America’s History Eighth Edition

America’s History Eighth Edition
James A. Henretta Eric Hinderaker Rebecca Edwards Robert O. Self America’s History Eighth Edition CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds 1450‒1600 Copyright © 2014 by Bedford/St. Martin’s

Ask students to describe the various elements of this image of an Algonquian village, located in present-day North Carolina, painted by the English colonist John White in 1585. 1. What does this painting suggest about how the Algonquians living in this town subsisted on a day-to-day basis? (Answer: Agricultural fields are the major feature of the image, illustrating the central importance of agriculture in the daily lives of this group. Fields are interspersed with buildings and other structures, not set apart. Hunters are depicted in the upper left corner, but are much less prominently featured than farm fields.) 2. What does the image suggest about the Algonquians’ sense of security or concerns about threats from other groups of people? (Answer: The village is unprotected by any visible walls or forts, suggesting that the villagers felt relatively secure and that their lives were peaceful. Lack of fortifications shows why European settlers believed it would be easy to subdue Native Americans in societies such as this one.) 3. What are the central actions taking place in this image? (Answer: Hunting in the upper left corner; cooking over a fire; villagers preparing and eating food in the center; villagers participating in a ceremonial or celebratory dance in the lower right corner.)

I. The Native American Experience
A. The First Americans 1. Migration from Asia 2. Hunters and Gatherers 3. Agriculture I. The Native American Experience A. The First Americans 1. Migration from Asia – First wave of Americans came from Asia during the last Ice Age, sometime between 13,000 and 3000 b.c., over a 100-mile bridge that connected Siberia and Alaska. Subsequent movements brought people who would be ancestors to the Navajos, Apaches, and Eskimos. 2. Hunters and Gatherers – Migrants dispersed through the American continents from north to south, hunting and gathering available resources, creating dense populations in central Mexico and the Andes Mountains; in North America, migration pushed eastward. 3. Agriculture – Around 6000 b.c., Mesoamericans began to cultivate maize, and people in the Andes region bred potatoes. Agricultural surpluses promoted population growth and provided the foundation for wealthy urban societies.

B. American Empires 1. Aztecs 2. Incas I. The Native American Experience B. American Empires 1. Aztecs – In 1325, built the city of Tenochtitlán [ten-och-teet-LAN], modern-day Mexico City; by 1500, its population was 250,000; Aztecs maintained a powerful government and forged trading routes across the empire. Priests and warrior-nobles aggressively subjugated the peoples of central Mexico; took economic and human tribute, including human sacrifice, from their subjects; believed that human sacrifice would sustain the cosmos and the land. 2. Incas – Incan capital Cuzco was located in the Andes and had 60,000 residents; Incan empire was 2,000 miles long, stitched together by roads, storehouses, and administrative centers. King claiming divine status ruled through bureaucracy of nobles, subordinating other kingdoms, and, like the Aztecs, exacting tribute. 4

C. Chiefdoms and Confederacies 1. The Mississippi Valley 2. Eastern Woodlands 3. The Great Lakes I. The Native American Experience C. Chiefdoms and Confederacies 1. The Mississippi Valley – Maize agriculture spread to this region by a.d. 1000, creating complex society of Cahokia (near St. Louis), which served as center for region with population of 20,000 to 30,000 people. Mississippian societies built mounds, worshipped the sun, and had powerful ruling class and priesthood. Decline began by 1350 as a result of ruinous warfare and environmental factors. Mississippian culture endured into 1500s in present-day Florida and the Southeast. 2. Eastern Woodlands – East of the Mississippi River, people adopted maize agriculture but not other elements of Mississippian culture. Algonquian and Iroquoian speakers combined farming with hunting, fishing, and gathering; lived in villages where women tended crops and oversaw community affairs and men performed hunting, fishing, and warfare. Political organization varied from regional chiefdoms (e.g., Powhaten Chiefdom), to local chiefdoms (e.g., Lenni Lenape) to Iroquois Confederacy. Diverse cultures of peoples in this region were impacted by European epidemic diseases brought by explorers in the 1540s; “matrilineal” system developed among these farming peoples; by 1600, most were too weak to mount opposition to English, Dutch, and French explorers. 3. The Great Lakes – Algonquian-speaking peoples dominated in this region and thought of themselves as the Anishinaabe; birchbark canoes and network of lakes and rivers made these people very mobile. Great Lakes region was porous, and political power and social identity took on multiple forms.

