The Creation of American Society - Bedford-St....

P A R T O N E

The Creation ofAmerican Society1450–1763

Part Instructional Objectives After you have taught this part, your students should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What were the main characteristics of traditional European society, and how success-fully did European settlers replicate that society in America?

2. How did the Columbian Exchange affect the lives of Europeans and Native Americans?

3. How did whites, Native Americans, and Africans interact socially and economically?

4. How did traditional English notions of government give way to calls for political sovereignty and representative assemblies in America?

5. How did family roles, immigrants, and changing religious values affect the emergence ofa new American identity?

1

Historians know that societies are made overtime, not born in a moment. They are the cre-ation of decades, even centuries, of human

endeavor and experience. Historians also know thatthe first Americans were hunters and gatherers whomigrated to the Western Hemisphere from Asia. Overhundreds of generations, these migrants—the NativeAmericans—came to live in a wide variety of environ-ments and cultures. In much of North America, theydeveloped kinship-based societies that relied on farm-ing and hunting. But in the lower Mississippi RiverValley, Native Americans fashioned a hierarchical so-cial order similar to that of the great civilizations of theAztecs, Mayas, and Incas of Mesoamerica.

In Part One, we describe how Europeans, withtheir steel weapons, attractive trade goods, and mostimportantly their diseases, shredded the fabric of most

Native American cultures. Throughout the WesternHemisphere, men and women of European origin—the Spanish in Mesoamerica and South America, theFrench in Canada, the English along the Atlanticcoast—gradually achieved domination over the nativepeoples.

Our story focuses on the Europeans who settled inthe English mainland colonies. They came hoping totransplant their traditional societies, cultures, and reli-gious beliefs in the soil of the New World. But thingsdid not work out exactly as they planned. In learning tolive in the new land, English, Germans, and Scots-Irishcreated societies in British North America that differedfrom those of their homelands in their economies,social character, political systems, religions, and cul-tures. Here, in brief, is the story of that transformationas we explain it in Part One.

2 Part One: The Creation of American Society, 1450–1763

ECONOMY SOCIETY GOVERNMENT RELIGION CULTURE

From staple cropsto internal growth

Ethnic, racial, andclass divisions

From monarchy torepublic

From hierarchy topluralism

The creation ofAmerican identity

1450 � Native Americansubsistence economy

� Europeans fish offNorth American coast

� Sporadic warfareamong Indian peoples

� Spanish conquest ofMexico (1519–1521)

� Rise of monarchicalnation-states in Europe

� ProtestantReformation begins(1517)

� Diverse NativeAmerican cultures ineastern woodlands

1600 � First staple exportcrops: furs and tobacco

� English-Indian wars

� African servitudebegins in Virginia(1619)

� James I claims divineright to rule England

� Virginia House ofBurgesses (1619)

� English Puritans andCatholics migrate toAmerica to escapepersecution

� Puritans implantCalvinism, education,and freehold ideal

1640 � New England tradeswith sugar islands

� First mercantilistregulation: NavigationAct (1651)

� White indenturedservitude inChesapeake

� Indians retreatinland

� Virginia lawsdeprive Africans ofrights (1671)

� Puritan Revolutionin England

� Stuart restoration(1660)

� Bacon’s Rebellion inVirginia (1675)

� Puritans inMassachusetts Bayquash “heresy”

� Religious liberty inRhode Island

� Aristocraticaspirations inChesapeake region

1680 � Tobacco tradestagnates

� Rice cultivationbegins in SouthCarolina

� Indian slavery in theCarolinas

� Ethnic rebellion inNew York (1689)

� Dominion of NewEngland (1686–1689)

� Glorious Revolutionin England (1688–1689)

� Rise of tolerance � Emergence ofAfrican Americanlanguage and culture

1720 � Mature yeomanfarm economy in north

� Cultivation of riceexpands

� Imports fromBritain increase

� Scots-Irish andGerman migration

� Growing inequalityin rural and urbanareas

� Rise of the colonialrepresentativeassemblies

� Era of salutaryneglect in colonialadministration

� German and Scots-Irish Pietists in MiddleAtlantic region

� Great Awakening

� Expansion ofcolleges, newspapers,and magazines

� Franklin and theAmericanEnlightenment

1760 � End of Britishmilitary aid sparkspostwar recession

� Uprisings by tenantsand backcountryfarmers

� Artisan protests inseaport cities

� Britain victoriousover French in “GreatWar for Empire”(1757–1763)

� British ministrytightens control ofAmerican colonies

� Evangelical Baptistsin Virginia

� First signs of anAmerican identity

Economy

Many European settlements succeeded as economicventures. Traditional Europe was made up of poor,overcrowded, and unequal societies that periodicallysuffered devastating famines. But with few people and abountiful natural environment, the settlers in NorthAmerica created a bustling economy. Indeed, in thenorthern mainland colonies, communities of indepen-dent farm families in rural areas and merchants andartisans in America’s growing port towns and citiesprospered in what British and German migrants called“the best poor man’s country.”

Society

At the same time, many European settlements becameplaces of oppressive captivity for Africans, with pro-found consequences for America’s social development.To replace the dwindling supply of white indenturedservants from Europe, planters in the Chesapeakeregion imported enslaved African workers to growtobacco. Wealthy British and French planters in theWest Indies, aided by African traders and political lead-ers, bought hundreds of thousands of slaves from manyAfrican regions and forced them to labor on sugarplantations. Slowly and with great effort, the slaves andtheir descendants created a variety of African Americancultures within the European-dominated societies inwhich they lived.

Government

Simultaneously, the white settlers in the English main-land colonies devised an increasingly free and compet-itive political system. The first migrants transplantedauthoritarian institutions to America and, until 1689,English authorities intervened frequently in their eco-nomic and political affairs. Thereafter, local govern-ments and representative assemblies became more im-portant and created a tradition of self-rule that wouldspark demands for political independence from Britainin the years following the conclusion of the Great Warfor Empire in 1763.

Religion

The American experience profoundly changed religiousinstitutions and values. Many migrants left Europebecause of conflicts among rival Christian churches andpersecution by government officials; they hoped topractice their religion in America without interference.Religion flourished in the English colonies, especiallyafter the evangelical revivals of the 1740s, but thechurches became less dogmatic. Many Americansrejected the harshest tenets of Calvinism (a strict Protes-tant faith); others embraced the rationalism of theEuropean Enlightenment. As a result, American Protes-tant Christianity became increasingly tolerant, demo-cratic, and optimistic.

Culture

The new American society witnessed new forms of fam-ily and community life. The first English settlers lived inpatriarchal families ruled by dominant fathers and incommunities controlled by men of high status. How-ever, by 1750, many American fathers no longer strictlymanaged their children’s lives and, because of wide-spread property ownership, many men and somewomen enjoyed personal independence. This newAmerican society was increasingly pluralistic, com-posed of migrants from many European ethnicgroups—English, Scots, Scots-Irish, Dutch, and Ger-mans—as well as West African slaves and Native Amer-ican peoples. Distinct regional cultures developed inNew England, the Middle Atlantic colonies, the Chesa-peake, and the Carolinas. Consequently, an overarchingAmerican identity based on the English language,English legal and political institutions, and shared expe-riences emerged very slowly.

Thus, the story of the English colonial experienceis both depressing and uplifting. On the one hand,Europeans and their diseases destroyed many NativeAmerican peoples and European slaveowners held anincreasing number of African Americans in bondage.On the other hand, white migrants enjoyed unprece-dented opportunities for economic security, politicalfreedom, and spiritual fulfillment.

Part One: The Creation of American Society, 1450–1763 3

Teaching ResourcesChapter Instructional Objectives

After you have taught this chapter, your studentsshould be able to answer the following questions:

1. How did Native American peoples structure theirsocieties? Why did each society develop differenteconomic, social, and political systems?

2. What were the main characteristics of traditionalEuropean society?

3. How did the European Renaissance and Reforma-tion affect the organization of American society?

4. Why did European nations pursue overseas explo-ration and colonization?

5. Why do historians describe the contact betweenEuropeans and Native Americans as the “Colum-bian Exchange”?

6. How did the Spanish invasion of the New Worldaffect the lives of peoples in the Americas, Europe,and Africa?

Chapter Annotated Outline

I. Native American SocietiesA. The First Americans

1. The first people to live in the WesternHemisphere were small bands of tribalmigrants from Asia. They followed animalherds over land and by sea over twentythousand years ago, when the last Ice Agecreated a 100-mile-wide land bridge overthe Bering Strait, connecting Siberia andAlaska.

2. Most anthropologists agree that the mainmigratory stream from Asia developedbetween 15,000 to 9,000 years ago.

3. Glacial melting then submerged the landbridge and created the Bering Strait,reducing contact between peoples inNorth America and Asia for three hun-dred generations.

4. Anthropologists also agree that a secondwave of migrants, the ancestors of theNavajos and the Apaches, crossed the nar-row Bering Strait in boats approximately8,000 years ago.

5. A third migration around five thousandyears ago brought the ancestors of theAleut and Inuit peoples, the Eskimos, toNorth America.

6. For centuries, Native Americans werehunter-gatherers; around 3000 B.C. manysocieties developed farming based oncorn, beans, and squash.

7. Agricultural surplus led to populous,urbanized, and wealthy societies in Mex-ico, Peru, and the Mississippi River Valley.

