1. Preface
2. 1491-1763 1. 1491-1607
1. . _Chapter 1 Introductory Essay: 1491—1607
Pe —_
— No
ee MA UB W
17,
18.
19. 20.
21, 22.
SOMNAN AWN
Inquiry Organizer
Native People
First Contacts
Columbian Exchange
Hernando de Soto
Life in the Spanish Colonies _ Origins of the Slave Trade
. _Henry Hudson and Exploration . _Montezuma and Cortés . _Should We Remember Christopher Columbus as a
Conqueror or Explorer?
. e Columbus’s Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella of
Spain, 1494
. «> Cortés’s Account of Tenochtitlan, 1522
. «> Las Casas on the Destruction of the Indies, 1552 . e The Florentine Codex, c. 1585
. «> The Oral Tradition of the Foundation of the
Iroquois Confederacy e> Watercolors of Algonquian Peoples in North Carolina, 1585 1491 vs. 1754 _ Ship Technology
Richard Hakluyt and the Case for Undertaking Sea Voyages
Paideia Seminar: Christopher Columbus
Writing Practice: Building Thesis Statements
23. & Unit 1 Essay Activity
2. 1607-1763 1, _Inquiry Organizer 2. _Chapter 2 Introductory Essay: 1607—1763 3. _The English Come to America 4. The Anglo-Powhatan War of 1622 5. _ The Founding of Maryland 6. _Anne Hutchinson and Religious Dissent 7. _William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania 8. _The Fur Trade 9. _Bacon’s Rebellion 10. _The Salem Witch Trials 11. _The Stono Rebellion 12. The Great Awakening 13. _Benjamin Franklin and the American Enlightenment 14, _Albany Plan of Union 15. _A Clash of Empires: The French and Indian War 16. _Wolfe at Quebec and the Peace of 1763 17. _ Pilgrims to the New World 18. _King Philip’s War 19. Colonial Identity: English or American? 20. _What Was the Great Awakening? 21. ee A City Upon a Hill: Winthrop’s “Modell of
22. 23. 24. 25.
26.
27.
Christian Charity,” 1630 e> Bacon vs. Berkeley on Bacon’s Rebellion, 1676 eo Penn’s Letter Recruiting Colonists, 1683 e> Germantown Friends’ Antislavery Petition, 1688 e> Washington's Journal: Expeditions to Disputed Ohio Territory, 1753-1754 e> Maps Showing the Evolution of Settlement, 1624— 1733
Colonial Comparison: The Rights of Englishmen
28. _Benjamin Franklin Mini DBQ
29. _Mercantilism
30. _ Civics Connection: The Colonial Origins of
American Republicanism 31. & Unit 1 Essay Activity 3. 1763-1800 1. 1763-1789
1, _Inquiry Organizer 2. _Chapter 3 Introductory Essay: 1763-1789 3. _Pontiac's Rebellion 4, _Stamp Act Resistance 5 6 7
. _The Boston Massacre . _The Boston Tea Party . Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence 8. _ Washington Crossing the Delaware 9. _The Battle of Saratoga and the French Alliance 10. _ Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom 11. _Shays' Rebellion 12. _The Constitutional Convention 13. _ The Ratification Debate on the Constitution 14. _Mercy Otis Warren 15. _George Washington at Newburgh 16. _ Loyalist vs. Patriot 17. _ Signing the Declaration of Independence 18. _The Annapolis Convention 19. _ Is the Constitution a Proslavery Document? 20. _Were the Anti-Federalists Unduly Suspicious or Insightful Political Thinkers? 21. ee John Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, 1767-1768 22. e+ Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
23
24. 25. 26. 27.
28. 29.
30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.
O73 38.
39
. «> Joseph Plumb Martin, The Adventures of a Revolutionary Soldier, 1777 eo Art Analysis: Washington Crossing the Delaware e> The Articles of Confederation, 1781 eo Quaker Anti-Slavery Petition, 1783 e> Belinda Sutton, Petition to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1783 e> The Northwest Ordinance, 1787 eo Judith Sargent Murray, "On the Equality of the Sexes," 1790 e> Junipero Serra’s Baja California Diary Acts of Parliament _ Abigail Adams: "Remember the Ladies" Mini DBQ The Path to Independence Constitutional Convention _Argumentation: The Process of Compromise Federalist/Anti-Federalist Debate on Congress's Powers of Taxation DBQ State Constitution Comparison _Argumentation: Self-Interest or Republicanism? . & Unit 2 Essay Activity
2. 1789-1800
. _Inquiry Organizer . _Chapter 4 Introductory Essay: 1789-1800 . _Alexander Hamilton and the National Bank . _James Madison and the Bill of Rights . _Benjamin Franklin and the First Abolitionist Petitions Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin . _The Battle of Fallen Timbers . _The Jay Treaty The XYZ Affair and the Quasi-War with France
10. 11. 12; 13.
14.
15.
16. 17. 18.
19. 20.
21. 22, 25. 24.
25. 26. 27.
28. 29; 30. 31. Oe:
33.
The Alien and Sedition Acts
Robert Carter and Manumission
The Compromise of 1790
George Washington and the Proclamation of Neutrality
The Whiskey Rebellion: Unjust Taxation or Enforcing the Rule of Law?
“Strict” or “Loose”: Was the National Bank Constitutional? e> George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789 eo The Judiciary Act of 1789 eo The Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Treaty of New York, 1790 e> Thomas Jefferson on the Compromise of 1790 e> Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, Writings on the National Bank, 1785-1792 eo The Jay Treaty, 1795 eo Pinckney’s Treaty, 1796 e> George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796 e> Cartoon Analysis: Property Protected—a la Francoise, 1798 eo Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, 1798—1799 e> Cartoon Analysis: Congressional Pugilists, 1798
The Global Impact of the American Revolution DBQ
Actions of the First Congress
The National Bank Debate
Methods of Slave Resistance DBQ
George Washington in American Art
Unit 2 Civics Connection: An Apple of Gold ina Frame of Silver
George Washington's Views on Slavery
34, _The Founders' Failure to End Slavery 35. _Using Political Cartoons to Understand History 36. _Be Washington: Whiskey Rebellion 37. & Unit 2 Essay Activity 4. 1800-1844 1. 1800-1828 1, _Inquiry Organizer 2. _Chapter 5 Introductory Essay: 1800-1828 3. _The Lewis and Clark Expedition 4 fs)
Fort McHenry and the War of 1812 . _Old Hickory: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans
6. _Tecumseh and the Prophet
7. _The Corrupt Bargain
8. _Mountain Men
9. _The Building of the Erie Canal 10. _ Washington Irving 11. _ Marbury v. Madison 12. The Hartford Convention 13. _The Missouri Compromise 14. _Was the Election of 1800 a Revolution? 15. _Did the Missouri Compromise Merely Delay War? 16. e+ The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1805 17. e+ The Monroe Doctrine, 1823 18. eo Cartoon Analysis: The Presidential Election of
1824 19. eo Henry Clay, Speech on American Industry, 1824 20. _ John Marshall’s Landmark Cases DBQ 21. Changing Views of Slavery Mini-DBQ 22. & Unit 3 Essay Activity 2. 1828-1844 1, _Inquiry Organizer
24.
. _Chapter 6 Introductory Essay: 1828-1844
The Nullification Crisis
The Mormon Trail
The Trail of Tears
William Lloyd Garrison’s War against Slavery
Nat Turner’s Rebellion
Sam Houston and Texas Independence
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Struggle for Women’s Suffrage
The Lowell Girls
. _John Quincy Adams and the Amistad
. _Frederick Douglass’s Path to Freedom
. _John Quincy Adams and the Gag Rule
. _Andrew Jackson’s Veto of the National Bank
. _Is the Concurrent Majority Theory Faithful to the
Ideals of the Constitution?
. e John C. Calhoun, South Carolina Exposition and
Protest, 1828
. «> David Walker, “An Appeal to the Coloured
Citizens of the World,” 1829
. > _Webster-Hayne Debates, 1830 . ee Indian Removal Act, 1830, and Cherokee Chief
John Ross’s Memorial and Protest to Congress, 1836
. e Andrew Jackson, Bank Veto Message, 1832
1835
. e> Jedediah Burchard, Revivalist Sermon, 1835 . «> Sarah M. Grimké, Letters on the Equality of the
Sexes and the Condition of Women, 1837 e> Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” 1837
25. «> John C. Calhoun, “Slavery as a Positive Good,” 1837 26. ee Dorothea Dix, Memorial to the Legislation of Massachusetts, 1843 27, e> Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845 28. ee Art Analysis: The County Election by George Caleb Bingham, 1852 29. _Responses to the Cherokee Removal Mini DBQ 30. _American Indians in American Art 31. _The Women’s Movement and the Seneca Falls Convention 32. _Unit 3 Civics Connection: Liberty and Union 33. & Unit 3 Essay Activity 5. 1844-1877 1. 1844-1860 1, _Inquiry Organizer 2. _Chapter 7 Introductory Essay: 1844—1860 3. _The American Southwest: Tucson in Transition 4. _The Free Soil Party 5. _The 49ers 6. _ Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad 7. Thomas Sims and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 8. _ Harriett Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin 9. Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan 10. _ Nativist Riots and the Know-Nothing Party 11. _Kansas-Nebraska Act and Bleeding Kansas 12. _Charles Sumner and Preston Brooks 13. _ John Brown and Harpers Ferry 14. The Election of 1860 15. _ Migration West
To Go to War with Mexico?
. _The Oregon Question: 54—40 or Fight? . _The Compromise of 1850 . _To What Extent Were Manifest Destiny and
Westward Expansion Justified?
Frederick Douglass, 1845
. o> Negro Spirituals . «> John O’ Sullivan, “Annexation,” 1845 . ee William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass
on Abolition, 1845-1852
. «> Debating the Mexican-American War, May 1846 . ee Daniel Webster, “7th of March,” 1850
. > Fugitive Slave Act, 1850
. > Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t 1a Woman?” 1851
Western Pioneer, 1851—1852
. e Frank Lecouvreur, From East Prussia to the
Golden Gate, 1851-1871
1854
. «> _Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855 . ee Art Analysis: Hudson River School Landscape
Paintings, 1836—1868
. ee Lincoln-Douglass Debates, 1858 . e+ South Carolina Secession Debate, 1860 . ee Art Analysis: American Progress by John Gast,
1872
. _Irish and German Immigration DBQ
Dred Scott v. Sandford DBQ
. _John Brown: Hero or Villain? DBQ . The Election of Lincoln and the Secession of
Southern States DBQ
AO.
© Unit 4 Essay Activity
2. 1860-1877
1, _Inquiry Organizer
2. _Chapter 8 Introductory Essay: 1860—1877
3. _Fort Sumter and the Coming of the War
4. The Battle of Antietam
5. _Gettysburg and Vicksburg: July 4, 1863
6. _The Draft and the Draft Riots of 1863
7. _Robert Gould Shaw and the Fifty-fourth
Massachusetts Regiment
8. _Women during the Civil War
9. _Mary Chesnut’s War 10. _Clement Vallandigham and Constitutionalism 11. _ William Tecumseh Sherman and Total War 12. O.O.Howard and the Freedmen’s Bureau 13. _The Ku Klux Klan and Violence at the Polls 14. _Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation 15. _Grant and Lee at Appomattox 16. _The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson 17. _Was the Civil War Fought Over Slavery? 18. _Did Abraham Lincoln Exceed His Presidential
Powers during the Civil War?
. _To What Extent Did American Principles Become a
Reality for African Americans during Reconstruction?
. e J.B. Elliott, Scott’s Great Snake (Anaconda Plan),
1861
. e Daniel Emmett’s “Dixie” and Julia Ward Howe’s
“Battle Hymn of the Republic,” 1859 and 1861
. e The Homestead Act of 1862 . «> Mathew Brady, The Dead of Antietam
Photography, 1862
24, eo Images of Total War: Sherman’s March to the Sea, 1865 25. ee Cartoon Analysis: The “Rail Splitter” at Work Repairing the Union, 1865 26. e+ Comparing Views of the Freedmen’s Bureau, 1866 27. e+ Andrew Johnson’s Veto of the Civil Rights Act, 1866 28. e> Cartoon Analysis: Thomas Nast on Reconstruction, 1869-1874 29. _The Emergence of Black Codes DBQ 30. _The Rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln DBQ 31. _Comparing Impeachments across U.S. History 32. _ Unit 4 Civics Connection: Equality, the Civil War, and Reconstruction 33. & Unit 4 Essay Activity 6. 1877-1898 1. 1877-1898 1, _Inquiry Organizer 2. _Chapter 9 Introductory Essay: 1877-1898 3. _The Transcontinental Railroad 4. _The Brooklyn Bridge 5. _George Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn 6. _William “Boss” Tweed and Political Machines 7, Andrew Carnegie and the Creation of U.S. Steel 8. _Cowboys and Cattle Drives 9. _Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching 10. _The Annexation of Hawaii 11. _ Jane Addams, Hull House, and Immigration 12. _Ignatius Donnelly and the 1892 Populist Platform 13. _The Homestead Strike 14. _Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
15. . _Were the Titans of the Gilded Age “Robber Barons”
The Chinese Exclusion Act
or “Entrepreneurial Industrialists”?
. Were Urban Bosses Essential Service Providers or
Corrupt Politicians?
. Was Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis
Myth or Reality?
. «> Cartoon Analysis: Thomas Nast ‘Takes on “Boss”
Tweed, 1871
. e The Dawes Act, 1887 . «> Images from the Carlisle Indian School, 1880s . «> Grover Cleveland’s Veto of the Texas Seed Bill,
1887
. «> Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000-1887,
1888
. e Ida B. Wells, “Lynch Law,” 1893 . «> Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the
Frontier in American History,” 1893
. e Booker T. Washington, “Speech to the Cotton
States and International Exposition,” 1895
. ee Cartoon Analysis: Immigration in the Gilded Age, 1882-1896 ee William Jennings Bryan, “Cross of Gold” speech,
1896
. _The Annexation of Hawaii DBQ . _Industry_ and Immigration in the Gilded Age . _Debating Industrial Progress: Andrew Carnegie vs.
Henry George
. _Populists and Socialists in the Gilded Age . _Debating Strategies for Change: Booker T.
Washington vs. W.E.B. Du Bois
34, _Unit 5 Civics Connection: Civil Rights and
Economic Freedom
35. & Unit 5 Essay Activity 7. 1898-1945 1. 1898-1919 1, _Inquiry Organizer 2. _Chapter 10 Introductory Essay: 1898-1919 3. _Ida M. Tarbell’s Crusade against Standard Oil 4. _Alice Paul and the Struggle for Women’s Suffrage 5. _Remember the Maine! Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders
6. _ Westward Expansion and the Quest to Conserve 7. _Jim Crow and Progressivism 8. _The Panama Canal 9. _Speaker Joseph Cannon Dethroned
10. _Wilsonian Progressivism
11. _The Philippine-American War
12. _America Enters World War I
13. _Over There: The U.S. Soldier in World War I
14. _The Great Migration
15. _The Election of 1912
16. _The ‘Treaty of Versailles
17. _Did the Progressive Movement Diverge from
20. 21.
Founding Principles and Did It Affect the Purpose of Government?
. e> Redfield Proctor vs. Mark Twain on American
Imperialism, 1898—1906
. > Cartoon Analysis: A Lesson for Anti-
Expansionists, Victor Gillam, 1899
eo Lewis Hine, Photographs Documenting Child Labor, 1908
22;
20.
24.
20;
eo Elihu Root vs. William Jennings Bryan on Women’s Suffrage, 1894-1914
e> Carrie Chapman Catt, Open Address to the U.S. Congress, 1917
eo Business and Advertising in the Early Twentieth Century, 1910—1917
eo The Espionage Act of 1917
26. e+ George M. Cohan, Over There, 1917 27. e Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, 1918 28. _Women's Suffrage and the Nineteenth Amendment 29. _The Progressive Movement DBQ 30. _ Schenck v. United States DBQ 31. & Unit 6 Essay Activity 2. 1920-1932 1, _Inquiry Organizer 2. _Chapter 11 Introductory Essay: 1920-1932 3. _The Red Scare and Civil Liberties 4. _Postwar Race Riots 5. _ The Spanish Flu of 1919 6. _U.S. Foreign Policy between the Wars 7. The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s 8. _Henry Ford and Alfred P. Sloan: Industrialization and Competition 9. _ “Silent Cal” Coolidge 10. _The Scopes Trial 11. _Charles Lindbergh and Flight 12. _The Crash of 1929 13. _The Bonus Army 14. _Was Prohibition a Success or a Failure? 15. _ Should Herbert Hoover Be Considered an Activist
President?
16.
iW
18.
19. 20.
21; 22.
23.
e> Cartoon Analysis: Elmer Andrews Bushnell, “The Sky Is Now Her Limit,” 1920
e> Mitchell Palmer, “The Case against the Reds,” 1920
eo Marcus Garvey, “Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World,” 1920
eo Charlie Chaplin, The Kid, 1921
eo Alice Paul and the Equal Rights Amendment (Lucretia Mott Amendment), 1923
e> Ellison DuRant Smith, “Shut the Door,” 1924
eo Langston Hughes, “I, Too” and “The Weary Blues,” 1920 and 1925
the Radio, 1929
24. _Ermest Hemingway and the Lost Generation 25. _The KKK during Reconstruction vs. the KKK in the 1920s 26. _‘The Blues and the Great Migration 27. & Unit 6 Essay Activity 3. 1932-1945 1, _Inquiry Organizer 2. _Chapter 12 Introductory Essay: 1932-1945 3. _The Dust Bowl 4. _The National Recovery Administration and the Schechter Brothers 5. _New Deal Critics
NI
Rise of the CIO
. _Court Packing and Constitutional Revolution
Eleanor Roosevelt and Marian Anderson
2.
10. . _Double V for Victory: The Effort to Integrate the
cl
12. 13. 14. ID: 16. 17,
18. 19.
20.
21. 22. 23.
24. 20:
26. 27. 28. 29.
30. 31.
Foreign Policy in the 1930s: From Neutrality to Involvement Pearl Harbor
U.S. Military D-Day Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima The Manhattan Project _ Dropping the Atomic Bomb Did the New Deal End the Great Depression? eo Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933 eo Art Analysis: The Art of the New Deal, 1934 e> Huey Long and the American Liberty League, 1934 1936-1937 eo “Sit Down,” Maurice Sugar, 1936-1937 e> The Atlantic Charter, 1941 March on Washington, 1941 e> World War II Propaganda Posters, 1941—1945 e> Photographs: Women at Work on the Homefront during World War II, 1941-1945 e> Franklin Roosevelt, Second Bill of Rights, 1944 e> Phil “Bo” Perabo, Letter Home, 1945 e> Images from the Congressional Committee Investigating Nazi Atrocities, 1945 Was the Use of the Atomic Bomb Justified? DBQ Korematsu v. United States and Japanese Internment DBQ
32. _Unit 6 Civics Connection: The Role of Government According to the Founders and the Progressives 33. _Unit 6 Civics Connection: The Constitution and Foreign Policy, 1898-1945 34. & Unit 6 Essay Activity 8. 1945-1980 1. 1945-1960 1, _Inquiry Organizer 2. _Chapter 13 Introductory Essay: 1945—1960 3. _Eleanor Roosevelt and the United Nations 4. TheGl. Bill 5. _The Berlin Airlift 6. _The Postwar Red Scare 7 8 9 10
. _Cold War Spy Cases . _The Korean War and the Battle of Chosin Reservoir . _Jackie Robinson . _The Murder of Emmett Till 11. Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Montgomery Bus Boycott 12. The Little Rock Nine 13. _The National Highway Act 14. _The Nixon—Khrushchev Kitchen Debate 15. _ William F, Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement 16. _Sputnik and NASA 17. _Dr. Benjamin Spock and the Baby Boom 18. _‘Truman Intervenes in Korea 19. _Truman Fires General Douglas MacArthur 20. _ Eisenhower and the Suez Canal Crisis 21. _Was Federal Spending on the Space Race Justified? 22. _Who Was Responsible for Starting the Cold War?
25.
24. 25.
26.
27;
28.
20.
30.
e> Winston Churchill, “Sinews of Peace,” March 1946
eo Levittown Videos, 1947-1957
eo Harry S. Truman, “Truman Doctrine” Address, March 1947
eo George Kennan (“Mr. X”), “Sources of Soviet Conduct,” July 1947
eo Richard Nixon, “Checkers” Speech, September 1952
e> Rosa Parks’s Account of the Montgomery Bus e> Critics of Postwar Culture: Jack Kerouac, On the Road (Excerpts), 1957
e> Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 1961
31. ee Nam Paik, Electronic Superhighway, 1995 32. _McCarthyism DBQ 33. _Kennedy vs. Nixon: TV and Politics 34. _The Sound of the Suburbs 35. & Unit 7 Essay Activity 2. 1960-1968 1, _Inquiry Organizer 2. _Chapter 14 Introductory Essay: 1960—1968 3. _John F. Kennedy’s Inauguration 4. _Freedom Riders 5. _ Rachel Carson and Silent Spring 6. _The Cuban Missile Crisis 7. The March on Birmingham 8. _ Betty Friedan and the Women's Movement 9. _The Vietnam War: Ia Drang Valley 10. _ Students and the Anti-War Movement 11. _ Black Power
18. 19.
