APUSH
Pre-Columbian and Europe during
the Age of Exploration- Vocab
Pangaea
• Gigantic common landmass
Continental Drift
• About 240 million years ago, powerful tectonic
forces fractured Pangaea and slowly pushed
the continents into their present positions.
Homo Sapiens
• Modern humans
Beringia
• A land bridge connecting Asian Siberia and
American Alaska.
Paleo-Indians
• The first migrants across Beringia who arrived
sometime after 15,000 BP and definitely by
13,500 BP.
Clovis Point
• An early Paleo-Indian spearhead named for
the place in New Mexico where it was first
excavated.
Archaic Indians
• North American peoples who lived sometime
between 10,000 BP to somewhere between
4000 and 3000 BP.
Great Basin Indians
• Archaic peoples who lived between the Rocky
Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas.
Woodland Peoples
• East of the Mississippi River, Archaic peoples
adapted to a forest environment such as those
located in the major river valleys of the
Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland;
the Great Lakes region and the East Coast.
Mogollon Cultures
• Small farming settlements located throughout
southern New Mexico at about AD 200.
Hohokam Culture
• About AD 500 in southern Arizona agrarian
based settlements used sophisticated grids of
irrigation canals to plant and harvest crops
twice a year.
Adena Peoples
• Between 2500 BP and 2100 BP, these peoples
built hundreds of burial mounds radiating
from central Ohio.
Hopewell Culture
• About 2100 BP, Adena culture evolved into the
more elaborate Hopewell culture which lasted
about 500 years.
Algonquian
• Tribes that inhabited the Atlantic seaboard,
the Great Lakes region and much of the Upper
Midwest.
Iroquoian
• Occupied territories centered in Pennsylvania,
upstate New York as well as the Carolinas and
New York.
Mississippian Culture
• Emerged in the floodplains of the major
southeastern river system about AD 800 and
lasted until about AD 1500.
League of Five Nations
• Confederation of Native Americans who
included the following tribes: Seneca,
Onondaga, Mohawk, Oneida and Cayuga.
Muskogean
• Spread throughout the woodlands of the
southeast, south of the Ohio River and east of
the Mississippi River. Including the Creek,
Choctaw, Chickasaw and Natchez tribes.
The Dalles
• A prime fishing site on the Colombia River on
the border of present-day Oregon and
Washington.
Mexica
• Empire that stretched from coast to coast
across central Mexico, encompassing between
8 and 25 million people.
Prince Henry the Navigator
• The most important advocate of Portuguese
exploration. He collected the latest
information about sailing techniques and
geography, supported new crusades against
Muslims, sought fresh sources of trade and
pushed exploration deeper into new areas.
Malinali
• A young Amerindian girl gifted to Cortes by
the Tabasco Indians. She spoke several
languages including, Nahuatl, the language of
the Aztecs and acted as an interpreter and
liaison for Cortes.
St. Augustine, Florida
• In 1565 the Spanish king sent Pedro
Menendez de Aviles to create settlements
along the Atlantic Coast of North America. In
early September, he founded St. Augustine,
the first permanent European settlement in
the U.S.
Acoma Pueblo Revolts
• 1599 revolt against the Spanish settlers led by
Juan de Onate in the New Mexico pueblo of
Acoma.
Repartimiento
• 1549 reform that began to replace
encomienda. It limited the labor the
encomendero could command from his
Indians to 45 days per year from each adult
male.