Boasted large urban centers
  • Had complex political systems
  • Had well-formed religions
• Central and South American civilizations


  • Aztecs (Mexica)
  • Maya
  • Inca
• Maize


  A nutritious corn-like crop that spread north and supported economic development, settlement, irrigation, and social diversification
• Native peoples of North America


  • Pueblo people
  • Nomadic hunter-gatherers (e.g. Ute)
  • Pacific Northwest fishing villages (e.g. Chinook)
  • California hunter-gatherers in permanent settlements (e.g. Chumash)
  • Hopewell people
  • Cahokia people
  • Iroquois
• The Hopewell people lived in towns of 4,000-6,000 people and traded extensively with other regions
• The Cahokia people had the largest settlement in their region, with 10,000-30,000 people at its height, led by powerful chieftains who centralized the government and engaged in extensive trade networks
• The Iroquois lived in villages of several hundred people where they grew crops like maize, squash and beans, and lived in longhouses with 30-50 family members
• Reasons for European exploration of the Americas


  • Population rebound after Black Plague
  • Political unification and centralized governments
  • Wealthy upper class wanting luxury goods from Asia
• Europeans unable to access land-based trade routes to Asia


  Motivated them to find water-based route
• Trading post empire


  Portugal's model of establishing trading posts along African coast and dominating Indian Ocean trade
• Maritime technology advances by Portugal


  • Use of caravels
  • Improved navigation with astrolabe, sternpost rudder
  • Updated maritime charts and astronomical tables
• Portugal's profitable trade


  Motivated Spain to also explore the Americas
• Christopher Columbus


  Italian sailor who sought Spanish sponsorship to find western route to Asia
• Columbus landed in the Caribbean, not Asia, and called the inhabitants "Indians"
• Columbus returned to Spain with gold jewelry and enslaved natives, sparking more Spanish exploration of the Caribbean and South America
• Within a decade it became clear Columbus had not found a sea route to Asia
• Columbus's voyages set off a process that would change the world, known as the Columbian Exchange
• Colombian exchange


  The transfer of food, animals, minerals, people, and diseases between Africa, Europe, and the Americas
• The Colombian exchange fundamentally transformed the societies, economies, and environments of Africa, Europe, and the Americas
• Transfer of disease in the Colombian exchange

  1. Spanish conquistadors brought deadly diseases like smallpox

  2. Native populations had no immunity

  3. Devastated populations, e.g. Arawak and Taino on Hispaniola, Incas, Aztecs, and Maya
• Foods transferred in the Colombian exchange


  • From the Americas to Europe: maize, tomatoes, potatoes, cacao, tobacco
  • From Europe and Africa to the Americas: rice, wheat, soybeans, rye, oats, lemons, oranges
• Animals transferred in the Colombian exchange


  • From Europe to the Americas: horses, pigs, cattle, chickens
• Horses and cattle transformed the diet and farming/warfare of native Americans
• Spanish plundered gold and silver from the Incan and Aztec empires, which made Spain wealthy beyond belief
• Influx of wealth from the Americas


  Hastened the end of feudalism and the rise of capitalism in Europe
• People transferred in the Colombian exchange


  • Native Americans enslaved and taken to Spain
  • Enslaved Africans transported to the Americas
• The Spanish colonization effort was driven by the state and its mercantilist economic policies
• Later colonizing nations would privatize exploration with joint stock companies
• The selling of people into slavery had a long history in Africa long before the period of European involvement
• Slaves in Africa had some legal rights and their bondage was not a permanent situation and was almost never an inheritable bondage
• During the period of European involvement, Europeans began establishing forts along the African coast and traded goods, especially guns, for enslaved people
• The Europeans faced enslaved Africans who had strange customs and spoke strange languages, but they looked like human beings, which made it morally unjustifiable to enslave them
• The European purchasers of enslaved Africans adopted thought systems that proved the inferiority of the black people and helped them justify purchasing them as enslaved labor
• The biblical story of Noah, Ham, and Canaan


  Europeans during the 15th and 16th century postulated that Africans had been descended from Canaan, and therefore it was biblical to enslave them
• Starting with the Spanish, Europeans brought these enslaved Africans to the Americas in increasing numbers
• The Encomienda system of labor


  1. Leading men called Encomenderos were granted a portion of land, and all the natives who lived on that land became the coerced labor force for the farming or mining

  2. The system was justified on religious grounds, as the Spanish monarchs had the authority to claim lands in the Americas and try to convert the people there

  3. Natives who submitted to conversion received protection, and those who resisted could be subjugated or killed
• The Encomienda system did not work well for the Spanish because the natives kept dying from European diseases and knew the land better, so the Spanish turned to importing African people to replace the natives
• By the late 16th century, Spain had completely transformed the Americas, and the wealth coming into Spain from the Americas transformed the Spanish economy, but it mainly enriched the nobles