Patrick Swan
Lathrop
AP US History
14 August 2012
New World Beginnings
The Shaping of North America
Recorded history of the Western world began 6,000 years ago
500 years ago European explorers stumbled on the Americas
225 million years ago a supercontinent, called Pangaea, contained all the world’s dry
land
Pangaea then began to break apart and enormous chunks of land drifted away from
each other
Geological forces opened the Atlantic and Indian oceans, narrowed the Pacific
Ocean, created the 5 continents, and created the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains
2 million years ago The Great Ice Age blanketed parts of Europe, Asia, and the
Americas
When the glaciers retreated they left the North American landscape transformed
and depressed the level of the Canadian Shield
The melting glaciers filled the Great Lakes
Peopling The Americas
The Land Bridge Theory
35,000 years ago, during the Great Ice Age, the sea level lowered and exposed a
Land Bridge linking Asia and North America
Small bands of nomadic Asian hunters began to populate the Americas by traveling
across the Land Bridge
10,000 years ago, as the great ice age diminished, the sea level rose again and
inundated the Land Bridge
The groups that traversed the bridge spread across North and Central America and
reached the far tip of South America
When the Europeans arrived in 1492 about 54 million people inhabited the two
American continents
Over centuries they evolved into countless tribes and developed over 2,000
languages
Incas: Peru, elaborate network of roads
Mayans: Yucatan Peninsula, step pyramids
Aztecs: Mexico, step pyramids, sacrifice of conquered peoples
The Earliest Americans
5000 B.C.E. hunter-gatherers in Mexico developed the growth of corn, which became
the staff of life for early civilizations
The cultivation of corn allowed hunter-gatherers to settle which led to the rise of
towns and cities
Corn planting reached present day U.S. in 2000 B.C.E.
The Pueblo people in the Rio Grande constructed intricate irrigation systems to
water their cornfields
Eastern Indians
Cultivation of maize, beans, and squash reached the Atlantic seaboard in 1000 C.E.
Eastern Indians used three-sister-farming, beans grew on the trellis of the
cornstalks and squash covered the planting mounds to retain moisture in the soil
The rich diet produced the highest population densities on the continent
Iroquois Confederacy
Legendary leader Hiawatha
Developed a robust military alliance
Menaced its neighbors
Native Americans vs. Europeans
Native Americans felt no human owned the land, the tribe as a whole did
(Europeans designated private property)
Native Americans had no intention to manipulate nature aggressively (Europeans
damaged land with their harsh agriculture)
They believed nature was full of many spirits (Europeans were monotheistic)
Indirect Discoveries of the New World
First Europeans to reach America were Norse farers from Scandinavia in about
1000 C.E.
They landed in present day Newfoundland which had an abundance of grapes,
which led them to name in Vinland
There weak settlements were soon abandoned and their discovery was forgotten
Christian Crusaders also indirectly discovered America
During their military assaults they acquired a sweet tooth for Asian goods such as
silk, drugs, perfumes, and spices (sugar)
Europeans Enter Africa
In 1295 Italian Marco Polo returned from a twenty-year voyage in Asia and further
interested Europeans
In 1450 Portuguese mariners developed a ship that could sail more closely into the
wind called a caravel
Portuguese sailors began to creep down the West African coast in the middle of the
fifteenth century
Portuguese set up trading posts along the African shore for the purchase gold and
slaves
Slave brokers deliberately split up families and people from the same tribes to
frustrate organized resistance
Slaves ended up on Portuguese sugar plantations
40,000 Africans were carried away to the Atlantics in the last half of the fifteenth
century
Spain later established trading posts also
Bartholomeu Dias rounded the southern most tip of the “Dark Continent” in 1488
and ten years later Vasco de Gama reached India
Spain became united under the Rule of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile
Columbus Comes Upon a New World
The dawn of the Renaissance in the fourteenth century nurtured and ambitious
spirit of optimism and adventure
Christopher Columbus persuaded the Spanish Monarchs to give him three tiny ships
to reach the East Indies by sailing west
On October 12, 1492, the crew sighted an island in the Bahamas
He thought he had reach the Indies
An interdependent global economic system emerged after his discovery: Europe
provided the markets, capital, and technology; Africa furnished the labor; and the
New World offered the raw materials
When Worlds Collide
When Columbus waded ashore two eco-systems clashed, this was called the
Columbian Exchange
The New World had tobacco, maize, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, gold, silver, and
syphilis
The Old World brought cows, pigs, horses, sugar cane, wheat, rice, coffee, smallpox,
measles, bubonic plague, influenza, typhus, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and slave labor
Within fifty years of the Spanish arrival, the population of the Taino natives went
from 1 million to 200
The Spanish Conquistadores
Spain secured its claim to Columbus’s discovery in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494
Spanish Conquistadores fanned out across the Caribbean to explore
Vasco Nunez Balboa: discovered the Pacific Ocean in 1513
Ferdinand Magellan: completed the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1522
Juan Ponce de Leon: explored Florida in 1513 and 1521
Francisco Coronado: discovered the Grand Canyon and Colorado River in 15401542
Hernando de Soto: discovered the Mississippi River 1539-1542
Francisco Pizarro: crushed the Incas of Peru in 1532
Encomienda System: the government would commend Indians to certain colonists if
they promised to Christianize them. It was basically glorified slavery
The Conquest of Mexico
In 1519 Hernan Cortes set sail form Cuba with16 horses, several hundred men, and
11 ships
Him and his men, along with 20,000 Indian allies, marched on Tenochtitlan and met
the Aztec Chieftain Moctezuma
Moctezuma welcomed Cortes with gifts and allowed them into the capital
unopposed
On the noche triste of June 30, 1520, the Aztec attacked and seized the city August
13, 1521
The Spanish then built Mexico City on top of the ruined Indian Capital
A new race of people emerged, Mestizos, a mix of Spanish and Indian blood
The Spread of Spanish America
Within half a century of Columbus’s landfall hundreds of Spanish cities and towns
flourished in America through
The English sent Giovanni Caboto to explore in 1497 and 1498
The French sent Giovanni de Verrazano to probe the eastern seaboard in 1524
To oppose these threats Spain set up forts all over the California coast and in other
cities like St. Augustine, Florida
Don Juan de Onate: Conquered the Indians ruthlessly in the battle of Acoma 1599
They claimed the area to be the province of New Mexico in 1609
Roman Catholic missionaries provoked and Indian uprising called the Pope’s
Rebellion in 1680
Pueblo Indians destroyed every Catholic Church and killed priests and Spanish
settlers
The French sent Robert de La Salle in the 1680’s and the Spanish began to establish
settlements in Texas in 1716
In 1769 Spanish Missionaries led by Father Junipero Serra founded a chain of 20
missions that went along the coast from San Diego as far as Sonoma
Black Legend: The false concept that Spaniards only brought bad things, tortured
Indians, infected them with smallpox, and left behind only misery. However they
erected a colossal empire and brought culture, law, religion, and language