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TEST BANK
Learning Objectives
1. Describe the major patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived.
2. Explain how Indian and European ideas of freedom differed on the eve of contact.
3. Explain what impelled European explorers to look west across the Atlantic.
4. Explain what happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with Europeans.
5. Identify the chief features of the Spanish empire in America.
1. In 1776, what did political philosopher Adam Smith observe about the “discovery” of the Americas?
a. The European colonization of the Americas changed the course of history.
b. The idea of slavery in the New World originated with the Native Americans.
c. In reference to the Americas, the term “discovery” is misleading and should not be used.
d. Christopher Columbus’s role in settling the New World was insignificant.
e. Native Americans had benefited tremendously from European encounters.
2. Which of the following resulted from the European exploration, conquest, and colonization of the Western Hemisphere?
a. Crops new to each hemisphere reshaped people’s diets and transformed the natural environment.
b. Native Americans gained an unprecedented amount of political power.
c. The Old and New Worlds remained largely unchanged.
d. European interest in Africa dissipated; instead, Europeans focused on enslaving Native American populations.
e. European nations entered the longest era of peace since the Pax Romana.
3. Which of the following statements accurately describes the Americas before the arrival of Europeans?
a. Across Native American groups, only a few languages were spoken, which aided communication.
b. A diverse array of Native American groups had their own languages, cultures, and conflicts.
c. Trade among Native American groups had yet to be established because there were few riches there.
d. Groups relied only on hunting and gathering, not any form of farming the earth.
e. Very little diversity existed in North America, which contributed to the lack of fighting.
4. Which statement is true about Native Americans who lived in the Western Hemisphere prior to the arrival of Europeans?
a. They descended from people who are believed to have arrived in North America from Asia between 15,000 and 60,000 years
ago, via a land bridge across the Bering Strait.
b. They lived in large cities such as Tenochtitlan, which had a population that surpassed 1 million people.
c. The most complex Native American civilizations developed in the region that later became the United States.
d. Native Americans were heavily reliant on livestock populations.
e. Native Americans all spoke the same language.
5. What was a commonality shared between the Asians who crossed the Bering Strait and the Europeans who crossed the Atlantic
Ocean thousands of years later?
a. Both groups were sent there by powerful monarchs.
b. Both groups were driven by the desire to hunt large mammals.
c. Both groups started as slaves and then gained their freedom during the journey.
d. Both groups trekked during bitter ice ages.
e. Both groups were searching for resources.
6. Around 9,000 years ago, where did farming first start in the Americas?
a. the Mississippi Valley
b. the Ohio Valley
c. around the Amazon River
d. Mexico and the mountains of South America
e. the Near East
7. Pre-Columbian Native Americans were viewed by Europeans as “backwards” due to their
a. lack of farming techniques.
b. lack of metal tools.
c. inadequate hunting and fishing skills.
d. lack of trade networks.
e. inability to communicate within their tribes.
8. Both the Aztec and Inca empires were
a. urban, but lacking markets and trade networks.
b. small in population but sophisticated in infrastructure.
c. large, wealthy, and sophisticated.
d. large in geographic size but sparsely populated.
e. rural, with few impressive buildings.
9. Why did Native Americans who farmed never plow their fields?
a. The soil was too dry.
b. They had no livestock.
c. There was too much fertilizer.
d. They had big shovels to use to dig.
e. They did not need to grow many crops.
10. Which of the following statements accurately describes one of the advancements of the Inca kingdom?
a. The Incas were the only Native American group to own vast quantities of gold.
b. The Aztecs helped the Incas develop their empire, as these groups formed a close alliance.
c. The Incas were predominantly located along the Atlantic Ocean and pioneered shipbuilding.
d. The Incas refrained from expanding so that the empire was easy to manage.
e. The Incas developed a complex system of roads and bridges along the Andes mountain chain.