B. The Mayas and the Aztecs1. The flowering of civilization in

Mesoamerica began among the Olmecpeople, who lived along the Gulf Coast ofMexico around 700 B.C. Subsequently theMayan peoples of the Yucatán Peninsulaand Guatemala built large urban religiouscenters.

2. An elite class claiming descent from thegods ruled Mayan society and lived off thegoods and taxes extracted from peasantfamilies.

3. Mayan astronomers created a calendarthat recorded historical events and pre-dicted eclipses of the sun and the moon.The Mayas also developed hieroglyphicwriting.

4. Mayan skills in astronomy and writing

5

C h a p t e r 1

Worlds Collide:Europe, Africa, and America1450–1620

increased the authority and power of theclass of warriors and priests that ruledMayan society, and provided the peoplewith a sense of history and identity. Byfacilitating the movement of goods andideas, they also increased the prosperity ofMayan society and the complexity of itsculture.

5. Beginning around A.D. 800, Mayan civi-lization declined, perhaps caused by atwo-century-long dry period that pro-duced an economic crisis, social unrest,and population dispersal.

6. By A.D. 900 many Mayan religious centerswere abandoned. The remaining city-states would resist the Spanish invasionduring the 1520s.

7. A second major Mesoamerican civilizationdeveloped around the city of Teotihuacán(pop. 100,000) in central Mexico. By A.D.800 Teotihuacán had also declined, prob-ably because of a long-term drought andrecurrent invasions by seminomadic war-rior peoples.

8. In A.D. 1325 the Aztecs built the lake cityof Tenochtitlán (Mexico City), a base fromwhere they learned the settled ways of res-ident peoples, and established a complexhierarchical social order that subjugatedmost of central Mexico through invasion,economic tribute, and human sacrifice.

9. Aztec priests and warrior-nobles ruledover twenty clans of free Aztec common-ers who farmed communally owned land.Aztec slaves and serfs also labored on eliteprivate estates.

10. By A.D. 1500 Tenochtitlán had grown intoa metropolis of over 200,000 inhabitants,and the Aztecs’ wealth, strong institutions,and military power posed a formidablechallenge to any adversary.

C. The Indians of the North1. The Indians north of the Rio Grande had

less complex and coercive societies, andlacked occupational diversity, social hier-archy, and strong state institutions.

2. Most of these societies were self-governingtribes composed of clans, groups ofrelated families that traced their lineage toa real or legendary common ancestor.

3. By A.D. 100 the Hopewells in present-dayOhio had spread their influence fromLouisiana to Wisconsin by organizingthemselves in large villages, establishingextensive trade networks, and increasing

their food supply through domesticatingplants.

4. Hopewell trade networks were impressive.They imported obsidian from the RockyMountains, copper from the Great Lakes,and pottery and marine shells from theGulf of Mexico.

5. The Hopewells built large burial moundsand surrounded them with extensive cir-cular, rectangular, or octagonal earthworksthat in some cases still survive. SkilledHopewell artisans fashioned striking orna-ments to bury with the dead.

6. A second series of complex cultures devel-oped in the Southwest. The Hohokam andMogollon cultures developed by A.D. 600,and the Anasazi by 900. Master architects,the Anasazi built residential-ceremonialvillages in steep cliffs, a pueblo in ChacoCanyon that housed one thousand people,and 400 miles of straight roads.

7. The Hohokam people along the border ofpresent-day Arizona and New Mexicoused irrigation to grow crops, fashionedfine pottery, and worshiped their gods onMesoamerican-like platform mounds; bythe year 1000 they were living in elaboratemultiroom stone structures calledpueblos.

8. Drought brought on soil exhaustion andthe collapse of all of these cultures after1150. Cities like Chaco Canyon were aban-doned and the population dispersed tosmaller settlements. The descendants ofthese peoples—including the Acomas,Zunis, and Hopis—later built strong butsmaller village societies better suited to thedry and unpredictable climate of theAmerican Southwest.

9. The advanced farming technology ofMesoamerica spread into the MississippiRiver Valley around A.D. 800; the Mississip-pian civilization was the last large-scale cul-ture to emerge north of the Rio Grande.

10. By 1150 the largest city, Cahokia, nearpresent-day St. Louis, boasted a popula-tion of 15,000 to 20,000 and more thanone hundred temple mounds, one of themas large as the great Egyptian pyramids. Asin Mesoamerica, the tribute paid by peas-ant farmers supported a privileged class ofnobles and priests who waged war againstneighboring chiefdoms, patronized arti-sans, and claimed descent from the sungod.

6 Chapter 1: Worlds Collide: Europe, Africa, and America, 1450–1620

11. By 1350 overpopulation, urban disease,and warfare led to the decline of the Mis-sissippian civilization. The large popula-tion had overburdened the environment,depleting nearby forests and herds of deer.Still, Mississippian institutions and prac-tices endured for centuries.

12. In the Muskogean-speaking societies—and among the Algonquian-speaking peo-ples who lived farther north and to theeast, in present-day Virginia—farmingbecame the work of women. While themen hunted and fished, the women usedflint hoes to raise corn, squash, and beans.

13. Because of the importance of farming, amatrilineal inheritance system developedamong many eastern Indian peoples.Women cultivated the fields around semi-permanent settlements and passed the userights to the fields to their daughters.

II. Europe Encounters Africa and the Americas,1450–1550A. European Agricultural Society

1. There were only a few large cities in West-ern Europe before 1450; only Paris, Lon-don, and Naples had as many as 100,000residents. More than 90 percent of thepopulation were peasants living in smallrural communities.

2. Cooperative farming was a necessitybecause of the lack of available land; mostfarm families exchanged their surplusfarm products with their neighbors orbartered it for local services due to poorroads and transportation systems.

3. Most peasants yearned to be yeomen,owners of small farms that provided amarginally comfortable living, but fewachieved that goal due to exploitation bylandlords.

4. As with the Native American cultures,many aspects of European life followed aseasonal pattern; even European birth anddeath patterns appear to have been sea-sonal, indicating the profoundly ruralnature of peasant existence.

5. Mortality rates among the peasants werehigh, primarily from disease. Hunger, dis-ease, and violence were part of the fabricof daily life. Although most peasantsaccepted their difficult circumstances, oth-ers hoped for a better life. The deprivedrural classes of Britain, Spain, and Ger-many would supply the majority of whitemigrants to the Western Hemisphere dur-ing the colonial period.

B. Hierarchy and Authority1. In the traditional European social order,

authority came from above; kings andprinces owned vast tracts of land, con-scripted men for military service, and livedin splendor off the labor of the peasantry.

2. Collectively, noblemen who possessed largelanded estates had the power to challengeroyal authority through control of the localmilitary and legislative institutions.

3. The man ruled his women and children;his power was codified in laws, sanctionedby social custom, and justified by theteachings of the Christian Church.

4. On marriage, an English woman assumedher husband’s surname and was requiredto submit to his orders. She also surren-dered to her husband her legal right to allher property. When he died, she received adower, one-third of the family’s propertyfor her use during her lifetime.

5. The inheritance practice of primogeni-ture, which bestowed all land on the eldest son, forced many younger childrento join the ranks of the roaming poor;few men—and even fewer women—hadmuch personal freedom or individualidentity. Fathers often demanded that children work for them until their mid-twenties.

6. Hierarchy and authority through family,church, and village prevailed because theyoffered a measure of social order andsecurity; these values shaped the violentand unpredictable American social orderwell into the eighteenth century.

C. The Power of Religion1. The Roman Catholic Church served as

one of the great unifying forces in WesternEuropean society; the Church provided apervasive authority and discipline throughChristian dogma, a church staffed bypriests in every village, and the unifyinglanguage of Latin.

2. Like the Indians of North America, Euro-pean peasants originally were pagans andanimists: They believed that unpredictablespiritual forces governed the natural worldand that those spirits had to be paid ritualhonor. The Church attacked paganism bydevising a religious calendar that trans-formed pagan agricultural festivals intoChristian holy days. Christian doctrinepenetrated the lives of peasants; to avertfamine and plague, Christians offeredprayers to Christ and the saints.

Chapter 1: Worlds Collide: Europe, Africa, and America, 1450–1620 7

3. Crushing other religions and suppressingheresies among Christians was an obliga-tion of rulers and a task of the new ordersof Christian knights.

4. Between 1096 and 1291 successive armiesof Christians embarked on Crusades;Muslims were a prime target of the cru-saders. Christians also persecuted pagans,those who believed in polytheism, forheresy.

5. The Crusades strengthened the Christianidentity of the European population andhelped broaden the intellectual and eco-nomic horizons of the European privi-leged class.

6. Military successes against Islamic peoplesand the absorption of Arab knowledgealso enabled European elites to set out tocapture the Arab-dominated trade routesthat stretched from Constantinople to Bei-jing and from the Mediterranean to theEast Indian seas.

D. The Renaissance Changes Europe, 1300–15001. Stimulated by the wealth and learning of

the Arab and Chinese world and the re-introduction of Greek and Roman textsfollowing the Black Death that destroyedone-third of the population, Europe expe-rienced a “rebirth” of learning, economicdevelopment, and cultural life. TheRenaissance had the most impact on theupper classes.

