APUSH

• Native American societies before 1492


  • Fishing villages
  • Nomadic hunters and gatherers
  • Settled farmers
  • City-based empires
• Native Americans often divided tasks by gender, participated in games and festivals for religious purposes, had harvests and hunts
• Major civilizations in Central/South America


  • Aztecs/Mexica
  • Mayans
  • Inca
• Aztecs/Mexica


  • Capital city of Tenochtitlan with 300,000 people
  • Had written language, complex irrigation systems
  • Priests upheld cult of fertility through human sacrifices
  • Had elaborate medical and educational centers
• Mayans


  • Developed large cities, complex irrigation and water storage systems
  • Sophisticated culture with written language, numerical system and calendar, advanced agricultural system
• Inca


  • Ruled 16 million people over 350,000 square miles
  • Cultivated fertile mountain valleys, elaborate irrigation systems
  • Complex political system with large network of paved roads
• Similarities between major civilizations


  • Cultivation of maize
  • Economies based on agriculture, with warriors and priests as elites
  • Religious and ceremonial structures
• Native American societies in North America


  • Eskimos of the Arctic Circle
  • Southwest (Pueblo)
  • Great Plains/Basin (nomadic)
  • Pacific Northwest
  • Mississippi River Valley
  • Northeast (Iroquois)
  • Woodland Indians
• Eskimos of the Arctic Circle


  • Fished and hunted seals
  • Civilization spanned thousands of miles of frozen land, traversed using dogsled
• Southwest (Pueblo)


  • Sedentary population, farmers of maize and other crops
  • Built adobe and masonry homes, including in cliffs
  • Highly organized society with administrative offices, religious centers, and craft shops
  • Constructed substantial towns that became centers of trade, crafts, and religious and civic ritual
• Great Plains/Basin (nomadic)


  • Hunter-gatherers who needed a lot of land due to aridity
  • Engaged in sedentary farming of corn and other grains
  • Ute lived in small egalitarian kinship-based bands
• Pacific Northwest


  • Lived by the sea, settled in fishing villages
  • Relied on elk and salmon
  • Engaged in violent competition for permanent settlement and natural resources
  • Chinook made use of cedar trees to build large plank houses
• Mississippi River Valley


  • More larger and complex societies due to fertile soil
  • Stayed together over linguistic roots
  • Hopewell lived in towns of 4,000-6,000 people, traded extensively
  • Cahokia had the largest settlement, with 10,000-30,000 people, led by powerful chieftains
• Northeast (Iroquois)


  • Lived in villages of several hundred people
  • Grew crops like maize, squash, and beans
  • Built and lived in longhouses with 30-50 family members
• Woodland Indians


  • Engaged in farming, hunting, gathering, and fishing simultaneously
  • Cleared land by setting forest fires or cutting trees
  • Settled at different locations when land became exhausted
• Reasons for European exploration


  • Population increase after the Black Plague
  • Political unification of European states under powerful monarchs
  • Desire for luxury goods from Asia, unable to access overland trade routes
• Portugal's exploration


  • Prince Henry the Navigator attempted to find a passage to Asia via the Atlantic Ocean
  • Established trading post empire along the African coast and into the Indian Ocean
  • Harnessed maritime technology like caravels, updated navigation tools
• Spain's exploration


  • Monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand wanted to spread Christianity
  • Established trading posts in Africa and India
  • Christopher Columbus sought sponsorship to find a western route to Asia
• Columbus reached the Caribbean in 1492, thinking he had reached the East Indies
• Columbus enslaved some natives and brought them back to Spain, leading to more Spanish exploration and conquest
• Columbian Exchange


  The transfer of food, animals, minerals, people, and diseases between Africa, Europe and the Americas
• The Columbian Exchange fundamentally transformed the societies, economies, and environments of all three continents
• Transfer of diseases


  • Smallpox ravaged native populations, killing hundreds of thousands and millions
  • Natives lacked immunity that Europeans and Africans had built up
• Foods transferred in the Columbian Exchange


  • High-yielding crops like maize, tomatoes, potatoes, cacao, tobacco
  • Grains like rice, wheat, soybean, rye, oats
  • Citrus fruits like lemons and oranges
• Animals transferred in the Columbian Exchange


  • Horses, pigs, cattle, chickens
  • Transformed the diet and farming/warfare of native Americans
• Minerals transferred in the Columbian Exchange


  • Spanish plundered vast quantities of gold and silver from the Inca and Aztec empires
  • This made Spain very wealthy and contributed to the end of feudalism and rise of capitalism in Europe
• People transferred in the Columbian Exchange


  • Native Americans enslaved and taken to Spain
  • Enslaved Africans captured and transported to the Americas in the Middle Passage
• Mercantilism


  The dominant economic system in Europe, based on heavy government direction and intervention, with colonies serving as markets for exports and suppliers of raw materials
• Mercantilism was used to finance exploration and was later privatized into joint-stock companies
• African slave trade


  • Slavery already existed in Africa, but Europeans established forts and traded goods for enslaved people
  • Africans who were enslaved often came from communities raided and conquered by other African groups
  • Europeans justified enslaving Africans through racist ideologies and biblical interpretations
• Spanish enslavement of Africans in the Americas


  • Brought to solve labor shortages after native Americans proved poor slaves
  • Encomienda system granted land and native labor to Spanish colonists
  • Justified on religious grounds of spreading Christianity
• Social hierarchy imposed by the Spanish in the Americas

  • Peninsulares (Spanish-born)
  • Creoles (Spanish descent, born in Americas)
  • Mestizos (Spanish and native ancestry)
  • Mulattos (Spanish and African ancestry)
  • Africans
  • Native Americans
• This caste system shaped and influenced colonial societies throughout the Western Hemisphere
• Spanish mission system


  • Sent Franciscan missionaries to convert native Americans to Christianity
  • Encountered fundamentally different worldviews regarding religion, land use, and family
• Native Americans often incorporated Christianity into their existing pantheon of gods, resisting efforts to force singular devotion
• The Pueblo revolt in 1610 was a violent resistance to Spanish attempts to end native religious practices
• Conversion efforts from the spanish priests in converting natives to christianity worked and natives became christians
• Pueblo people's definition of conversion


  Different than christians who believed that by the definition of christianity, an exclusive religion that requires the converts total devotion and requires the converts to reject all other gods
• The pueblo, with their expansive spiritual vision of the world had no problem bringing christ into their pantheon of gods and worshiping him right along with their other gods – in becoming christians, the pueblo retained some of their native religious practices and this was a similar case to other native groups
• When priests tried to put an end to this and forced singular devotion to christ, some native groups resisted and kept their religious practices a secret while some resisted with violence like the pueblo