Download Overview of the First Americans

Teacher’s Note: These U.S. history supplementary texts are taken from the
website http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=1&smtid=1
This site is an excellent resource that includes a lot more information if you
are interested in learning further about these topics.
Overview of the First Americans
Digital History ID 2908
No aspect of our past has been more thoroughly shaped by popular mythology than
the history of Native Americans. Quite unconsciously, Americans have picked up a
host of misconceptions. For example, many assume that pre-Columbian North
America was a sparsely populated virgin land. In fact, millions of Native Americans
inhabited the area that would become the United States.
This section traces the settlement of the Americas by Paleo-Indians, the ancestors
of the New World Indians; it examines the diversity and size of Native American
cultures; and identifies the defining characteristics of the Indian cultures of North
America on the eve of European contact.
Summary
Although few textbooks today use the word "primitive" to describe pre-contact
Native Americans, many still convey the impression that North American Indians
consisted simply of small migratory bands that subsisted through hunting, fishing,
and gathering wild plants. As we shall see, this view is incorrect; in fact, Native
American societies were rich, diverse, and sophisticated.
Food discovered and domesticated by Native Americans would transform the diet of
Europe and Asia. Native Americans also made many crucial--though often
neglected--contributions to modern medicine, art, architecture, and ecology.
During the thousands of years preceding European contact, the Native American
people developed inventive and creative cultures. They cultivated plants for food,
dyes, medicines, and textiles; domesticated animals; established extensive
patterns of trade; built cities; produced monumental architecture; developed
intricate systems of religious beliefs; and constructed a wide variety of systems of
social and political organization ranging from kin-based bands and tribes to
city-states and confederations. Native Americans not only adapted to diverse and
demanding environments, they also reshaped the natural environments to meet
their needs. And after the arrival of Europeans in the New World, Native Americans
struggled intently to preserve the essentials of their diverse cultures while adapting
to radically changing conditions.
Approximately 30,000 years ago, the Paleo-Indians, the ancestors of Native
Americans, followed herds of animals from Siberia across Beringia, a land bridge
connecting Asia and North America, into Alaska. By 8,000 B.C.E., these peoples had
spread across North and South America.
No one knows for sure how many Indians lived in the Western Hemisphere in 1492,
but the number was in the millions. In no sense were the Americas empty lands.
At least 2,000 distinct languages were spoken in the Americas in 1492. Cultural
differences were marked. Some Indian peoples belonged to small bands of hunters
and gatherers; some practiced sophisticated irrigated agriculture.
Complex, agriculturally-based cultures developed in a number of regions, including
the Mayas and Aztecs in Mesoamerica, the Incas in Peru, and the Moundbuilders and
Mississippians in the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys.
All Indians lived in organized societies with political structures, moral codes, and
religious beliefs. All had adapted to the particular environments in which they lived.
The idea of private land ownership was foreign; land was held communally and
worked collectively.
The largest domesticated animals were dogs, llamas, and alpacas, and therefore the
Indians could not rely on such animal by-products such as wool, leather, milk, and
meat. Although some societies had developed the wheel, it was used as a toy. No
society had shaped metal into guns, swords, or tools; none had gunpowder, sailing
ships, or mounted warriors.
Deadly epidemics also aided the European conquest. The Indians were highly
susceptible to European diseases. Smallpox, typhus, diphtheria, plague, cholera,
measles, and influenza appear to have been unknown. Measles, mumps, whooping
cough, and other epidemics greatly reduced the Indian population.
Overview of the Colonial Era
Digital History ID 2909
The year 1492 marks a watershed in modern world history. Columbus's voyage of
discovery inaugurated a series of developments that would have vast consequences
for both the Old World and the New. It transformed the diets of both the eastern and
western hemispheres, helped initiate the Atlantic slave trade, spread diseases that
had a devastating impact on Indian populations, and led to the establishment of
European colonies across the Western Hemisphere.
This section identifies the factors--including rapid population growth, commerce,
new learning, and the rise of competing nation-states--that encouraged Europeans
to explore and colonize new lands. It explains why Portugal and Spain were the first
to become involved in overseas exploration and why England and France were slow
to challenge Spain’s supremacy in the Americas.
