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CHAPTER 1 A New World
This chapter concentrates on the contact between Indians and early European explorers and settlers in the Americas.
It begins by examining the sophisticated Native American cultures in South and North America before European
contact. Another major theme is the European expansion pioneered by the Portuguese and Spanish and propelled by
the search for African gold and a direct sea route to Asia. Portuguese contact with African societies, the voyages of
Columbus, and the Spanish conquest of Mexico and South America are discussed, with critical analysis of the
demographic consequences of those contacts. Other aspects of Spanish colonization—including justifications for
conquest, economic matters, and Spanish-Indian relations—are also considered. The next section focuses on the
French and Dutch empires in North America. The relatively few French who lived in New France (French Canada)
consisted mainly of fur traders, indentured servants, and Jesuit missionaries. The French drew Indians into the
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction
A. Since the voyages of Columbus, the interconnection of cultures and peoples has taken place on a global scale.
II. The First Americans
A. The Settling of the Americas
1. “Indians” settled the New World between 15,000 and 60,000 years ago, before the glaciers melted and
submerged the land bridge between Asia and North America.
B. Indian Societies of the Americas
1. North and South American societies built roads, trade networks, and irrigation systems.
2. Societies from Mexico and areas south were grander in scale and organization than those north of
Mexico.
C. Mound Builders of the Mississippi River Valley
1. Built approximately 3,500 years ago along the Mississippi River in modern-day Louisiana, a
community known today as Poverty Point was a trading center for the Mississippi and Ohio River
Valleys.
D. Western Indians
1. Hopi and Zuni ancestors settled around present-day Arizona and New Mexico, built large planned towns
with multiple-family dwellings, and traded with peoples as far away as Mississippi and central Mexico.
2. Indians in the Pacific Northwest lived primarily by fishing and gathering, whereas on the Great Plains,
the Indians hunted buffalo or lived in agricultural communities.
E. Indians of Eastern North America
1. Indian tribes living in the eastern part of North America sustained themselves with a diet of corn,
squash, and beans and supplemented it by fishing and hunting.
2. Native Americans believed sacred spirits could be found in living and inanimate things such as animals,
F. Native American Religion
1. Religious ceremonies were often directly related to farming and hunting.
2. Those who were believed to hold special spiritual powers held positions of respect and authority.
3. Indian religion did not pose a sharp distinction between the natural and the supernatural.
G. Land and Property
1. The idea of owning private property was foreign to Indians.
2. Indians believed land was a common resource, not an economic commodity.
3. Wealth mattered little in Indian societies and generosity was far more important.
H. Gender Relations
1. Women could engage in premarital sex and choose to divorce their husbands, and most Indian societies
were matrilineal.
2. Because men were often away on hunts, women attended to the agricultural duties as well as the
household duties.
I. European Views of the Indians
1. Europeans felt that Indians lacked genuine religion.
III. Indian Freedom, European Freedom
A. Indian Freedom
1. Europeans concluded that the notion of freedom was alien to Indian societies.
2. Europeans concluded that Indians were barbaric because they were too free.
B. Christian Liberty
1. Europeans believed that to embrace Christ was to provide freedom from sin.
2. “Christian liberty” had no connection to later ideas of religious tolerance.
3. In the premodern world, religion permeated every aspect of people’s lives.
4. A person’s religion was closely tied to his or her economic, political, and social position.
C. Freedom and Authority
1. Europeans claimed that obedience to law was another definition of freedom; law was liberty’s salvation.
2. Under English law, women held very few rights and were submissive to their husbands.
D. Liberty and Liberties
1. Liberty came from knowing one’s place in a hierarchical society and fulfilling duties appropriate to
one’s rank.
2. Numerous modern civil liberties (such as freedom of worship and of the press) did not exist.
IV. The Expansion of Europe
A. Chinese and Portuguese Navigation
1. Chinese admiral Zheng He led seven naval expeditions into the Indian Ocean between 1405 and 1433,
even exploring East Africa on the sixth voyage.
2. Caravel, compass, and quadrant made travel along the African coast possible for the Portuguese in the
early fifteenth century.
B. Portugal and West Africa
1. Africa was a wealthy continent, and the search for African gold drove the early explorers.
2. The Portuguese established trading posts, “factories,” along the western coast of Africa.
3. Portugal began colonizing Atlantic islands and established sugar plantations worked by slaves.
C. Freedom and Slavery in Africa
1. Slavery was already one form of labor in Africa before the Europeans came.
2. Europeans traded textiles and guns for African slaves; this greatly disrupted African society.
3. By the time Vasco da Gama sailed to India in 1498, Portugal had established a vast trading empire.
D. The Voyages of Columbus
1. Both commercial trade and religious conversions motivated Columbus.
V. Contact
A. Columbus in the New World
1. Columbus landed on Hispaniola in 1492, and colonization began the next year.
2. Nicolas de Ovando established a permanent base in Hispaniola in 1502.
3. Amerigo Vespucci sailed along the coast of South America between 1498 and 1502, and the New World
came to be called America.
