APUSH

• Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World

  1492
• Christopher Columbus was not the first European to reach North America, the Norse had arrived in modern Canada around 1000
• Columbus' arrival marked the beginning of the Contact Period, during which Europe sustained contact with the Americas
• The period of European contact with the Americas ends, as that is the year of the first English settlement

  1607
• Bering Land Bridge


  Connected Eurasia and North America
• The first people to inhabit North and South America came across the Bering Land Bridge
• Ancestors of the Native Americans could walk across the Bering land bridge from Siberia (in modern Russia) to Alaska
• During the period when the Bering Land Bridge existed, the planet was significantly colder and much of the world's water was locked up in vast polar ice sheets, causing sea levels to drop
• As the planet warmed, sea levels rose, and the Bering Land Bridge was submerged forming the Bering Strait
• Pre-Columbian era


  The period before Christopher Columbus' arrival in the "New World"
• North America was populated by Native Americans, not to be confused with native-born Americans
• There was a culture clash between European settlers and Native Americans, as the Europeans brought different culture, religion, and technology, while Native Americans had their own complex societies, cultures, and religions
• Conflicts and misunderstandings occurred between the two groups as Native Americans resisted European colonization and expansion
• Many wars and battles took place between Native Americans and European settlers
• The marker of 1491 serves as a division between the Native American world and the world that came after European exploration, colonization, and invasion
• North America was home to hundreds of tribes, cities and societies, and indigenous societies in North America before Europeans were definitely very complex
• The spread of maize cultivation from present-day Mexico northward into the present-day American Southwest and beyond supported economic development
• Along the Northwest coast and in California, tribes developed communities along the ocean to hunt whales and salmon, and they created totem poles and canoes
• In the northeast, the Mississippi river valley, and along the Atlantic seaboard, some indigenous societies developed
• Natives in the Great Plains and surrounding grasslands retained the nomadic lifestyles, while in the Southwest, people had fixed lifestyles
• The Great Plains was more suitable for hunting and gathering food sources
• New ships, such as the caravel, allowed for longer exploratory voyages
• In August of 1492, Columbus used three caravels, supplied and funded by the Spanish crown, to set sail toward India
• After his voyage, when Columbus reached land, he found a group of people called the Taino and renamed their island San Salvador, claiming it for Spain
• Columbus' voyage pleased the Spanish Monarchs
• Other European explorers also set sail to the New World in search of gold, glory and to spread the word of their God
• There was a period of rapid exchange of plants, animals, foods, communicable diseases, and diseases between the Old World and the New World
• Europe had the resources and technology to establish colonies far from home
• Old World


  Africa, Asia, and Europe
• New World


  The Americas
• Native American Societies Before European Contact


  • Permanent Settlements
  • Nomadic Hunting and Gathering Tribes
• European Exploration in the Americas


  • Columbus Sails Circa 1492
  • The Age of Exploration
• Columbian Exchange, Spanish Exploration, and Conquest


  • The Columbian Exchange
  • Flow of Trade
• The introduction of new crops to Europe helped to increase food production and stimulate growth
• Colony


  A territory settled and controlled by a foreign power
• Columbus' arrival initiated a long period of European expansion and colonialism in the Americas
• During the next century, Spain was the colonial power in the Americas, founding a number of coastal towns in Central and South America and in the West Indies
• Spanish conquistadors collected and exported as much of the area's wealth as they could
• Encomienda system


  The crown granted colonists authority over a specified number of natives, who the colonist was obliged to protect and convert to Catholicism, in exchange for the natives' labor
• The encomienda system was a form of slavery