2. A new ruling class of moneyed elite—mer-chants, bankers, and textile manufacturers—created the concept of civic humanism.This ideology celebrated public virtue andservice to the state and would profoundlyinfluence European and American concep-tions of government and national expan-sion. In Italy this movement led to theestablishment of city-states as republicswithout princes or kings.

3. Works by artists such as Michelangelo,Palladio, and da Vinci were part of a flow-ering of artistic genius that set standardsthat still influence the modern era.

4. Following Niccolò Machiavelli’s advice inThe Prince (1513), an alliance of mon-archs, merchants, and royal bureaucratschallenged the power of the agrariannobility by creating royal law courts andbureaucracies.

5. Monarchs allowed merchants to tradethroughout their realms, granted privi-leges to the artisan organizations called

guilds, and safeguarded commercial trans-actions, thereby encouraging domesticmanufacturing and foreign trade. Inreturn, kings and princes extracted taxesfrom towns and loans from merchants tosupport their armies and officials.

6. This mutually enriching alliance of mon-archs, merchants, and royal bureaucrats(which eventually became known as mer-cantilism) propelled Europe into its firstage of overseas expansion under Spainand Portugal.

7. Because Arabs and Italians dominatedtrade in the Mediterranean, Prince Henryof Portugal sought an alternate oceanicroute to Asia; under Henry’s direction,Portugal led European expansion overseas.Arab learning and innovations in sail andship design facilitated Henry’s success.

8. Eventually Henry’s mariners sailed far intothe Atlantic, where they discovered andcolonized the Azores and Madeira Islands;from there they explored the sub-SaharanAfrican coast.

E. West African Society and Slavery1. Vast and diverse, West Africa stretches

along the coast from present-day Senegalto Angola.

2. In the 1400s tropical rain forest coveredmuch of the coast, but a series of greatrivers—the Senegal, Gambia, Volta, Niger,and Congo—provided access to the inte-rior, where most people lived. There werefew coastal cities because there was littleseaborne trade.

3. Most West Africans farmed small plotsand lived with extended families in smallvillages that specialized in certain crops,ranging from millet and cotton to live-stock, yams, and oil-rich palm nuts. Theytraded both raw and manufactured goodswith one another, including rare itemssuch as salt, iron, gold, textiles, and ivory.

4. The majority of the population lived inhierarchical societies ruled by princes,similar to the Aztec and Maya peoples inMesoamerica. Some Africans inhabitedsmaller-scale stateless societies based onhousehold and lineage.

5. Among West Atlantic–speakers, the Fulaniand Wolof peoples were most numerous.Mande-speakers in the upper Niger regionincluded the Malinke and Bambara peo-ples; the Yorubas and the Ibos of southernNigeria spoke varieties of the Kwa lan-


guage. Finally, the Mossis and otherVoltaic-speakers inhabited the area alongthe upper Volta River.

6. Spiritual beliefs varied greatly, with mostWest Africans recognizing a variety ofdeities. West Africans who lived immedi-ately south of the Sahara—the Fulanis inSenegal, Mande-speakers in Mali, and theHausas in northern Nigeria—learnedabout Islam from Arab merchants andmissionaries.

7. At first, European traders had a positiveimpact on the West African peoples byintroducing new plants (coconuts andlemons), animals (pigs), and metal prod-ucts (iron) and by expanding the Africantrade networks.

8. From small, fortified trading posts on thecoast, Europeans shipped metal products,manufactures, and slaves along the coastand to inland regions, and took gold,ivory, and pepper in return.

9. In 1502 Vasco da Gama’s ships outgunnedArab fleets; the Portuguese governmentsoon built fortified trading posts on thecoast, and opened trade routes fromAfrica to Indonesia and up the coast ofAsia to China and Japan.

10. Portuguese traders joined African statesand Arab merchants in the slave trade.Bonded labor—slavery, serfdom, inden-tured servitude—was the norm in mostpremodern societies, and in Africa it tookthe form of slavery.

11. A small portion of West Africans weretrade slaves, mostly war captives andcriminals sold from one kingdom toanother as agricultural workers. SomeAfrican slaves were carried overland incaravans by Arab traders to the Mediter-ranean region.

12. To exploit this trade, Portuguese mer-chants established forts at small portcities—first at Elmina in 1482 and later atGorée, Mpinda, and Loango—where theybought gold and slaves from Africanprinces and warlords.

13. Initially the Portuguese carried a fewthousand African slaves each year to workon sugar plantations in the Cape VerdeIslands, the Azores, and the MadeiraIslands; they also sold slaves in Lisbon,which soon had a black population of9,000.

14. After 1550 other Europeans soon joined

the West African’s long-established tradein humans; by 1700 Europeans shippedhundreds of thousands of slaves to newAmerican sugar plantations in Brazil andWest Indies.

F. Europeans Explore America1. Explorers financed by the Spanish mon-

archs, King Ferdinand of Aragon andQueen Isabel of Castile, discovered theWestern Hemisphere for Europeans.

2. Married in an arranged match to combinetheir Christian kingdoms, the young rulers completed the centuries-long recon-quista. In 1492 their armies capturedGranada, the last Islamic state in WesternEurope.

3. Simultaneously, Ferdinand and Isabelsought trade and empire, and enlisted theservices of Christopher Columbus, aChristian mariner from Genoa.

4. Misinterpreting the findings of Italiangeographers, Columbus believed that theAtlantic Ocean, long feared by Arab mer-chants as a 10,000-mile-wide “green sea ofdarkness,” was a much narrower channelof water separating Europe from Asia.Although dubious about Columbus’s the-ory, Ferdinand and Isabel arranged finan-cial backing from Spanish merchants andcharged Columbus with finding a westernroute to Asia and carrying Christianity toits peoples.

5. Christopher Columbus set sail in threesmall ships in August 1492. After a per-ilous voyage of 3,000 miles, he disem-barked on October 12 on an island in thepresent-day Bahamas, believing he hadreached Asia—“the Indies,” in fifteenth-century parlance.

6. Columbus called the native inhabitants(the Taino, Arawak, and Carib) Indiansand the islands the West Indies.

7. Although Columbus found no gold, themonarchs sent three more expeditionsover the next twelve years; they wanted tomake the new land they called Las Indias(the Indies) a Spanish empire.

8. During those expeditions, Columbusbegan the colonization of the West Indies,transporting more than a thousand Span-ish settlers—all men—and hundreds ofdomestic animals.

9. A German geographer soon labeled the“new” continents “America” in honor of aGenoese explorer, Amerigo Vespucci.


Vespucci, who had explored the regionaround 1500, believed that the land wasnot Asia and called it a nuevo mundo, anew world.

10. The Spanish disregarded Vespucci’s term,and continued to consider all new lands aspart of the Indies.

G. The Spanish Conquest1. Spanish adventurers ruled the peoples of

the Indies with an iron hand. After subdu-ing the Arawaks and Tainos on Hispan-iola, the Spanish probed the mainland forgold and slaves.

2. Rumors of rich Indian kingdoms in theinterior encouraged other Spaniards,including hardened veterans of the recon-quista, to launch an invasion.

3. In 1519 Hernán Cortés, a member of theSpanish gentry class, and his fellow Span-ish conquistadors landed on the Mexicancoast and began a conquest of the Aztecempire. Luck, Indian allies, and superbnegotiation strategies enabled the Spanishto emerge victorious.

4. Moctezuma, the Aztec ruler, believed thatCortés might be a returning god andallowed him to enter the empire withoutchallenge.

5. Superior European military technology,internal divisions within the Aztec empire,and the assistance of a female native inter-preter named Malinali (Malinche) alsocontributed to Spanish victory.

6. The Spanish also had a silent ally, disease.A smallpox outbreak of 70 days decimatedthe population of Tenochtitlan, enablingCortés and his crew to infiltrate the city.Subsequent outbreaks of measles, in-fluenza, and smallpox facilitated Aztec col-lapse.

7. In the 1520s the Spanish conquest entereda new phase when Francisco Pizarro over-threw the Inca empire in Peru; the Incaswere also easy prey because of internalfighting over the throne and diseasebrought by the Spanish.

8. The Spanish invasion changed life foreverin the Americas. Disease and warfarewiped out virtually all of the Indians ofHispaniola—at least 300,000 people.

9. The conquistadors remained powerfulbecause they held royal grants (encomien-das) giving them legal control of thenative population, principally on planta-

tions and livestock ranches exportinggoods to Europe.

10. The Spanish invasion of the Americas hada significant impact on life in Europe, theAmericas, and Africa due to a process oftransfer known as the ColumbianExchange.

11. The gold and silver that had formerlyhonored Aztec gods now gilded theCatholic churches of Europe and flowedinto the countinghouses of Spain, makingthat nation the richest and most powerfulin Europe.

12. Between 1500 and 1650 no fewer than350,000 Spaniards migrated to Mesoamer-ica and western South America. Morethan 75 percent of the Spanish settlerswere men, and many of them took Indianwomen as wives or mistresses.

13. Consequently, a substantial mixed-racepopulation, called mestizos, quicklyappeared, along with an elaborate, race-based caste system.

14. Moreover, the surviving Indian peopleslost a vital part of their cultural identitywhen Spanish priests suppressed theirworship of traditional gods and convertedthem to Catholicism.

15. The empire contained about 17 millionpeople: a dominant caste of 3.2 millionSpaniards; 5.5 million people of mixedIndian and European heritage; 1.0 millionAfrican slaves; and 7.5 million Indians,who lived mostly on marginal lands.