B. Exploration and Conquest
1. News could now travel quickly, especially with the invention of Johann Gutenberg’s movable-type
printing press in the early 1400s.
2. John Cabot had traveled to Newfoundland in 1497, and soon many Europeans were exploring the New
World.
3. Vasco Núñez de Balboa trekked across Panama and was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean.
C. The Demographic Disaster
1. The Columbian Exchange transferred not only plants and animals but also diseases, such as smallpox
and influenza.
2. The native populations were significantly depleted through wars, enslavement, forced conversion to
Christianity, and disease.
VI. The Spanish Empire
A. Governing Spanish America
1. Spain established a stable government modeled after Spanish home rule and absolutism.
a. Power flowed from the king to the Council of the Indies to viceroys to local officials.
2. The Catholic Church played a significant role in the administration of Spanish colonies.
B. Colonists in Spanish America
1. Gold and silver mining was the primary economy in Spanish America.
C. Colonists and Indians
1. Indian inhabitants always outnumbered European colonists and their descendants in Spanish America.
a. Peninsulares were people of European birth.
2. Spanish America evolved into a hybrid culture—part Indian, part Spanish, and, in places, part African.
a. Mestizos were persons of mixed Indian and Spanish origin.
D. Justifications for Conquest
1. To justify their claims to land that belonged to someone else, the Spanish relied on cultural superiority,
missionary zeal, and violence.
E. Spreading the Faith
1. A missionary element existed from the Church’s long holy war against Islam and was renewed with the
Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century.
2. National glory and religious mission went hand in hand, with the primary aim of the Spaniards being to
transform the Indians into obedient Catholic subjects of the crown.
F. Las Casas’s Complaint
1. Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote about the injustices of Spanish rule toward the Indians.
2. Las Casas insisted that Indians were rational beings and Spain had no grounds to deprive them of land
or liberty.
3. He believed that “the entire human race is one,” but favored African slavery.
4. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature)
a. Las Casas, History of the Indies (1528)
b. His book helped to establish the Black Legend that Spain was a uniquely brutal colonizing power.
G. Reforming the Empire
1. Las Casas’s writings encouraged the 1542 New Laws, which forbade Indian enslavement.
2. In 1550, Spain abolished the encomienda system and replaced it with the repartimiento system.
H. Exploring North America
1. In what would become the future United States, Spain established the first permanent colony on the
island of Puerto Rico (1508).
2. Large Spanish expeditions traveled through Florida, the Gulf of Mexico region, and the Southwest
(1520s–1540s).
3. These expeditions, particularly Hernando de Soto’s, brutalized Indians and spread deadly diseases.
I. Spanish Florida
1. Florida, the first present-day U.S. continental area colonized by Spain, had forts as early as the 1560s to
protect Spanish treasure fleets from pirates.
2. Spanish missionaries sought to convert Indians, without much success.
3. As late as 1763, Spanish Florida had only 4,000 inhabitants of European descent.
J. Spain in the Southwest
1. In 1598, Juan de Oñate led settlers into present-day New Mexico.
2. Oñate destroyed Acoma, a centuries-old Indian city, in response to an attack.
K. The Pueblo Revolt
1. In 1680, Pueblo Indians, led by Popé, rebelled against the Spanish colonists in present-day New Mexico
for forcing the Indians to convert to Christianity.
2. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature)
a. The “Declaration of Josephe” (1681) is the deposition of a Native American who witnessed the
Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico.
VII. The French and Dutch Empires
A. French and Dutch settlements became more dependent than the English on Native Americans as trading
and military allies, providing Indians with more power and freedom in dealing with these settlements.
B. French Colonization
1. The French were hoping to find gold and the Northwest Passage to the Pacific but found only what they
considered a barrier: a large North American continent.
2. Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in 1608, and others explored and claimed the entire Mississippi
C. New France and the Indians
1. With few settlers, France needed friendly relations with the Indians.
2. The Jesuits converted Indians but did not try to change much of the Indian culture and allowed them to
retain some of their traditional religious practices.
3. The French prided themselves on adopting a more humane policy toward the Indians than Spain, yet
their contact still brought disease and their fur trading depleted the native animal population.
4. On the upper Great Lakes, relative equality existed between the French and Indians.
a. The métis were children of Indian women and French men.
b. It was more common for the French to adopt Indian ways than for Indians to become like the French.
D. The Dutch Empire
1. In 1609, Henry Hudson sailed into New York Harbor and claimed the area for the Netherlands.
E. Dutch Freedom
1. The Dutch prided themselves on their devotion to liberty; freedoms of the press and of private
religious practice were unique to the Dutch.