C. Chiefdoms and Confederacies (cont.) 4. The Great Plains and Rockies 5. The Arid Southwest 6. The Pacific Coast I. The Native American Experience C. Chiefdoms and Confederacies (cont.) 4. The Great Plains and Rockies – Small dispersed groups lived by hunting and gathering; bison hunters used horses by the late sixteenth century and some groups (e.g. Comanches and Sioux) used skill on horseback to gain control over their neighbors. Hidatsa and Mandan Indians maintained settled agricultural villages; Numic-speaking peoples occupied the Great Basin, migrating to take advantage of hunting and gathering opportunities. 5. The Arid Southwest – Hohokams, Mogollons, and Anasazis (all Pueblo peoples) developed irrigation systems to manage scarce water, making large farming settlements possible; by 1000 a.d., people were building multi-room structures out of mud and stone (“pueblos”); culture of these varying groups of people began to decline after 1150 due to soil exhaustion and extended drought. 6. The Pacific Coast – Hunter-gatherers dominated in this region; 300,000 people divided into small, localized groups that shared clearly defined social hierarchies separating elites from commoners. Pacific Northwest people also had strong warrior traditions and built large longhouses and totem poles.

D. Patterns of Trade 1. Regional trade networks 2. Long-distance trade 3. Generosity and authority I. The Native American Experience D. Patterns of Trade 1. Regional trade networks – Trade goods included food and raw materials, tools, ritual artifacts, and decorative goods; regional trade networks allowed groups to exchange their specialized products for another groups’ resources (e.g., Navajos and Apaches exchanged meat with Pueblos to acquire maize, pottery, and blankets) to enrich diets and enhance economies; sometimes groups conducted regional trade in war captives as well. 2. Long-distance trade – Rare and valuable objects (e.g., copper, mica, seashells, grizzly bear claws, eagle feathers) traveled through networks that spanned the continent. 3. Generosity and authority – Powerful leaders who controlled wealth redistributed it to prove their generosity and strengthen authority; generosity was a mark of good leadership.

Have students examine the image of the mid-nineteenth century Chilkat Tlingit bowl, paying attention to its construction and workmanship. 1. What does the bowl indicate about this Chilkat Tlingit’s specialized skills? (Answer: Bowl’s wood construction and beautiful design indicates the group’s skill at milling and carving. Snail shell inlay also demonstrates the careful craftsmanship. Artistry demonstrates that at least some in the group had the time to devote to such activities.) 2. Why might this group of Native Americans have made a bowl in this form? What might its purposes have been? (Answer: The brown bear is a Tlingit clan totem, and it represents the group’s affinity for animals. Bowl probably served some utilitarian purpose as a container, but it also demonstrates the group’s affinity for and identification with nonhuman creatures.)

E. Sacred Power 1. Animism 2. Women’s spiritual roles 3. Men’s spiritual roles 4. Warfare I. The Native American Experience E. Sacred Power 1. Animism – Most Native North Americans believed the natural world was suffused with spiritual power; they sought to understand it by interpreting dreams and visions; their rituals appeased guardian spirits to ensure successful hunts and other forms of good fortune. 2. Women’s spiritual roles – Native American women grew crops and maintained hearth, home, and village; conceptions of female power linked their bodies’ generative functions with the earth’s fertility. 3. Men’s spiritual roles – Spiritual power for men was involved in hunting and war; men’s rituals acknowledged animals’ spirits; success in hunting and war were interpreted as signs of sacred protection and power. 4. Warfare – Wars were fought for geopolitical reasons but also to provide crucial rites of passage for young men.

II. Western Europe: The Edge of the Old World
A. Hierarchy and Authority 1. Monarchs and nobles 2. Men governed families 3. Importance of eldest son II. Western Europe: The Edge of the Old World A. Hierarchy and Authority 1. Monarchs and nobles – Kings and princes owned large tracts of land; local nobles owned estates in which large numbers of peasants lived and toiled; nobles held both military and political power through legislative institutions (e.g., French parlements and English House of Lords); the established institutions of nobility, church, and village provided a sense of security despite tremendous class differences, violence, and instability. 2. Men governed families – Society was patriarchal and households were headed by males no matter the economic class of family; Christian teachings justified the man’s position; upon husband’s death woman received a dower, which usually gave her use of one-third of the family’s land and goods for the remainder of her life. 3. Importance of eldest son – Children worked for their fathers into their middle to late twenties; fathers chose spouses for children based on wealth and status; fathers bestowed land to eldest son (a practice known as primogeniture), which left many men landless and poor; position of eldest son meant that many men and women had no individual identify or personal freedom because they had no land.