Detailed Summary:
European Expansion
During the mid- and late-15th century, Europe gained mastery over the world's
ocean currents and wind patterns and began to create a European-centered world
economy. Europeans developed astronomical instruments and trigonometrical
tables to plot the location of the sun and stars; replaced oarsmen with sails; and
began to better understand wind patterns and ocean currents.
The pioneer in European expansion was tiny Portugal, which, after 1385, was a
united kingdom, and, unlike other European countries, was free from internal
conflicts. Portugal focused its energies on Africa's western coast. It was Spain that
would stumble upon the New World.
Columbus underestimated the circumference of the earth by one-fourth and
believed he could reach Japan by sailing 2,400 miles west from the Canary Islands.
Until his death in 1506 he insisted that he had reached Asia. But he quickly
recognized that the new lands could be a source of wealth from precious minerals
and sugar cane.
The Columbian Exchange
The 15th and 16th century voyages of discovery brought Europe, Africa, and the
Americas into direct contact, producing an exchange of foods, animals, and diseases
that scholars call the “Columbian Exchange.”
The Indians taught Europeans about tobacco, corn, potatoes, and varieties of beans,
peanuts, tomatoes, and other crops unknown in Europe. In return, Europeans
introduced the Indians to wheat, oats, barley, and rice, as well as to grapes for wine
and various melons. Europeans also brought with them domesticated animals
including horses, pigs, sheep, goats, and cattle.
Even the natural environment was transformed. Europeans cleared vast tracts of
forested land and inadvertently introduced Old World weeds. The introduction of
cattle, goats, horses, sheep, and swine also transformed the ecology as grazing
animals ate up many native plants and disrupted indigenous systems of agriculture.
The horse, extinct in the New World for ten thousand years, encouraged many
farming peoples to become hunters and herders.
The exchange, however, was not evenly balanced. Killer diseases killed millions of
Indians. The survivors were drawn into European trading networks that disrupted
earlier patterns of life.
European Colonization
There were three distinct forms of European colonization in the New World: empires
of conquest, commerce, and settlement. Spain regarded the Indians as a usable
labor force, while France treated the Indians primarily as trading partners. The
English, in contrast, adopted a policy known as plantation settlement: the removal
of the indigenous population and its replacement with native English and Scots.
For more than a century, Spain and Portugal were the only European powers with
New World colonies. After 1600, however, other European countries began to
emulate their example. France’s New World Empire was based largely on trade. By
the end of the 16th century, a thousand French ships a year were engaged in the fur
trade along the St. Lawrence River and the interior, where the French constructed
forts, missions, and trading posts.
Relations between the French and Indians were less violent than in Spanish or
English colonies. In part, this reflected the small size of France’s New World
population, totaling just 3,000 in 1663. Virtually all these settlers were men--mostly
traders or Jesuit priests--and many took Indian wives or concubines, helping to
promote relations of mutual dependency. Common trading interests also
encouraged accommodation between the French and the Indians. Missionary
activities, too, proved somewhat less divisive in New France than in New Mexico or
New England, since France’s Jesuit priests did not require them to immediately
abandon their tribal ties or their traditional way of life.
English Colonization
During the 17th century, when England established its first permanent colonies in
North America, a crucial difference arose between the southern-most colonies,
whose economy was devoted to production of staple crops, and the more diverse
economies of the northern colonies.
Initially, settlers in the Chesapeake colonies of Maryland and Virginia relied on white
indentured servants as their primary labor force, and at least some of the blacks
who arrived in the region were able to acquire property. But between 1640 and
1670, a sharp distinction emerged between short-term servitude for whites and
permanent slavery for blacks. In Virginia, Bacon's Rebellion accelerated the shift
toward slavery. By the end of the century slavery had become the basic labor force
in the southern colonies.
In New England, the economy was organized around small family farms and urban
communities engaged in fishing, handicrafts, and Atlantic commerce, with most of
the population living in small compact towns. In Maryland and Virginia, the economy
was structured around larger and much more isolated farms and plantations raising
tobacco. In the Carolinas, economic life was organized around larger but less
isolated plantations growing rice, indigo, coffee, cotton, and sugar.
Religious persecution was a particularly powerful force motivating English
colonization. Some 30,000 English Puritans immigrated to New England, while
Maryland became a refuge for Roman Catholics, and Pennsylvania, southern New
Jersey, and Rhode Island, havens for Quakers. Refugees from religious persecution
included Baptists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians, to say nothing of religious
minorities from continental Europe, including Huguenots and members of the Dutch
and German Reformed churches.