2. Amsterdam was a refuge for many persecuted Protestants and Jews.
F. Freedom in New Netherland
1. New Netherland was a military post. It was not governed democratically, but the citizens possessed
rights.
G. The Dutch and Religious Toleration
1. New Netherland was a remarkably diverse colony; eighteen different languages were spoken in New
Amsterdam.
2. The Dutch were more tolerant in religious matters than other European countries, but they still had an
official religion, the Dutch Reformed Church.
3. Governor Petrus Stuyvesant denied open practice of other religious faiths.
4. No one in New Netherland was forced to attend the Dutch Reformed Church or executed for different
religious beliefs.
H. Settling New Netherland
1. Cheap livestock and free land after six years of labor were promised in an attempt to attract settlers.
2. A plan was adopted to offer large estates to patroons, shareholders who agreed to transport tenants for
agricultural labor.
I. New Netherland and the Indians
J. Borderlands and Empire in Early America
1. A borderland is a “meeting place of peoples where geographical and cultural borders are not clearly
defined.”
2. Boundaries between empires, and between colonists and native peoples, constantly shifted.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• Compare the following precontact societies: Aztec, Inca, Cahokia, and the ancestors of the Hopi and Zuni. What
similarities and differences defined the development and culture of these indigenous peoples?
• How did Indians and Europeans conceive of and practice religion?
• The Europeans’ understanding of freedom based on ownership of private property had little meaning to most
Indian societies. What values were far more important than individual autonomy to most Indian communities,
and why?
• Bartolomé de Las Casas became a voice of freedom for the Indians in Spanish America. Explain what
experiences motivated him to speak out. What kind of influence did his actions exert on the Spanish, Indians,
and African slaves? In what sense was his understanding of freedom limited by his background and origins?
• Compare the Spanish colonies with the French and Dutch colonies. Think about factors such as economies,
freedoms, religion, government structure, and intermarriage. How did the French and Dutch learn from Spanish
experiences in the Americas?
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nattrans/nattrans.htm
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/tblibrary.htm
The National Humanities Center. Teacher Serve: An Interactive Curriculum Enrichment Service for Teachers. Two sections:
one on religion and the national culture and one on the environment in American history. Toolbox Library offers a plethora of
primary sources, discussion questions, additional online sources, and talking points.
Caribbean Amerindians
http://indigenouscaribbean.wordpress.com/articles/issues-in-indigenous-caribbean-studies/
Issues in Indigenous Caribbean Studies is an online collection of academic papers.
Columbian Exchange
www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/tserve/nattrans/ntecoindian/essays/columbian.htm
The National Humanities Center chronicles the Columbian Exchange with help from Alfred Crosby.
Conquistadores
1492: An Ongoing Voyage
www.ibiblio.org/expo/1492.exhibit/Intro.html
This exhibit, hosted by the Library of Congress, provides a variety of resources and information about Columbus and the
consequences of his voyage.
The Mound Builders
http://www.crt.state.la.us/louisiana-state-parks/historic-sites/poverty-point-state-historic-site/index
The Louisiana State Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, Office of State Parks, offers this website for the Poverty
Point Historic Site.
www.cr.nps.gov/archeology/feature/builder.htm
The National Park Service’s archaeology site features a time line, artifacts, “delta voices,” and more from the mound builders.
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Axtell, James. “The Moral Dimensions of 1492.” Historian 56, no. 1 (1993): 17–28.
Bradley, James W. Evolution of the Onondaga Iroquois: Accommodating Change, 1500–1655. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 2005.
Crosby, Alfred. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972.
Davis, David Brion. “Constructing Race: A Reflection.” William and Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997): 7–18.
Shaped America. New York: First Vintage Books, 2005.
Townsend, Camilla. “Burying the White Gods: New Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico.” American Historical Review 108,
no. 3 (2003): 659–687.
Wright, Ronald. Stolen Continents: 500 Years of Conquest and Resistance in the Americas. New York: Mariner, 2005.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Pizarro and the Incas: Group Film Analysis
Have students watch Guns, Germs, and Steel, episode 2, “The Conquest,” based on Jared Diamond’s book. It is available on
DVD or streaming from Netflix. The DVD is a National Geographic program, but PBS has an insightful companion website
that includes transcripts of all episodes: www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/.
Discussion Activities
1. What was life like for the Incas in the sixteenth century?
2. What was life like for the Spanish in sixteenth-century Europe?
3. Why did conflict arise between the Spanish and the Incas?
4. Discuss the advantages Spanish society had over Incan society and which allowed the Spanish forces to conquer the
large Incan army. How did these advantages come about?
compare to the conquest of the Aztecs?
2. The Spanish Conquest: European and Indian Perspectives: Class Debate
Divide the class in half to represent European and Native American people. Allow the groups to meet and finalize their talking
points on the question of how European arrival in the Americas impacted Native American people. A class debate will ensue