11. Where did mound-building tribes flourish?
a. near the Atlantic Ocean
b. in the Mississippi River Valley
c. in present-day New Mexico
d. in present-day South Florida
e. near the Hudson River
12. Pueblo Indians lived in what is now
a. the eastern United States.
b. the southwestern United States.
c. the Yucatan Peninsula.
d. the northeastern United States.
e. western Canada.
13. The Pueblo Indians encountered by the Spanish in the sixteenth century
a. had engaged in settled village life only briefly before the Spanish arrived.
b. had been almost completely isolated from any other people before the Spanish arrived.
c. used irrigation systems to aid their agricultural production.
d. were called mound builders because of the burial mounds they created.
e. created a vast empire that included control of the Incas.
14. Who were the Native Americans who created the Great League of Peace?
a. Creeks
b. Mohegans
c. Choctaws
d. Powhatans
e. Iroquois
15. When Europeans arrived, many Native Americans
a. tried to use them to enhance their standing with other Native Americans.
b. immediately opened treaty negotiations regarding land and resources.
c. promptly united against them in open warfare.
d. immediately surrendered due to the Europeans’ superiority.
e. simply moved away to avoid any interactions with them.
16. Which of the following was one of the primary focuses of the Great League of Peace?
a. It led an educational program intended to spread knowledge of the best farming techniques.
b. It successfully outlawed any wars among tribes over goods or sentiments such as revenge.
c. It greatly decreased the amount of centralized authority that had been the norm before the fifteenth century.
d. It forbid all participating Native American groups from having their own political systems and religious beliefs.
e. It relied on representatives from different groups to decide on whether to have friendly relations with outsiders.
17. Native American religious ceremonies
a. were completely unrelated to traditional practices such as farming and hunting.
b. reflected a belief that sacred spirits could be found in living and inanimate things.
c. conveyed that man was subject to supernatural forces he could not control.
d. were practiced the same way in every community regardless of tribe.
e. posed sharp distinctions between the natural and supernatural.
18. How did Native Americans view the concept of land ownership?
a. They treated land as a space for only hunting, not farming.
b. They viewed land as a common resource to use.
c. They viewed land as a possession owned only by individuals, not families.
d. They considered land as a trading opportunity.
e. They treated land as an economic commodity.
19. When European clergy read to Native Americans from the Bible about God creating the world in six days, was there anything
relatable for Native Americans?
a. Most Native Americans did not have any religion to compare with Christianity.
b. No Native American religions believed in creation myths.
c. Most Native Americans compared the Bible with their own written version of the Old Testament.
d. Some Native Americans stated that they were a lost tribe of Israel.
e. Many Native Americans concurred with the idea of a single supreme being creating the world.
20. How were the shamans and medicine men regarded in Indian societies?
a. Native Americans in general viewed them with mistrust.
b. Native American women, in particular, tended to reject them.
c. Native Americans in general treated them with respect.
d. Native Americans viewed them as highly paid witches.
e. Native Americans regarded them as murderers.
21. Which one of the following is true about Native Americans and material wealth?
a. Chiefs were expected to share some of their goods rather than hoard them.
b. Eastern Native Americans were more materialistic than those who lived west of the Mississippi.
c. Wealth mattered less to them than to Europeans, but both considered trade to be simply a commercial transaction.
d. Native Americans actually suffered more social inequality than Europeans did.
e. Generosity was one of the least valued social qualities for Native Americans because it risked taking advantage of one
another.
22. Which of the following generalizations about Native Americans did the dynamics of the Natchez Indian society highlight?
a. Native Americans rarely placed trust in the role of supernatural forces in their everyday lives and disregarded other living
things.
b. Native Americans across North America and South America had close to no similarities in terms of values and shared the same
rigid social structures.
c. Native American groups had record numbers of beggars and tended to experience far greater inequalities than did societies in
Europe.
d. While some Native American groups had rigid societal structures, wealth mattered relatively less to Native Americans
than to the Europeans.
e. The primary reason behind the fighting between Europeans and Native Americans was the emphasis Native Americans placed
on wealth.
