History Chapter 1 New World This Concentrates The Contact Between Indians And Early

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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 ex-

amining 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

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

2. Near present-day St. Louis, the city known as Cahokia, which flourished with a population of 10,000 to 30,000 around

1200 CE, featured large human-built mounds.

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.

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, plants, trees,

water, and wind. This idea is known as animism.

F. Native American Religion

1. Religious ceremonies were often directly related to farming and hunting.

3. Indian religion did not pose a sharp distinction between the natural and the supernatural.

G. Land and Property

2. Indians believed land was a common resource, not an economic commodity.

H. Gender Relations

1. Women could engage in premarital sex and choose to divorce their husbands, and most Indian societies were matrilineal.

I. European Views of the Indians

1. Europeans felt that Indians lacked genuine religion.

3. Europeans viewed Indian men as weak and Indian women as mistreated.

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.

3. In the premodern world, religion permeated every aspect of people’s lives.

C. Freedom and Authority

1. Europeans claimed that obedience to law was another definition of freedom; law was liberty’s salvation.

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

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.

3. Portugal began colonizing Atlantic islands and established sugar plantations worked by slaves.

C. Freedom and Slavery in Africa

2. Europeans traded textiles and guns for African slaves; this greatly disrupted African society.

D. The Voyages of Columbus

3. In the same year, 1492, the king and queen completed the Reconquista, ordering all Muslims and Jews to convert to

Catholicism or leave the country.

V. Contact

A. Columbus in the New World

1. Columbus landed on Hispaniola in 1492, and colonization began the next year.

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.

3. Vasco Núñez de Balboa trekked across Panama and was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean. Ferdinand Magellan

led an expedition to sail around the world.

C. The Demographic Disaster

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.

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.

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.

3. Not only diseases contributed to massive deaths but also brutal conditions of forced labor.

F. Las Casas’s Complaint

2. Las Casas insisted that Indians were rational beings and Spain had no grounds to deprive them of land or liberty.

4. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature)

G. Reforming the Empire

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

3. As late as 1763, Spanish Florida had only 4,000 inhabitants of European descent.

J. Spain in the Southwest

2. Oñate destroyed Acoma, a centuries-old Indian city, in response to an attack.

K. The Pueblo Revolt

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

3. Relatively few French colonists arrived in New France; most were engagés (indentured servants) who returned home

when their contracts expired. The white population in 1700 was only 19,000.

C. New France and the Indians

1. With few settlers, France needed friendly relations with the Indians.

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.

D. The Dutch Empire

2. Dutch traders established Fort Orange (near modern Albany) in 1614, and the Dutch West India Company settled

colonists on Manhattan Island in 1626.

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.

F. Freedom in New Netherland

1. New Netherland was a military post. It was not governed democratically, but the citizens possessed rights.

3. Women had more rights and independence in New Netherland than in other European colonies; they could go to court,

borrow money, and own property.

G. The Dutch and Religious Toleration

1. New Netherland was a remarkably diverse colony; eighteen different languages were spoken in New Amsterdam.

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.

I. New Netherland and the Indians

1. The Dutch came to trade, not to conquer, and were determined to treat the Indians more humanely, although conflict was

not completely avoided.

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.

3. Indians often wielded power and pitted Europeans against each other.