III. The Protestant Reformation and the Rise ofEnglandA. The Protestant Movement

1. Christianity ceased to be a unifying forcein European society as new religious doc-trines divided Christians into armed ideo-logical camps of Catholics and Protestantsand created centuries of religious wars.

2. During these conflicts, France replacedSpain as the most powerful Europeanstate, and Holland and England emergedas Protestant nations determined to colo-nize the Western Hemisphere.

3. Over the centuries the Catholic Churchbecame a large and wealthy institution,controlling vast resources and politicalpower throughout Europe. Critics ofchurch wealth began to voice their con-cerns following the Renaissance.

4. In 1517 a Catholic priest named Martin


Luther publicly challenged RomanCatholic practices and doctrine with hisNinety-five Theses; the document con-demned the sale of indulgences by theChurch.

5. Luther argued three main points: Hebelieved that people could be saved onlyby grace, not good works; he dismissedthe need for priests to act as intermedi-aries between Christians and God; and hedownplayed the role of high-ranking cler-gymen and popes by naming the Bible theultimate authority in matters of faith.

6. As peasants mounted violent socialprotests of their own, Luther urged obedi-ence to established political institutionsand condemned the teachings of religiousdissidents more radical than him.

7. Eventually, the Peace of Augsburg (1555)divided Germany into Lutheran states inthe north and Catholic principalities inthe south. It allowed princes to decide thereligion of their subjects; southern Ger-man rulers installed Catholicism, andNorthern German rulers choseLutheranism.

8. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion(1536), Protestant John Calvin preachedpredestination—the idea that God deter-mines who will be saved before they areborn.

9. When the pope denied his request for amarriage annulment, King Henry VIIIbroke with the Roman Catholic Churchand created a national Church of England.

10. Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth I, combinedLutheran and Calvinist beliefs butretained the Catholic ritual of Holy Com-munion in her religious reforms. Thiscompromise angered some radical Protes-tants who took inspiration from the Pres-byterian system in which male churchelders guided the church.

11. Other radical Protestants called them-selves Puritans; they wanted to purify thechurch of “false” Catholic teachings andpractices.

B. The Dutch and English Challenge Spain1. King Philip II wanted to root Protes-

tantism out of the Netherlands andEngland, as well as Islam from NorthAfrica. He failed in both efforts.

2. To protect their Calvinism and politicalliberties, the seven northern provinces of

the Spanish Netherlands declared theirindependence in 1581 and became theDutch Republic (or Holland).

3. To assist the Dutch independence move-ment, Queen Elizabeth I dispatched 6,000troops to the Netherlands.

4. She also supported military expeditions toextend direct English rule over Gaelic-speaking Catholic regions of Ireland. Call-ing the Irish “wild savages,” English troopsbrutally massacred thousands, prefiguringthe treatment of Indians in America.

5. Through her actions Elizabeth immedi-ately became the enemy of King Phillip ofSpain.

6. In 1588 the Spanish Armada sailed out toreimpose Catholic rule in England andHolland but was defeated when a stormallowed the English to claim victory.

7. Shrugging off this defeat, Philip continuedto spend his American gold on religiouswars. This ill-advised policy divertedresources from industrial investment inSpain and weakened its economy.

8. Oppressed by high taxes on agricultureand fearful of military service, more than200,000 residents of Castile, the richestregion of Spain, migrated to America.

9. As the Spanish government and economystruggled, the Dutch Republic became theleading commercial power of Europe.

10. Amsterdam emerged as the financial capi-tal of northern Europe, and the DutchRepublic replaced Portugal as the domi-nant trader in Indonesia and West Africa.

11. Dutch merchants also looked across theAtlantic: They created the West IndiaCompany, which invested in sugar planta-tions in Brazil and established the fur-trading colony of New Netherland alongthe Hudson River in North America.

12. England’s economy was stimulated by arise in population (from 3 million in 1500 to 5 million in 1630) and by mer-cantilism, a system of state-supportedmanufacturing and trade.

13. Mercantilist-minded monarchs like QueenElizabeth encouraged merchants to investin domestic manufacturing, therebyincreasing exports and decreasingimports.

14. The domestic English textile industryrelied on outwork: Merchants boughtwool from the owners of great estates and


then hired landless peasants to spin andweave the wool into cloth. The govern-ment further helped textile entrepreneursby setting low rates for wages.

15. By 1600 the success of merchant-orientedpolicies helped to give the English and theDutch the ability to challenge Spain’smonopoly in the Western Hemisphere.

C. The Social Causes of English Colonization1. England sent more than merchant fleets

and manufactures to America. Economicchanges would bring thousands of poor,landless English peasants to search forprosperity in the Americas.

2. The Price Revolution, major inflation as a result of Spanish dumping of goldand silver on the European market, causedsocial changes in England; the nobilitywere its first casualties largely because they had rented their lands on long-term leases at low rents. In contrast, thegentry, or nonnoble landowners, pros-pered by offering short-term leases at highrates.

3. As the influence of the House of Com-mons increased, rich commoners andsmall property owners gained a voice ingovernment; this process of creating rep-resentative government had profoundconsequences for English and Americanpolitical history.

4. The Price Revolution likewise transformedthe lives of peasants. The economic stimu-lus of Spanish gold spurred the expansionof the textile industry. To increase the sup-ply of wool, profit-minded landlords andwool merchants persuaded Parliament topass enclosure acts, laws that allowedowners to fence in the open fields thatsurrounded many peasant villages and putsheep to graze on them.

5. Because of the Enclosure acts, the PriceRevolution, and crop failure, many peas-ants lost the means to earn a living andwere willing to go to America as inden-tured servants, signing a contract inwhich the individual agreed to work with-out wages for four or five years inexchange for passage to America androom and board for the term of the con-tract.

6. This massive migration to Americabrought about a new collision betweenEuropean and Native American worlds.

Key Terms

clan A group of related families that share a real orlegendary common ancestor. Most Native peoplesnorth of the Rio Grande organized their societiesaround clan groups, which combined to form adistinct people based on language and culture. (9)

pueblos Multistory and multiroom stone or mud-brick buildings built as residences by Native peoples in the southwestern United States. (11)

matrilineal A system of family organization in whichsocial identity and property descend through thefemale line. Children are usually raised in theirmother’s household, and her brother (their uncle)plays an important role in their lives. (14)

peasant The traditional term for a farmworker inEurope. Some peasants owned land, while othersleased or rented small plots from landlords. Insome regions, peasants lived in compact commu-nities with strong collective institutions. (14)

yeoman In England between 1500 and 1800, a farmerwho owned enough land to support his family inreasonable comfort. In America, Thomas Jeffersonenvisioned a nation of yeomen, of politically andfinancially independent farmers. (14)

dower, dower right A legal right originating inEurope and carried to the American colonies thatprovided a widow with the use of one-third of thefamily’s land and goods during her lifetime. (16)

primogeniture The practice of passing family land, bywill or by custom, to the eldest son. Republic-minded Americans of the Revolutionary era feltthis practice was unfair, but they did not prohibitit. However, most state legislatures eventuallypassed laws providing that if a father dies withouta will, all his children must receive an equal por-tion of his estate. (16)

pagan A person whose spiritual beliefs center on thenatural world. Pagans do not worship a super-natural God; instead, they pay homage to spiritsand spiritual forces that dwell in the natural world.(16)

heresy A religious doctrine inconsistent with theteachings of a church. Some of the Crusades be-tween 1096 and 1291 targeted groups of Chris-tians whose beliefs the Roman Catholic Churchjudged to be heretical. (16)

republic A state without a monarch that is ruled by arepresentative system of government. In designinggovernments for the newly independent American


states, Patriot leaders chose a republican form.They considered it an antidote to the poisonouscorruption they had seen in the British monarchy.(20)

civic humanism The belief that individuals owe a ser-vice to their community and its government. Dur-ing the Renaissance, political theorists argued thatselfless service was of critical importance in arepublic, a form of government in which author-ity lies in the hands of some or all of the citizenry.(20)

ideology A systematic philosophy or political theorythat purports to explain the character of the socialworld or to prescribe a set of values or beliefs. (20)

guild An organization of skilled workers in medievaland early modern Europe that regulated the entryinto and the practice of a trade. Guilds did notdevelop in colonial America because artisans gen-erally were in short supply. (20)

trade slaves West Africans who were sold by one Afri-can kingdom to another and who were not consid-ered members of the society that had enslavedthem. For centuries, Arab merchants carried tradeslaves to the Mediterranean region; around 1440,Portuguese ship captains joined in this trade andbegan buying slaves from African princes and war-lords. (23)

reconquista The campaign by Spanish Catholics todrive North African Moors (Muslim Arabs) fromthe European mainland. After a centuries-longeffort to recover their lands, the Spaniards de-feated the Moors at Granada in 1492 and securedcontrol of all of Spain. (23)

encomiendas Land grants in America given by theSpanish kings to privileged landholders (encomien-deros) in the sixteenth century. Encomiendas alsogave the landholders legal control over Native peo-ples who lived on or near their estates. (25)