20. 21.
22:
23, 24.
20:
26.
pag
28.
29.
30.
31. 32.
. _The Election of 1968
. _Protests at the University of California, Berkeley 14. 15. 16. 7
Free Speech and the Student Anti-War Movement _Lyndon B. Johnson’s Decision Not to Run in 1968 Was the Great Society Successful? eo John F, Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961 e> Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962 e> Students for a Democratic Society, "Port Huron Statement," 1962 eo Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963 eo Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 1963 eo Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream,” August 28, 1963 e> The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, 1964 e> Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” April 12, 1964 e> Lyndon B. Johnson, Commencement Address at the University of Michigan (“Great Society” Speech), May 22, 1964 e> Lyndon B. Johnson, “Peace Without Conquest,” April 7, 1965 eo The Vietnam War Experience: An Interview with Veteran William Maxwell Barner III eo Image Analysis: March on the Pentagon, October 21,1967 eo Walter Cronkite Speaks Out against Vietnam, February 27, 1968 Civil Disobedience across Time The Music of the Civil Rights Movement Civil Rights DBQ
33. _A Civil Rights Investigation: Mississippi Burning 34. _We Shall Overcome: The Fight for Voting Rights 35. © Unit 7 Essay Activity 3. 1968-1980 1, _Inquiry Organizer 2. _Chapter 15 Introductory Essay: 1968-1980 3. _Neil Armstrong and the Moon Landing 4, Kent State 9. _ The Birth Control Pill 6. _ Phyllis Schlafly and the Debate over the Equal Rights Amendment 7. The Gay Liberation Movement 8. _Richard Nixon Opens Diplomatic Relations with China 9. _Richard Nixon and Watergate 10. _American Indian Activism and the Siege of Wounded Knee 11. _The 1973 Oil Crisis and Its Economic Consequences 12. _The Controversy over Busing 13. _César Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers 14. _ Jimmy Carter and the “Malaise” Speech 15. _ Jimmy Carter and the Iran Hostage Crisis 16. _Barbara Jordan and Watergate 17. _Did U.S. Media Provide Fair and Accurate Coverage of the Tet Offensive? 18. eo Music as Protest: “We Shall Overcome”
20. 21.
. «> National Organization for Women (NOW), Bill of
Rights, 1968 e> Indians of All Tribes, Alcatraz Proclamation, 1969 e> Nixon Tapes: The “Smoking Gun” Tape, 1972
22:
23. 24.
20; 26. Z7. 28.
29.
eo Art as Protest: Images from the United Farm Workers of America, 1973-1978 eo Herblock, Watergate Cartoons, 1973-1974
The New York Blackout of 1977
Vietnam War DBQ
Unit 7 Civics Connection: Modern Liberalism, Limited Government, and Rights © Unit 7 Essay Activity
9. 1980—Present 1. 1980—Present
1.
SID
Inquiry Organizer
2. _Chapter 16 Introductory Essay: 1980—Present 3. _Ronald Reagan and Supply-Side Economics
4.
9. _ The Space Shuttle Program and the Challenger
The Iran-Contra Affair
Disaster
. _Rodney King and the Los Angeles Race Riots
The 1992 Presidential Election and the Rise of Democratic Populism
. _Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing . The USA PATRIOT Act
. _Fossil Fuels, Foreign Policy, and Climate Change
. _Tech Giants: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates
. “Tear Down This Wall”: Ronald Reagan and the End
of the Cold War U.S. Foreign Policy in Somalia and Rwanda
. U.S. Military Intervention in Afghanistan . _Has Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” Thesis
Been Proven Correct?
34. 35.
. _Does the Threat of Terrorism Justify Increased
Surveillance?
. _Was the Invasion of Iraq Justified? . Is Affirmative Action Justified? . _Is It in the Interest of the United States to Maintain
Its International Obligations?
. e Ronald Reagan, Address to the Nation on the
Challenger Disaster, January 28, 1986
June 12, 1987
. > Herblock, Cartoons of Ronald Reagan, 1984—1987 . e AIDS Memorial Quilt, 1987
. e George H. W. Bush, Address to the United Nations
General Assembly, September 23, 1991
. «> Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of Morning,”
January 20, 1993
Contract with America,” 1994
. e Barack Obama, Keynote Address at the
Democratic National Convention, July 27, 2004
. «> New Yorker Covers, 2001-2011 (Reflections on
9/11)
. _Comparing Presidential Campaign Advertising
1964-1980
. _Continuity and Change: Immigration in the United
States
. Security, Liberty, and the USA PATRIOT Act
across U.S. History Executive Power in Times of Crisis Cold War DBQ (1947-1989)
10. . The Constitution of the United States 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.
‘a
36. _ Unit 8 Civics Connection 37. & Unit 8 Essay Activity The Declaration of Independence
Federalist Papers #10 and #51
U.S. Political Map
Electoral College Votes by State, 2012—2020 U.S. Topographical Map
United States Population Chart
U.S. Presidents
Selected Supreme Court Cases
Glossary
Preface
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About Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (LLPH) is designed to meet the course needs of a yearlong U.S. History or AP U.S. History class. The history of the United States is presented through a series of narratives, primary sources, and point-counterpoint debates that invites students to participate in the ongoing conversation about the American experiment. The content is coupled with rigorous assessments that help students to develop historical thinking skills and reasoning processes.
Coverage and scope
The course covers U.S. history from 1491 to the present over 16 chapters collected into 8 units. Each chapter is organized around a central inquiry. The resource as a whole has the following components.
Chapter Introductory Essays (16): An essay that provides students with an overview of significant events in a given period.
Narratives (175): Brief narratives that provide an in-depth and exciting look into the compelling stories around individuals and events that shaped the historical time period.
Decision Points (37): Accounts framed from the perspective of a group or individual faced with a history-making decision. Point-Counterpoints (30): Two scholars offer different perspectives about a historical topic, theme, or event.
Primary Sources (156): Relevant and engaging visual and text primary sources for students to analyze.
Lessons (75): Teacher-facing instructions with handouts, sequencing and facilitation notes, and extension ideas to help students form historical connections. Includes Civics Connections, which provide a bridge between history and civic learning.
Each component is supported by assessments including AP-style multiple choice questions. In addition, each unit contains a writing assessment that works to answer the unit’s central question. As a complete history of the United States organized by module, the resource can be used in whole, with selected components, or as a supplementary resource.
Terminology and images
Some components of this resource contain terminology that is no longer used because the terms are recognized to be offensive or derogatory, and some components contain images that would be considered offensive or derogatory today. These terms and images have been retained in their original usage in order to present them accurately in their historical context for student learning, including understanding why these are not acceptable today.
Alignment to AP standards
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness is an inquiry-based resource that aligns to the College Board’s Advanced Placement U.S. History Course framework. Each chapter contains an inquiry organizer that helps guide students in their historical investigations via challenging questions. In addition, this organizer serves as a prompt that helps contextualize
stimulus-based multiple choice questions, annotated primary sources, short answer questions, videos, and unit writing assessments. Each chapter also features several lessons to further deepen classroom engagement.
Additional resources
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About the contributors
More than 100 individuals contributed to this resource, including authors and reviewers listed alphabetically, and lead reviewers Rob McDonald and Carol Berkin, who provided input on the entire publication.
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
(https://www. gilderlehrman.org/) provided editorial review of Units 3-5. Selected lesson plans are included courtesy of George Washington’s Mount Vernon (https://www.mountvernon.org/), John F. Kennedy Presidential
Foundation and Institute (https://www.reaganfoundation.org/), and TeachRock (https://teachrock.org/).
Bill of Rights Institute contributors include Kirk Higgins, lead editor and author; Tony Williams, editor and author; and Mary Patterson, Mallory Admire, Gennie Westbrook, and Joshua Schmid.
Contributing Authors
Patrick Allitt, Emory University, Cahoon Family Professor of American History
Anthony Badger, Cambridge University, Emeritus Paul Mellon Professor of American History and Emeritus Master of Clare College
Jeremy D. Bailey, University of Houston, Professor of Political Science and the Honors College
Anthony D. Bartl, Angelo State University, Professor of Political Science and Philosophy
Mathieu Billings, University of Indianapolis, Professor of History Brad Birzer, Hillsdale College, Russell Amos Kirk Chair in History
John Bodnar, Indiana University, Distinguished and Chancellor's Professor of History
Rebecca Brannon, James Madison University, Professor of History Patrick Breen, Providence College, Associate Professor of History Jeff Broadwater, Barton College, Professor of History
Stewart Burns, Union Institute & University, Professor of Ethical & Creative Leadership and Martin Luther King Jr. Studies
Andrew Burstein, Louisiana State University, Charles P. Manship Professor of History
Andrew Busch, Claremont McKenna College, Crown Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow
Vincent Cannato, University of Massachusetts Boston, Associate Professor of History
H. Lee Cheek, East Georgia State College, Dean of Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science
Erwin Chemerinsky, UC Berkeley Law School, Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law
Mark Christensen, Assumption College, Associate Professor of History
Catherine Clinton, University of Texas, San Antonio, Denman Endowed Professor of American History
Nicholas Cole, Oxford University, Senior Research Fellow
Jonathan Den Hartog, Samford University, Professor of History, Chair
Paul Dickson, author and popular historian
Brian Domitrovic, Sam Houston State University, Associate Professor of History
Jim Downs, Connecticut College, Professor of History and Director of American Studies Program
Melvyn Dubofsky, Binghamton University, Emeritus Professor of History Todd Estes, Oakland University, Department Chair and Professor of History
Andy Fisher, William & Mary, Associate Professor of History and Director of Environmental Science and Policy
A. James Fuller, University of Indianapolis, Professor of History
Frank W. Garmon, Jr., Christopher Newport University, Visiting Faculty at the Center for American Studies
Malcolm Gaskill, University of East Anglia, Professor of Early Modern History
Glenda Gilmore, Yale University, Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History Emerita
John Steele Gordon, author and popular historian
Allen Guelzo, Princeton University, Senior Research Scholar in the Council of the Humanities, Lincoln Prize winner (2000, 2005, 2008)
Kevin Gutzman, Western Connecticut State University, Professor of History David E. Hamilton, University of Kentucky, Professor of History Phil Hamilton, Christopher Newport University, Professor of History
John Earl Haynes, Library of Congress
Steven Hayward, UC Berkeley, Senior Resident Scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies
Kenneth J. Heineman, Angelo State University, Professor of History Rebeccah Heinrichs, Hudson Institute, Senior Fellow
Stephanie Hinnershitz, Cleveland State University, Professor of History Maurice Isserman, Hamilton College, Professor of History
Glen Jeansonne, University of Wisconsin, Emeritus Professor of History Michael Kazin, Georgetown University, Professor of History
Jennifer D. Keene, Chapman University, Department Chair and Professor of History
LeeAnna Keith, The Collegiate School
Thomas Kidd, Baylor University, Distinguished Professor of History Harvey Klehr, Emory University, Professor of Political Science Frank Lambert, Purdue University, Professor Emeritus of History
Edward G. Lengel, The National World War II Museum, National Humanities Medal Winner (2005)
Gordon Lloyd, Pepperdine University, Dockson Emeritus Professor of Public Policy; The Ashbrook Center
Robert McMahon, Ohio State University, Ralph D. Mershon Distinguished Professor, Emeritus Faculty
Bonnie M. Miller, University of Massachusetts Boston, Associate Professor of American Studies
Dan Monroe, Millikin University, Associate Professor and John C. Griswold Distinguished Professor of History
John E. Moser, Ashland University, Professor of History & Political Science
Barton A. Myers, Washington and Lee University, Associate Professor of History
Peter C. Myers, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Professor of Political Science, Visiting Scholar, Heritage Foundation
Cathal J. Nolan, Boston University, Associate Professor of History and Executive Director of the International History Institute
Johnathan O'Neill, Georgia Southern University, Professor of History Mackubin Owens, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Senior Fellow Chester Pach, Ohio University, Associate Professor of History Michael Parrish, UC San Diego, Professor of History
Jason Pierce, Angelo State University, Associate Professor of History David Pietrusza, author and popular historian
Joe Postell, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Professor of Political Science
Steve Puleo, author and popular historian
Martin H. Quitt, University of Massachusetts Boston, Professor Emeritus of History
Jack Rakove, Stanford University, Professor of History and American Studies, Pulitzer Prize winner (1997)
James H. Read, College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University, Professor of Political Science
Gregory L. Schneider, Emporia State University, Professor of History
Timothy J. Shannon, Gettysburg College, Department Chair and Professor of History
Amity Shlaes, Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, Board Chair and author
Julie Silverbrook, iCivics, Senior Director of Growth Initiatives
Brooks D. Simpson, Arizona State University, ASU Foundation Professor of History and faculty head of the Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication faculty
Mark Summers, University of Kentucky, Professor of History
Adam Tate, Clayton State University, Department Chair of Humanities and Professor of History
Alan Taylor, University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Chair, Pulitzer Prize winner (1996, 2014), Bancroft Prize winner (1996), and Beveridge Award winner (1996)
Mark Thomas, University of Virginia, Professor of History
Stephen Tootle, College of the Sequoias, Professor of History
Michael Tougias, author and popular historian
John van Atta, The Brunswick School, Oakland Chair of American History
Artemus Ward, Northern Illinois University, Professor of Political Science and Faculty Associate of Public Law
Benjamin Waterhouse, University of North Carolina, Associate Professor of History
John C. Waugh, independent historian
Jonathan W. White, Christopher Newport University, Associate Professor of American Studies
W.E. White, Christopher Newport University, Associate Professor of Leadership and American Studies
Michael Zuckert, University of Notre Dame, Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science, Emeritus; Visiting Professor, Arizona State University’s School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership
Lead Reviewers
Carol Berkin, Baruch College & The Graduate Center, CUNY, Presidential Professor of History, Emerita (Core Reviewer of Units 1-8)
Rob McDonald, U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Professor of History (Core Reviewer of Units 1-8)
Reviewers
Stuart Leibiger, La Salle University, Department Chair and Professor of History (Reviewer, Unit 1, 1491-1763)
Darren Staloff, The City College of New York, Professor of History (Reviewer, Unit 2, 1763-1800)
Daniel Feller, University of Tennessee, Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Papers of Andrew Jackson (Reviewer, Unit 3, 1800— 1844)
Matthew Pinsker, Dickinson College, Professor of History and Pohanka Chair in American Civil War History (Reviewer, Unit 4, 1844-1877)
David Zonderman, North Carolina State University, Department Head and Alumni Distinguished Professor of History (Reviewer, Unit 5, 1877-1898)
Paul Moreno, Hillsdale College, William and Berniece Grewcock Chair in Constitutional History, Professor of History, Dean of Social Sciences (Reviewer, Unit 6, 1898-1945)
Mary C. Brennan, Texas State University, Professor of History (Reviewer, Unit 7, 1945-1980 and Unit 8, 1980—Present Day)
Jeremi Suri, University of Texas at Austin, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, Professor of Public Affairs and History (Reviewer, Unit 8, 1980—Present Day)
Assessment Writers Susan Pingle
John Struck
Pilot Teachers Allison Collier Benjamin Donnelly Kathy Hagee Bridgette Howell Chris Kemp Jessica Matsler Matt Ochs
Kathy Saar Michael Sandstrom
Megan Towle
Inquiry Organizer
Inquiry Organizer
Chapter
Introductory Essay
Narratives
Decision Points
Point- Counterpoints
Primary Sources
Lessons
Unit Essay Activity
Summary of chapter objectives and resources
In-depth overview of significant events in the time period
Shorter essays on a dramatic story or individual
Narratives that describe a pivotal decision in history
Differing sides of an argument presented by scholars or historical figures
Firsthand accounts from the time period
Instructions and handouts to engage students in the classroom
Culminating essay based on AP LEQs to assess chapter objectives
Unit 1: Chapter 1 (1491-1607)
Compelling Question: How did the collision of cultures create a “New World”?
Chapter Objectives:
e Students will be able to explain the development of the systems of exchange of resources, goods, and peoples between Europe, Africa, and the Americas that developed due to European exploration of the Atlantic world.
e Students will be able to evaluate the social, cultural, geographic, economic, and political impact of European contact with Native Americans and the Americas.
Resources:
e Question Formulation Technique (QET): Map of 1491 vs. 1754 Lesson
e Native People Narrative
e The Oral Tradition of the Foundation of the Iroquois Confederacy Primary Source
e Watercolors of Algonquin Peoples in North Carolina, 1585 Primary Source
Supporting Question 1: What were the social, political, and economic structures of American peoples before the arrival of Europeans?
Supporting Question 2: What Resources: motivated and enabled Europeans to begin exploring the globe in the e Richard Hakluyt and
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? the Case for
Supporting Question 3: What was the initial contact between Europeans and native peoples like?
Undertaking Sea Voyages Lesson Hernando de Soto Narrative Columbus’s Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, 1494 Primary Source Should We Remember Christopher Columbus as a Conqueror or Explorer? Point- Counterpoint
Henry Hudson and Exploration Narrative
Resources:
First Contacts Narrative
Paideia Seminar: Christopher Columbus Lesson Montezuma and Cortés Decision Point Cortés’s Account of Tenochtitlan, 1522 Primary Source Columbian Exchange Narrative
The Florentine Codex, c. 1585 Primary Source
Supporting Question 4: How did the Resources: contact between Europeans and native peoples affect Europe, Africa, e Origins of the Slave and the Americas? Trade Narrative e Life in the Spanish Colonies Narrative e Las Casas on the Destruction of the Indies, 1552 Primary Source e Writing Practice: Building ‘Thesis Statements Lesson
Additional Resources:
e Chapter 1 Introductory Essay: 1491-1607
Unit 1 Essay Activity
How did the collision of cultures create a “New World”?
Option A: Compare and contrast British and Spanish imperial goals in the New World between 1491 and 1763.
Europeans believed they discovered an entirely new place when they encountered the diverse inhabitants of North and South America. Contact between the hemispheres began a long process of exchange in people, goods, customs, language, religion, and disease. Each group’s political, economic, and social structures felt the effects of this exchange, sometimes with devastating consequences. Through this inquiry, students will evaluate primary and secondary sources to assess how contact between Europeans and native peoples forever affected European and American civilizations. Assess students’ progress in understanding the compelling question for this chapter by assigning the Unit 1 Essay Activity.
Some components of this resource may contain terminology that is no longer used because the terms are recognized to be offensive or derogatory, and some components may contain images that would be considered offensive or derogatory today. These terms and images have been retained in their original usage in order to present them accurately in their historical context for student learning, including understanding why these are not acceptable today.
Chapter 1 Introductory Essay: 1491-1607 In this section, you will
e Explain the context for European encounters in the Americas from 1491 to 1607
Written by: Alan Taylor, University of Virginia
Introduction
During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Europeans explored the world’s oceans and distant coasts. Once a barrier to exploration, the Atlantic Ocean now became their route to other seas, faraway regions, and people unknown. In the “Age of European Exploration,” voyagers rounded southern Africa to cross the Indian Ocean, reaching India and the East Indies. Between 1519 and 1521, Portugal’s Ferdinand Magellan became the first person to circle the globe. In an unprecedented burst of new geographic knowledge, daring, and enterprise, explorers built outposts on newly discovered shores, creating the first global trade empires based on oceanic shipping ([link]). (See the Ship Technology Lesson.)
The Iberian countries of Spain and Portugal led the way in the European Age of Exploration and the creation of maritime empires. Spanish shipping routes are shown in white and Portuguese routes in
blue.
The Portuguese and the Spanish in the New World
The expansion was begun by Portugal, a kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula of southwestern Europe. Sailing along the west coast of Africa, Portuguese mariners sought new sources of gold, ivory, pepper, and slaves. They slowly but steadily probed southward until 1498, when Vasco da Gama sailed around the continent’s southern tip and crossed the Indian Ocean to reach India.
The riches of that new trade route fascinated Portugal’s Iberian neighbors, the Spanish. Seeking an alternate route to the trade riches of Asia, the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella enlisted the help of a mariner from Genoa (in what is now Italy) named Christopher Columbus. Like other educated Europeans, Columbus knew the world was round. Therefore, in theory, sailing due west would take his fleet to China or Japan, promising sources of silks and spices. He had no idea, however, of the exact
circumference of the earth and greatly underestimated it. He also did not know that the Americas would block a direct voyage westward.
