Download Chapter 1 Outline New World Beginnings 33000 BCE

Chapter 1 Outline
New World Beginnings
33,000 B.C.E.-1783 C.E.
Peopling the Americas:
 ~35,000 years ago—land bridge connecting Eurasia & No Amer
 Early peoples may have reached Americas in crude boats
 Most came by land
 Probably following migratory herds of game
 Small bands of nomadic Asian hunters
 Europeans arrive in 1492—approx. 54 million people inhabited the Americas
 Split into countless tribes; evolved more than 2000 languages; developed diverse religions, cultures,
and customs
 Sophisticated civilizations emerged
 Incas—Peru
 Mayans—Central America
 Aztecs—Mexico
 Advanced agric practices
 Cultivation of maize
 Elaborate cities with far-flung commerce
The Earliest Americans:
 Agric (esp corn) accounted for size and sophistication of Native Amer civilization in Mex and So Amer
 Corn—staple crop; staff of life; foundation of complex, large-scale, centralized Aztec and Incan
civilizations
 Corn planting reached present-day Amer SW ~2000 BCE; powerfully molded Pueblo culture
 Intricate irrigation system
 Villages of multi-storied, terraced bldgs.
 Reached other parts of No Amer considerably later
 Explains much of relative rates of development of diff Native Amer peoples
 No dense concentrations of pop or complex nation-states comparable to Aztec empire existed in
No Amer outside Mex at time of Eur arrival
 Allowed for relative ease w/ which Eur colonizers subdued native No Amers
 Mound Builders of Ohio R valley
 Mississippian culture of lower Midwest
 Cahokia (present-day East St. Louis)
 Desert-dwelling Anasazi peoples of SW
 Chaco Canyon (present-day New Mexico)
 Each sustained some lrg settlements after incorporation of corn planting into ways of life during 1 st
millennium CE
 Each fell into decline by ~1300 CE
 Cultivation of maize reached SE area of No Amer by 1000 CE
 Three-sister farming—beans growing on trellis of cornstalks and squash covering the planting mounds
to retain moisture in soil
 Produced some of highest pop densities on continent
 i.e. Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee peoples
 Closest No Amer approximation to empires of Mex and Peru—Iroquois in 16th c
 Inspired by legendary leader Hiawatha
 Iroquois Confederacy devel pol and organiz skills to sustain robust military alliance that menaced
neighbors and Europeans for over a century
 For most part—Native Amer peoples in No Amer lived in small, scattered, impermanent settlements on
eve of Eur arrival
 Pattern of life conferred substantial authority on women
 Developed matrilineal cultures
 Power & possessions passed down the female side of family line
 Native Americans had neither desire nor means to manipulate nature aggressively
 Unlike Europeans—presumed humans had dominion over earth; had tech to alter face of land
Indirect Discoverers of the New World:
 Norse sea-farers from Scandinavia chanced upon NE shores of No Amer ~1000 CE
 Flimsy settlements soon abandoned; their discovery forgotten except in Scandinavian song and saga
 Christian crusaders rank high among America’s indirect discoverers
 Acquired taste for exotic delights of Asia
 Luxuries prohibitively expensive in Eur
 Had to be transported enormous distances
 Muslim middlemen exacted heavy toll en route
 Eur eager to find less expensive route to riches of Asia or devel alternate sources of supply
Europeans Enter Africa:
 Marco Polo—regarded as indirect discoverer of New World; his book stimulated Eur desires for cheaper
route to treasures of East
 ~1450 CE—Portuguese mariners devel the caravel
 Ship that could said more closely into the wind
 New world of sub-Saharan Africa came w/in grasp of questing Eur
 Portuguese set up trading posts along African shore for purchase of gold and slaves
 Slaves to work sugar plantations on African coastal islands
 Slave trading became big biz
 15th c—Portuguese adventurers in Africa found the origins of modern plantation syst
 Based on lrg-scale commercial agric and wholesale exploitation of slave labor
 Spain—newly united under Ferdinand and Isabella—eager to outstrip their rival in race to tap wealth of
the Indies
Columbus Comes upon a New World:
 Eur clamored for more and cheaper products from the East
 Africa est as source of cheap slave labor for plantation agric
 Portuguese voyages demonstrated feasibility of long-range ocean navigation
 Spain—gaining unity, wealth, and power to undergo tasks of discovery, conquest, and colonization
 Dawn of Renaissance (14th c) nurtured ambitious spirit of optimism and adventure
 ~1450 CE—intro of printing press
 Facilitated spread of scientific knowledge
 Christopher Columbus—Italian seafarer who conviced F & I to sponsor his search for new route to East
 Oct 12, 1492—sighted island in Bahamas
 One of most successful failures in history
 Seeking new water route to the East, he in fact bumped into an enormous land barrier
 At 1st certain he had skirted rim of the “Indies”; called native peoples Indians
 Due to his “discovery”—an interdependent global economic syst emerged on scale undreamed of
before
 Eur provided the markets, capital, and tech; Africa furnished labor; New World offered its raw
materials
When Worlds Collide:
 Columbian exchange—flora and fauna from Old and New Worlds exchanged
 Tobacco, maize, beans, tomatoes, potatoes—revolutionized international economy as well as Eur diet