23. Which of the following statements accurately compares Native American gender relations in the Southwest to those in most
other Native American societies?
a. Because the Southwest had fewer opportunities for hunting, men there were the primary cultivators rather than women.
b. Due to the climate, women in the Southwest had more opportunities to perform work outside the home than they did in any
other region.
c. Women in the Southwest tended to be tribal leaders, whereas other regions tended to do without the role of tribal leaders
entirely.
d. Because Native American communities in the Southwest never needed to construct homes, women there were legally
considered unable to own dwellings.
e. Because gift giving was frowned on in Native American societies in general and materials were scarce in the Southwest, men
in the Southwest primarily worked as thieves.
24. After exploring the Atlantic coast in the late sixteenth century, an Englishman writes in his journal about untouched wilderness.
What could this description mean to a European?
a. The land was beautiful and made him think badly of and ultimately reject the European countryside.
b. It would take the expedition too much effort to build a settlement, and such a settlement was almost sure to fail.
c. The Native Americans had developed bustling metropolises in many areas along the Atlantic coast.
d. The English believed the land was theirs for the taking, despite the possible presence of Native Americans.
e. The area lacked any resources that the English could successfully exploit because it was so underdeveloped.
25. An example of a freedom that most Native Americans would hold in high esteem would be
a. the opportunity for the chief to profit from selling land to a European.
b. the right to become the wealthiest member of the tribe.
c. the opportunity to work for the benefit of the group as opposed to individual gain.
d. the right to sever kinship ties to pursue individual prosperity.
e. the opportunity for some families to dominate others in the tribe.
26. Native inhabitants of the Americas generally understood freedom
a. in terms of the well-being of one’s community, mutual obligation, and group autonomy.
b. as respecting authority and obeying laws created by established governments.
c. to be defined by ownership of private property.
d. as abandoning a life of sin to embrace the teachings of Christianity.
e. in terms of coverture, which denied property rights to married women.
27. In Europe on the eve of colonization, one conception of freedom, called “Christian liberty,”
a. was a set of ideas that today is referred to as “religious toleration.”
b. combined seemingly contradictory ideas of freedom and servitude to God.
c. found expression in countries dominated by Catholics but not in primarily Protestant ones.
d. argued that all Christians should have equal political rights.
e. referred to the policy of trying to overthrow any non-Christian regime around the world.
28. What statement best characterizes religion in Europe on the eve of colonization?
a. People’s religious beliefs and practices were a matter of private choice.
b. All Christian men were politically equal regardless of their social status.
c. All Christians were legally equal regardless of gender.
d. Christians never imposed their way of life on non-Christians.
e. Religious uniformity was thought to be essential to public order.
29. European society on the eve of colonization
a. had no rigid class lines.
b. was extremely hierarchical, with inequality built into virtually every social relationship.
c. allowed the majority of men a great degree of personal independence.
d. valued freedom of expression and a free press above all else.
e. valued gender equality above all else.
30. Which of the following describes women’s rights under “coverture”?
a. They were banned from signing contracts.
b. They were required to pay more taxes than men.
c. They had to sit in the back of churches.
d. They had to be fully clothed in public.
e. They adopted a legal identity fully their own.
31. In the fifteenth century, a big impetus for European exploration was
a. establishing a sea route to Asia to obtain luxury goods.
b. mining gold in central Mexico.
c. procuring religious relics in India.
d. obtaining the compass from Asia.
e. spreading African slavery to the Americas.
32. What was China hoping to accomplish with Admiral Zheng He’s fifteenth-century explorations?
a. It hoped to impress other kingdoms with its military might.
b. It wanted to spread Buddhism.
c. It had highly limited seafaring technology and wished to copy that of the Europeans.
d. It was searching for new resources because it did not yet have a trading economy.
e. It wanted to be the first nation to arrive in the Americas.