In 1492, with three ships and ninety men, Columbus followed the trade winds southwest from Spain past the Canary Islands and out into the Atlantic. To his surprise, he reached then-unknown islands, the Bahamas and West Indies, located in the Caribbean Sea. Columbus stubbornly insisted that the islands were the East Indies near the mainland of Asia. Although the natives, the Taino, were unlike any people he had ever seen or read about, he called them “Indians,” a name for all the native populations that has stuck in the writings of Europeans and their descendants. (See the Native People Narrative.)
Sailing home, Columbus reported to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain in early 1493. They authorized an immediate and larger expedition of seventeen ships, twelve hundred men, and many livestock. This time the Spanish came to stay, to dominate the land and the natives, and to weave the new settlements into an empire to support a European power.
Colonization proved tragic for the Taino. The Spanish viewed them as primitive savages fit for conquest and slavery. They aimed to convert the natives to Christianity and introduce them to the civilization of Spain. Using the military advantages of horses, cannons, steel swords, pikes, and crossbows, the Spanish killed and captured thousands of Taino. Others they shipped to Spain for sale as slaves, but most had to work on plantations or in gold mines in the new Spanish colonies. The Taino population declined from 300,000 in 1492 to a mere five hundred by 1548. Most died as a result of diseases to which they lacked immunity and that unintentionally were brought across the Atlantic by the Spanish, though some died because of enslavement and outbreaks of violence. The Spanish had not intended to destroy the Indians, whom they preferred to exploit as workers and tributaries—but exploitation sometimes led to violence. (See the First Contacts Narrative, the Should We Remember Christopher Columbus as a Conqueror or Explorer? Point-Counterpoint, and the Paideia Seminar: Christopher Columbus Lesson.)
To continue to work their mines, ranches, and plantations, the Spanish colonists sought new slaves by raiding the mainland of Central and South
America. In Cuba, a brilliant but ruthless adventurer named Hernan Cortés became intrigued by reports of a wealthy empire in the highlands of central Mexico. There, by conquering their neighbors and exacting tribute, the Aztecs had grown rich and built a city called Tenochtitlan that was larger than any city in Spain. It featured lofty pyramids superintended by priests and ruled by an emperor named Montezuma. But in their rise to power, the Aztecs had also made enemies an invader could recruit.
By alternating brutal force with shrewd diplomacy, Cortés forged partnerships with Indians along his route into Mexico’s interior. Alarmed by the Spanish weapons and alliances, Montezuma tried to buy Cortés off with gifts. Instead, the invader seized the emperor. When the Aztecs fought back, the Spanish destroyed Tenochtitlan. Deploying thousands of new captives as Slaves, the Spanish rebuilt the city as the capital of a new colony, which they called New Spain. By his death in 1547, Cortés had become the wealthiest man in the new Spanish empire. (See the Montezuma and Cortés Decision Point and the Cortés’s Account of Tenochtitlan, 1522 Primary Source.)
Cortés’s spectacular success inspired other Spanish conquistadores— enterprising soldiers who sought wealth. The conquistadores regarded plunder, slaves, and tribute as just rewards for men who forced pagans to accept Spanish rule and the Christian faith. Although many Indians embraced the Christianity promoted by Roman Catholic Spanish missionaries and its promise of eternal life in heaven, many others, noting that the Spanish appeared immune to disease, suspected the newcomers knew some powerful supernatural secret that spread death. In search of relief, some embraced the new religion because they saw it as a source of magical protection.
Some missionaries spoke out against the heavy casualties and massive destruction wrought by the conquistadores. These missionaries urged the Spanish crown to exercise greater control over the distant colonies, subordinating the private armies of soldiers. The most eloquent critic was Bartolomé de Las Casas, a former conquistador who repented and became a priest. (See the Las Casas on the Destruction of the Indies, 1522 Primary Source.) Las Casas argued for the humanity and natural rights of the
natives. He asked: “Are these Indians not men? Do they not have rational souls? Are you not obliged to love them as you love yourselves?”
The Spanish crown did issue more rules governing the colonies, but the effort was hampered by continental wars and the Protestant Reformation in Europe, which diverted attention away from the colonies. The crown agreed that the conquistadores killed too many Indians, who might otherwise have become Christian converts and taxpaying subjects. From about ten million in 1500, the Indian population of Mexico declined to one million by 1620. The decline came about primarily from epidemics of new diseases unwittingly introduced by the invaders, but also was the result of violence. (See the Columbian Exchange Narrative and The Florentine Codex, c. 1585 Primary Source.)
Missionary priests also criticized the legal authority granted to conquistadores as exploitive and destructive to Indian communities. Successful conquistadores obtained legal rights known as encomienda to govern and collect tribute from particular Indian villages ((link]). In return, the encomendero was supposed to promote the conversion of Indians to Christianity by supporting a priest and building a church. Other Spaniards obtained private land grants, known as hacienda, which displaced Indian settlements and substituted ranches and mines. In 1573, the priests persuaded the crown to issue the Royal Orders for New Discoveries, which sought to reduce violence against Indians by increasing the power of priests over expeditions by conquistadores. (See the Life in the Spanish Colonies Narrative and the Columbus’s Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, 1494 Primary Source.)
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In this startling image from the Kingsborough Codex (a book written and drawn by native Mesoamericans), a well- dressed Spaniard is shown pulling the hair of a bleeding, severely injured Indian. The drawing was part of a complaint about Spanish abuses of their encomiendas.
The priests were not blameless. They demanded that Indians surrender their traditional beliefs and behaviors and adopt the ways of the Spanish. To that end, they oversaw the destruction of Indian temples, prohibited customary dances, and obliged Indians to practice the rituals of a new faith. The missionaries also ended the Aztec practice of human sacrifice to appease their sun god. Many Indians tried to adapt, but few, if any, could so quickly and completely change everything they believed. While publicly practicing Christianity, some still secretly venerated old idols and conducted traditional ceremonies. They assimilated the Christian faith into their traditional forms of worship.
By 1540 in the Americas, the Spanish had developed the largest empire ever ruled by Europeans, larger even than the ancient domain of the Romans. At its core were the gold- and silver-rich colonies of Mexico and Peru, which eclipsed Spain’s initial settlements on the islands of the Caribbean. During the sixteenth century, the new colonies attracted 250,000 Spanish emigrants. Most of the emigrants were men; they married the widows and daughters of conquered Indians, with whom they produced mixed-race children known as mestizos, who became the majority population of New Spain by 1700. The core colonies developed hundreds of carefully planned towns with a grid of streets around a central plaza, which featured a municipal hall and a church. These towns were trading centers for a land of shrinking Indian villages and expanding Spanish farms and ranches.
Ambitious conquistadores probed northward, deep into the continental interior of what is now the United States, in search of riches held by other Indian empires. In 1539, Hernando de Soto led an expedition from Cuba that landed in what is now Florida and crossed the American southeast, reaching the Mississippi River ({link]). The Spanish discovered many large towns, vast fields of corn, and earthen pyramids topped by wooden temples, but almost no gold. In frustration , they slaughtered Indians who resisted them. In 1542, de Soto fell ill and died, and the remaining men built boats to sail down the Mississippi and return empty handed to Mexico. They left behind diseases that ravaged the region’s Indian nations, reducing the populations to a fraction of their size before contact with Europeans. The survivors of these epidemics abandoned the great riverside towns and
pyramids, dispersing into the hilly hinterland. (See the Hernando de Soto Narrative. )
Hernando de Soto’s exact route is not known, but he and his men opened the door for future Spanish exploration and settlement.
In 1540, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado led a similar expedition north, this time from Mexico into the American southwest, seeking the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola and their fabulous riches. Reaching modern New Mexico, he found substantial villages made of stone and adobe brick, which he called pueblos. He called all the inhabitants “the Pueblos,” although they actually belonged to several cultures with distinct languages. Failing to find gold or silver, Coronado and his conquistadores provoked violence with the Pueblos after demanding supplies. The Spanish also attacked a dozen villages of the Tiwa Indians after again failing to acquire gold or supplies.
Pressing northeastward, they crossed a vast grassy plain known now as the Great Plains. With little wealth to show for his venture, Coronado retreated to Mexico in 1542.
The de Soto and Coronado expeditions were expensive failures and discouraged further efforts by conquistadores. But missionaries wanted to return to the northern frontier of Spain’s new empire, to convert the Indians of Florida and New Mexico. They won support from Charles V, who, as the leader of the preeminent Catholic power in Europe, took the conversion of Indians and the expansion of the faith seriously. The king also saw a Spanish missionary presence as a buffer to keep rival European powers from developing colonies that might be used as a base from which to attack Spain’s valuable territory in Mexico.
In 1564, in fact, a French expedition built a fort it called Fort Caroline on the Atlantic coast of Florida. In 1565, the Spanish sent Pedro Menéndez de Avilés with a small army to take the fort by surprise, slaughter the French garrison, and build a Spanish town named San Agustin (now St. Augustine). The Spanish were unable to attract many colonists to Florida because of repeated Indian attacks and the vast distance from Mexico. However, they tried to convert Indians to Hispanic ways at missions that stretched across the region to the Gulf Coast. By 1675, forty priests were ministering to twenty thousand Indians at thirty-six missions in Florida.
The Spanish also reoccupied the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, with a system of forts and missions centered around a capital they named Santa Fe (meaning “holy faith”). Too few colonists went to such a distant and isolated colony, so again the soldiers and priests had to rely on converting the Indians and taking tribute from them.
By the end of the sixteenth century, King Philip II of Spain ruled not only the Iberian Peninsula (including Portugal) but also a massive empire in the New World, which stretched from modern Florida and New Mexico in North America to the lands of the conquered Inca empire in South America. The Spanish generated great wealth at their core bases in Mexico and Peru. Between 1500 and 1650, they shipped 181 tons of gold and sixteen- thousand tons of silver from the Americas to Europe. This bullion enabled
the Spanish to raise and pay for large armies in Europe. The armies dominated Italy and the Netherlands and threatened the rest of Europe.
Threats to Spanish Sovereignty
To even the military odds in Europe, the French, English, and Dutch wanted a share of the wealth being generated in the Americas. The quickest way to get it was to steal gold and silver from Spanish ships bound for Europe. Queen Elizabeth I of England ({link]) even sanctioned privateers, government-licensed pirates, to raid Spanish ships laden with New World treasure. During the 1580s and 1590s, Francis Drake, the most successful English pirate, sailed into the Pacific Ocean to capture Spanish ships along the Peruvian and Mexican coasts before heading west to complete his voyage around the globe. Lashing back, in 1588, Philip II sent an armada of warships to seize control of the English Channel and assist in an invasion of England. But the English navy and fierce storms combined to scatter and destroy most of the Spanish fleet. Thereafter, Spanish naval power declined while England and France expanded their commercial and colonial reach.
This famous Armada Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I was painted after England’s defeat of Spain in 1588. How has the artist communicated the queen’s power in this image?
State-sanctioned piracy could generate spectacular but unpredictable windfalls. To obtain steadier profits, the other European powers wanted their own American colonies. They wanted to exploit precious mines and develop plantations to raise tropical crops—sugar, cacao, and tobacco—that sold for high prices in Europe. Arguing for the benevolence of their own New World colonies, the French and English developed the “black legend” that the Spanish were uniquely cruel and destructive. Therefore, these critics argued, the Indians would welcome other Europeans as liberators.
The French and the English had many violent encounters with American Indians in Canada and the eastern seaboard of North America. One English colonist wrote, “Our intrusion into their possession shall tend to their great good, and no way to their hurt, unlesse as unbridled beastes, they procure it to themselves.” For his part, the Powhatan leader Opechancanough asserted, “Before the end of two moons there should not be an Englishman in all their countries.” English settlers at Jamestown and Powhatan Indians attacked each other and sometimes engaged in wholesale massacres and retaliatory strikes. Although most encounters were based upon mutually beneficial trade, violence erupted often between Europeans and American Indians.
The French Arrive in the North
As the French found out in Florida in 1565, it was dangerous to settle too close to the Spanish colonies. The French did better when they probed the northern waters and coasts of Canada—a land the Spanish had dismissed as too cold and barren—in the early seventeenth century. The French hoped to find either precious metals or the fabled Northwest Passage through, or around, the continent to reach the Pacific and the trade riches of Asia. Failing in both goals, they instead discovered coastal waters teeming with fish and sea mammals: seals and whales. During the warmer months, French fishermen began to visit the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Grand Banks near Newfoundland. In the fall, they sailed home with their catch, which they had dried in the sun and packed into barrels.
Some fishermen began to trade with the Indians, who were skilled hunters living among many fur-bearing mammals, particularly beaver. Although the northern climate discouraged agriculture, it yielded especially thick and valuable furs, which fetched high prices back in Europe, where a craze for felt hats had developed. Indians eagerly traded the furs for European goods, including steel knives, hatchets, and arrowheads. (See the Henry Hudson and Exploration Narrative.)
Indians grew dependent on these new goods, especially the steel weapons. Well-armed Indians nations could attack their neighbors, taking away valuable hunting grounds where they could kill more beavers to trade for
more weapons. To avoid destruction, all had to find a European trade partner. But the Indians could also manipulate the French traders, who dared not alienate their suppliers of furs. Coming in small numbers as they did, the French could not afford to bully, dispossess, or enslave the Indians of Canada.
In 1608, Samuel de Champlain founded a permanent French trading post at Quebec on the St. Lawrence River. His Indian allies and suppliers—the Montagnais and Algonquin—demanded that he help them against their enemies, the Iroquois, who lived to the south. In 1609, Champlain and nine French soldiers joined their Indian allies’ raiding party. Reaching the lake now named for Champlain, they attacked an Iroquois encampment there. Shocked by the French firearms, which killed three chiefs, the Iroquois broke and fled ({link]).
This engraving, styled after a 1609 sketch by Samuel de Champlain, depicts the battle between the Iroquois and Algonquian tribes. Note the presence of the French, armed with guns.
The French advantage proved short-lived, for the Iroquois soon obtained their own guns from Dutch traders who settled along the Hudson River. With their new weapons, the Iroquois raided French settlements and the villages of their Indian allies. In pursuit of fur-trade profits, the French became entangled in complicated Indian alliances and enmities. At the same time, the fur trade escalated the warfare between Indian nations to unprecedented levels of bloodshed and destruction. (See The Oral Tradition of the Foundation of the Iroquois Confederacy Primary Source.)
The English and the Atlantic Coast
While the Spanish dominated the southern part of North America and the French focused their efforts on northern waters, the intervening Atlantic coast became, by default, the target of English colonizers. The English named the region “Virginia,” after Queen Elizabeth I, the “Virgin Queen” who never married. In 1587, English adventurers built their first American settlement on Roanoke, a sandy island within the Outer Banks of present- day North Carolina. Raising too few crops, they relied on taking food from the local Indians. Within a few years, the colony mysteriously disappeared, though historians are not sure whether by assimilation with the Croatan tribe or by a devastating attack. (See the Watercolors of Algonquian Peoples in North Carolina, 1585 Primary Source.)
In 1607, the English tried again, a bit farther north at the Chesapeake Bay, which offered better harbors, navigable rivers, and fertile land. The Virginia Company, an entrepreneurial joint-stock company, erected a settlement at Jamestown beside the James River, both places named for the new king of England, James I. One of its leaders was John Smith, bold and dashing despite his humble origins in England, who claimed the Indian Pocahontas had saved him from execution by her father, a powerful chief named Powhatan ((Link]).
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John Smith included an image of his encounter with Powhatan on a map of Virginia drawn in 1622. The caption
beneath the image reads: “Powhatan held this state &
fashion when Capt. Smith was delivered to him prisoner, 1607.”
Repeating the mistake of Roanoke, however, the Jamestown colonists worked too little at raising crops, perhaps because Smith and the other leaders required them to tend communal fields where shirking was widespread. The colony’s ever-changing succession of leaders also ordered them to hunt for gold and seize food from the Indians. As a result, the newcomers suffered from hunger, disease, and violence wrought by Indians led by Powhatan. When a new governor, Thomas Dale, arrived in 1611, he observed untended communal fields, only “some few seeds put into a private garden or two,” and the inhabitants engaged in “their daily and usuall workes, bowling in the streets.” He introduced martial law, which further impinged upon the liberties of the colonists. The subsequent introduction of private property on which they would grow their own food met with considerable success, however. As settler Ralph Hamor observed in 1615, “When our people were fedde out of the common store and laboured jointly in the manuring of the ground, and planting corne, glad was that man that could slippe from his labour, nay the most honest of them in a generall businese, would take so much faithfull and true paines, in a weeke, as now he will doe in a day.”
Conditions slowly improved during the 1610s, thanks in part to the efforts of an especially enterprising colonist named John Rolfe. In 1614, Rolfe married Pocahontas ({link]), a union that diminished hostilities between her people and the English, just as marriages among European royalty cemented diplomatic relations between families and nations. Taking the name “Rebecca” and embracing Christianity, Pocahontas went to England with Rolfe on a promotional tour to raise money for the colony. Her presence, in fine European clothing, suggested the English would succeed in converting the natives. Her capture and conversion also persuaded her elderly and weary father to suspend his war against the Virginia colony. But in 1617, at the age of just 21 years, Pocahontas died of disease in England.
This 1616 engraving by Simon van de Passe, completed when Pocahontas and John Rolfe were presented at court in
England, is the only known contemporary image of Pocahontas, then known as Rebecca. Note her European garb and pose. What message did the artist likely intend to convey with this portrait of Pocahontas, the daughter of a powerful Indian chief?
Rolfe also promoted the cultivation of a promising new crop: tobacco. Although worthless as food, the plant was mildly intoxicating and highly addictive after being dried and cured so it could be smoked. After Rolfe developed milder strains of the plant, the English began to crave tobacco, which grew better in the Virginia heat than in the cool climate of Britain. By 1624, Virginia had produced 200,000 pounds of tobacco. Fourteen years later, that production had soared to three million pounds.
Profits from tobacco and greater opportunity attracted more immigrants to the Virginia colony. From only 350 people in 1616, its numbers had swelled to thirteen thousand by 1650. Most arrived as poor young men who signed an indenture or labor contract to work for wealthy landowners for a set period in return for their passage, food, clothing, and lodging. Settlers also often earned land, transferred to them from planters who received it through the “headright system,” which rewarded those who brought Englishmen to Virginia and thereby saved the Virginia Company, and later the Crown, the expense of populating the colony. The terms of the settlers’ “indentured servitude” typically lasted at least four years. Indentured servants gambled their lives on an unhealthy climate. If they survived their terms, they would obtain land and buy their own servants.
Starting in 1619, an occasional shipment of enslaved Africans arrived to provide another source of labor for those who could afford to buy them. Initially, the colonists treated some of the Africans as indentured servants, who also became free at the end of their terms. Free black people were not an uncommon sight in the first few decades of settlement; some African- born Virginians owned their own land and the labor of English indentured servants and African slaves. In the aftermath of Bacon’s Rebellion (1676), Virginia increasingly switched its labor force from indentured servants to
African slaves, as greater opportunity in England reduced the supply of indentures and the growing Atlantic slave trade expanded the supply of Africans. Over the course of the century, however, the colonists increasingly treated the Africans as lifelong slaves who were forced to pass that status on to their children ({link]).
This eighteenth- century English advertisement for Virginia tobacco (“Martin's Best Virginia at the Tobacco Role in Bloomsbury Market") shows black children working on a tobacco plantation in Virginia. What does the presence of children working the tobacco fields reveal about slavery in the
colony by the 1700s?
The colony’s early years took a grisly toll. Between 1607 and 1622, about ten thousand colonists settled in Virginia, but only a fifth were still alive in 1622 when their Indian neighbors launched a massacre that had left 347 Englishmen dead by day’s end. A critic declared that the colony had become “a slaughterhouse.” The death rate exceeded the birth rate in Virginia throughout the seventeenth century because of the unhealthy Tidewater climate and prevalence of disease. (See The Anglo-Powhatan War of 1622 Narrative.)
Yet the English had come to Virginia to stay, to the dismay of the Indians, whose numbers also decreased as a result of war and disease. However, the king took control of the colony because the Virginia Company could not handle the problems with the Indian population or the discontent of the settlers. Moreover, an investigation revealed the shocking mortality rates. Thereafter, the crown appointed a governor who had to cooperate with the New World’s earliest elected legislature, known as the House of Burgesses. This body first convened in Jamestown in the summer of 1619, only a few days before the first ship carrying enslaved Africans arrived at a dock a few hundred feet away. These conflicting visions of democracy and slavery continued to shape America. (See the Origins of the Slave ‘Trade Narrative.)