 Fed rapidly growing pop of Old World
 3/5 of crops cultivated around world today originated in the Americas
 Cattle, swine, horses from Old World to New
 No Amer Indian tribes (i.e. Apaches, Sioux, Blackfeet) swiftly adopted the horse
 Transformed the cultures into highly mobile, wide-ranging hunter societies that roamed Great
Plains
 Sugar cane brought from Old World—thrived in warm Caribbean climate
 “sugar revolution” took place in Eur diet
 From New World to Old
 Gold, silver
 Corn, potatoes, pineapples, tomatoes, tobacco, beans, vanilla, chocolate
 Syphilis
 From Old World to New
 Wheat, sugar, rice, coffee
 Horses, cows, pigs,
 Smallpox, measles, bubonic plague, influenza, typhus, diphtheria, scarlet fever
 From Africa to New World
 Slave labor
 Microbes from Old World killed many more natives than enslavement or armed aggression
 As many as 90% of Native Amers perished—demog catastrophe w/o parallel in human history
The Spanish Conquistadores:
 Spain secured its claim to Columbus’s discovery in Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)
 Divided New World with Portugal
 Spain became dominant exploring and colonizing power in 1500s
 Spanish conquistadores fanned out across Caribbean and mainland America
 Gold, glory, and God
 Vasco Nunez Balboa—“discover” of Pacific
 Ferdinand Magellan—first circumnavigation of the globe
 Juan Ponce de Leon—explored Florida in search of gold
 Francisco Coronado—penetrated as far east as Kansas; in quest of fabled golden cities
 Hernando de Soto—gold-seeking expedition in 1539-1542; “discovered” the Mississippi R
 Francisco Pizarro—crushed the Incas of Peru in 1532
 By 1600—Spain was swimming in New World silver
 Touched off price revolution in Eur that increased consumer costs by as much as 500%
 Ballooning money supply fueled the growth of new economic syst that would emerge—capitalism
 Laid foundation of modern commercial banking syst
 Stimulated spread of commerce and manufacturing
 Paid for much of international trade with Asia
 West Indies—served as off-shore bases for staging of the Spanish invasion of the mainland Americas
 Encomienda—Spanish govt’s policy to “command” (or give) Indians to certain colonists in return for the
promise to Christianize them
 Part of broader Spanish effort to subdue Indian tribes in West Indies and on No Amer mainland
 Was slavery in all but name
 Bartolome de Las Casas—Spanish missionary opposed to practice; called it “a moral pestilence
invented by Satan”
The Conquest of Mexico:
 1519—Hernan Cortes began his conquest of Aztecs
 Aztec metropolis rose from island in center of a lake, surrounded by gardens
 Malinche—Indian slave and interpreter for Cortes
 Eventually baptized with Spanish name of Dona Maria
 Used knowledge of unrest in Aztec empire to gain control
 Peoples required to pay tribute to Tenochtitlan joined Cortes
 Aztec chieftan Moctezma—superstitious belief that Costes was sent from the god Quetzalcoatl, whose
return from the eastern sea was predicted in Aztec legends
 Treated Spaniard hospitably at first
 June 30, 1520—Noche triste (sad night)—Aztecs attacked , driving Spanish out
 Cortes then laid siege to the city, which capitulated Aug 13, 1521
 Small pox epidemic also broke out
 Aztec empire gave way to 3 centuries of Spanish rule
 Native pop shrank from ~20 million to 2 million in less than a century
 Positives—invaders brought
 His crops and animals
 His language and laws
 His customs and religions
 All proved adaptable to peoples of Mexico
 Intermarried with surviving Indians
 Created distinctive culture of mestizos
 People of mixed Indian and Eur heritage
The Spread of Spanish America:
 W/in about ½ century of Columbus’s landfall—100s of Spanish cities/towns flourished in Americas
 Other Eur powers sniffing around the edges
 English sent Govanni Caboto (John Cabot) to explore NE coast of No Amer 1497 and 1498
 French sent Giovanni da Verrazano to probe eastern seaboard in 1524
 Also sent Jacque Cartier in 1534, who explored St Lawrence R
 Spanish began fortifying and settling their No Amer borderlands
 Ex—St Augustine, FL in 1565
 Ex—1716—established settlements in TX
 In response to Robert de La Salle exploring the Mississippi R in 1680s (France)
 Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo explored CA coast in 1542; Father Junipero Serra founded chain of 21 missions
up the coast in 1769
 Zealous devotion to Christianize3 the 300,000 native Californians
 “Mission Indians”—adopted Christianity; lost contact w/ native cultures; often lost their lives as
well due to “white mans’” diseases
 Misdeeds of Spanish in New World obscured their substantial achievements; helped give birth to the Black
Legend
 False concept that held that the conquerors merely tortured and butchered the Indians (“killing for
Christ”), stole their gold, infected them with smallpox, and left little but misery behind
 They grafted their culture, laws, religion, and language onto a wide array of native societies
 Laid foundation for score of Spanish-speaking nations
 Spaniards had more than a century’s head start over the English
 Were genuine empire builders; cultural innovators
 Paid the Native Amer the highest compliment of fusing with them through marriage
 Incorporated indigenous culture into their own
 Unlike English adversaries who shunned and isolated the Indians