Columbian Exchange The transfer in the sixteenthcentury of agricultural products and diseases fromthe Western Hemisphere to other continents, andvice versa. (25)

mestizo A person of mixed blood; specifically, thechild of a European and a Native American. (28)

caste system A form of social organization that dividesa society along relatively rigid lines of status basedprimarily on birth. (28)

indulgence A certificate granted by the CatholicChurch that claimed to pardon a sinner from pun-

ishment in the afterlife. In his Ninety-five Theses,written in 1517, Martin Luther condemned theselling of indulgences, which was a common prac-tice among Catholic clergy. (29)

predestination The idea that God chooses certainpeople for salvation even before they are born.Sixteenth-century theologian John Calvin was themain proponent of this doctrine, which became afundamental tenet of Puritan theology. (29)

outwork A system of manufacturing, also known asputting out, used extensively in the Englishwoolen industry in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. Merchants bought wool and then hiredlandless peasants who lived in small cottages tospin and weave it into cloth, which the merchantswould sell in English and foreign markets. (32)

mercantilism A set of parliamentary policies, firstenacted in 1650 and constantly updated, that reg-ulated colonial commerce and manufacturing forthe enrichment of Britain. The policies ensuredthat the American colonies produced agriculturalgoods and raw materials for export to Britain,where they were sold to other European nations ormade into finished goods. (32)

Price Revolution The impact of the high rate of infla-tion in Europe in the mid-1500s. American goldand silver, brought to Europe by Spain, doubledthe money supply at a time when the populationalso was increasing. The increase in prices causedprofound social changes—reducing the politicalpower of the aristocracy and leaving many peasantfamilies on the brink of poverty—setting the stagefor substantial migration to America. (32)

gentry A class of Englishmen and -women who weresubstantial landholders but lacked the social priv-ileges and titles of nobility. During the Price Revo-lution of the sixteenth century, the relative wealthand status of the gentry rose while those of thearistocracy fell. (33)

enclosure acts Laws passed in sixteenth-century England that allowed landowners to fence in theopen fields that surrounded many villages and usethem for grazing sheep. Such enclosures left peas-ants in those villages without land to cultivate,forcing them to work as wage laborers or as woolspinners and weavers. (33)

indenture A contract that required service for a spec-ified period. In the seventeenth century, inden-tures brought thousands of workers to NorthAmerica. In exchange for agreeing to work for fouror five years without wages, the workers received


passage across the Atlantic, room and board, andstatus as a free person at the end of the contractperiod. (34)

Lecture Strategies

1. Implicit in the notion of worlds colliding is a com-parison of Europeans, Africans, and Native Amer-icans encountering alien cultures. Using thisframework, you might compare and contrast themain characteristics of European and NativeAmerican civilizations to provide the basis for students to understand cultural interactions in ahistorical context. This binary focus sets up a sub-sequent lecture to explain why and how Europeansdominated the Americas and Africa. A central goalwould be to explain how cultural differencesshaped the variant actions and responses of thecultural groups to the broader forces of expansionand encounter set in motion by Europe.

2. Another major lecture would detail why and howEuropeans eventually took over the Americas bymanipulating African and Native American peo-ples. Compare and contrast European and NativeAmerican civilizations to explain how Europeansused more than superior military technology tovanquish native opposition throughout the Amer-icas. Examine demography, social order, politicalorganization, agrarian labor systems, trade and ex-change, technology, religion, and science amongthe Mayans, Aztecs, or native peoples such as theHopewell and Mississippian cultures. Compareand contrast these factors with the economic, so-cial, political, and cultural life of Europe in the fif-teenth century. Analyze the impact of the viraldiseases Europeans brought to the Americas. Dis-cuss how epidemics spread so quickly, had such adevastating effect, and disorganized and demoral-ized Native Americans. How did the impact ofepidemics affect the contemporary European andNative American interpretations of what was happening?

3. Native American resistance to European invasionwas widespread throughout the early colonialperiod. Write a lecture that traces the complexitiesof this phenomenon across cultural groups andregions in the Americas that came under Spanishcontrol before 1600. Examine political, social, eco-nomic, environmental, and disease factors thatshaped the different responses of native people toEuropean arrival.

4. Students will need help unraveling the complexprocess of European state development, specifi-cally in England, which had such a profound influ-

ence on the course of American history. Studentsoften take for granted the rise of the constitutionalnation-state that has become the norm in themodern world. But its rise was by no means guar-anteed. The complexity of its development lies inthe interactions among religion, economics, andsocial and political organization. How and whendid changes in one area affect those in another?

5. Exploration and colonization are major effortsthat require the considerable resources of a nation.Explain to students the logic of exploration andcolonization. What did the Europeans want? Howdid they go about getting it? Why were they suc-cessful? What kind of mercantile system did theydevelop? Examine how the Portuguese took mostof the fifteenth century to develop a colonial sys-tem in which they imported African slaves to colo-nial plantations in order to produce tropical crops,which were then imported into the mother coun-try and traded throughout Europe. Then showhow that system became the model for the colo-nial systems developed by Spain in the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries.

Reviewing the Text

These questions are from the textbook and follow eachmain section of the narrative. They are provided in theComputerized Test Bank with suggested responses, foryour convenience.

Native American Societies (pp. 6–14)

1. What were the major similarities and differencesbetween the civilizations of Mesoamerica and theMississippian culture to the north?

Similarities

• Formed complex, large-scale societies with largepermanent populations based in fortified cities

• Practiced advanced farming techniques basedon plant domestication

• Extensive trade networks with neighboring societies

• Produced agricultural surplus that led to popula-tion increase, class specialization, and city-stateformation

• Farmers built pyramids and large templemounds, directed by an elite class of rulers andpriests

• Tribute and taxes (in the form of goods) paid bypeasant farmers supported an elite class ofnobles and priests who ruled through descentfrom the sun god, waged war against neighbor-ing chiefdoms, patronized skilled artisans.


• Large populations overburden the environment,depleting local food supplies, leading to disease.Maya experienced a two-century drought pro-ducing economic crisis for overburdened peas-ants, leading to migration.

• Mesoamerican rituals may have influenced thedevelopment of Mississippian culture: examplesare Mayan refugees from war-torn Yucataninfluencing Mississippi River Valley and Natchezcustoms of ceremonial burial in mounds

• Buried remains of dead in ceremonial mounds

Differences

• Inhabited different regions: Central Mesoamer-ica vs. North America

• Mesoamerica possessed more people (40 millionin Mesoamerica and South America combined);North America = 7 million

• Mesoamerica declines earlier (800 A.D. for Mayaand Teotihuacan vs. 1350 A.D. for Mississippi-ans) due to later development of populationincrease and later arrival of farming technology(800 A.D. for Mississippians)

2. How did the climate affect the rise and decline ofvarious native peoples?

• Climate changes during the last Ice Age enablednative people to walk across a land bridge overthe Bering Strait to North America around10,000 B.C.

• The warming of the climate then isolated NorthAmerican Indians from European migrationand diseases until the arrival of Columbus in1492. Native people succumbed rapidly to Euro-pean diseases because of geographical isolation.

• Climate shaped the development of farmingtechnology in the Americas, concentrating corn,beans, and squash cultivation in the warm andmoist soil of Mesoamerica where it later spreadas far north as Canada.

• Climate changes, including drought, shaped themigratory patterns of North American Indiansover time.

3. How were eastern woodland Indian societies orga-nized and governed?

• The societies were comprised of diverse cultures,ranging from larger, more agriculturally basedsocieties to smaller Algonquian and Iroquoiansocieties who combined hunting/gathering withfarming.

• They inhabited semi-permanent settlementssurrounded by fields.

• They were self-governing tribes composed ofclans. Clan elders conducted ceremonies andpoliced societies, but did not form a distinct rul-ing class.

• Eastern woodland societies did not encourageaccumulation of material goods and land own-ership; resources were shared, which encouragedreciprocity rather than accumulation amongpeople.

• Lineage and household formed the basis ofsociety.

• Gender specialization: farming controlled bywomen after large-scale societies declined anddispersed into smaller settlements following dis-ease exposure from the 1540s de Soto expedition.

• A matrilineal inheritance system developed dueto control of farming by women; women passeduse-rights of fields to daughters.

• Fathers stood outside the main lines of kinship;primary responsibility of child rearing fell tomothers and brothers who often lived with sis-ters rather than wives.

• Religious rituals centered on annual agriculturalcycle, for example, green corn and strawberryfestivals of the Iroquois.

• But because household and lineage was the basisof society, not hereditary and divinely ordainedleadership, leaders lacked power compared toMesoamerica, and could not compel all peopleto follow them into war or make other majordecisions.

Europe Encounters Africa and the Americas,1450–1550 (pp. 14–28)

1. Compare and contrast the main characteristics oftraditional European society and West Africansociety. How were they each similar to and differ-ent from Native American societies?

European society vs. West African society

• Similarities: Agriculturally based pagan culturecombined with monotheism; relative poverty ofpeasant classes; lived in small villages withextended families; male-ruled society; multiplic-ity of languages; majority of people lived in hier-archical societies ruled by princes.

• Differences: More unified religion in Europebased on Christianity; Europeans made morewidespread use of iron; Europeans were sailingsocieties; Europeans were more politically united;Africans practiced slavery; many Africans lived intribal societies.


Native American society vs. West Africans and Europeans

• Similarities: Agriculturally based, small commu-nities as well as large kingdoms; kinship basedwith extended families living in one large house-hold; multiplicity of languages.