B. Peasant Society 1. The Peasantry 2. The Peasant’s Fate II. Western Europe: The Edge of the Old World B. Peasant Society 1. The peasantry – People who lived in small agricultural villages; farmed cooperatively; on manorial lands, there were tillage rights in exchange for labor on the lord’s estates (serfdom); output produced surpluses that fed a local market economy; farming cycle was largely dictated by the seasons and weather with busiest times of year being spring and fall. 2. The peasant’s fate – Constant labor with primitive tools; compared to today, output was very small – 1/12 of present-day yields; malnourished mothers fed babies sparingly (boys preferred to girls); half of peasant children died before age 21, victims of disease and malnourishment; had strong ties to religion as a result of this hardship in daily life. 15

C. Expanding Trade Networks 1. Byzantine civilization 2. The Italian Renaissance 3. Economic revolution in northern and Western Europe II. Western Europe: The Edge of the Old World C. Expanding Trade Networks 1. Byzantine civilization – In the first millennium a.d., Europe was extremely backward and Arab scholars in the Mediterranean basin preserved the achievements of the Greeks and Romans in medicine, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and geography; Arab merchants controlled trade in the Mediterranean, Africa, and the Near East; they had access to spices, silks, compasses, water-powered mills, and mechanical clocks. 2. The Italian Renaissance – In the twelfth century, Italian merchants pushed into Arab-dominated trade routes and carried Asian luxuries into European markets; commerce created wealthy merchants, bankers, and manufacturers who expanded trade; wealthy Italian elites governed city-states as republics; they celebrated civic humanism and sponsored artists including Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and others. 3. Economic revolution in Northern and Western Europe – Italy’s economic and cultural revolution spread slowly to northern and Western Europe, which traded in wool, timber, furs, wheat and rye, honey, wax, and amber; rise of commerce favored kings over nobility; they established courts and bureaucracies that allow them to centralize power.

D. Myths, Religions, and Holy Warriors 1. The Rise of Christianity II. Western Europe: The Edge of the Old World D. Myths, Religious, and Holy Warriors 1. The Rise of Christianity – Oldest European religions were animistic; pagan traditions of Greece and Rome overlaid animism with myths about gods interacting directly in humans’ affairs. Christianity grew out of Jewish monotheism; Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in a.d. 312 and made it Rome’s official religion; Roman Catholic Church became great unifying institution in Western Europe; Pope in Rome sat atop a hierarchy of cardinals, bishops, and priests; every village had a church; Christians shared a common view of God and history through the church’s scholarship and teachings. Priests taught pagans that there was a supernatural God who sent his son (Jesus Christ) to save humanity from sin; pagan festivals were transformed into religious holidays and services; people offered prayers to Christ instead of ritual offerings to nature. Church also taught that Satan was a lesser and wicked supernatural being who constantly challenged God by tempting the people to sin; the spread of “heresies” (teachings inconsistent with the Church) by prophets was seen as the work of Satan.

D. Myths, Religions, and Holy Warriors (cont.) 2. The Crusades 3. The Reformation II. Western Europe: The Edge of the Old World D. Myths, Religious, and Holy Warriors (cont.) 2. The Crusades – In a.d. 632, the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad saw the conversion of Arab peoples to Islam and the desire then to spread Muslim teachings; between 1096 and 1291, Christian crusaders (armies) sought to reverse the spread of Islam and win back the lands where Christ lived; Crusades solidified Europe’s Christian identity and spurred persecution and expulsion of Jews; Crusades also introduced Western European merchants to trade routes from Constantinople to China along the Silk Road, and crusaders encountered sugar for the first time. 3. The Reformation – In 1517, German monk Martin Luther wrote Ninety-five Theses which condemned corruption in Roman Catholic Church and called for Christians to look to the Bible, not the clergy, for spiritual authority; John Calvin’s writings stressed human weakness, God’s omnipotence, and doctrine of predestination (God chooses certain people for salvation and condemns the rest to eternal damnation); thousands of Europeans converted to Protestantism and the Protestant Reformation triggered a Counter-Reformation and wars between Catholic and Protestant nations; religious competition and conflict shaped European colonization of the Americas in the 1600s and beyond.