In the 1620s, the English developed another set of colonies, known as “New England,” farther north along the coast (and beyond the small Dutch colony of New Netherland on the Hudson River). A colder, rockier land, New England was less promising for cultivating crops for export to England. A group called the Pilgrims was the first to arrive there in 1620. The Pilgrims were separatists who believed the Church of England was irredeemable and saw no other solution but to leave the Church and the country. After a brief stay in Holland, the Pilgrims eventually set sail for the New World and settled just north of Cape Cod in the town of Plymouth. (See the Reasons for the Pilgrims’ Emigration Decision Point.) According to their governor, William Bradford, they “fell upon their knees and blessed the God of
Heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth.” In signing the Mayflower Compact, they agreed to cooperate and write just laws.
The region also attracted colonists who adhered to a purist form of Protestant Christianity, which had led their critics at home in England to call them “Puritans.” The Puritans felt persecuted by the English government and troubled by the immoralities they detected in England. They were a hard-working as well as a moralistic people. One Puritan preached, “God sent you unto this world as unto a Workhouse, not a Playhouse.” While most Puritans stayed behind in England, thousands went to New England during the 1630s to establish a model society governed by their understanding of the Bible. They expected that such a “Bible Commonwealth” would prosper and inspire the people back in England to copy their example—as Governor John Winthrop put it, to be “a city upon a hill,” a phrase he borrowed from the Book of Matthew ([link]). (See the A
Source.)
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(a) In the 1629 seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, an Indian is shown asking colonists to “Come over and help us.” This seal indicates the religious ambitions of (b) John Winthrop, the colony’s first governor, for his “city upon a hill.”
Unable to agree among themselves on the matters of religion, dissidents left Massachusetts and Plymouth to found other colonies in nearby Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. Rhode Island tended to attract radicals who broke with New England orthodoxy, including Roger Williams, who favored a stricter separation of church and state, and Anne Hutchinson, who was banished because she refused to back down from her claim to women’s right to convene meetings to discuss religious beliefs. (See the Anne Hutchinson and Religious Dissent Narrative.) Although they bickered with one another, the New England colonists united to fight the Indians who resisted their expansion. For example, in 1637, they destroyed the Pequot Indians of eastern Connecticut. (See The Salem Witch Trials Narrative. )
Unlike the Virginians, most of the New Englanders came from the middle class and emigrated as free families; they were often married couples with young children. Although twice as many English had migrated to Virginia, New England had the larger population of colonists by 1660, thanks to a more equal balance of the sexes, a healthier climate, better living conditions, and a higher birth rate.
New Englanders diversified their economy and did not focus on tobacco and other cash crops, as southerners did. They developed smaller farms and raised a little of everything: wheat, rye, barley, com, potatoes, vegetables, chickens, hogs, horses, and cattle. Because the crops were not labor intensive, labor was supplied by the settlers’ many children rather than by slaves or indentured servants. For export, the region also developed fisheries and shipbuilding. In contrast to the extremes of wealth and poverty found in England and the Chesapeake Bay area, a broad middle class of yeoman farmers populated New England. These farmers were literate in a society that valued education and scripture reading. In Massachusetts Bay, freemen who were older than 21 years and church members could vote. Although their farms produced less wealth than did the plantations of the Chesapeake area, a broad equality characterized the farmers and tradesmen of New England. The wealthiest were a few merchants in the seaports, who managed the export of fish and ships, and the import of manufactured goods from England and enslaved Africans in the Atlantic slave trade.
Conclusion
By the early seventeenth century, Europeans had come by the thousands to dominate the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of North America. They built rival empires covering much of the Americas and competed to control the resources and Indians. Arriving first, the Spanish claimed the densest areas of Indian civilization in Mesoamerica. They also sustained weaker colonies along a broad northern frontier stretching from New Mexico to Florida. Arriving in smaller numbers, the French developed a far northern colony and relied on fishing and on trading furs with Indians living near their sparse settlements in the St. Lawrence Valley. They also formed military alliances with the Indians. The English came relatively late and claimed the temperate region best suited for family farms and tobacco plantations.
Agriculture attracted and sustained many more immigrants in Virginia and New England than the French could muster for Canada or the Spanish could attract to Florida and New Mexico. In the contest to colonize North America, the English had the advantage of growing numbers but the disadvantage of fiercer Indian resistance. Despite initial military advantages, Europeans did not drive the Indians from the interior for another two centuries.
Note: Watch this BRI Homework Help video on The Colonization of America to
review of the reasons different European powers claimed portions of the New World:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/e8my1VY30GA
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between Asia and flourishes in Leif Ericson Columbus North America Yucatan Peninsula arrives in arrives in ca. 13,000- ca. 2,000 BCE- present-day Canada Bahamas 7,000 BCE 900 CE ca. 1000 1492 ca. 5,000 BCE ca. 1100 1325-1521 1400-1532 Corn domesticated in Cahokia at its Aztec civilization Inca Empire Mesoamerica peak near modern flourishes in thrives in
St. Louis present-day Mexico South America
As shown on this timeline, thousands of years of history transpired on the North and South American continents before 1492. What are the arguments for and against focusing this course on events that took place after the arrival and lasting settlement of Europeans?
Additional Chapter Resources
¢ Question Formulation Technique (QFT): Map of 1491 vs. 1754 Lesson e Ship Technology Lesson e Richard Hakluyt and the Case for Undertaking Sea Voyages Lesson
e Paideia Seminar: Christopher Columbus Lesson e Writing Practice: Building Thesis Statements Lesson
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Explain how small numbers of Spanish conquistadores succeeded in conquering larger numbers of Indians.
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Explain why the French concentrated their colonial effort on the north and Canada.
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Primary Sources
de Champlain, Samuel. “’The Iroquois Were Much Astonished That Two Men Should Have Been Killed So Quickly’: Samuel de Champlain Introduces Firearms to Native Warfare, 1609.” History Matters. From Samuel de Champlain, The Works of Samuel de Champlain (Toronto, 1925), Vol 2, 89-101. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6594
Percy, George. “Jamestown: 1609-10: ’Starving Time,’” National Humanities Center. http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/amerbegin/settlement/text2/Jamesto wnPercyRelation.pdf
Suggested Resources
Calloway, Colin G. New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England New York: Hill & Wang, 1983.
Crosby, Alfred W., Jr. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Horn, James. Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth- Century Chesapeake. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Murrin, John M. “Beneficiaries of Catastrophe: The English Colonies in America.” In The New American History, edited by Eric Foner. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997.
Phillips, Carla Rahn, and D. William, Jr. The Worlds of Christopher Columbus. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Steele, Ian K. Warpaths: Invasions of North America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Taylor, Alan. American Colonies. New York: Viking-Penguin, 2001.
Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Warren, Wendy. New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America. New York: Liveright, 2017.
Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
White, Sam. A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter with North America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017.
Native People In this section, you will
e Explain how and why various native populations in the period before
European contact interacted with the natural environment in North America
Written by: Andrew H. Fisher, The College of William & Mary
United States history did not start with Columbus sailing west, John Smith meeting Pocahontas, or Pilgrims celebrating the first Thanksgiving. For at least twelve thousand years before those events took place, North America was home to a diversity of human communities whose living descendants are now Called Native Americans or American Indians ({link]). Contrary to a persistent but outdated view of history, says historian Colin Calloway, “What Columbus ’discovered’ was not a “new world,’ but another old world, rich in diverse peoples, histories, and cultures.”
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This map shows the major cultures of North America’s people before contact with Europeans in the late fifteenth century. Native societies adapted to and transformed their environments through innovations in agriculture, resource use, and social structure.
By 1492, the area north of Mexico contained between seven million and eighteen million people, divided into hundreds of distinct cultures that had evolved and adapted to the varied environments of North America. Along the Northwest Coast, for example, rich ocean resources and abundant salmon runs enabled Native Americans to develop societies of unique complexity. Without agriculture or domesticated animals, they sustained large, mostly sedentary villages featuring immense plank houses and elaborate artwork. Totem poles were one marker of the social stratification that also distinguished Northwest Coast cultures north of the Columbia River. Hereditary elites controlled access to valuable resources, seized captives from enemy groups and made them slaves, and held potlatches— lavish ceremonial feasts—to reinforce their high place in society by redistributing surplus food and goods to those of lower status.
Northwest Coast Indians also traded with Native Americans to the east, on the Columbia Plateau of present-day Oregon and Washington. This region has a semiarid climate that supported smaller human populations in more egalitarian societies. Tribes such as the Nez Perce, Yakama, and Okanogan followed a seasonal way of life that took them from semipermanent winter villages to fisheries and foraging areas used by many different Indian nations. Salmon was their major source of protein, but the bulk of their calories came from the wild plant foods gathered by women, who shared a roughly equal amount of power and responsibility with men. Women often led work groups and ceremonial gathering expeditions. They also butchered and cleaned the large amounts of game and fish that were exchanged for other goods in the great, intertribal marketplace on the Columbia River.
Trade networks linked the Northwest to California, one of the most densely populated and culturally diverse parts of North America. At the time of first contact with the Spanish in 1542, approximately 300,000 Indians occupied the coastal areas and river valleys west of the Sierras. They spoke as many as one hundred different languages but lived a similar lifestyle based on hunting, fishing, and foraging. California’s extensive oak woodlands were an especially important source of food, furnishing perhaps 600,000 tons of acorns annually to gatherers. Women gathered and ground the acorns into a highly nutritious meal, while men hunted and fished.
The harsh climate and scarce resources of the Great Basin forced the Paiutes, Shoshones, and Utes to move frequently and kept their populations relatively low. At a few locations, such as Pyramid Lake in Nevada, adequate supplies of water and fish did allow sedentary communities to form. Paiutes in the Owens Valley dug irrigation ditches to encourage the growth of edible bulbs. Ute territory in western Colorado and Utah also yielded a greater variety of resources. For most groups, however, survival required seasonal migration to take advantage of changes in the availability of small game, waterfowl, and wild plants. Traveling in small bands or family units, Paiutes and Shoshones stored caches of food and equipment to see them through the winter. Whenever possible, Basin Indians supplemented local products with trade items from beyond the region, including buffalo hides from the Great Plains.
The Native Americans of the Plains had been hunting bison for centuries. Plains tribes did not have horses until the Spanish brought them from Europe; to slaughter buffalo, they used bluffs or cliffs called buffalo jumps to drive herds to stampede over the edge ([link]).
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This formation, known as Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in southern Alberta, Canada, is an example of the cliffs used for “buffalo jumps.”
The tribes followed the migration of bison and other game animals that filled their bellies, clothed their bodies, sheltered their families, and equipped their toolkits. Buffalo robes also served as a valuable trade item that could be exchanged for corn and other crops. The Pawnee combined horticulture and hunting to support permanent earth-lodge villages along the Platte River (in modern Nebraska). In these semi-agrarian societies, women tended the fields and controlled the produce, which gave them economic and social power.
Maize cultivation, which had spread north from Mexico, also shaped many native cultures of the Southwest. After prolonged droughts undermined the Ancestral Puebloan civilization in the thirteenth century, people migrated east and west to establish the mesa-top Pueblo, Zuni, and Hopi villages that greeted Spanish conquistadors. These societies staged elaborate dances to the spirits known as kachinas that they believed brought rain to their fields. All had uneasy relations with the Apache and Navajo bands that moved into the region during the fifteenth century. Although some Navajos cultivated crops in the canyons of northern Arizona, they and the Apache lived primarily by hunting and gathering, and by raiding their agrarian neighbors. They also began herding sheep and goats, which were introduced by the Spanish.
East of the Mississippi River, epidemics and violence unleashed by Spanish expeditions in the early sixteenth century destabilized the great chiefdoms that had dominated much of the Southeast. The ancestors of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek gradually abandoned settlements such as Moundville in Alabama and Etowah in Georgia, where they had built huge earthen pyramids surrounded by plazas, palisades, and farms.
By the time English colonists arrived on the eastern seaboard, few large chiefdoms existed. One exception was the Powhatan confederacy, which controlled most of eastern Virginia through conquest and diplomacy. Another was the Five Nations, or Iroquois confederacy, in the Northeast. Formed in the centuries before European contact, this “Great League of Peace” ended rampant warfare and established intertribal cooperation among the Mohawk, Oneida, Ononondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca (and later a sixth tribe, the Tuscorora).These Iroquois nations and other tribes of the
Eastern Woodlands lived in matrilineal societies (i.e., they traced their ancestry through the female line). They also accorded considerable power to clan mothers, who decided the fate of captives, chose or removed sachems (chiefs), and participated in councils. Because women grew the corn, beans, and squash that sustained war parties, they could withhold food if they deemed an attack to be against Iroquois interests. By the seventeenth century, though, the Five Nations had waged many wars against Algonquian-speaking enemies such as the Delaware, Huron, and Ojibwe. European imperial powers exploited these rivalries by seeking allies in their own wars of conquest, while the Native Americans, in turn, used the Europeans for their own purposes.
Changes were already underway during the sixteenth century as fishermen and merchants from England, France, and other maritime nations began introducing Indians along the Atlantic Coast to exotic goods and exposing them to terrible diseases. Although North America was an old world in 1607, European colonization would soon make it, as one historian wrote, “a new, and often nightmarish, world for Indian peoples.”
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Evaluate and explain the ethnocentric view of North America as a “new world” awaiting discovery, exploration, and settlement in 1492.
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Describe the diversity and dynamism of Native American cultures in North America at the time of European contact.
AP Practice Questions
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Primary Sources
Parker, Arthur C. The Constitution of the Five Nations. Edited by Gerald Murphy. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/iroquois. html
Suggested Resources
Coe, Michael, Dean Snow, and Elizabeth Benson. Atlas of Ancient America. New York: Facts on File, 1986.
Calloway, Colin. First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2016.
Calloway, Colin. New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2013.
Dillehay, Thomas D. The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory. New York: Basic Books, 2000.
Fagan, Brian M. The First North Americans: An Archaeological Journey. London: Thomas and Hudson, 2011.
Josephy, Alvin M., ed. America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus. New York: Knopf, 1992.
Kennedy, Roger G. Hidden Cities: The Discovery and Loss of Ancient North American Civilization. New York: Penguin, 1994.
Kopper, Philip. The Smithsonian Book of North American Indians Before the Coming of the Europeans. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1986.
Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Mann, Charles C. 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. New York: Vintage, 2012.
Milner, George R. The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America. London: Thomas and Hudson, 2004.
Thomas, David Hurst. Exploring Native North America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
First Contacts In this section, you will
e Explain the causes of exploration and conquest of the New World by various European nations
e Explain how and why European and Native American perspectives of others developed and changed in the period
Written by: Mark Christensen, Assumption College
Twelve thousand years ago, rising sea levels submerged the land bridge connecting the Americas and Asia; thus, the Americas developed in isolation from Europe. The first contact between the vastly different cultures of the Europeans and Native Americans represented a rare moment in recorded history, producing impressions that are difficult to alter, even today.
The first documented European contact with the Americas occurred in North America, when the Vikings established a settlement in Newfoundland on the east coast of Canada around 1000 A.D. Norse legends, or sagas, recount a relationship between Vikings and Native Americans defined by violence and frequent attacks. The reason the Vikings eventually abandoned their Newfoundland settlement is the subject of much scholarly debate. Regardless, it appears the Vikings did not have any lasting impact on Native American societies, and the Americas had little impact on Europeans.
However, beginning in the fifteenth century, merchant capitalism, the emergence of navigation tools and improved ship designs, and the desire for a sea route westward to the valuable goods in Asia drove Europeans once again into the Atlantic. Iberians—the people of Spain and Portugal— dominated most of these efforts, although the English, French, and Dutch also played a role. All brought with them the expectation of finding trade
goods and their preconceived notions of strange humans and barbaric societies, often influenced by fictitious travel accounts circulating in Europe at the time. Following the Vikings, the most important contact between Europeans and the Native Americans in North America was begun by Christopher Columbus, working for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain
((link]).
Columbus sailed in three caravels such as these. His flagship, the Santa Maria, was only 58 feet long.
Columbus came to the Americas quite by accident in his search for a route
west from Europe to Asia. Upon arriving in the Caribbean in 1492, sighting Bahamian islands, and eventually landing in Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he believed he had found the islands just southeast of
Asia, or the East Indies. According to his own account, the inhabitants, whom he believed were natives of the East Indies, or Indians, brought the Europeans a variety of goods to trade, including parrots, cotton, and spears. The Europeans had brought trinkets such as glass beads and small brass bells. The native populations’ lack of understanding of European weaponry, their nearly naked appearance, and their lack of what Europeans would term civilization led Columbus to report that they “would make fine servants” and that “with fifty men we could subjugate them all” ((link]).
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Spanish court after his first voyage. The image includes the nakedness of the Native Americans that shocked Columbus.
Columbus also reported that various Caribbean islands held cannibals, people with tails, and women warriors known as Amazons—descriptions all derived from preconceived notions and tales circulating in Europe at the time. In the end, he took six natives back to Spain as proof of his success.
For their part, the native populations surely were equally intrigued by the Europeans. Although documentation is mostly lacking, a few reports do exist. Contrary to popular belief, Native Americans did not believe the Europeans were gods. In general, they found the Europeans to be dirty and unkempt and did not care for their food. Certainly, natives adopted specific European goods they deemed most useful, such as metal tools, weapons, and cloth, but it was a selective process and they did not readily adopt much technology. Echoing the Europeans’ opinions of them, the natives viewed many practices and habits of the European newcomers as little less than savage.
Over the course of his subsequent three voyages to the Caribbean, Columbus established Spanish towns and continued to trade with natives. However, the these Native Americans were subsistence farmers and fishers, not producers of valuable exports and commodities. Mistaken expectations held by both Europeans and Native Americans in these first encounters led to outbreaks of violence and abuse. The eventual decimation of the native population was largely due to disease. Yet the settlement of the Spaniards in the Caribbean was a stepping stone to their farther incursions into the Americas.
Columbus’s third and fourth voyages took him to modern-day Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, and sustained contact occurred afterward. In 1500, Spain authorized Rodrigo de Bastidas to explore lands not previously discovered by Columbus. In 1500 and 1501, Bastidas made contact with various Native Americans in Jamaica and Santo Domingo, and traded European trinkets for gold, pearls, and other items. He also acquired Native American slaves. Like Columbus and later Europeans, Bastidas was interested in tradable goods. If the Native Americans
possessed them and traded them freely, relations remained peaceful. However, in the absence of valuable goods or trade, violence and slavery typically followed; enslaved people were a marketable good always in high demand throughout the New World.
The Portuguese discovered Brazil in 1500, but it remained of minor importance to the crown during the first few decades that followed, while peaceful coastal trading of Brazilwood (desired for its red dye) took place with the various Native American groups. French traders also frequented the coast of Brazil until Portugal initiated its colonization effort in 1531. This enterprise endowed portions of land, or captaincies, on individual donatories, who settled the land at their own expense in return for the right to create and govern towns, levy taxes, and enslave the Native Americans. As sugar mills began to appear along the coastline, the Native Americans were eventually forced into labor. Slave raiders known as bandierantes pursued them into the interior as they fled and then enslaved and sold them.
Yet not all first contacts resulted in the enslavement of the Native Americans. Occasionally, Europeans encountered sedentary native civilizations, cultures like the Aztec, Maya, and Inca that had ready access to valuable trade items and proved more difficult to conquer. In such cases, other Native Americans allied themselves with the Spaniards to pursue their own interests in defeating long-time enemies and rivals and upsetting existing hierarchies of power. For example, the Tlaxcalans took the opportunity to join the Spaniards in overthrowing the Aztec (also called Mexica), who were their warring rivals. Similar alliances occurred throughout central Mexico and Peru.
Although the Spaniard Hernando de Soto led an expedition into Florida in 1539 and Pedro Menéndez de Avilés established the town of St. Augustine in 1565, the English did not create a successful permanent settlement in the contiguous United States until Jamestown in 1607 in the Chesapeake Bay area. The Jamestown settlers experienced a generally warm initial greeting from the Powhatan people. Yet their permanent presence and continuous exploration provoked a series of attacks from neighboring groups of Native Americans. Along with starvation and disease, such attacks nearly defeated the colony in its first year. This strained first contact foreshadowed a
difficult relationship between Europeans and Native Americans, culminating in a surprise attack on Jamestown by the Powhatan nation in 1622. Nearly 350 settlers were killed, spelling disaster for relations between Europeans and American Indians.
The relationships originating from first contact between Europeans and American Indians were complex and varied and should not be viewed as monolithic. In general, when Native Americans possessed goods or land they were willing to trade to Europeans, relations remained peaceful. The absence of such commodities, however, often led to violence and slavery. This pattern is not new. In fact, it has been replicated worldwide since the rise of civilizations.