• Differences: Native American societies gave morepower to women, succumbed to European dis-eases more readily due to greater geographicalisolation, produced relatively smaller populationlevels, practiced paganism universally, and didnot possess sailing technology.

2. Why and how did Portugal and Spain pursue over-seas commerce and conquest?

• Why: To acquire new lands for the monarchyand nation-state, to find a western route to Asianresources, to serve a Christian god, and to enrichprivate investors and fulfill the process of mer-cantilism

• How: State-sponsored exploration led by deter-mined monarchs and private individuals, uti-lization of Arab sailing technology, use of privateinvestors and mercantilism to finance voyages,extermination and enslavement of native popu-lation of the Americas.

3. What was the impact of the Columbian Exchangeon the Americas, Europe, and Africa?

• The Columbian Exchange profoundly impactedall three continents, changing natural environ-ment through new flora, fauna, minerals, anddiseases.

• Native Americans suffered catastrophic popula-tion losses from European diseases as Europeansincreasingly migrated to the Americas.

• European nations profited economically fromthe exchange of precious metals in the form ofgold and silver from the Americas.

• A new class of people, mestizos, formed fromthe interactions of Europeans, Indians, andAfricans.

The Protestant Reformation and the Rise of England (pp. 29–34)

1. How did Protestant religious doctrine differ fromthat of Roman Catholicism?

• Protestants wanted to purify the CatholicChurch of ostentatious display, the sale of indul-gences, and general church corruption.

• Luther rejected the doctrine that Christianscould win salvation through good deeds. He

argued that people could be saved only by grace,a free gift from God.

• Luther downplayed the role of the clergy and thepope as mediators between God and the people.

• Luther argued that believers must look to theBible and not church doctrine as the ultimateauthority in matters of faith.

• John Calvin preached the doctrine of predesti-nation, the idea that God had chosen certainpeople for salvation even before they were born,condemning the rest to eternal damnation.

2. Why did Spain lose its position as the dominantEuropean power?

• A flood of gold and silver into European marketsas a result of Spain’s triumph over the Inca andAztec empires in the Americas doubled themoney supply in Europe and created a period ofrunaway inflation known as the Price Revolu-tion (1530–1600).

• King Philip II spent much time, energy, andnational resources on a failed attempt to defeatProtestantism in Holland and England.

• Spain attempted to administer a far-flung American empire as well as control of Holland,Belgium, and Portugal. The high cost of admin-istering this new empire became a financial andmilitary hardship for the Spanish crown.

3. What factors prompted the large-scale migrationof English men and women to America?

• The Price Revolution tripled the price of goods,forcing the nobility and some peasants to findmore lucrative opportunities in the Americas.

• The enclosure movement led to the fencing ofopen lands for raising sheep rather than free useby peasants for gardens and livestock. Peasantsbecame even more landless as a result, andlooked to America as an alternative.

• Crop failures caused by cold weather between1590 and 1640 further motivated English peas-ants to migrate.

Chapter Writing Assignments

These questions appear at the end of Chapter 1 in thetextbook. They are provided in the Computerized TestBank with suggested responses, for your convenience.

1. How do you explain the different ways in whichthe Indian peoples of Mesoamerica and NorthAmerica developed?

• Farming technology (corn, beans, and squash)developed earlier in Mesoamerica; settled agri-


culture arrived later (800 A.D.) in North Amer-ica. This factor produced a larger populationand large cities earlier and in greater numbers inMesoamerica than in North America.

• A larger population in Mesoamerica producedgreater state control, urbanization, and moresocial classes compared to North American soci-eties.

• Lower population levels in North Americansocieties produced less diversity of occupationsand social classes, lower levels of state formationand territorial competition, and fewer large-scale cities than in Mesoamerica.

• Greater use of mixed hunting/gathering andfarming in North America stemming from thelater development of farming technology inNorth America produced smaller-scale andmore self-governing societies.

• Greater development of dispersed and smallersettlements compared to Mesoamerica gavewomen more economic power within NorthAmerican societies.

2. What made Native American peoples vulnerableto conquest by European adventurers?

• Lack of political unity. For example, Aztecs hadmany enemies from within their own tribes as aresult of territorial competition, wealth acquisi-tion, and the sacrifice of captives taken in war.Cortés exploited Indian political rivalries to hisadvantage, forming alliances with enemy tribesof the Aztecs. La Malinche, Cortés’s interpreter,assisted the Spanish in the hope of escapingenslavement by the Aztec. In contrast, the Span-ish possessed highly unified society.

• Lack of iron. Native Americans possessed copperbut did not smelt iron. Spanish metal armor,swords, and lances inflicted devastating woundson Aztec warriors armed with cotton armor andobsidian-tipped spears and arrows.

• Differences in weaponry. Besides penetratingpower and devastating wounds, the use of gunsand crossbows, though limited, inflicted psycho-logical shock on Native American people.

• Lack of horse and animal technology. Aztecsfought on foot and had no wheeled carts or cav-alry, unlike the Spanish, who also possessedattack dogs.

• Lack of immunity to European diseases. Al-though tuberculosis was known among NativeAmericans before the arrival of Europeans, iso-lation from Eurasia for thousands of years prevented habituation to common Europeandiseases. Examples: In 1500 the Mesoamericanpopulation equaled 30 million, but only 3 mil-

lion by 1650; 300,000 Indians in Hispaniola werewiped out in a few decades; a smallpox epidemiclasted twenty days in Aztec Tenotchtitlán in1521, facilitating Cortés’s victory. Before Pizarrolanded in Peru in 1524, smallpox had reducedthe Inca population by half (18 to 9 million),igniting an internal native fight over successionto rule and weakening the Inca militarily. In-fluenza and measles also severely impactednative populations, producing both a popula-tion loss and a psychological shock that facili-tated power decline.

3. What led to the transatlantic trade in Africanslaves?

• Crusades in Europe during the Middle Agesbrought Europe closer to North Africa andincreased the desire of European monarchs totake advantage of Arab Muslim slave trade withSub-Saharan Africa.

• Renaissance economic expansion influencedEuropean monarchs to increase commerce withAfrica and Asia in an attempt to remove ArabMuslim control of world trade. Profits from in-creasing trade created powerful merchant andbanking interests that promoted further worldexploration. Africa, geographically close tosouthern Europe, was within easy reach due inpart to advances in ship design (caravel) and thecompass.

• European monarchs such as Prince Henry theNavigator sponsored voyages to find maritimeroutes to West Africa and Asia.

• West Africans had previous experience withdomestic slavery in African societies. People be-came slaves as prisoners of war and as securityfor debts, and some were sold by relatives intimes of famine.

• West African societies engaged in African slavetrade with Arab Muslim traders of North Africabefore the Portuguese arrived in the mid-1400s.West African slaves were sold as agriculturalworkers from one kingdom to another or car-ried overland in caravans by Arab traders toNorth Africa.

• The large population of Africans and a highdegree of African warfare made a great numberof people available for slave trade.

• The desire of African leaders to take part in slavetrade with Europeans led to Atlantic slave trade.

• There was a lack of political unity in Africa. Afri-can leaders raided neighboring tribes for slavesto use in African societies and to sell to Arabtraders from North Africa and to the Portugueseby the mid-1400s.


• Portuguese monarchs and traders militarilyoverwhelmed Arab middlemen and took controlof trade (e.g., the building of the first slave-trad-ing post at Elmina in 1482).

• Portuguese monarchs and merchants created asugar plantation system based on West Africanslave labor. Plantations were established in CapeVerde islands, the Azores, and Madeira, with asmany as 9,000 slaves imported in Lisbon. By1550 Atlantic slave trade expanded enormouslyto supply new sugar plantations in Brazil andWest Indies.

4. What was mercantilism? How did this doctrineshape the policies of European monarchs to promote domestic manufacturing and foreigntrade?

• During the sixteenth century, European banks,private investment firms, and monarchies, led bythe English and Dutch, promoted a system ofcapitalism, known as mercantilism, that evolvedinto a complex state-sponsored system of do-mestic manufacturing and foreign trade thatencouraged Europeans to increase funding ofworld exploration and conquest.

• European monarchies created royal law courtsand bureaucracies that reduced the power ofthe landed classes. The desire to export ratherthan import goods (and create a favorable bal-ance of trade) prompted England under QueenElizabeth to expand mercantilism through overseas colonization. In exchange for free trade, merchants and urban areas were taxedheavily. The expansion of mercantilism increased the revenues of the English royal treasury and enhanced the power of the nationalgovernment.

5. How did Europeans become leaders in world tradeand extend their influence across the Atlantic?

• Europeans used technological innovations de-rived by Arab inventors in navigation, weaponry,map-making, and communication.

• Mercantilist policies were promoted by Chris-tian merchants and monarchies.

• Profits from commerce created powerful mer-chants, bankers, and textile manufacturers whospurred technological innovation in communi-cation and navigation.

• Military supremacy was achieved over Muslimsin Spain and Africa by 1492.

• Competition with Arab states for control ofAsian trade increased European mercantilist

policies and eventual expansion into the West-ern Hemisphere.

• Crusades and the expansion of Christian powerduring the 1300s created an economic and cul-tural ethos of competition that fed the expan-sion of mercantilism.

• In conjunction with African leaders, Europeanmonarchs and merchants created an Atlanticslave trade that increased the power of mercan-tilism.