33. Portuguese trading posts along the western coast of Africa were called factories because
a. the merchants were known as factors.
b. the trading posts made luxury products there in makeshift factories.
c. the African slaves built factories along the coast to manufacture guns.
d. the slave traders called their system a labor factory.
e. that is how the local Africans translated “trading post.”
34. African enslavement of other Africans
a. resulted from the arrival of Europeans.
b. included no form of rights for the slaves.
c. was the only kind of labor on that continent.
d. involved the enslavement of criminals, debtors, and war captives.
e. accelerated with the arrival of the French in the 1520s.
35. Where did Vasco da Gama hope to get to by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope?
a. North America
b. South America
c. the East
d. Australia
e. Europe
36. Which country first explored the Atlantic coast of Africa in the 1400s, and soon thereafter established plantation slavery on the
Atlantic islands off the African coast?
a. China
b. Spain
c. Portugal
d. England
e. France
37. By the late fifteenth century, which country replaced the Italian city-states as the major European commercial partner of Asia?
a. France
b. Holland
c. England
d. Spain
e. Portugal
38. A significant difference between the Vikings and Columbus was that
a. the Vikings were only interested in exploring Africa’s coasts.
b. Columbus’s voyages received far more publicity and would not be forgotten.
c. Columbus and other explorers for Spain did not use violence.
d. Viking ships did not use sails and were unable to cross the Atlantic.
e. the Vikings never attempted to establish settlements.
39. To solidify Spain’s religious unification, what did King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella do?
a. They required all Jews and Muslims to convert to Catholicism or leave the country.
b. They refused to sponsor voyages of exploration.
c. They banned the Protestant faith in Spain.
d. They joined with the Moor leadership to bring about harmony.
e. They returned gold to Indians in the Western Hemisphere.
40. What geographic error did Columbus make?
a. He grossly underestimated the size of the earth.
b. He thought the earth was not round but flat.
c. He was certain that India was east of the Americas.
d. He expected the weather in India to be the same as in the North Atlantic.
e. He confused the Atlantic Ocean with the Indian Ocean.
41. What role did religion play in Columbus’s explorations?
a. none whatsoever
b. Columbus was determined to convert Native Americans to Christianity.
c. Catholics in Spain supported his expeditions because they wanted to end Muslim control of the eastern trade.
d. Columbus benefited from Ferdinand and Isabella’s efforts to promote tolerance in Spain.
e. Spain wanted Columbus to find a refuge for the Jews that the king was driving out of the country.
42. What was the most significant result of Ferdinand Magellan’s explorations?
a. He was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean.
b. He died in the Caribbean islands.
c. He led the conquering of the Aztecs.
d. His voyages corrected Columbus’s erroneous assessment of the earth’s size.
e. He and his men were the first Europeans to encounter bison.
43. The ritual sacrifices practiced by the Aztecs
a. were minimal in number and never exceeded more than a couple at a time.
b. prompted most Aztecs to oppose their leaders, who opposed the sacrifices.
c. shocked Europeans despite their own practices of publicly executing criminals and burning witches at the stake.
d. were always held at an arena in Tenochtitlán that resembled the Roman Colosseum.
e. cost the Spanish several hundred men before Cortés conquered the Aztecs.
44. What was MOST significant in inspiring Spanish conquistadores during their exploration and conquest of the New World?
a. a desire to replicate the successful social structures found in the New World
b. a desire to increase the population in Spain by encouraging the people of the New World to immigrate
c. a desire to catalog the flora and fauna of the newly discovered continent
d. a desire to spread Catholicism and gain wealth and national glory
e. a desire to take Brazil back from the British
45. What 1430s invention was instrumental in spreading the news of Columbus’s voyage across Europe?
a. the steamship
b. the printing press with movable type
c. the compass
d. the bicycle
e. the telegraph
46. What factor had the greatest impact on ensuring Hernán Cortés’s victory over the Aztecs?
a. a smallpox epidemic that devastated Aztec society
b. the thousands of Aztec subjects alienated by brutal Aztec rule who were willing to fight with Cortés
c. iron weapons and gunpowder
d. the pacifism of Aztec rulers
e. Cortés’s superior negotiation skills
47. The Columbian Exchange was
a. the agreement that documented what Christopher Columbus would give to Spanish leaders in return for their sponsorship of
his travel to the New World.
b. the transatlantic flow of people, plants, animals, and germs that began after Christopher Columbus reached the New World.
c. John Cabot’s exploration of the New World, which brought more of the goods that Columbus had found back to the Old
World.
d. responsible for introducing food staples such as corn, tomatoes, and potatoes to the Americas.
e. the first European market established in the New World, named for the man who founded it.