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Explain how the Spanish and the Native Americans viewed each other and how this first impression affected their future relationship.
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Explain what characterized the relationships between Europeans and Native Americans after Columbus.
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Explain the main factors determining the relationships between Europeans and Native Americans.
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Primary Sources
Christopher Columbus’s Letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain: https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-now/columbus-reports-his- first-voyage-1493
Suggested Resources
Kicza, John E., and Rebecca Horn. Resilient Cultures: America’s Native Peoples Confront European Colonization, 1500-1800. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Restall, Matthew, and Kris Lane. Latin America in Colonial Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Seed, Patricia. Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Columbian Exchange In this section, you will
e Explain causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effect on Europe and the Americas during the period after 1492
Written by: Mark Christensen, Assumption College
When European settlers sailed for distant places during the Renaissance, they carried a variety of items, visible and invisible. Upon arriving in the Caribbean in 1492, Christopher Columbus and his crew brought with them several different trading goods. Yet they also carried unseen biological organisms. And so did every European, African, and Native American who wittingly or unwittingly took part in the Columbian Exchange—the transfer of plants, animals, humans, cultures, germs, and ideas between the Americas and the Old World. The result was a biological and ideological mixing unprecedented in the history of the planet, and one that forever shaped the cultures that participated.
For tens of millions of years, the earth’s people and animals developed in relative isolation from one another. Geographic obstacles such as oceans, rainforests, and mountains prevented the interaction of different species of animals and plants and their spread to other regions. The first settlers of the Americas, who probably crossed the Bering Strait’s ice bridge that connected modern-day Russia and Alaska thousands of years ago, brought plants, animals, and germs with them from Eurasia. However, scholars have speculated that the frigid climate of Siberia—the likely origin of the Native Americans— limited the variety of species. And although the Vikings made contact with the Americas around 1000, their impact was limited.
A large variety of new flora and fauna was introduced to the New World and the Old World in the Columbian Exchange. New World crops included
maize (corn), chiles, tobacco, white and sweet potatoes, peanuts, tomatoes, Papaya, pineapples, squash, pumpkins, and avocados. New World cultures domesticated only a few animals, including some small-dog species, guinea pigs, llamas, and a few species of fowl. Such animals were domesticated largely for their use as food and not as beasts of burden. For their part, Old World inhabitants were busily cultivating onions, lettuce, rye, barley, rice, oats, turnips, olives, pears, peaches, citrus fruits, sugarcane, and wheat. They too domesticated animals for their use as food, including pigs, sheep, cattle, fowl, and goats. However, cows also served as beasts of burden, along with horses and donkeys. Domesticated dogs were also used for hunting and recreation.
The lack of domesticated animals not only hampered Native Americans development of labor-saving technologies, it also limited their exposure to disease organisms and thus their immunity to illness. Europeans, however, had long been exposed to the various diseases carried by animals, as well as others often shared through living in close quarters in cities, including measles, cholera, bubonic plague, typhoid, influenza, and smallpox.
Europeans had also traveled great distances for centuries and had been introduced to many of the world’s diseases, most notably bubonic plague during the Black Death. They thus gained immunity to most diseases as advances in ship technology enabled them to travel even farther during the Renaissance. The inhabitants of the New World did not have the same travel capabilities and lived on isolated continents where they did not encounter many diseases.
All this changed with Columbus’s first voyage in 1492. When he returned to Spain a year later, Columbus brought with him six Taino natives as well as a few species of birds and plants. The Columbian exchange was underway ([link]). On his second voyage, Columbus brought wheat, radishes, melons, and chickpeas to the Caribbean. His travels opened an Atlantic highway between the New and Old Worlds that never closed and only expanded as the exchange of goods increased exponentially year after year. Although Europeans exported their wheat bread, olive oil, and wine in the first years after contact, soon wheat and other goods were being grown
in the Americas too. Indeed, wheat remains an important staple in North and South America.
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The Columbian Exchange
With European exploration and settlement of the New World, goods, animals, and diseases began crossing the Atlantic Ocean in both directions. This “Columbian Exchange” soon had global implications. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)
Horses, cattle, goats, chickens, sheep, and pigs likewise made their New World debut in the early years of contact, to forever shape its landscapes and cultures. On the lusher grasslands of the Americas, imported populations of horses, cattle, and sheep exploded in the absence of natural predators for these animals in the New World. In central Mexico, native
farmers who had never needed fences complained about the roaming livestock that frequently damaged their crops. The Mapuche of Chile integrated the horse into their culture so well that they became an insurmountable force opposing the Spaniards. The introduction of horses also changed the way Native Americans hunted buffalo on the Great Plains and made them formidable warriors against other tribes.
The Atlantic highway was not one way, and certainly the New World influenced the Old World. For example, the higher caloric value of potatoes and corn brought from the Americas improved the diet of peasants throughout Europe, as did squash, pumpkins, and tomatoes. This, is turn, led to a net population increase in Europe. Tobacco helped sustain the economy of the first permanent English colony in Jamestown when smoking was introduced and became wildly popular in Europe. Chocolate also enjoyed widespread popularity throughout Europe, where elites frequently enjoyed it served hot as a beverage. A few diseases were also shared with Europeans, including bacterial infections such as syphilis, which Spanish troops from the New World spread across European populations when their nation went to war in Italy and elsewhere.
By contrast, Old World diseases wreaked havoc on native populations. Aztec drawings known as codices show Native Americans dying from the telltale symptoms of smallpox. With no previous exposure and no immunities, the Native American population probably declined by as much as 90 percent in the 150 years after Columbus’s first voyage. The Spanish and other Europeans had no way of knowing they carried deadly microbes with them, but diseases such as measles, influenza, typhus, malaria, diphtheria, whooping cough, and, above all, smallpox were perhaps the most destructive force in the conquest of the New World.
Contact and conquest also led to the blending of ideas and culture. European priests and friars preached Christianity to the Native Americans, who in turn adopted and adapted its beliefs. For instance, the Catholic celebration of All Souls and All Saints Day was blended with an Aztec festival honoring the dead; the resulting Day of the Dead festivities combined elements of Spanish Catholicism and Native American beliefs to
create something new. The influence of Christianity was long-lasting; Latin America became overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.
People also blended in this Columbian Exchange. The Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans in the New World procreated, resulting in offspr oma race (ink)
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2s pe, “Venivsriat Aire, com Hulizhe, pefemen hice Ee eile :
Races in the Spanish colonies were separated by legal and social restrictions. In the mid-eighteenth century, casta paintings such as these showed the popular fascination with categorizing individuals of mixed ethnicities.
Throughout the colonial period, native cultures influenced Spanish settlers, producing a mestizo identity. Mestizos took pride in both their pre- Columbian and their Spanish heritage and created images such as the Virgin of Guadalupe—a brown-skinned, Latin American Mary who differed from
her lighter-skinned European predecessors. The Virgin of Guadalupe became the patron saint of the Americas and the most popular among Catholic saints in general. Above all, she remains an enduring example and evidence of the Columbian Exchange.
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Watch this BRI Homework Help video on the Columbian Exchange for a review of the main ideas in this essay.
https://www. youtube.com/embed/ZUSgZeFMofM
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Compare the effects of the Columbian Exchange on North America and Europe.
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Explain why historian Alfred Crosby has described the Columbian Exchange as “Ecological imperialism.”
AP Practice Questions
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Primary Sources
Bartholomew Gosnold’s Exploration of Cape Cod: http://historymatters. gmu.edu/d/6617
Suggested Resources
Crosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. New York: Praeger, 2003.
Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Mann, Charles C. 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. New York: Vintage, 2012.
McNeill, William. Plagues and Peoples. New York: Anchor, 1977.
Hernando de Soto In this section, you will
e Explain causes of the Columbian Exchanges and its effect on Europe and the Americas during the period after 1492
e Explain how the growth of the Spanish Empire in North America shaped the development of social and economic structures over time
Written by: Mark Christensen, Assumption College
Hernando de Soto was born in the late fifteenth century to noble parents in western Extremadura in Spain. The region was home to other famous conquistadors, including Hernando Cortés and the Pizarro brothers. De Soto’s social status allowed him some education, and he became literate. Yet a life in Spain seemed too placid to him, and in his late teens he embarked for the New World for the first time.
De Soto joined other ambitious young men seeking advancement, wealth, and prestige through conquest in the “Indies” after the arrival of Columbus in 1492. He left Spain in 1514 with the expedition of Pedro Arias de Avila, also known as Pedraria Davila, and landed in Darién (modern Panama) in Central America. He spent most of his career in the region participating in various campaigns of conquest and settlement, and his efforts were awarded with an encomienda, a grant of Native Americans’ tribute and labor given by the crown to Spaniards in Nicaragua. De Soto profited from slave trading, but he lacked the status of other conquistadors, such as Hernando Cortés, whose conquest of the Aztecs was becoming widely known. Soon, however, de Soto would get his chance for greater fame.
In 1530, de Soto invested in the efforts of Francisco Pizarro to scout the Pacific coast for gold. In 1532, he joined Pizarro’s expedition to Peru and contributed enough men and money to become a captain. As the expedition
reached the city of Cajamarca in the Peruvian highlands, the men encountered the army of the Inca emperor, Atahualpa. By all accounts, de Soto was a skilled equestrian and fighter. Not surprisingly then, Pizarro chose him and a few other men to invite Atahualpa to a meeting set for the next day. At this fateful encounter, de Soto and the Spanish soldiers attacked the Inca emperor and his retinue without provocation in a slaughter that resulted in Atahualpa’s capture ((Link]).
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(a) Hernando de Soto accompanied (b) another famous conquistador, Francisco Pizzaro, in his exploits in South America. With superior military weapons such as steel swords, armor, guns, horses, and the
element of surprise, Pizzaro and de Soto were able to capture (c) the
ruler of the Inca empire, Atahualpa.
Seizing Native American rulers was a common tactic of conquistadors throughout the New World, who needed gold and silver to pay for their incursions and make them profitable. Observing the Spaniards’ interest in precious metals, Atahualpa offered to fill a room once with gold and twice with silver in return for his freedom. De Soto’s lofty position among the conquistadors was confirmed by his share of this ransom—it was the third largest after those of Francisco and Hernando Pizarro. The windfall and his role in the subsequent conquest of the Inca and their capital city of Cuzco
plucked de Soto from relative obscurity and firmly established him as a leading conquistador.
Yet de Soto remained unsatisfied. Despite serving as lieutenant governor of Cuzco and living in a palace built by a former Inca emperor, he desired his own command and expedition to a territory in the New World. So in 1536 he left Peru and returned to Spain a wealthy man to lobby the crown for such a command. There he was fortunate enough to marry Isabel de Bobadillo, the well-connected daughter of Pedrarias Davila, and be admitted into the highly prestigious military-religious order of knights, the Order of Santiago. After petitioning King Charles V for various concessions, de Soto was granted the governorship of Cuba in 1537 and was made adelantado of Florida. He was also rewarded with the title of marquis in anticipation of his efforts in conquering and settling regions in the New World.
After the discovery of the wealth of the Aztec and Inca empires, many Spaniards were hopeful of finding the next Native American kingdom of riches. This enthusiasm inspired many to join de Soto’s 1539 expedition to Florida, including some who had been in Peru with him. The campaign was sizeable; accounts vary, but approximately 650 to 800 men signed on, including Spaniards, Portuguese, enslaved Africans, free blacks, enslaved Native Americans, and free Native Americans.
De Soto’s experience in Florida was a mix of peaceful and violent encounters with Native Americans. The swampy terrain proved difficult for the men and the more than two hundred horses they brought with them. Like most conquest expeditions, de Soto’s relied on Native American captives to serve as translators and even a Spaniard, Juan Ortiz, who had been captured by Native Americans in Florida years before and now knew two native dialects. Those Native Americans with whom he did communicate at times led de Soto to believe that treasures were to be had elsewhere, a useful tactic to ensure the Spanish departure. Thus, de Soto and his men wandered, searching in vain for riches and kingdoms that did not exist.
In 1542, de Soto died of an unknown illness on what is today the Louisiana/Arkansas border. The remainder of his force—now reduced by
half, largely due to illness and attacks by Native Americans—gave up the expedition and made a laborious voyage to Mexico City, arriving in 1543.
Although it was considered a failure that damaged de Soto’s reputation, the expedition journeyed through what are today eleven states in the American southeast and crossed the Mississippi River. Moreover, the Spanish presence in the region had many unintended consequences. The exposure to European disease (and violence) often resulted in high population loss among the Native Americans and the abandonment of villages, and it set a precedent for future Native American and European interactions. Deserters of de Soto’s expedition included free and enslaved Africans. In one example, after the Spaniards had captured a native cacica, or female ruler, an African slave named Gomez helped her escape to present-day Camden, South Carolina, and became her companion. Scholars argue that the Native American nations in the Spanish-claimed territory of La Florida provided a potential haven for runaway slaves over the next three centuries.
Finally, de Soto’s failed expedition dampened enthusiasm for future forays into the region, resulting in Florida’s sparse settlement by the Spanish and its eventual cession to the United States in 1821. After all, Spaniards preferred to settle on or near sedentary Native American settlements that provided easy access to Native American tribute and labor. Thus, they concentrated mainly on central Mexico (held by the Aztecs) and Peru (the Inca) throughout the colonial period. Regions such as the American Southeast held little appeal to exploring conquistadors, who were always looking for the next “Mexico” or “Peru” instead.
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Explain the methods used by Spanish conquistadors to accumulate wealth, land, and social status in the New World.
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Explain the extent to which de Soto's expedition to the American Southwest was successful in leading to Spanish control of the region.
AP Practice Questions
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Primary Sources
Hernando de Soto’s Letter to Cuban Magistrates:
Suggested Resources
Hudson, Charles. Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South’s Ancient Chiefdoms. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998.
Galloway, Patricia, ed. The Hernando de Soto Expedition: History, Historiography, and “Discovery” in the Southeast. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.
Restall, Matthew, and Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. The Conquistadors: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Schwartz, Stuart B. Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico. Boston: Bedford, 2000.
Thomas, Hugh. Conquest: Cortes, Montezuma, and the Fall of Old Mexico. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
Life in the Spanish Colonies In this section, you will
e Explain causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effect on Europe and the Americas during the period after 1492
e Explain how the growth of the Spanish Empire in North America shaped the development of social and economic structures over time
e Explain how and why European and Native American perspectives of others developed and changed in the period
Written by: Mark Christensen, Assumption College
The reliance of Spain on the cooperation, tribute, and labor of Native Americans and Africans drastically shaped life in colonial Spanish America. Daily life was a complex combination of compliance and rebellion, order and disorder, affluence and poverty. On the one hand, Spaniards relied on Native Americans for labor, tribute, and assistance in governing the many Native American towns. On the other hand, many Native Americans realized the benefits of accommodating the Spaniards to maintain traditional ways of life. In short, cooperation served the interests of both parties, although it was negotiated daily.
Upon their arrival in the New World, Spaniards constructed their colonies and cities upon or alongside established Native American communities such as the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan ({link]), on the site that later became Mexico City. To establish political and economic control over their new colonies, the Spaniards created two “republics”: the Republica de Espanoles and the Republica de Indios. They and their enslaved Africans (and even free Africans) were in the first, and Native Americans were in the second. Although both republics fell under the purview of Spanish law, they operated semi-autonomously, with each established town having its own
town council. For example, Mexico City had both a Spanish and a Native American town council
a
At its height, Tenochtitlan was one of the largest cities in the world, with a population of up to 200,000. After the conquest of the Aztec empire, the Spanish appropriated this floating city as their capital. Note the flag of Imperial Spain at the top left of the island city.
The town councils governed the daily affairs of each town and its inhabitants in each respective republic. Councils in Native American towns were run by Native American officers, often those who already held positions of power. For example, the Maya ruler in most preexisting Maya towns became the governor of the colonial town council. The Native American nobility in each town filled other local government positions. In short, the establishment of the republics, their towns, and their respective town councils allowed the Native Americans a great deal of autonomy and gave the original Native American elite a way to maintain their positions of authority in daily life. The Spanish relied heavily on these Native American
elites not only to maintain order in the towns but also to redirect their systems of tribute into the hands of the Spaniards and assist in the establishment of Catholicism in their towns.
As subjects of Spain, Native Americans had various daily responsibilities. As Christians, they were to attend services and send their children to daily catechism classes. They also paid various religious fees and taxes designed to support the Church in the Spanish colonies. Local priests and officers of the Inquisition (a Roman Catholic tribunal established to investigate and suppress heresy) maintained spiritual order and orthodoxy among all inhabitants of the colonies. In addition, Native Americans had labor and tribute quotas to fill. Such duties provided many opportunities for confrontation and discontent, and the local Native American elite adjudicated many such situations through the town council. Indeed, the archives are full of petitions by Native American councils against corrupt priests and Spanish officials and complaints against excessive tribute quotas. Yet the council likewise mediated local affairs, including land disputes, bills of sale, and the filling of town positions. It even meted out punishments for wrongdoing. In many ways, the town councils in the Republica de Indios allowed Native Americans to continue governing Native Americans.
To govern and tax the Native Americans in the early decades of colonization, the Spanish relied on the encomienda, a grant of native labor and tribute given to Spanish conquistadors and settlers. Abuse and distrust of the system led to its gradual and sometimes incomplete phasing out, with control over Native American tribute and labor reverting to the crown, which tried to control corrupt colonial officials.
Tribute varied according to region and era but included mainly goods Spaniards could ship back to Spain for profit or sell on the local or regional market. Products presented as tribute included maize from Culhuacan, silk from the Mixteca Alta region, honey from Yucatan, pearls from the Caribbean, gold from Columbia, and even cattle from Argentina. After the initial years of colonization, Spaniards in central Mexico organized Native American labor around the repartimiento, or “allotment,” system. The repartimiento required those between the ages of eighteen and fifty years to
give service in a variety of projects, from laboring in a Spaniard’s field to participating in large construction projects. The Native Americans were to receive payment for their labors, but it was often insufficient or withheld. In South America, labor was organized through the mita, an Incan system in which adult Native Americans were drafted for extended periods. For example, the silver mines of Potosi required the labor of thousands of Andean laborers, who were drafted from towns hundreds of miles away and required to serve one year of every seven ([link]). Eventually, the decline in the Native American population and difficulties with the forced-labor system led to the development of wage labor.
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The rich silver deposits of the Cerro Rico mountain in Potosi, in present-day Bolivia, supplied Spain with immense wealth in the sixteenth century. The Spanish appropriated the Incan system of labor tribute known as the mita to ensure a constant source of labor in the mines.
Although Native American tribute and labor served as the linchpin of colonial society, Africans also contributed to the daily life of the Spanish colonies. In general, Spaniards employed native labor whenever possible. However, where the supply was insufficient, they purchased African slaves to work in the more profitable industries such as mining and sugar. For example, after the decimation of the native population in the Caribbean, Spaniards brought thousands of enslaved people from West Africa to work the islands’ sugarcane fields. This drastically altered the Caribbean’s population demographics. Not all enslaved Africans worked in the mines or sugar plantations. In the cities and large towns, they were rented out and served in other domestic roles, including as wet nurses and maids. Africans also learned the skilled trades of their owners and became proficient tailors, blacksmiths, and artisans.
Because Spanish law allowed an enslaved person to purchase his or her own freedom, Spain’s colonies boasted a sizeable portion of free blacks who engaged in myriad trades; freed slaves became sailors, merchants, and even slave owners. Many joined militias and defended thousands of miles of coastline along the Spanish colonies against pirates—another common element of life in the colonies. They served in return for a salary, social advancement, and tax exemption. Moreover, free Africans formed their own Catholic brotherhoods—common among Spaniards and Native Americans —that supported an African-Christian worldview while providing monetary support for members by funding funerals and celebrations and even serving as banks.
Spanish cities and the activities within them modeled those found in Europe. Like their counterparts in Spain, the capitals of Mexico City and Lima housed universities, cathedrals, exquisite homes, central courthouses, and exclusive shopping. Cards, music, books, plays, bullfights, and parties occupied the time of the elite. Poorer citizens also partook in such activities but on a smaller scale, enjoying local ballads, cockfights, and town gatherings on feast days. The elite dined on wheat bread, olive oil, cured meats, and wine, while commoners ate maize tortillas, manioc, chilies, turkeys, and small dogs, and drank the local indigenous intoxicant. Cities
boasted the most refinement and Spanish influence, whereas the countryside was denigrated for its overwhelming “Indian” feel.