Class Discussion Starters

1. What factor best explains the ability of Europeansto prevail over Native Americans in their encoun-ters in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?

Possible answers

a. Relative military technology was an importantfactor. Without firearms, steel, horses, andarmor, Native Americans could not effectivelyresist the Europeans.

b. Native Americans’ initial responses were some-what confused and uncertain and only slowlyled to resistance.

c. The Europeans were more unified, had clarityof purpose, and were militarily disciplined.

d. The Native American peoples were vulnerableto European viral diseases.

e. The Native American groups subjugated bymajor native civilizations were not cohesive andturned on their overlords when the opportu-nity arose.

2. The process of the European colonization andconquest of America in the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries was both tragic and exciting. Isthere any way to understand these events objec-tively and impartially?

Possible answers

a. The depletion of the Native American popula-tion that resulted from their initial contacts withEuropeans was a tragic event. The society andculture of many diverse peoples who had been inAmerica for thousands of years were almostcompletely wiped out in a few generations. Ingeneral terms, Europeans did not consciouslyexterminate Native Americans, as neither peopleunderstood how disease was spread. However, inisolated instances, Europeans did attempt toharm Indians through passage of infected items.It must be remembered that Europeans also suf-


fered from exposure to New World diseases andpathogens. Likewise, Native Americans used thetools and means at their disposal to resist Euro-peans. In essence, Europeans who arrived toAmerica were armed with sophisticated weap-ons, equipment, and an ideology that supportedwar, commerce, and expansion.

b. By means of their conquest of the Americas, theEuropeans set in motion the dynamics neededto create a society with an unimagined degreeof economic opportunity and political free-dom. However, the high cost to Native Ameri-cans and Africans taken as slaves must beconsidered alongside the advances of the soci-eties that resulted from European expansion.The fact that Europeans have dominated mostencounters with other civilizations over thepast five centuries bears examination.

c. Questions of assessing costs in history mustremain within historical context. Our role asstudents of history is to try to understand whathappened, recognize the impact events had onpeople then and in subsequent years, and hopethat we will thus be better able to comprehendthe forces of change in our own time. Ascribingmotives of good or evil to broad historicalprocesses is often problematic. While the co-existence of Indian and European civilizationsis attractive as an ideal, it is difficult to describethat eventuality in pragmatic terms. In any case,it was not the reality that occurred. The Euro-pean conquest can, however, be examined forlessons to be applied in other parts of the worldwhere civilizations meet.

3. What are some aspects of present-day life in theUnited States that we could trace from the courseof the interaction between Native Americans andEuropeans? In that interaction, how can we seethe development of a new kind of society and cul-ture?

Possible answers

a. Many of our dietary staples, such as corn, pota-toes, beans, and squash, came from NativeAmerican agriculture. However, Europeanscontributed many plants and animals, such aswheat and oats and horses and livestock, thatare now integral to our environment.

b. The Europeans’ view of themselves as a prosely-tizing, conquering people of destiny, wanting toconvert the Native Americans and transformAmerica into a land of economic opportunity,

was shaped by the presence of Native Ameri-cans.

c. The complex social and cultural interactions inearly America among the Spanish, the English,Native Americans, and Africans foreshadowedin many ways the complex multiethnic societythat is America today.

d. At the center of American society remain traitsthat developed in Europe and were transferredto America. Our notions of the nation-state,social structure, individualism, religious diver-sity, political and religious freedom, and eco-nomic opportunity for every person are rootedin European origins.

Classroom Activities

1. Brainstorming exercise: Using the board, ask thestudents what words best describe the earlyencounters between Native Americans and Euro-peans in the Americas. After the students haveprovided four or five words (e.g., discovery, en-counter, invasion, settlement, conquest), ask themto explain why and how a particular word choiceis both accurate and inaccurate in explaining thehistory in question.

2. Divide the class into three groups, Europeans,Africans, and Native Americas. Then ask the stu-dents to work in their respective groups to comeup with a list of factors that enabled their side toeffectively deal with the opposing group. The goalis for students to understand the political, eco-nomic, and social constraints that structured theearly contact period. Ask each group to designateone person to explain each factor that shaped theconquest encounter of the early colonial period.

3. Counterfactual exercise: Divide the students intosmall groups. Then ask the students what wouldhave happened in North America if Native Amer-icans were not susceptible to European diseases.How would life be different today? This exercisewill help them understand the reasons why Euro-peans triumphed in the Americas.

Oral History Exercises

• The first chapter of any U.S. history textbook dealswith the ethnic origins of the North Americanpopulation. Ask the students to talk to their rela-tives to discern their ethnic origin. If relatives can-not be found, ask the student to talk to an olderfriend, or any friend. From this interaction, stu-


dents will learn the importance of oral history, andwill also be able to relate more personally with thehistory of immigration they will read throughoutthe semester. Instructors may also ask students torelate one historical moment of their family his-tory that they have learned from practicing oralhistory with their relatives.

• Oral history is an important component of NativeAmerican and African American history becausesubaltern groups struggle historically with a lackof written documentation of their past. Ask thestudents to go through Chapter 1 and find refer-ences to the use of oral history. Ask the questions:How is oral history important for understandingthe history of the Americas? Why is oral historycentral to the historical documentation efforts ofNative Americans and African Americans who aretrying to understand family history today?

Working with Documents

C O M P A R I N G A M E R I C A N V O I C E S

The Spanish Conquest of Mexico (p. 26)1. Díaz’s account is a memoir written long after the

event. What effect does that have on the structureand tone of his writing? How is the Aztec descrip-tion, as translated by Sahagún, different in thoserespects?

• Díaz: The structure of the passage is a straight-forward story of the step-by-step Spanishentrance into Mexico City. But the passage oftime created selective memory of certain facts.He may have written the account to achievefame in later years by portraying himself and theSpanish as benevolent conquerors. Díaz’s confi-dent tone is a factor of conquest mentality.

• The Aztec selection is written closer in time tothe event, was filtered through another perspec-tive (Sahagún), translated into Spanish fromNahuatl, and written by several men from thevantage point of the victims of Spanish con-quest. The Aztec elders wanted to present theirside of the story in an era when Aztec power waswaning under Spanish colonization. The tone ofthe piece is one of surprise, fear, and sorrow.

2. Why does Moctezuma pay “great reverence” toCortés? Why does Cortés return the honor? Whatis the strategy of each leader?

• Cortés’s strategy: The Spanish had a cultural andpolitical tradition of welcoming leader with gifts.

Cortés also wanted to convince Moctezuma ofhis sincerity. Cortés desired to form an alliancewith any Indian nations that would help himachieve fame and conquest. Cortés also wantedto buy time to study Moctezuma’s reactions andfind a weakness to exploit for conquest.

• Moctezuma’s strategy: The Aztecs were unsureof the nature of Spanish, prompting Moctezumato assume Cortés was a major leader or god.Moctezuma was also bound by cultural andpolitical tradition to treat high-ranking guestswith great honor. Moctezuma also wanted tobuy time to discern the true nature of Cortés,and find a weak point to exploit.

3. How does Díaz explain the Spaniards’ easy entryinto Tenochtitlán? What explanation do the Aztecelders suggest? Why do you think they are differ-ent?

• Díaz: Divine favor from God and Jesus Christ,luck, daring, fear on the part of the Aztecs, pos-session of heavy weaponry, and Cortés’s diplo-macy and determination.

• Aztecs: Fear of the Spanish and mental paralysisby Moctezuma, Spanish power in the form ofhorses, guns, and steel armor, and Moctezuma’sdesire to protect and help his people.

• Accounting for the differences in the twoaccounts: Different perspectives determined bydistinct cultural systems, different vantagepoints with Aztecs as defenders inside the cityversus Spanish invaders coming into the city,unequal power positions in wake of conquest,and the role of Sahagún as translator for Nahu-atl elders.

V O I C E S F R O M A B R O A D

Father Le Petite: The Customs of theNatchez, 1730 (p. 13)

1. Which of Le Petite’s remarks suggest a linkbetween the Natchez and the Aztecs of Mesoamer-ica? How might this link have been established?

• Religious: Le Petite mentions a “temple filledwith idols . . . of men and animals,” similar tothe polytheism practiced by the Aztecs; othersimilarities include the importance of the eagleas a ceremonial animal in both cultures/regions,sun worship, and the divine origin of the ruler.

• Political: Both cultures were mound builders,practiced a hereditary government system, andformed large and populous city-states.


• The link between Mesoamerica and Southwest-ern North America was most likely establishedthrough trade networks, but may also haveflourished from migrations of Mayan and otherMesoamerican refugees fleeing social unrest andenvironmental collapse in home regions.

2. Given what you have learned about the NativeAmerican population decline, how would you ex-plain that sixty Natchez villages had been reducedto six?

• The Spanish arrival through De Soto in the1520s led to a population decline because of iso-lation from European diseases (due to theabsence of Bering Strait land bridge).

• Refugees dispersed from large cities and recon-figured societies into smaller geographical andpolitical units.

• Environmental collapse through deforestation,soil exhaustion, and drought may also havemotivated native North Americans to downsizetheir communities.