48. In 1492, the Native American population
a. lived mostly in the area of present-day Canada.
b. lived primarily in large urban areas.
c. was immune to smallpox and measles.
d. lived mostly south of the present-day United States.
e. comprised at least 200 million people.
49. When Native Americans first encountered Europeans, what led to the European diseases being so deadly?
a. Native Americans had been struggling with basic survival.
b. The diets of most Native Americans lacked meat, so they had no consistent amounts of protein.
c. Most Europeans spread the diseases on purpose.
d. The Native Americans had no tribal doctors or healers.
e. Centuries of continental isolation meant the Native Americans had no immunity.
50. Which statement is accurate regarding the flow of goods in the Columbian Exchange?
a. Corn, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, tobacco, and cotton were introduced to Europe.
b. Avocados, beans, pumpkins, squashes, and cocoa were introduced to the Americas.
c. Corn, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, tobacco, and cotton were introduced to the Americas.
d. Wheat, sugarcane, horses, cattle, pigs, and sheep were introduced to Europe.
e. Bananas, rice, grapes, chickens, and dandelions were introduced to Europe.
51. What happened to the population of the Americas as a result of contact with Europeans?
a. The population stayed relatively stable.
b. It is estimated that 80 million native people of the Americas died in the first 150 years after contact with Europeans, due to
disease, war, and enslavement.
c. Many native inhabitants of South America moved to West Indian islands.
d. The native population increased from 2 million to 20 million.
e. Many Native Americans moved to Europe.
52. The Spanish empire in America
a. was limited to the Caribbean.
b. did not provide any wealth to Spain.
c. tended to be led by royal officials who were predominantly creoles.
d. contained the largest cities in the Western Hemisphere.
e. revolved around cotton farming.
53. Who in the sixteenth-century Spanish empire would have the most authority?
a. a Native American chief
b. a Catholic priest
c. a locally born wealthy landowner
d. an administrative official from Spain
e. an administrative official born in the New World
54. Which one of the following statements is true of Spanish emigrants to the New World?
a. Many of the early arrivals came to direct Native American labor.
b. From the beginning, they tended to arrive as families.
c. They were all at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
d. They soon outnumbered Native Americans.
e. Only the residents of the Malaga province migrated.
55. After conquests ended and settlements were built, who stood atop the social hierarchy in Spanish America?
a. Mestizos
b. Criollos
c. peninsulares
d. conquistadores
e. Aztec chiefs
56. What did the Virgin of Guadalupe represent?
a. the fact that mestizos held most of the high government positions
b. a mixing of Indian and Spanish cultures
c. the fact that miracles were not part of Christianity
d. the fact that the Catholic Church was insignificant in Spanish America
e. the rejection of all Indian customs by the Spanish colonies
57. Mestizos
a. were people of entirely indigenous (native) ancestry.
b. were persons of mixed origin who made up a large part of the urban population of Spanish America.
c. were a very small group, because intermarriage between Spanish and native people was illegal.
d. were people of European birth who occupied the top of the social hierarchy in Spanish America.
e. were enslaved Africans.
58. A substantial difference between the Spanish colonies in Mexico and Santa Fe was that
a. Santa Fe was settled first.
b. Mexico had few Native Americans.
c. Santa Fe did not concern itself with conversions.
d. Mexico had more Spanish settlers because of gold.
e. Mexico did not need to be conquered.