Throughout the colonial period, sexual relations between different people from the Americas, Europe, and Africa created a growing mixed-race population known as the castas ({link]). Disregarded as a minor inconvenience at first, the castas eventually threatened the social hierarchy. The Spanish sought to maintain themselves at the top and keep Native Americans and Africans at the bottom, whereas the castas were allowed a place somewhere in the middle. In daily life, however, people were often racially categorized by how well they spoke Spanish, how they dressed, what food they ate, or their social circle of acquaintances. As a result, in practice, the hierarchy allowed for some flexibility.
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Castas paintings from the mid-1700s document the cultural blending seen in Spanish colonies. Do these images support the assertion that there was a degree of social mobility in the Spanish colonies? Why or why not?
Perhaps this flexibility best reflects life in the Spanish colonies. It consisted of specific obligations, religious institutions, and social hierarchies, to be sure. Yet Native Americans, Africans, and Spaniards negotiated their own experiences, from conformity to resistance, within these limits. Most lived somewhere between the two extremes, doing their best to adapt their traditional ways of life to a diverse colonial world.
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Explain how the Spanish relied on existing social structures to maintain order in their colonies.
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Explain why social structure in the Spanish colonies could be considered both rigid and flexible.
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Primary Sources
Bartolomé de Las Casas Describes the Exploitation of Indigenous Peoples:
bartolome-de-las-casas-describes-the-exploitation-of-indigenous-peoples- 1542/
Suggested Resources
Boyer, Richard, and Geoffrey Spurling. Colonial Lives: Documents on Latin American History, 1550-1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Elliott, J-H. Imperial Spain: 1469-1716. New York: Penguin, 2002.
Kamen, Henry. Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763. New York: Harper, 2004.
Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Schwartz, Stuart B. Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico. Boston: Bedford, 2000.
Origins of the Slave Trade In this section, you will
e Explain how the growth of the Spanish Empire in North America shaped the development of social and economic structures over time
Written by: Mark Christensen, Assumption College
In 1734, British sea captain William Snelgrave stated that Africans had been trafficking in slaves long before the Europeans arrived and explained the various ways Africans could become enslaved in their native country. Slavery could result from crimes committed or unpaid debts; parents could also sell their children into slavery. Yet the most common source of slavery was the taking of war captives by an enemy tribe or state. Snelgrave argued that the slave trade between Europeans and Africans was moral and just and, in fact, benefitted the African slaves. According to him, Europeans had an economic incentive to treat slaves better than their African counterparts because of the expense incurred in their purchase. Furthermore, European slavers would introduce African slaves to Christianity, thus saving their souls for eternity. Many Europeans shared Snelgrave’s opinions, as did the Catholic Church and its popes, who issued several decrees concerning Africa beginning in the mid-fifteenth century and authorizing the enslavement of non-Christians.
Although grossly exaggerating the improved treatment of slaves by Europeans, Snelgrave was right in that the slave trade was just that: a trade. Contrary to popular understanding, Europeans were generally prevented by disease and Africans wielding metal weapons from raiding the African continent and stealing away people they then enslaved. These limitations forced them to deal with Africans as equal business partners. After all, the business of slavery had existed in Africa and been controlled by the African elite since the seventh century. Some historians estimate that, before the
arrival of the Europeans in the fifteenth century, Africans had sold upward of eleven million slaves to the Islamic world. When the Portuguese arrived on the coast of Africa, African merchants and rulers were more than happy to exchange enslaved Africans for various commodities. In other words, Europeans simply accessed the preexisting systems of slave trading and provided a new means of transport across the Atlantic to the Americas.
It is important to view slavery and its deep history not as a “white” versus “black” racial issue, but as a longstanding example of “us” versus “them” exploitation. Slavery has existed in various forms since at least ancient times and throughout many world cultures. Before the Industrial Revolution, the invention of advanced labor-saving technology, and the development of markets for free labor, forced or coerced human labor was used by civilizations from Sumeria, Egypt, and Greece to Rome, and eventually African and European nations. Cultures and nations routinely used other cultures and nations deemed different or inferior as sources of slaves. In other words, European and African involvement in a slave trade was just one link in an already long chain of examples.
In Africa, slaves served in a variety of roles. Some worked on the agricultural estates of nobles and kings; some served in domestic roles or as indicators of wealth and prestige; some performed hard labor in gold mines or as soldiers; and others served as artisans, concubines, tutors, and in many other roles. Slaves in Africa were seen as a form of property, and slave markets abounded throughout west and central Africa. The all-too-real danger of becoming enslaved due to violent raids by other Africans prompted many African communities to use the natural geography of cliffs, lakes, mountains, and caves, and the construction of walls around communities, towns, and cities to protect themselves from aggressive neighbors.
The discovery of the Americas and the increased demand for the labor- intensive production of sugar led to an increased European demand for slaves, and Africa provided the perfect solution. Not only was it close to the trade routes going west to the Americas but it had a preexisting system of slavery that facilitated the trade. Business-savvy African merchants and rulers knew they held a product highly valued by Europeans and adjusted
their price accordingly. Some demanded cowry shells for their slaves; others requested European goods such as rum, tobacco, guns, iron bars, axes, knives, and textiles. These goods enhanced the prestige of their African owners while also providing a military advantage over their rivals.
A typical slave-trading venture might begin with a European ship captain, before his departure, obtaining from his government the necessary permissions and paying the necessary fees to trade in slaves. He would hire a crew and check the local ports for men returning from Africa to ascertain the current value of slaves and the goods African traders sought. After purchasing supplies and desired trade items, he would set sail for the African coast. For their part, African rulers and merchants would acquire slaves, often through violent raids, and bring them to coastal forts, such as the one shown in [link], to be held until they were purchased by Europeans.
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In 1482, Portuguese traders built Elmina Castle (also called Sao Jorge
da Mina, or Saint George’s of the Mine) in present-day Ghana, on the
west coast of Africa. Originally the fort was used to trade gold, but by the sixteenth century it was serving as a holding pen for enslaved
Africans waiting to board ships that would take them to the Americas. This image of the Elmina dates from the 1660s, when the fort had been seized by Dutch traders.
Having arrived, the European captain would likely offer “gifts” or pay “dues” to the local African traders and kings in exchange for the opportunity to trade with them. The captain would then purchase as many slaves as the African merchants had available and continue this process all along the coastline as he sailed to various vendors until he had purchased his desired number of slaves. A trip could last weeks or even months, depending on the number of enslaved people available at each stop.
During the purchasing process, the crew outfitted the boat for its trans- Atlantic voyage. They installed planks in the storage hold on which to keep the slaves, and nets around the deck to prevent escape or suicide. Enslaved people spent the hellish voyage across the Atlantic Ocean shackled together in the cramped, dark, and foul confines below deck ([link]). Approximately 10 to 15 percent of the 12 million Africans in the slave trade—more than one million people—died on the voyage of disease, mistreatment, or suicide.
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What does this cross-section of a slave ship reveal about the treatment of Africans during the Middle Passage?
Known as the “Middle Passage” of the triangular trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas, the ordeal took one to two months. After arriving in the Americas, the captain would sell his slaves for local goods including cotton, rum, sugar, dyes, and logwood. These goods would then be transported back to Europe for sale. Although European and African slavers saw the slave trade as beneficial and lucrative, the Africans who had been kidnapped and enslaved suffered inhumane exploitation, mistreatment, and
denial of the fundamental individual rights to life, liberty, and ownership of their labor and themselves.
Before 1820, four of every five people bound for North or South America arrived in chains. Once purchased and transported from Africa, slaves ended up in a variety of places. A small portion was taken to Europe. Nearly one-third of slaves were sent to Brazil, which received more than
four million slaves to work on its numerous sugar plantations, to mine and pan for gold, and eventually to grow coffee. Caribbean islands owned by the British, French, and Dutch likewise received millions of slaves, as did Spanish America, where enslaved people commonly worked in the mines, in artisan trades, and around ports as laborers and sailors. Contrary to popular belief, British North America received only about six percent of the captives transported in the slave trade ([link]). Demand was greater in the sugar islands of the Caribbean, whereas North American labor needs were met, in part, by white indentured servants and a naturally reproducing slave population. In the end, however, Africa and Europe worked together to supply the Americas with their primary source of immigrants in the colonial period: African slaves.
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The African Slave Trade
This map shows the routes that were used in the Atlantic slave trade. The majority of slaves were sent to the plantations and mines of
Brazil. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)
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Problem: Explain how the Europeans viewed the African slave trade.
Exercise:
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Explain how the New World economy determined where most slaves were eventually brought.
AP Practice Questions
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Primary Sources
Nzinga Mbemba’s Letter to the King of Portugal: http://www.classzone.com/books/wh_ 05 _shared/pdf/WHS05 _ 020 568 PS. pdt
Suggested Resources
Benjamin, Thomas. The Atlantic World: Europeans, Africans, Indians, and Their Shared History, 1400-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009.
Curtain, Philip D. The African Slave Trade: A Census. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972.
Klein, Herbert S. The Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.
Henry Hudson and Exploration In this section, you will
e Explain the causes of exploration and conquest of the New World by various European nations
Written by: Bill of Rights Institute
In early April 1609, the 80-ton Halve Maen (the “Half Moon”) sailed from the Dutch commercial capital of Amsterdam toward the frozen seas of the Arctic Ocean. The ship’s captain was seeking a quicker northeast passage around Russia for access to the valuable spices and other riches of the East Indies. The great powers of Europe were locked in a worldwide struggle for empire that included competing for the vast wealth associated with the Asian trade. The intrepid captain of the ship, Henry Hudson, was determined to be the first to chart a path through the Arctic ice—or perhaps he had other discoveries in mind.
Hudson was an Englishman who found employment as a ship captain for the Dutch. He was sailing familiar waters with his Dutch and English crew. In the previous two years, he had twice tried to discover a northeast passage for the English East India Company. Merchants in several countries were looking for an alternative to sailing around Africa, because the long journey increased the dangers posed by weather, piracy, and diseases like scurvy. Hudson’s voyage was sponsored by Dutch merchants who would soon form the Dutch East India Company. Although the monarchs of some European nations used government funds to sponsor voyages, these entrepreneurial merchants, acting with the permission of their governments, formed and invested in privately owned joint-stock companies that launched voyages of exploration in search of profit. The investors split the profit and paid a share to the crown.
Hudson sailed into the Barents Sea north of Scandinavia but soon found the ice impassable. After some bickering among the officers and crew about their next destination, the captain persuaded them to sail across the Atlantic and search for the fabled Northwest Passage that had captured the imaginations of so many mariners, investors, and monarchs of Europe ({link]). Over the past century, several Spanish, English, and French explorers had probed just about every broad river they encountered along North America’s Atlantic coast in hopes that it would provide a water route through the continent. Hudson was drawn to North America by the same ambition of being the first to sail directly to the East Indies, although not by the path his investors had directed.
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This 1687 Dutch map illustrates the widely held belief that a northwest passage to the riches of China and the East Indies existed. For centuries, European explorers like Henry Hudson hoped to be the first to chart this route.
In early July, the Halve Maen reached Newfoundland, where Hudson and his crew encountered a French fishing fleet hauling in cod. The sailors aboard the Dutch ship caught and salted dozens of cod for their journey, and Hudson eventually plied the officers of another French vessel for information about the coast. The Halve Maen also made contact with Native Americans in or near Nova Scotia; Hudson traded knives, kettles, clothing, and beads for beaver skins and other furs. He heard tales of gold and silver, and possibly the Northwest Passage. However, because his men feared the Native Americans had stolen items from the ship, they went ashore and raided the native village. It was an ominous start to Hudson’s relationship with the indigenous people of North America.
By early August, the Halve Maen had spotted Cape Cod and traded with more Native Americans for tobacco and meat. A few weeks later, the ship arrived at the eastern shore of Virginia, but Hudson quickly sailed away rather than exploring the Chesapeake Bay and risking trouble with the new English colony at Jamestown. After repairing damage the ship had suffered in storms, the Halve Maen’ crew sailed to New York in early September. Hudson then traveled what is now the Upper New York Bay for a couple of weeks and had many trading encounters with different local Native American tribes.
On these occasions, the Native Americans generally paddled over to the ship in several large canoes with items for trade. Some came aboard, invited and not, to trade tobacco, oysters, furs, wheat, and corn for knives, hatchets, and beads. After the crew grew suspicious of some Natives American and chased them from the ship, however, a group of Munsees attacked one night. Three sailors were injured, one of whom was shot through the throat with an arrow and died. The Europeans were even more wary and cautious after this violent exchange and were prepared to use their muskets and cannons should further violence ensue. They may also have abducted a few Native Americans, who later escaped.
Hudson was pleased at the prospect that one of the rivers—the Hudson that would later be named for him—was the Northwest Passage. The Halve Maen sailed up this river, passing the Peekskills and the Hudson Highlands. The crew traded cautiously with Native Americans along the way,
especially the Mahicans at Catskill Creek. They sailed all the way to modern-day Albany and went ashore to trade with Native Americans, who sought wampum (strings or belts of purple and white shells used as currency). The crew also introduced the Native Americans to alcohol.
The ship finally reached shallows and was forced to turn around. As Hudson sailed back down the Hudson, a trading encounter with the Indians turned violent when a Native American climbed aboard the ship and stole some items. A sailor shot him in the chest and killed him, after which the other Native Americans on the ship jumped into the water and were chased by sailors in a small boat. When the Indians in the river tried to overturn the boat, a sailor cut off the hand of one, causing the Indian to drown. Two canoes assaulted the ship, and word spread quickly for additional warriors to join the attack. As more than one hundred Native Americans shot arrows from canoes and the nearby shore, the sailors opened up with a cannon and killed three. A few other Native Americans were cut down by cannon and musket fire while a hail of arrows flew ineffectively against the crew.
The Halve Maen reached what is now Manhattan by early October, and Hudson and his crew again faced a decision. Hudson wanted to continue searching for the Northwest Passage and winter in North America, but the crew was strongly opposed. So Hudson reluctantly sailed into the Atlantic bound for Europe. The ship reached Dartmouth, England, in early November, and, curiously, Hudson went to London to report on his voyage rather than returning to his employers in Amsterdam. Perhaps the English detained him and prevented him from going to Amsterdam because they were trying to gain a competitive advantage in the struggle for empire. Whatever the case, Hudson sailed to North America for the English the following year on the Discovery, but he was stranded with his son and some other crew members in a mutiny and was never seen again.
The Dutch established their first permanent fur-trading post near modern- day Albany, New York, in 1614. For a decade, the post had fewer than 50 inhabitants. In 1625, the Dutch West India Company established New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island as a fortified town to guard the Hudson River and the fur trade against any competing European powers. The company selected a governor, Pieter Stuyvesant, who presided over the
settlement. New Amsterdam’s policy of religious toleration invited the growth of a religiously and ethnically diverse group of settlers. Eventually, the Dutch colony was caught up in the Anglo-Dutch wars in the mid- seventeenth century and was lost in 1664 when English warships forced its surrender. The Netherlands ceded “New York,” as it came to be known, to England a few years later.
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Explain why Henry Hudson sought both a northeast and a northwest passage.
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Explain the entrepreneurial basis of Hudson’s expedition for the Dutch.
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Describe the nature of Hudson’s relations with Native Americans.
AP Practice Questions
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Primary Sources
The Third Voyage of Master Henrie Hudson:
Suggested Resources
Hunter, Douglas. Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the Voyage that Redrew the Map of the New World. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009.
Kammen, Michael. Colonial New York. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Mancall, Peter. Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson. New York: Basic, 2009.
Taylor, Alan. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. New York: Penguin, 2001.
Montezuma and Cortés In this section, you will
e Explain the causes of exploration and conquest of the New World by various European nations
e Explain how and why European and Native American perspectives of others developed and changed in the period
Written by: Mark Christensen, Assumption College
The ninth ruler of the Aztec Empire, Montezuma, was not overly concerned by the report he had just received. For the past few years, his spies had been informing him of the activities of the Spanish and their expeditions. Now, in 1519, a report came to him of another group of foreign men coming from the Yucatan Peninsula and entering the eastern borders of his central Mexican empire. Montezuma resided at a distance from the coast in the capital city of Tenochtitlan, which is today Mexico City. A strong ruler who had aggressively expanded the Aztec Empire to its height, Montezuma weighed his options concerning this new expedition before deciding whether to welcome its leader, Hernando Cortés.
Montezuma led an empire that served its patron deity through the capture and sacrifice of war captives. He was no stranger to warfare and certainly was not intimidated by Cortés and his Spanish companions. Like other Native Americans, Montezuma viewed the bearded white Spaniards with curiosity, yet he understood that they were just as mortal as he was, and certainly not gods. That said, he faced not only Cortés and his few hundred Spaniards but also thousands of Spain’s Native American allies, many from Montezuma’s unbeatable military rival and neighbor, Tlaxcala. Montezuma thus knew the Spaniards could successfully defend themselves in battle. Not only did their steel swords hold a decisive advantage over the obsidian axes and clubs used by the Native Americans of central Mexico but the
Spaniards could also garner support from towns at odds with the Aztecs, which might supply them with food and warriors.
Like many empires, the Aztec culture conquered its neighbors with military might and forced them to pay tribute in labor and goods. Even the capital, Tenochtitlan, was held together by political and military persuasion, which allowed tensions to simmer under the surface. For example, although the city of Tlatelolco was incorporated into Tenochtitlan as a sister city in the fifteenth century, it had been at odds with Tenochtitlan and its rulers long before the Spaniards arrived (its inhabitants later blamed Montezuma for the Aztecs’ defeat). Such division provided Cortés with a ready supply of allies willing to throw off the yoke of Aztec oppression.
Montezuma also considered his duty to his people. When faced with the decision of what to do about Cortés, he could jump headfirst into war, certainly. But a lengthy war could affect the planting and harvesting season, which would mean famine for his subjects. So he chose a more pragmatic approach: Montezuma would welcome and entertain the foreigner, impress him with the greatness of the vast capital city, and persuade him to be an ally. If all else failed, Montezuma always had the option of war. For the sake of his people and empire, however, a negotiation with Cortés made much more sense.
Montezuma’s decision to welcome Cortés into his city reflected his strength and intelligence, not his weakness. Years of reports of Spaniards along the coastline suggested they were in the Americas to stay. Even defeating Cortés outright would only delay the inevitable negotiations that must be made with the newcomers. Montezuma rightly concluded that it was better to negotiate with the Spaniards on his terms, in his city, from a position of strength. After all, Cortés had already shown himself willing to ally with other Native American cities. Surely Montezuma could convince him that he would be the most valuable ally of all and negotiate a deal that would allow him to keep his empire intact and his people safe.
Thus Montezuma welcomed and entertained the Spaniards for a few months ({link]). He showed them his temples, the enormous markets where goods from all over his empire were sold, his zoo, and his palaces. Montezuma did not think Cortés was the reincarnation of an ancient Aztec deity, as some
thought at the time. He was just a powerful rival who could be bent to Montezuma’s will and interests.
The meeting of Cortés and Montezuma is shown in this image from a Tlaxcalan mural. The mural was completed by 1560, nearly 40 years after the Spanish conquest. Cortés’ interpreter, a Native American woman known as Malinche or Dona Marina, stands behind him.
Some Native Americans from Tlateloloco later encouraged the belief that omens predicting the destruction of his empire, including an eclipse, a comet, and a terrible storm, had frightened Montezuma ((link]). Yet this was an attempt to show Montezuma as a weak, indecisive, and superstitious leader who was to blame for the fall of Tenochtitlan. Instead, he was strong and decisive, and he knew what he wanted from the Spanish.
Images such as this one, in which Montezuma watches a large comet streak across the sky, perpetuated the belief that Montezuma’s superstition was to blame for the fall of the Aztec empire.
For his part, during his stay in Tenochtitlan, Cortés took every opportunity to search for precious metals and convert Montezuma to Christianity. Montezuma also informed Cortés of his people’s worldview and deities, their traditions, and customs. As a good host, he tolerated some of Cortés’s requests and even offered one of his daughters to Cortés as a potential wife, in the time-honored fashion of Aztecs building alliances. Yet with his emphasis on precious metals and his foreign religion, Cortés began to wear out his welcome.
Then news from Montezuma’s spies changed everything. In April 1520, they reported that approximately 800 Spaniards had arrived on the coast with 13 ships. Cortés knew at once that the hostile fleet, led by Panfilo de
Narvaez, had certainly come from his disgruntled patron, Diego de Velazquez. Cortés had betrayed de Velazquez by embarking on this expedition without permission—an act of insubordination for which he could be imprisoned. With a Spanish fleet approaching, however, Montezuma saw his chance to get rid of his increasingly bothersome guest and prepared his people for war. His decision to welcome Cortés had paid off—Montezuma had learned all he could of the interlopers and their intentions and now decided to act.
