Time Period #1 Review [1491 to 1607]
Europeans and American Indians maneuvered and fought for dominance, control, and security in North America, and distinctive colonial and native societies emerged

Three interrelated themes pervade the history of colonial North America and the United States.  These themes can be most succinctly summarized as: 1) the land of the free; 2) the land of opportunity; and 3) a nation of immigrants.  These themes can each be traced back to before 1492, to a time when the only immigrants living in North America were those who had crossed the land bridge over the Bering Strait centuries before.  The Europeans who began arriving in 1492 were seeking a better life, most in the form of a higher standard of living and many wishing to practice the religion of their choice and/or to govern themselves.  At various junctures after 1492, some of the new arrivals succeeded in finding the freedom and opportunity they sought, while others came to occupy a subordinate position with only very limited freedom or access to economic opportunity.  As we trace the growth and transformation first of colonial North America and then the United States, we will focus on those individuals and groups, immigrants and native-born, who found the freedom and opportunity they sought, as well as those who failed to do so.

Europeans called the Americas “The New World.” But for the millions of Native Americans they encountered, it was anything but. Humans have lived here for over ten thousand years. Dynamic and diverse, they spoke hundreds of languages and created thousands of distinct cultures. Native Americans built settled communities and followed seasonal migration patterns, maintained peace through alliances and warred with their neighbors, and developed self-sufficient economies and maintained vast trade networks. Native Americans cultivated distinct art forms and spiritual values. Kinship ties knit their communities together. But the arrival of Europeans and the resulting global exchange of people, animals, plants, and microbes—what scholars benignly call the Columbian Exchange—bridged more than ten thousand years of geographic separation, inaugurated centuries of violence, unleashed the greatest biological terror the world had ever seen, and revolutionized the history of the world.

The “discovery” of America unleashed horrors. Europeans embarked upon a debauching path of death and destructive exploitation that unleashed murder and greed and slavery. But disease was deadlier than any weapon in the European arsenal. It unleashed death on a scale never before seen in human history. Estimates of the population of pre-Columbian America range wildly. Some argue for as much as 100 million, some as low as 2 million. In 1983, Henry Dobyns put the number at 18 million. Whatever the precise estimates, nearly all scholars tell of the utter devastation wrought by European disease. Dobyns estimated that in the first 130 years following European contact, 95 percent of Native Americans perished.31 (At its worst, Europe’s Black Death peaked at death rates of 25% to 33%. Nothing else in history rivals the American demographic disaster.) A 10,000 year history of disease crashed upon the New World in an instant. Smallpox, typhus, the bubonic plague, influenza, mumps, measles: pandemics ravaged populations up and down the continents. Wave after wave of disease crashed relentlessly. Disease flung whole communities into chaos. Others it destroyed completely.Disease was only the most terrible in a cross-hemispheric exchange of violence, culture, trade, and peoples–the so-called “Columbian Exchange”–that followed in Columbus’s wake. Global diets, for instance, were transformed. The America’s calorie-rich crops revolutionized Old World agriculture and spawned a worldwide population boom. Many modern associations between food and geography are but products of the Columbian Exchange: potatoes in Ireland, tomatoes in Italy, chocolate in Switzerland, peppers in Thailand, and oranges in Florida are all manifestations of the new global exchange. Europeans, for their part, introduced their domesticated animals to the New World. Pigs ran rampant through the Americas, transforming the landscape as they spread throughout both continents. Horses spread as well, transforming the Native American cultures who adapted to the newly introduced animal. Partly from trade, partly from the remnants of failed European expeditions, and partly from theft, Indians acquired horses and transformed Native American life in the vast North American plains.

The Europeans’ arrival bridged two worlds and ten-thousand years of history largely separated from each other since the closing of the Bering Strait. Both sides of the world had been transformed. And neither would ever again be the same.

 From Pangaea to Paradise - The Americas Before European Conquest [1491]
Pre-Columbian indigenous populations were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness rather, a vastly  more populous and sophisticated civilizations that actively shaped and influenced the land around them .

Pangaea
The pristine myth
Incas
Mayans
Aztecs

To the Ends of the Earth: The Age of European Exploration and Discovery [1400-1600]
Overseas exploration emerges as a powerful factor in European culture as the world’s regions, peoples, and economies became increasingly interconnected.

Crusades |1095 to 1295| "A successful failure"
Role of Geography |Location, Location, Location
Rise of Nation States
Coastal exploration vs. open sea exploration|Technological Advances
Christopher Columbus
The Protestant Reformation|1517

The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
An ecological collision of organisms across the Atlantic between the Old World and the New,
changed the history of our planet creating the Modern World.