Reading American Pictures

Maize for Blankets:Indian Trading Networks on the Great Plains (p. 101)

1. Why did the location of the Pecos pueblo make ita major trading post? One clue comes from aSpanish explorer who visited Pecos in 1541 withFrancisco Vásquez de Coronado’s expedition (seeChapter 2). He reported that Indians from theGreat Plains exchanged “cueros de Cíbola [bisonhides] and deer skins” for the “maize and blan-kets” produced by the Pueblo peoples. Do you seeany other Pueblo products in this painting?

• Pecos was located on a strategic mountain passthat connected the Rio Grande Valley and theGreat Plains. Products from Indian cultures inboth regions were sought by outsiders becauseof the scarcity of resources. At this time, nativepeoples transported themselves primarily bywalking, giving major importance to citieslocated on the borders of culture groups.

• Pottery, various clothing and food items, andbaskets are also visible.

2. What do the clothing, material goods, and lodg-ings of the two peoples—the Towas and theApaches—tell us about their respective ways oflife?

• The use of dogs and temporary structures byApaches indicate a migratory existence, onedependent on trade to fulfill material needs.

• The fortified Towa town indicates resource com-petition with rival groups inside or outside cul-tural regions.

• The role of women and children from bothgroups indicates kinship-based society.

• Apache structures and animal hides indicate a migratory Plains existence based on bisonhunting.

• The Apache town structure (pueblo), foodsources (maize), and blankets (textile) indicate along-term and permanent agricultural settle-ment.

3. How have the Apaches transported their goods toPecos? Based on what you have read in the text,can you explain why no horses are shown in thepainting, which is set in A.D. 1500?

• Apaches utilized both human and animal powerto transport goods to Pecos. Plains Indians didnot adopt horses until after the Spanish expedi-tion led by Coronado in 1540.

4. Look closely at what the men and women aredoing. What does the painting tell you about gen-der roles in Native American societies?

• Native men and women share the economicendeavors associated with trading. Both gendersspecialized in work roles, with women takingcare of planting the fields and men with huntinglarger mammals. In the image men deal withbison hides while women examine and trans-port baskets and agricultural goods. Two mendominate the center of the image, indicatingultimate male control of trade exchanges.

• For further ideas and sources, see Alvar NúñezCabeza de Vaca, Castaways, ed. Enrique Pupo-Walker (Univ. of California Press, 1993); AlvinJosephy Jr., 500 Nations: An Illustrated History ofNorth American Indians (Gramercy, 2002).

Electronic Media

Websites

• Native American tribes by regionwww.hanksville.org/NAresources/

This site explores the numerous native cul-tures in existence at the time of European inva-sion of North America.


• University of Cincinnati’s Center for the Elec-tronic Reconstruction of History and Archaeolog-ical Siteswww.earthworks.uc.edu/

Digital restorations of Ohio Valley Moundsand a virtual reconstruction of pre-Columbianmounds and major earthen sites in the OhioRiver Valley are included.

• European Voyages of Explorationwww.acs.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/eurvoya/index.html

Created by the University of Calgary, the siteaccompanies a course entitled “The EuropeanVoyages of Exploration: The Fifteenth and Six-teenth Centuries.”

• Discoverers Web www.win.tue.nl/cs/fm/engels/discovery/

Created by a doctoral student from TheNetherlands, this site provides numerous linksregarding the period of European exploration.

Films

• 500 Nations (1995, CBS documentary serieshosted by Kevin Costner)

This award-winning documentary tracesthe history of various native groups over time inearly U.S. history.

• Elizabeth (United Kingdom, 2003, historicaldocumentary produced by the National Mar-itime Museum to accompany its exhibition ofElizabeth’s personal effects, 50 minutes)

This film explores the life of Queen Eliza-beth I, the England she governed and the courtin which she lived, and the many threats to herrule, including Mary, Queen of Scots and theSpanish Armada.

• The Mystery of Chaco Canyon: Unveiling theAncient Astronomy of Southwestern Pueblo Indi-ans (1999, Solstice Project, narrated by RobertRedford, 56 minutes)

This video documentary traces the possiblereasons for the creation of Chaco Canyon by theAnasazi in the Southwestern portion of theUnited States around 1050 A.D.

• Christopher Columbus: Secrets from the Grave(1999, Discovery Channel Documentary, 50minutes)

Join a team of historians, archaeologists andscientists as they explain the identity andexploits of the most famous explorer the worldhas ever known.

Literature

• Velma Wallis, Two Old Women: An Alaskan Leg-end of Betrayal, Courage, and Survival (NewYork: Harper Perennial, 2004)

This work of historical fiction traces thechallenges faced by native people in Alaskabefore European arrival. The book providesinformation on the cultural development of oneregion of native people in North America.

• Christopher Columbus, The Four Voyages, ed.and trans J. M. Cohen (New York: Penguin,1969)

A reprint of Columbus’s diaries of his voy-ages to the New World.

• Hernando Cortés: Five Letters, 1519–1526, ed.and trans. J. Bayard Morris (New York: Norton,1991)

A collection of letters sent by the conquista-dor to the King of Spain during the conquestperiod.

• Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of NewSpain, trans. J. M. Cohen (New York: Penguin,1963)

One of the best historical accounts of theinvasion written by an actual participant and acommon soldier.

• Miguel Leon Portilla, The Broken Spears: TheAztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, trans.Lysander Kemp (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962)

The Aztec account of the conquest period.

Additional Bedford/St. Martin’sResources for Chapter 1

F O R I N S T R U C T O R S

Transparencies

The following maps and images from Chapter 1 areavailable as full-color acetates:

• Orbis Typus Universalis• Map 1.1 The Ice Age and the Settling of the

Americas• Map 1.2 Native American Peoples, 1492• Tom Lovell, Trade Among Indian People• Map 1.3 The Eurasian Trade System and Euro-

pean Maritime Ventures, 1500• Map 1.4 West Africa and the Mediterranean in the

Fifteenth Century• Map 1.5 The Spanish Conquest of the Great

Indian Civilizations• Map 1.6 Religious Diversity in Europe, 1600


Instructor’s Resource CD-ROM

The following maps, figures, and images from Chapter1, as well as a chapter outline, are available on disc inboth PowerPoint and jpeg formats:

• Map 1.1 The Ice Age and the Settling of the Amer-icas

• Map 1.2 Native American Peoples, 1492• Map 1.3 The Eurasian Trade System and Euro-

pean Maritime Ventures, 1500• Map 1.4 West Africa and the Mediterranean in the

Fifteenth Century• Map 1.5 The Spanish Conquest of the Great

Indian Civilizations• Map 1.6 Religious Diversity in Europe, 1600• Figure 1.1 The Yearly Rhythm of Rural Life • Figure 1.2 Inflation and Living Standards in

Europe, 1400–1700• Figure 1.3 The Structure of English Society, 1688• Orbis Typus Universalis• Tom Lovell, Trade Among Indian Peoples• Iroquois Women at Work, 1724• Malinche and Cortés

Using the Bedford Series withAmerica’s History, Sixth Edition

Available online at bedfordstmartins.com/usingseries,this guide offers practical suggestions for incorporat-ing volumes from the Bedford Series in History andCulture into the U. S. History Survey. Relevant titles forChapter 1 include

• Envisioning America: English Plans for the Colo-nization of North America, 1580–1640, Edited withan Introduction by Peter C. Mancall, University ofSouthern California

• Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Viewsof the Conquest of Mexico, Edited with an Intro-duction by Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University

• Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise of theIndies: A Brief History with Documents, GeoffreySymcox, University of California, Los Angeles, andBlair Sullivan, University of California, Los Angeles

F O R S T U D E N T S

Documents to Accompany America’s History

The following documents and illustrations are avail-able in Chapter 1 of the companion reader by MelvinYazawa, University of New Mexico:

1. Indian and Non-Indian Population Charts(1492–1980)

2. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Discovery and Conquestof Mexico (1517–1521)

3. Hernan Cortés, Cortés and the Requerimiento(1519–1521)

4. Pierre de Charlevoix, The Role of Women inHuron Society (1721)

5. Father Pierre Biard, Indian Populations of NewFrance (1611)

6. Gomes Eannes de Azurara, Prince Henry and theSlave Trade (1444)

7. Bartolomé de las Casas, Columbus’s Landfall(1552)

8. John Hales, Objections against Enclosure (1548)9. Richard Hakluyt, A Discourse to Promote Colo-

nization (1584)10. Thomas Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the

New Found Land of Virginia (1588)11. John White and Theodore de Bry, Images of Native

Americans from Roanoke Island (1585, 1590)

Online Study Guide atbedfordstmartins.com/henretta

The Online Study Guide helps students synthesize thematerial from the text as well as practice the skills his-torians use to make sense of the past. The followingmap, visual, and documents activities are available forChapter 1:

Map Activity

• Map 1.5 The Spanish Conquest of the GreatIndian Civilizations

Visual Activity

• Reading American Pictures: Maize for Blankets:Indian Trading Networks on the Great Plains

Reading Historical Documents Activities

• Comparing American Voices: The Spanish Con-quest of Mexico

• Voices from Abroad: Father le Petite: The Customsof the Natchez, 1730

Critical Thinking Modules at bedfordstmartins.com/historymodules

These online modules invite students to interpretmaps, audio, visual, and textual sources centered onevents covered in the U.S. history survey. Relevantmodules for Chapter 1 include

• Envisioning the New World, 1562


The Creation of American Society - Bedford-St....

Documents

Transcript of The Creation of American Society - Bedford-St....