Aware of his precarious situation, Cortés moved first by imprisoning Montezuma; the exact details of this event are sparse and contradictory. Leaving a group of men behind to guard the Aztec emperor, Cortés left for the coast in May 1520 to deal with the newcomers. He defeated the Spanish force, the remnants of which decided to join him. In his absence, however, his men had massacred a group of Native Americans gathered to celebrate a religious festival. Relations between the two cultures had reached their low point, and when Cortés returned a month later, the Aztecs began their assault. Desperate and fighting for their lives, the Spaniards fled the city after suffering massive casualties (as did their Native American allies), but they killed Montezuma before they left.
Montezuma’s decision to allow Cortés to enter his city cost him his life and ended his empire. It was reasonable for him to assume that the potential benefit of an alliance with the Spaniards was worth the risk, but in the end it was a misjudgment. Montezuma failed to achieve the outcome he desired, because his empire was overwhelmed by a technologically superior foe bent on conquest and wealth.
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Exercise: Problem: Analyze the extent to which the major motives of European exploration were reflected in the story of Cortés and Montezuma. Exercise: Problem:
What factors enabled the Spanish to conquer the Aztec Empire? Explain your answer.
AP Practice Questions
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Primary Sources
Cortés, Hernan. “Modern History Sourcebook: Hernan Cortés: from Second Letter to Charles V, 1520.” In The Library of Original Sources, Vol. V: 9th to 16th Centuries, edited by Oliver J. Thatcher, 317-326. Milwaukee: University Research Extension Co., 1907. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1520cortes.asp
LeonPortilla, Miguel. “Modern History Sourcebook: An Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico.” https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/aztecsl.asp
Pagden, Anthony, trans. “Moctezuma’s Greeting to Hernan Cortes.” http://web.archive.org/web/20000304002237/
Suggested Resources
Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Townsend, Camilla. Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006.
Should We Remember Christopher Columbus as a Conqueror or Explorer?
Written by: Mark Christensen, Assumption College
Issue on the Table
Controversy has arisen over the validity of honoring Christopher Columbus. Should his actions be viewed through the lens of modern values, or should they be viewed within the context of his time?
Instructions
Read the two arguments in response to the question presented, paying close attention to the supporting evidence and reasoning used for each. Then complete the comparison questions that follow. Note that the arguments in this essay are not the personal views of the scholar but are illustrative of larger historical debates.
Claim A
The story of Christopher Columbus and his voyages to the New World is one of cruelty and greed. Departing Spain, Columbus sought a westward route to Asia and the riches it held. His accidental arrival in the Caribbean in 1492 proved frustrating for the explorer, because the islands held none of the spices he desired and only small amounts of gold. Repeated attempts to uncover rich kingdoms in his voyages of 1493, 1498, and 1502 further frustrated the man who became the governor of Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Without access to easy riches, Columbus turned to the exploitation and enslavement of the Native Americans.
The former settler turned friar, Bartolomé de Las Casas, criticized the actions of Columbus, stating that, in his efforts to please the king, he committed “irreparable crimes against the Indians.” Indeed, Columbus’s crimes against the Native Americans began on his first encounter with the peaceful Arawak. Seeing some of the Arawak with gold ornaments, Columbus took them prisoner and demanded they lead him to the source of the gold. When he returned to Spain from his first voyage, he brought with him some captured Native Americans to show the king. His subsequent expeditions likewise involved the enslavement and mistreatment of Native Americans. During the exploits of Columbus’s second voyage, Michele da Cuneo reported in a letter that Columbus had captured a beautiful Native American woman. Columbus subsequently gave this woman to Da Cueno, and Da Cuneo then proceeded to beat and rape her in the most grotesque manner.
Over the years, Columbus sent an estimated several thousand Native Americans to Spain as slaves, with many perishing on the journey. Those Native Americans who did resist succumbed to the Spaniards’ superior steel swords and armor in battle, or were later hanged or burned. The violence perpetrated and allowed by Columbus on Hispaniola coupled with the diseases introduced by the Spanish led to the eventual eradication of the Native American population there by the early seventeenth century. In short, Columbus forever poisoned European—Native American relations.
Columbus’s mismanagement of Hispaniola and acts of cruelty and torture led to his eventual arrest by colonial administrators and forcible return to Spain. Statements from detractors and supporters of the governor provided lengthy accusations that included his punishing of others, including Spaniards, through the amputation of hands, the nose, tongue, or ears for crimes as petty as slander. His mistreatment and enslavement of the Native Americans was also a common complaint, and even those who supported Columbus admitted things were out of hand. After spending six weeks in jail, he was released and appeared before the Spanish monarchs, who allowed him his freedom and even financed his fourth voyage to the Caribbean. Columbus, however, would never regain his position as governor. Even those who supported and excused his behavior realized the man for what he truly was: a villain.
Claim B
In 1991, on the eve of the celebration marking five hundred years since Columbus discovered the Americas, the City Council of Berkeley, California, voted to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The council adopted the resolution in 1992. In so doing, they joined thousands of others who mistakenly deem Christopher Columbus as a villain whose greed-fueled voyages brought only death and destruction. Indeed, it is not uncommon for critics to use the loaded word “genocide” in the same sentence as Columbus. But there is more to the story. The vilification of Columbus is not justified.
The transatlantic voyage of Christopher Columbus and his subsequent actions continued a pattern of European exploration and expansion established centuries before. Indeed, his most criticized actions—the capture and enslavement of Native Americans; the cutting off of hands, ears, lips, and noses of those deemed insubordinate; and his quest for riches —all had precedent in those who had reconquered Spain or conquered the Atlantic islands. The acts are reprehensible by today’s standards to be sure. Yet they are certainly not unique to Columbus, who simply used practices in most cases considered the status quo by many European and non-European cultures at the time.
In fact, an argument can be made that Columbus would prove beneficial to the colonies in the long run. The Americas developed in isolation from Europe for millennia, but that could not last. Eventually, the Americas and its inhabitants would have to find their place in an increasingly interconnected world dominated by a technologically superior Europe. Within this meeting of two worlds, it is true that Native Americans suffered, but most suffered from the unintended consequences of disease. Moreover, many Native Americans benefited. Many of them allied with the Spanish to further their own political and economic ambitions, engaging with the new export colonial economy to make themselves fortunes or using the Spanish to overthrow oppressive Native American overlords such as the Aztecs, ending their practices of human sacrifice and incessant warfare. Given what we know about the violence and warfare of the Aztecs or many other groups of Native Americans, had they possessed the technology to cross the
ocean and invade Spain, would they have displayed any more mercy than the Spanish?
Columbus and his patron country of Spain recognized the authority of the Native American nobility and, eventually, would allow the sociopolitical structure of many cultures to continue throughout colonial rule. In truth, colonial life for many Native Americans continued many indigenous traditions. Moreover, unlike other European countries, Spain was not so averse to settlers having sexual relations with Native Americans and even encouraged Spaniards to marry into the indigenous nobility. Particularly when compared with Native Americans living outside Spanish America, those in Spanish America fared much better and continued and preserved much of their culture, a culture that survives today intertwined with that of Spain throughout the Americas. Seen in this light, Columbus and his introduction of Spanish culture to the Americas benefited the Native American population in the long term by allowing them to maintain much of their culture and traditional ways of life in ways unmatched throughout the Americas today, as they transitioned into an increasingly interconnected world.
Historical Reasoning Questions
Use Handout A: Point-Counterpoint Graphic Organizer to answer historical reasoning questions about this point-counterpoint.
Primary Sources (Claim A)
Christopher Columbus, Extracts from Journal: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/columbus1.asp
Symcox, Geoffrey, and Blair Sullivan. Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise of the Indies: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford Books, 2005.
Primary Sources (Claim B)
Christopher Columbus, Extracts from Journal: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/columbus1.asp
Symcox, Geoffrey, and Blair Sullivan. Christopher Columbus and the
Enterprise of the Indies: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford Books, 2005.
Suggested Resources (Claim A)
Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy. New York: Knopf, 1990.
Suggested Resources (Claim B)
Bergreen, Laurence. Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504. New York: Penguin, 2012.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus. Boston: Little, Brown, 1991.
e> Columbus’s Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, 1494
Introduction
Christopher Columbus made landfall on an island in what is now the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, after setting sail from Spain about two months earlier. He continued to explore the Caribbean, conquering the lands in the name of God, Spain, and his benefactors, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Through his journeys, the Italian explorer encountered new cultures, flora and fauna, and enormous economic potential in the “New World.” Noting that inhabitants of the island wore gold jewelry, Columbus and his men set out to find gold deposits on the island. By the early sixteenth century, the Spanish had exhausted most of the gold deposits accessible through mining methods of that time, and the native Taino people were decimated by disease, forced labor, and murder.
The following primary source is a letter written by Christopher Columbus to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, in which he advised that the Spanish Crown capitalize on the newfound lands by creating colonies and setting up structures for governance, focusing on the island of Hispaniola (Espanola), which is today Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Sourcing Questions
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Who was the audience of this letter? How might that have affected the author’s tone or style?
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Problem: What was the purpose of this letter?
Vocabulary
thither (adv): there
Text
Most High and Mighty Sovereigns,
In obedience to your Highnesses’ commands, and with submission to superior judgment, I will say whatever occurs to me in reference to the colonization and commerce of the Island of Espanola, and of the other islands, both those already discovered and those that may be discovered hereafter.
In the first place, as regards the Island of Espanola: Inasmuch as the number of colonists who desire to go thither amounts to two thousand, owing to the land being safer and better for farming and trading, and because it will serve as a place to which they can return and from which they can carry on trade with the neighboring islands:
Vocabulary
notary public (n): a person authorized to perform certain legal formalities, such as draw up or witness contracts or official documents.
Castile (n): the capital of Spain at the time
Text
[1] ‘That in the said island there shall be founded three or four towns, situated in the most convenient places, _and that the settlers who are there be assigned to the aforesaid places and towns.
[2] That for the better and more speedy colonization of the said island, no one shall have liberty to collect gold in it except those who have taken out colonists’ papers, and have built houses for their abode, in the town in which they are, that they may live united and in greater safety.
[3] That each town shall have its alcalde [Mayor] ... and its notary public, as is the use and custom in Castile.
Vocabulary
smelt (v): to extract a metal from its ore by using a process of heating and melting
Text
[4] ‘That there shall be a church, and parish priests or friars to administer the sacraments, to perform divine worship, _and for the conversion of the Indians.
[5] That none of the colonists shall go to seek gold without a license from the governor or alcalde of the town where he lives; and that he must first take oath to return to the place whence he sets out, for the purpose of registering faithfully all the gold he may have found, and to return once a month, or once a week, as the time may have been set for him, to render account and show the quantity of said gold; and that this shall be written down by the notary before the alcalde [alcalde], or, if it seems better, that
also present.
[6] That all the gold thus brought in shall be smelted immediately, and stamped with some mark that shall distinguish each town; and that the portion which belongs to your Highnesses shall be weighed, and given and consigned to each alcalde in his own town, and registered by the above-mentioned priest or friar, so that it shall not pass through the hands of only one person, and there shall he no opportunity to conceal the truth.
Vocabulary
per centum (n): percent
Text
[7] That all gold that may be found without the mark of one of the said towns in the possession of any one who has once registered in accordance with the above order shall be taken as forfeited, and that the accuser shall have one portion of it and your Highnesses the other.
[8] That one per centum of all the gold that may be found shall be set aside for building churches and
or friars belonging to them; and, if it should be thought proper to pay_any thing to the alcaldes or notaries for their services, or for ensuring the faithful perforce of their duties, that this amount shall be sent
there by your Highnesses.
[9] As regards the division of the gold, and the share that ought to be reserved for your Highnesses, this, in my opinion, must be left to the aforesaid governor and treasurer, because it will have to be greater or less according to the quantity of gold that may be found. Or, should it seem preferable, your Highnesses might, for the space of one year, take one half, and the collector the other, and a better arrangement for the division be made afterward.
[10] That if the said alcaldes or notaries shall commit or be privy to any fraud, punishment shall be provided, and the same for the colonists who shall not have declared all the gold they have.
Vocabulary
liberality (n): in this context, the quality of granting permission more freely
Text
[11] ‘That in the said island there shall be a treasurer, with a clerk to assist him, who shall receive all the and notaries of the towns shall each keep a record of what they deliver to the said treasurer.
[12] As, in the eagerness to get gold, every one will wish, naturally, to engage in its search in preference to any other employment, it seems to me that the privilege of going to look for gold ought to be withheld during some portion of each year, that there may be opportunity to have the other business necessary for the island performed.
[13] In regard to the discovery _of new countries, I think permission should be granted to all that wish to go, and more liberality used... making the tax
disposed to go on voyages.
... | beg your Highnesses to hold me in your protection; and I remain, praying our Lord God for your Highnesses’ lives and the increase of much greater States.
Comprehension Questions
Exercise:
Problem:
How are towns to be populated in Columbus’s plan for colonies? Exercise:
Problem:
What cultural purpose of colonization does Columbus highlight here? Exercise:
Problem:
According to Columbus’s description, what is one of the main
purposes of governing the colonies?
Exercise:
Problem: According to this passage, what are Columbus’s priorities? Exercise: Problem: How does Columbus propose that a “gold rush” be prevented on the island? Why might a gold rush be bad? Exercise: Problem:
How does Columbus feel about the continuation of voyages to discover new lands?
Historical Reasoning Questions
Directions: Answer the following questions to prepare for a Paideia Seminar discussion on Christopher Columbus. You should be able to
support your answers with evidence from the text. All students are responsible for sharing their brief answers to the Round Robin questions. Exercise:
Problem: Round Robin: Which word or phrase from the text best represents European motivation for exploring the “New World”?
Exercise: Problem: Which line from the text best represents the religious motivations for establishing colonies?
Exercise: Problem: Which line from the text best represents the political motivations for establishing colonies?
Exercise: Problem: What economic purposes does the island of Hispaniola serve for colonists?
Exercise:
Problem: What role does religion play in establishing colonies? Exercise:
Problem:
Describe the political structures that Columbus recommends. What
does this say about his, and his audience’s, interests in the island of Hispaniola?
Exercise:
Problem: If Columbus landed in the Caribbean, why is he celebrated in the United States?
Exercise: Problem: How does Columbus’s plan for colonization affect existing populations and structures of social organization?
Exercise: Problem: How would Columbus’s voyage and what he encountered in the New World affect other European countries?
Exercise: Problem: How would the connection between Europe and the Americas change the Americas culturally, socially, and/or economically?
Exercise: Problem: How would the connection between Europe and the Americas change Europe culturally, socially, and/or economically?
Exercise: Problem: Should Columbus’s actions be celebrated? If so, to what extent and in what ways?
Exercise:
Problem:
Closing Round Robin: Should Christopher Columbus have his own national holiday in the United States? Why or why not?
e> Cortés’s Account of Tenochtitlan, 1522
Introduction
Hernan Cortés arrived in what is now Mexico in 1519. He was sent by the Spanish king Charles V to explore more of the Caribbean territories, search for gold and other resources, and claim this land in the name of the king. In 1520, he and approximately three hundred men traveled to the interior of Mexico to the mighty Aztec Empire, which was ruled by King Montezuma II. Eventually, he was brought to the capital of this empire, Tenochtitlan, which is today known as Mexico City. This city was home to approximately twenty million people. By 1521, however, Cortés and his three hundred men managed to bring this great city under Spanish control. Cortés documented his two years in Mexico to his benefactor, King Charles V, in a series of letters.
Sourcing Questions
Exercise:
Problem: Who was Hernan Cortés? Exercise: Problem: How might Cortés’s European background influence how he viewed the Aztec Empire?
Exercise:
Problem: Who was the audience of this document?
Exercise:
Problem:
How might this have affected how the author described the Aztec Empire? Exercise:
Problem: What was the purpose of this document?
Vocabulary Text
Vocabulary
brevity (n): state of being brief
Text
In order, most potent Sire, to convey to your Majesty a just conception of the great extent of this noble city of Tenochtitlan, and of the many rare and wonderful objects it contains . . . it would require the labor of many accomplished writers, and much time for the completion of the task. I shall not be able to relate an hundredth part of what could be told respecting these matters but I will endeavor to describe, in the best manner in my power, what I have myself seen; and imperfectly as I may succeed in the attempt, I am fully aware that the account will appear so wonderful as to be deemed scarcely worthy of credit; since even when we who have seen these things with our own eyes, are yet so amazed as to be unable to comprehend their reality. But your Majesty may
be assured that if there is any fault in my
_. it will arise from too great brevity rather than extravagance. ...
Vocabulary
Seville/Cordova [Cordoba]: cities in Spain
Salamanca: a city in Spain
portico (n): a structure supported by columns, similar to a porch
wrought (adj): worked or shaped by hammering
Text
This great city of Tenochtitlan [Mexico] is situated in this [a] salt lake, and from the main land to the denser parts of it, by whichever route one chooses to enter, the distance is two leagues. There are four avenues or entrances to the city, all of which are formed by artificial causeways, two spears’ length in width. The city is as large as Seville or Cordova; its streets, I speak of the principal ones, are very wide and straight; some of these, and all the inferior ones, are half land and half water, and are navigated by canoes. All the streets at intervals have openings, through which the water flows, crossing from one street to
composed of large pieces of timber, of great strength and well put together; on many of these bridges ten horses can go abreast...
This city has many public squares, in which are situated the markets and other places for buying and selling. There is one square twice as large as that of the city of Salamanca, surrounded by porticoes, where are daily assembled more than sixty thousand souls, engaged in buying, and selling; and where are found all kinds of merchandise that the world affords, embracing the necessaries of life . . . as well as jewels of gold and silver, lead, brass, copper, tin, precious stones, bones, shells, snails, and feathers. There are also exposed for sale wrought and unwrought stone, bricks burnt and unburnt,
wh (adj): Vocabliab.
has been cut or chopped
apothecary (n): a person who prepares and sells medicine
brazier (n): vessel used for holding burning coal
nasturtium (n): an herbaceous flowering plant
borage (n): an herb, used either as a fresh vegetable or dried
Text
timber hewn and unhewn, of different sorts. There is a street for game, where every variety of’ birds found in the country are sold, as fowls, partridges, quails, wild ducks, fly- catchers, widgeons, turtle-doves, pigeons, reedbirds, parrots, sparrows, eagles, hawks, owls, and kestrels they sell likewise the skins of some birds of prey, with their feathers, head, beak, and claws. There are also sold rabbits, hares, deer, and little dogs, which are raised for eating and castrated. There is also an herb street, where may be obtained all sorts of roots and medicinal herbs that the country affords. There are apothecaries’ shops, where prepared medicines, liquids, ointments, and plasters are sold; barbers’ shops, where they wash and shave the head; and restaurateurs, that furnish food and drink at a certain price. There is also a class of men like those called in Castile porters, for carrying burdens. Wood and coals are seen in abundance, and braziers of earthenware for burning coals; mats of various kinds for beds, others of a lighter sort for seats, and for balls and bedrooms. There are all kinds of green vegetables, especially onions, leeks, garlic, watercresses, nasturtium, borage, sorrel, artichokes, and golden thistle; fruits also of numerous descriptions, amongst which are cherries and plums, similar to those in Spain; honey and wax from bees, and from the stalks of maize, which are as sweet as the sugar-cane; honey is also extracted from the plant called maguey, which is superior to sweet or new
and wine, which they also sell.
Vocabulary
skein (n): a length of thread or yam
Granada: a city in Spain
terra firma (n): dry or solid land (in this context, it likely refers to the land surrounding Tenochtitlan, because much of the city was based in water and featured canals and other waterways)
Text
Different kinds of cotton thread of all colors in skeins are exposed for sale in one quarter of the market, which has the appearance of the silk- market at Granada, although the former is supplied more abundantly. Painters’ colors, as numerous as can be found in Spain, and as fine shades; deerskins dressed and undressed, dyed different colors; earthenware of a large size and excellent quality; large and small jars, jugs, pots, bricks, and an endless variety of vessels, all made of fine clay, and all or most of them glazed and painted; maize, or Indian corn, in the grain and in the form of bread, preferred in the grain for its flavor to that of the other islands and terra-firma; patés of birds and fish; great quantities of fish, fresh, salt, cooked and uncooked; the eggs of hens, geese, and of all the other birds I have mentioned, in great abundance, and cakes made of eggs; finally, every thing that can be found throughout the whole country is sold in the markets. .. . Every kind of merchandise is sold in a particular street or quarter assigned to it exclusively, and this is the best order is preserved. ... There is a building in the great square that is used as an audience house, where ten or twelve persons, who are magistrates, sit and decide all controversies that arise in the market, and order delinquents to be punished. In the same square there are other persons who go constantly about among the people observing what is sold, and the measures used in selling; and they have been seen to break measures that were not true.