International Trade|Globalization (Global Networks)|Redistribution of wealth
Redistribution of world’s population|voluntary and involuntary
Triangular slave trade| 1500-1800 |“African Diaspora”
Redistribution of plants and animals| “Columbian Exchange”
Indians and European disease
Diffusion of European values and religion

Devils in the Desert: Spanish Exploration and Conquest [1500-1620]
Rich in resources and natural beauty, the Americas became irresistible to gold-hungry Spanish Conquistadors seeking to harvest souls and extract gold.

Spanish Conquistadors "Profitable Havoc"
Spanish Extraction of mineral resources
Cortes|LaMalinche|Moctezuma II 
The Colonial Caste System
The Black Legend

Encomienda: Indigenous Labors Systems in New Spain
The Spanish Empire ruthlessly bound Indigenous people and imported Africans into a coerced labor system, initiating debates that challenged the idea of colonial exploitation based on race.

Encomienda System
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1547)
Bartolomé de Las Casas (1552)
Repartimiento System
Asiento System

The Spanish Mission System – “A Wealth of Souls to Harvest”
The Spanish clergy, particularly Jesuits and Franciscans, played a critical role in settling the Southwest using the mission system. Over the centuries, this became the most effective means of “civilizing” natives.

GOAL: “civilizing” natives
REACTIONS: Pueblo Revolt of 1680|Popé's Rebellion

The French and the Dutch, in the New World 1524 to 1608
European explorers, traders, settlers, soldiers and missionaries explore beyond the Southwest and help establish an economic base for North American trade.

Impact of Protestant vs Catholic battles
Marquette|Missionary work|Mississippi River
Coureurs du bois
The Dutch East India Company|1602

Gentlemen in the Wilderness - The Planting of English America [1588 – 1607]
A group of haughty gentleman-adventurers undertake a poorly planned,
badly led and foolishly located English colony that will miraculously survive and prosper.

Queen Elizabeth I - 1533-1603  Protestant Queen of England
Roanoke settlement in North Carolina (1590)

From Pangaea to Paradise - The Americas Before European Conquest [1491]

Pre-Columbian indigenous populations were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness rather, a vastly  more populous and sophisticated civilizations that actively shaped and influenced the land around them .

Pangaea

The pristine myth
Incas

Mayans

Aztecs

 To the Ends of the Earth: The Age of European Exploration and Discovery [1400-1600]

Overseas exploration emerges as a powerful factor in European culture as the world’s regions, peoples, and economies became increasingly interconnected.

Crusades |1095 to 1295| "A successful failure"
Role of Geography |Location, Location, Location
Rise of Nation States

Coastal exploration vs. open sea exploration|Technological Advances
Christopher Columbus
The Protestant Reformation|1517

The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
An ecological collision of organisms across the Atlantic between the Old World and the New,
changed the history of our planet creating the Modern World.

International Trade|Globalization (Global Networks)|Redistribution of wealth

Redistribution of world’s population|voluntary and involuntary

Triangular slave trade| 1500-1800 |“African Diaspora”

Redistribution of plants and animals| “Columbian Exchange”

Indians and European disease

Diffusion of European values and religion

Devils in the Desert: Spanish Exploration and Conquest [1500-1620]

Rich in resources and natural beauty, the Americas became irresistible to gold-hungry Spanish Conquistadors seeking to harvest souls and extract gold.

Spanish Conquistadors "Profitable Havoc"
Spanish Extraction of mineral resources

Cortes|LaMalinche|Moctezuma II 

The Colonial Caste System

The Black Legend

Encomienda: Indigenous Labors Systems in New Spain

The Spanish Empire ruthlessly bound Indigenous people and imported Africans into a coerced labor system, initiating debates that challenged the idea of colonial exploitation based on race.

Encomienda System

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1547)

Bartolomé de Las Casas (1552)

Repartimiento System

Asiento System

The Spanish Mission System – “A Wealth of Souls to Harvest”

The Spanish clergy, particularly Jesuits and Franciscans, played a critical role in settling the Southwest using the mission system. Over the centuries, this became the most effective means of “civilizing” natives.

GOAL: “civilizing” natives

REACTIONS: Pueblo Revolt of 1680|Popé's Rebellion

The French and the Dutch, in the New World 1524 to 1608

European explorers, traders, settlers, soldiers and missionaries explore beyond the

Southwest and help establish an economic base for North American trade.

Impact of Protestant vs Catholic battles
Marquette|Missionary work|Mississippi River
Coureurs du bois
The Dutch East India Company|1602

Gentlemen in the Wilderness - The Planting of English America [1588 – 1607]
A group of haughty gentleman-adventurers undertake a poorly planned,
badly led and foolishly located English colony that will miraculously survive and prosper.

Queen Elizabeth I - 1533-1603  Protestant Queen of England
Roanoke settlement in North Carolina (1590)