By 1700, Britain's North American colonies differed from England itself in the
population growth rate, the proportion of white men who owned property and were
able to vote, as well as in the population's ethnic and religious diversity. The early
and mid-18th century brought far-reaching changes to the colonies, including a
massive immigration, especially of the Scots-Irish; the forced importation of tens of
thousands of enslaved Africans; and increasing economic stratification in both the
northern and southern colonies. A series of religious revivals known as the Great
Awakening helped to generate an American identity that cut across colony lines.
Between 1660 and 1760, England sought to centralize control over its New World
Empire and began to impose a series of imperial laws upon its American colonies.
From time to time, when the imperial laws became too restrictive, the colonists
resisted these impositions, and Britain responded with a system of accommodation
known as "salutary neglect."
During the late 17th and early and mid-18th centuries, the colonists became
embroiled in a series of contests for power between Britain, France and Spain. By
the 1760s--after Britain had decisively defeated the French--the colonists were in a
position to challenge their subordinate position within the British Empire.
Overview of the American Revolution
Digital History ID 2910
Much more than a revolt against British taxes and trade regulations, the American
Revolution was the first modern revolution. It marked the first time in history that a
people fought for their independence in the name of certain universal principles
such as rule of law, constitutional rights, and popular sovereignty.
This section examines the causes, fighting, and consequences of the American
Revolution. You will read about the problems created by the Seven Years' War, and
British efforts to suppress American smuggling, to prevent warfare with Indians,
and to pay the cost of stationing troops in the colonies. You will also read about the
emerging patterns of resistance in the colonies, including petitions, pamphlets,
intimidation, boycotts, and intercolonial meetings. You will also learn about the
series of events, including the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and the
Coercive Acts, that ruptured relations between Britain and its American colonies.
In addition, you will learn why many colonists hesitated before declaring
independence and how the Declaration of Independence summarized colonial
grievances and provided a vision of a future independent American republic. This
chapter will discuss the composition of the British and American military forces; the
Revolution's implications for the institution of slavery; and the role of the French,
Spanish, Dutch, and Native Americans in the colonists' struggle for independence.
Finally, you will learn why the Americans emerged victorious in the Revolution.
Summary:
The Causes of the Revolution
The roots of the American Revolution can be traced to the year 1763 when British
leaders began to tighten imperial reins. Once harmonious relations between Britain
and the colonies became increasingly conflict-riven. Britain’s land policy prohibiting
settlement in the West irritated colonists as did the arrival of British troops. The
most serious problem was the need for money to support the empire.
Attempts through the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, and the Townshend Acts to raise
money rather than control trade met with growing resistance in the colonies.
Tensions increased further after Parliament passed the Coercive Acts and the First
Continental Congress took the first steps toward independence from Britain. Before
the colonies gained independence, they had to fight a long and bitter war.
The Revolutionary War
The British had many advantages in the war, including a large, well-trained army
and navy and many Loyalists who supported the British Empire. But many white
colonists were alienated by Lord Dunmore’s promise of freedom to slaves who
joined the royal army, and were inspired by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.
Excellent leadership by George Washington; the aid of such European nations as
France; and tactical errors by British commanders contributed to the American
victory. British strategy called for crushing the rebellion in the North. Several times
the British nearly defeated the Continental Army. But victories at Trenton and
Princeton, N.J., in late 1776 and early 1777 restored patriot hopes, and victory at
Saratoga, N.Y., which halted a British advance from Canada, led France to intervene
on behalf of the rebels.
In 1778, fighting shifted to the South. Britain succeeded in capturing Georgia and
Charleston, S.C. and defeating an American army at Camden, S.C. But bands of
patriots harassed loyalists and disrupted supply lines, and Britain failed to achieve
control over the southern countryside before advancing northward to Yorktown, Va.
In 1781, an American and French force defeated the British at Yorktown in the war's
last major battle.
Consequences:
1. About 7,200 Americans died in battle during the Revolution. Another 10,000 died
from disease or exposure and about 8,500 died in British prisons.
2. A quarter of the slaves in South Carolina and Georgia escaped from bondage
during the Revolution. The Northern states outlawed slavery or adopted gradual
emancipation plans.
3. The states adopted written constitutions that guaranteed religious freedom,
increased the legislature's size and powers, made taxation more progressive, and
reformed inheritance laws.