Vocabulary
idol (n): false god
Seville: a city in Spain that features one of the largest Catholic cathedrals in the world
Text
This great city contains a large number of temples, or houses for their idols, very handsome edifices, which are situated in the different districts and the suburbs. . .. Among these temples there is one which far surpasses all the rest, whose grandeur of architectural details no human tongue is able to describe; for within its precincts, surrounded [by] a lofty wall, there is room enough for a town of five hundred families. Around the interior of this enclosure there are handsome edifices, containing large halls and corridors, in which the religious persons attached to the temple reside. There are full forty towers, which are lofty and well built, the largest of which has fifty steps leading to its main body, and is higher than the tower of [the] principal church at Seville. The stone and wood of which they are constructed are so well wrought in every part, that nothing could be better done, for the interior of the chapels containing the idols consists of curious imagery, wrought in stone, with plaster ceilings, and wood-work carved in relief, and painted with figures of monsters and other objects. All these towers are the burial places of the nobles, and every chapel in them is dedicated to a particular idol, to which they pay their devotions. ...
Vocabulary
precipitate (v): to hurl down; send violently (original meaning as used in this context)
remonstrate (v): to object, argue against
famine (n): state of mass starvation
Text
In these chapels are the images or idols, although, as I have before said, many of them are also found on the outside; the principal ones, in which the people have greatest faith and confidence, I precipitated from their pedestals, and cast them down the steps of the stood, _as they were all polluted with human blood, shed in the sacrifices.
In the place of these I put images of Our Lady and the Saints, which excited not a little feeling in Moctezuma and the inhabitants, who at first remonstrated, declaring that if my proceedings were known throughout the country, the people would rise against me; for they believed that their idols bestowed on them all temporal good, and if they permitted them to be ill-treated, they would be angry and withhold their gifts, and by this means the people would be deprived of the fruits of the earth and perish with famine.
Vocabulary
idolatry (n): worship of idols
Text
I answered, through the interpreters, that they were deceived in expecting any favors from idols, the work of their own bands, formed of unclean things; and that they must learn there was but one God, the universal Lord of all, who had created the heavens and the earth, and all things else, and had made them and us; that he was without beginning and immortal, and they were bound to adore and believe him, and no other creature or thing. I said every thing to divert them I could to divert them from their idolatries, and draw them to a knowledge of God our Lord.
Vocabulary
assent (v): to express approval or agreement
aborigine (n): antiquated synonym for native
manifest (v): to prove or become apparent through one’s actions
Exercise:
Text
Moctezuma replied, the others assenting to what he said, “That they had already informed me they were not the aborigines of the country, but that their ancestors had emigrated to it many years ago; and they fully believed that after so long an absence from their native land, they might have fallen into some errors; that I having more recently arrived must know better than themselves what they ought to believe; and that if I would instruct them in these matters, and make them understand the true faith, they would follow my directions, as being for the best.” Afterwards, Moctezuma and many of the principal citizens remained with me until I had removed the idols, purified the chapels, and placed the images in them, manifesting apparent pleasure; and I forbade them sacrificing human beings to their idols, as they had been accustomed to do; because, besides being abhorrent in the sight of God, your sacred Majesty had prohibited it by law, and commanded to put to death whoever should take the life of another. Thus, from that time
were never seen to, kill or sacrifice a human being.
Comprehension Questions
Problem:
How does Cortés preface his tone in his letter to King Charles V?
What does this tell you about his impressions of Tenochtitlan? Exercise:
Problem:
Some cities are skillfully designed to accommodate many people,
whereas others grow with the population and usually end up crowded
or disorganized. Was Tenochtitlan skillfully designed or a product of a population boom? How can you tell?
Exercise: Problem: Why does Cortés document all the goods available for sale in Tenochtitlan’s market place?
Exercise: Problem: Describe the religion of the Aztec. What do they value, according to this excerpt?
Exercise:
Problem: How does Cortés “purify” the Aztec temple? Exercise: Problem: What is the reaction of the Aztec to Cortés placing an image of the Virgin Mary in the temple?
Exercise:
Problem:
How does Cortés’s enforcement of Christian religious practices affect Montezuma’s political power, according to the text?
Historical Reasoning Questions
Exercise: Problem: What are Cortés’s impressions of the city of Tenochtitlan? Cite at least one line from the text.
Exercise:
Problem: How does Cortés compare Tenochtitlan to his native Spain? Exercise: Problem: If you were King Charles V reading this letter, what reaction might you have? What steps might you take next? Exercise: Problem:
How does Cortés’s letter support the motivations for European exploration
A. politically?
B. culturally? C. economically?
Exercise:
Problem:
Circle the aspects of this account you found especially surprising, along with the reasons you were surprised. Then discuss with a partner.
eo Las Casas on the Destruction of the Indies, 1552
Introduction
Bartolomé de Las Casas was a Dominican priest who was one of the first Spanish settlers in the New World. After participating in the conquest of Cuba, Las Casas freed his own slaves and spoke out against Spanish cruelties and injustices in the empire. He argued for the equal humanity and natural rights of the Native Americans. Las Casas worked for the conversion of Native Americans to Christianity and for their better treatment. Pope Paul III agreed and issued an edict in 1537 banning the enslavement of Native Americans. The Spanish crown also agreed and banned in the 1542 New Laws the enslavement of Native American. In 1550, the crown abolished the encomienda system, which allowed the Spanish to seize Native Americans’ lands and force their labor. In 1552, Las Casas published a shocking account of Spanish cruelties, A Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. He blamed the depopulation of the Native American populations on Spanish brutality rather than on the spread of disease. This gave rise to the Black Legend, a legend that Protestant nations such as England and the Netherlands used as propaganda to denounce the imperial system of Catholic Spain and promote their own means of settlement, which they viewed as more peaceful and benevolent.
Sourcing Questions
Exercise:
Problem: Who was Bartolomé de Las Casas?
Exercise:
Problem: Who was his audience?
Exercise:
Problem:
What was his primary concern regarding Spanish settlement of the
Americas?
Exercise:
Problem: Is Las Casas a reliable source for this topic? Explain.
Exercise:
Problem:
After reading the title, what do you think was the goal of his
document?
Vocabulary
abominable (adj): hateful, detestable
infernal (adj): wretched, detestable
Text
As for the vast mainland, which is ten times larger than all Spain, even including Aragon and Portugal, containing more land than the distance between Seville and Jerusalem, or more than two thousand leagues, we are sure that our Spaniards, with their cruel and abominable acts, have devastated the land and exterminated the rational people who fully inhabited it. We can estimate very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of the slain is more like fifteen million.
Vocabulary
extirpate (v): to destroy, eradicate
servitude (n): slavery, bondage
Text
The common ways mainly employed by the Spaniards who call themselves Christian and who have gone there to extirpate those pitiful nations and wipe them off the earth is by unjustly waging cruel and bloody wars. Then, when they have slain all those who fought for their lives or to escape the tortures they would have to endure, that is to say, when they have slain all the native rulers and young men (since the Spaniards usually spare only the women and children, who are subjected to the hardest and bitterest servitude ever suffered by man or beast), they enslave any survivors. With these infernal methods of tyranny they debase and weaken countless numbers of those pitiful Indian nations.
Vocabulary
felicitous (adj): well- chosen
Text
Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time and thus rise to a high estate disproportionate to their merits. It should be kept in mind that their insatiable greed and ambition, the greatest ever seen in the world, is the cause of their villainies. And also, those lands are so rich and felicitous, the native peoples so meek and patient, so easy to subject, that our Spaniards have no more consideration for them than beasts. And I say this from my own knowledge of the acts I witnessed. But I should not say "than beasts" for, thanks be to God, they have treated beasts with some respect; I should say instead like excrement on the public squares. And thus they have deprived the Indians of their lives and souls, for the millions I mentioned have died without the Faith and without the benefit of the sacraments. This is a wellknown and proven fact which even the tyrant Governors, themselves killers, know and admit. And never have the Indians in all the Indies committed any act against the Spanish Christians, until those Christians have first and many times committed countless cruel aggressions against them or against neighboring nations. For in the beginning the Indians regarded the Spaniards as angels from Heaven. Only after the Spaniards had used violence against them, killing, robbing, torturing, did the Indians ever rise up against them.
Comprehension Questions
Exercise: Problem: How does Las Casas describe the actions of the Spanish? How does he describe the Native Americans? Exercise: Problem: How do the Spanish treat Native Americans, according to this passage? Exercise: Problem:
Why does Las Casas say the Spanish conquistadors are so cruel? What are their vices?
Historical Reasoning Questions
Exercise:
Problem: Why did the Spanish conquistadors go to the New World? Exercise:
Problem:
Why was there conflict in the Spanish Empire and within Christendom
over the treatment of the Native Americans?
Exercise:
Problem:
Were Las Casas’s claims about the numbers of Native Americans killed accurate? Explain your answer.
Exercise:
Problem: How might point of view affect bias in this source?
eo <i>The Florentine Codex</i>, c. 1585
Introduction
European explorers unwittingly brought diseases with them as they made contact with the residents of the New World. These invisible microbes had devastating and profound consequences: Native Americans had never been exposed to diseases such as smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhoid, and therefore had no immunities. These diseases wreaked havoc on the Native American societies, wholly destroying some groups and severely weakening others. The following image ([link]) comes from The Florentine Codex, a compilation of materials and information on Aztec history organized by Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagtn and his students. The friar spent over fifty years studying Aztec culture and history, working on the Codex from 1545 until his death in 1590. The Codex consists of more than twenty-four hundred pages, with images drawn by Native American artists. The accompanying text was written in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec people.
Sourcing Questions Exercise: Problem: Who were the authors of this document?
Exercise:
Problem:
What purpose would Sahagun have in compiling a resource on Aztec history and culture?
"[The disease] brought great desolation: a great many died of it. They could no longer walk about, but lay in their dwellings and sleeping places, no longer able to move or stir. They were unable to change
position, to stretch out on their sides or face down, or raise their heads. And when they made a motion, they called out loudly. The pustules
that covered people caused great desolation; very many people died of them, and many just starved to death; starvation reigned, and no one
took care of others any longer. On some people, the pustules appeared only far apart, and they did not suffer greatly, nor did many of them die of it. But many people's faces were spoiled by it, their faces were
made rough. Some lost an eye or were blinded."
Comprehension Questions
Exercise: Problem: ({link]) How has the artist captured the suffering of the sick in this image? Exercise: Problem:
({link]) Apart from the actual illness, what other consequences did smallpox have on the Aztec people, based on the accompanying text?
Historical Reasoning Questions
Exercise:
Problem:
Could disease be considered a weapon used in the conquest of the Aztec empire? Explain.
e> The Oral Tradition of the Foundation of the Iroquois Confederacy
Introduction
Very few written sources exist from the perspective of any North American Indians before European contact. This poses a huge challenge to scholars wishing to learn about the enormous economic, political, and cultural diversity of these groups before the arrival of Europeans. Historians are left with the archeological record, European accounts of first encounters, and Native American oral traditions. Oral traditions consist of stories handed down through generations, yet our records of these traditions were often compiled after European contact.
The Iroquois Confederacy was centered in what is today upstate New York and was one of two large chiefdoms that existed when English colonists arrived on the eastern seaboard (the other being the Powhatan Confederacy in eastern Virginia). The following source recounts the foundation of the Iroquois Confederacy, or Haudenosaunee, as the member nations refer to themselves. The confederacy is believed to date from c. 1570-1600; this version of its creation was first published in 1881 by a Tuscarora chief, Elias Johnson, in a work entitled “Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations and History of the Tuscarora Indians.”
Sourcing Questions
Exercise:
Problem:
What sources can historians consult when studying Native American groups prior to European contact?
Exercise:
Problem: What is the focus of the oral tradition presented here?
Exercise:
Problem:
Who compiled and translated this tradition? What was his
background?
Vocabulary
Hiawatha: According to tradition, Hiawatha was the cofounder of the Iroquois Confederacy alongside another leader, Dekanawida.
Text
When another day had expired, the council again met. Hiawatha entered the assembly with even more than ordinary attention, and every eye was fixed upon him, when he began to address the council in the following words:
“Friends and Brothers:—You being members of many tribes, you have come from a great distance; the voice of war has aroused you up; you are afraid of your homes, your wives and your children; you tremble for your safety. Believe me, I am with you. My heart beats with your hearts. We are one. We have one common object. We come to promote our common interest, and to determine how this can be best done.
Vocabulary
Text
To oppose these hordes of northern tribes, singly and alone, would prove certain destruction. We can make no progress in that way. We must unite ourselves into one common band of brothers. We must have but one voice. Many voices makes confusion. We must have one fire, one pipe, and one war club. This will give us strength. If your warriors are united they can defeat the enemy and drive them from our land; if we do this, we are safe.
Onondaga, you are the people sitting under the shadow of the Great Tree, whose branches spread far and wide, and whose roots sink deep into the earth. You shall be the first nation, because you are warlike and mighty.
Oneida, and you, the people who recline your bodies against the Everlasting Stone, that cannot be moved, shall be the second nation, because you always give good counsel.
Seneca, and you, the people who have your habitation at the foot of the Great Mountain, and are overshadowed by its crags, shall be the third nation, because you are all greatly gifted in speech.
Vocabulary Text
Cayuga, you, whose dwelling is in the Dark Forest, and whose home is everywhere, shall be the fourth nation, because of your superior cunning in hunting.
Mohawk, and you, the people who live in the open country, and possess much wisdom, shall be the fifth nation, because you understand better the art of raising
corn and beans and making cabins.
five great and powerful nations: because the Iroquois Confederacy originally comprised five tribes, they were also sometimes referred to as the Five Nations. A sixth group, the Tuscarora, joined the Confederacy in the eighteenth century.
You five great and powerful nations, with your tribes, must unite and have one common interest, and to foes shall disturb or subdue you.
And you of the different nations of the south, and you of the west, may place yourselves under our protection, and we will protect you. We earnestly desire the alliance and friendship of you all. ...
Vocabulary Text
If we unite in one band the Great Spirit will smile upon us, and we shall be free, prosperous and happy;_but if we shall
remain as we are we Shall incur his displeasure. We shall be enslaved, and perhaps annihilated forever.
Brothers, these are the words of Hiawatha. Let them sink deep into your hearts. I have done.”
Comprehension Questions
Exercise:
Problem: Why has this council assembled? Exercise:
Problem:
How does Hiawatha argue that the groups must band together? Exercise:
Problem:
What five tribes are assembled at this gathering? What strengths did
each bring?
Exercise:
Problem:
What final reason does Hiawatha give to convince the tribes to unite?
Historical Reasoning Questions
Exercise:
Problem:
What evidence can be gathered from this source regarding the context and purpose of the creation of the Iroquois Confederacy?
Exercise:
Problem:
What are the limitations of using this source to provide your answer to the previous question?
Exercise:
Problem:
In his introduction to his compilation in 1881, Elias Johnson wrote the following:
“The Histories which are in the schools, and from which the first impressions are obtained, are still very deficient in what they relate of Indian History, and most of them are still filling the minds of children and youth, with imperfect ideas. I have read many of the Histories, and have longed to see refuted the slanders, and blot out the dark pictures which the historians have wont to spread abroad concerning us. May I live to see the day when it may be done, for most deeply have I learned to blush for my people.
I thought, at first, of only giving a series of Indian Biographies, but without some knowledge of the government and religion of the
Iroquois, the character of the Indians could not be understood or appreciated.
I enter upon the task with much distrust. It is a difficult task at all times to speak and to write in foreign language, and I fear I shall not succeed to the satisfaction of myself, or to my readers.”
According to this passage, what was Johnson’s purpose in publishing his book? What challenges did he face? Exercise: Problem: Johnson was writing over one hundred years ago and wrote that
schools were “deficient in what they relate of Indian History.” Do you think his assessment is still applicable? Explain.
e> Watercolors of Algonquian Peoples in North Carolina, 1585
Introduction
Tales of Spanish riches in the New World quickly spread throughout Europe. With the support of Queen Elizabeth I, English adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh wanted to establish a permanent North American settlement as a harbor for English privateers to prey upon Spanish galleons hauling riches back to Spain. Raleigh also hoped to discover gold and silver in his own right, to find a water passage through the New World on to the riches of India and China, and to Christianize the Native Americans. Raleigh sponsored several voyages to achieve this goal. John White was an English artist who accompanied one of these expeditions looking for a place to establish Raleigh’s colony. White’s voyage took him to Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina in 1585. The group failed to establish a colony, but White produced many watercolor portraits of the Algonquian Indians he encountered during the year-long expedition. Two years later, Raleigh again attempted to establish a settlement at Roanoke Island. Raleigh’s colony had disappeared by 1590 and came to be known as the Lost Colony.
Sourcing Questions
Exercise:
Problem:
Why did Sir Walter Raleigh want to set up a colony in North America?
Exercise:
Problem: Who was John White?
Warrior of the Secotan Indians in North Carolina, 1585.
The caption reads, “The manner of their attire and painting them selves when they goe to their generall huntings, or at theire Solemne feasts.”
Comprehension Questions
Exercise: Problem: ({link]) Look carefully at this image. List three or four things that strike you. Exercise: Problem: ({link]) What does this image tell you about the role of men in this society? Exercise: Problem:
({link]) White’s paintings would have been viewed by a European audience. How do you think they would react to this image?
Mother and child of the Secotan Indians in North Carolina, 1585.
A Cheifie Herowans Wyfe, 1585.
Exercise: Problem: ({link] and [link]) Look carefully at these images. List three or four things that strike you.
Exercise: Problem: ({link]) and ({link]) What do these images reveal about women and children in this society? White’s paintings would have been viewed by
a European audience. How do you think they would react to this image?
Historical Reasoning Questions
Exercise: Problem: John White’s images were painted in the early stages of Raleigh’s
attempt to set up a colony. Why might an artist accompany a colonizing expedition?
Exercise: Problem: Based on these images and your knowledge of early contact between
English settlers and native people, what generalizations can you make about these first encounters between cultures?
Question Formulation Technique (QFT): Map of 1491 vs. 1754 Lesson Objectives:
e Students will formulate questions based on maps from North America before contact with Europeans, as well as maps of North America in 1750.
e Students will anticipate historical themes or trends about the period 1491-1763 by examining maps from the beginning and end of this period.
Resources:
¢ Handout A: QFT Notes and Reflections ¢ Handout B: QFocus—Maps of Pre-Columbian North America and North America in 1750
Suggested Sequencing:
It is recommended that this Lesson be completed to introduce the first unit of AP U.S. History. This Lesson will benefit from students having limited prior knowledge about the course content. This Lesson can also be used in conjunction with the Native People Narrative and The Oral Tradition of the Foundation of the Iroquois Confederacy Primary Source.
Lesson Materials:
Chart paper and markers should be available to each group of students and placed in locations where all students can see the board.
I. Warm-up Activity (10 min)
1. Students should answer the following question on Handout A: QFT Notes and Reflections individually: How do historians use questions?
2. Ask students to volunteer their responses in a whole-group discussion. Students should understand that historians use questions to drive their inquiry or research into particular topics or arguments and can question
historical events, peoples’ actions, and/or the effect of these experiences. Students can be asked follow-up questions such as:
a. Why do historians ask different questions in different eras? b. What factors might shape the question a historian asks?
II. Exploration (20 min)
1. Students will participate in an exercise known as the Question Formulation Technique, or the QFT®. The QFT is designed to encourage students to ask their own questions, pique their interest in a subject, and build confidence in their historical thinking skills. Explain to students that they will be using the QFT today, which means they will be formulating questions on the basis of a prompt that will appear on the next slide, known as the QFocus. Have students read the four rules to the QFT aloud, which should be posted on the board:
e Ask as many questions as you can.
e Do not stop to answer, judge, or discuss any questions. e Change any statement into a question.
e Write down every question exactly as stated.
Explain to students that these are the only rules they must follow in this process. Engage students in a discussion about these rules:
e What are you going to be doing during this activity? ¢ What will be challenging about following these rules? e¢ Which rule will be most difficult to follow?
2. When students are clear on the directions, divide students into groups of two or three and assign each group to a piece of chart paper. The group should nominate a recorder to record questions from all group members. When all groups are ready, show the QFocus: the map of pre-Columbian Native American settlement and the map of British, French, and Spanish colonies in 1750.
3. Allow students to ask questions for about 15 minutes without interruption. If students seem to be slowing down or checking out of the
activity, remind students of the rules or ask them to repeat a certain rule (i.e., if they make an observation to a peer instead of asking a question, ask the student to read rule 3: “Change any statement into a question.”). Monitor students; when most groups have a full piece of chart paper, give students a one-minute warning.
III. Application (15-20 min)
1. Ask students to step back from their poster and read over the questions they generated as a group. Students should label their closed- and open-
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ended questions with a “c” or “o.”
¢ Closed-ended questions have one specific answer (i.e., “What year did