59. In 1517, the German priest ________ began the Protestant Reformation by posting his Ninety-Five Theses, which accused the
Catholic Church of worldliness and corruption.
a. Martin Buber
b. Ulrich Zwingli
c. Martin Luther
d. Reinhold Niebuhr
e. Johannes Gutenberg
60. How did Pope Alexander VI restructure the land of the non-Christian world in 1493?
a. He granted the northern half of North America to France.
b. He refused to give land to England because it was Protestant.
c. He encouraged more crusades to regain Jerusalem.
d. He granted the Dutch sole control of Africa.
e. He divided the Western Hemisphere between Spain and Portugal.
61. Besides saving the Indians from heathenism, what else did Spain claim was the goal of colonization?
a. beginning a Native American slave trade in Europe
b. enlisting French missionaries
c. introducing sheep, pigs, and cattle to the New World
d. preventing Protestantism from spreading
e. adopting Native American customs as Spanish customs
62. According to Bartolomé de Las Casas,
a. Spain needed to outlaw African slavery and prevent it from entering the New World.
b. Spain had caused the deaths of millions of innocent Native Americans in the New World.
c. Native Americans were barbarians and had limited rights to their lands and liberty.
d. Spain had no right whatsoever to rule in America and had gone against God’s wishes.
e. enslaving Native Americans was questionable but must continue in order to benefit the Spanish economy.
63. Which statement is true of Bartolomé de Las Casas?
a. Las Casas participated in the conquest of Brazil and was himself an enslaver of Indians before he changed his views in 1523.
b. Las Casas’s book A Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies denounced Spain for enslaving Indians and causing
the deaths of millions of native people.
c. Las Casas believed that Spain’s rule over America was unjust, and advocated returning the land to its native inhabitants.
d. Las Casas was equally critical of enslaving Africans and Indians, and felt that all humans should be treated with respect and
dignity.
e. Las Casas sailed on Columbus’s first voyage, and used his firsthand knowledge of the brutalities he saw inflicted on that
journey to justify his political views.
64. The actions of Bartolomé de las Casas can best be described in modern-day terminology as that of a(n)
a. whistleblower.
b. irrational man.
c. religious zealot.
d. curious intellectual.
e. greedy businessman.
65. The New Laws of 1542
a. led Protestant Europeans to create the Black Legend about Spanish rule in the Americas.
b. introduced the encomienda system.
c. were adopted at the urging of Gonzalo Pizzaro, brother of Peru’s conqueror.
d. stated that Indians would no longer be enslaved in Spanish possessions.
e. forbade the enslavement of Africans in New Spain.
66. The Black Legend described
a. the Aztecs’ view of Cortés.
b. English pirates along the African coast.
c. Spain as a uniquely brutal colonizer.
d. Portugal as a vast trading empire.
e. Indians as savages.
67. What was the significance of Puerto Rico during Spanish exploration?
a. It was where the Indians revolted and booted out the Spanish.
b. It was rare among European colonies in that it had gold.
c. It later broke away from Spain and became an independent nation.
d. Under Spanish rule, slavery was outlawed and all residents had equal rights.
e. Natives in this colony were immune to European diseases.
68. Where was the first permanent Spanish colony in what is now the United States?
a. Jamestown, Virginia
b. St. Augustine, Florida
c. on the island of Puerto Rico
d. Plymouth, Massachusetts
e. Santa Fe, New Mexico
69. Who explored the Great Plains in the 1500s, but was considered a failure because he failed to find gold?
a. Jacques Marquette
b. Samuel Champlain
c. Francisco Vásquez de Coronado
d. Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo
e. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés
70. Which of the following is true of Spain’s explorations of the New World?
a. Individual conquistadores always traveled alone.
b. Spanish exploration parties suffered greatly from disease.
c. Florida was the first region in the present-day continental United States that Spain colonized.
d. Spain sought to forestall Portuguese incursions into the New World.
e. Spain’s explorations had no impact on the size of the Native American population.