III. West and Central Africa: Origins of the Atlantic Slave Trade
A. Empires, Kingdoms, and Ministates 1. Sudanic civilization 2. West African empires 3. Importance of gold 4. Kingdoms and ministates III. West and Central Africa: Origins of the Atlantic Slave Trade A. Empires, Kingdoms, and Ministates 1. Sudanic civilization – Emerged 9000 b.c. in eastern West Africa and traveled westward; based on domesticated cattle (8500–7500 b.c.), cultivation of sorghum and millet (7500–7000 b.c.), cultivation of cotton and production of cotton cloth (6500–3500 b.c.), and copper and iron production (2500–1000 b.c.); states were stratified and ruled by kings and princes; monotheistic religion was distinct from Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. 2. West African empires – Three great empires grew from Sudanic origins: around a.d. 800, the Ghana Empire used domesticated camels to pioneer trade routes across the Sahara to North Africa; Mali Empire emerged in thirteenth century and Songhai Empire in fifteenth century; these empires were similar to Aztecs and Incas, relying in military might to control trade routes. 3. Importance of gold – Abundant in West Africa, gold was cornerstone of international trade and constituted one-half to two-thirds of all the gold in circulation in Europe, North Africa, and Asia by 1450. 4. Kingdoms and ministates – West Africa’s resource-rich lower savanna and tropical rain forest regions were home to many kingdoms; comparable to Italy’s city-states, these densely populated kingdoms relied on yam cultivation and gathering; they also fought frequently in a competition for local power.

B. Trans-Saharan Africa and Coastal Trade 1. European trade in Africa 2. The slave trade III. West and Central Africa: Origins of the Atlantic Slave Trade B. Trans-Saharan Africa and Coastal Trade 1. European trade in Africa – For centuries, smaller states along the West African coast had few trading options; by the mid-fifteenth century, a new coastal trade with Europeans brought new options; European traders had to negotiate contracts on local terms, but they welcomed the chance to trade Asian and European goods for West Africa’s resources, including gold, grain, and ivory. 2. The slave trade – East of Africa’s Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin, an early center of the slave trade, came to be called the Slave Coast.

C. The Spirit World 1. Islam 2. African animism III. West and Central Africa: Origins of the Atlantic Slave Trade C. The Spirit World 1. Islam – West Africans immediately south of the Sahara learned about Islam from Arab merchants and Muslim leaders called imams; they knew the Koran and built centers of Islamic learning and instruction in cities like Timbuktu. 2. African animism – Most West Africans acknowledged multiple gods as well as animistic spirits; kings were seen as divine, and ancestor worship was important; rituals celebrated male virility and female fertility.

IV. Exploration and Conquest
A. Portuguese Expansion 1. Prince Henry’s efforts 2. Italian explorers 3. The sugar islands IV. Exploration and Conquest A. Portuguese Expansion 1. Prince Henry’s efforts– In 1420, Prince Henry of Portugal founded a center for sea navigation in the south of Portugal; from there, he hoped his explorers would find a way around North Africa to the south and east; explorers from Henry’s center designed new, better-handling vessels (caravels) and claimed the Madeira and Azore islands for Portugal. In 1435, they sailed to Sierra Leone and exchanged salt, wine, and fish for African ivory and gold. 2. Italian explorers – Genoese traders cooperated with Portuguese and Castilians and discovered the Canary and Cape Verde Islands to which they exported Mediterranean agriculture and familiar cash crops. 3. The sugar islands – Europeans conquered the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands, and São Tomé and enslaved the local populations; planters transformed local ecosystems to agricultural colonies where they produced wheat, wine grapes, and, where the climate permitted, sugar.

B. The African Slave Trade 1. Slavery in Africa 2. Europeans’ entry into the slave trade IV. Exploration and Conquest B. The African Slave Trade 1. Slavery in Africa – Slavery was widespread in Africa, and slaves, used as agricultural laborers, concubines, or military recruits, were a key commodity of exchange; slaves were central to the trans-Saharan trade. Between a.d. 700 and 1900, an estimated nine million Africans were sold in the trans-Saharan slave trade. 2. Europeans’ entry into the slave trade – In 1482, Portuguese merchants exploited and redirected the existing African slave trade. First, they enslaved Africans to work on sugar plantations; they also sold slaves in Lisbon, which soon had an African population of 9,000. After 1550, the Atlantic slave trade expanded enormously as Europeans established sugar plantations in Brazil and the West Indies.

C. Sixteenth-Century Incursions 1. Columbus and the Caribbean 2. The Spanish Invasion 3. Cabral and Brazil IV. Exploration and Conquest C. Sixteenth-Century Incursions 1. Columbus and the Caribbean – Castilian monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella subsidized Christopher Columbus’s (supported by Genoa investors) exploration of the west. In August 1492, three ships traveled 3,000 miles to present-day Bahamas, which Columbus believed was part of Asia; he called the region “the West Indies” and the people “Indians.” Columbus returned to report to the Spanish monarchs that, while he had found no gold, he had heard stories of gold on other islands; three more trips to the New World saw Columbus colonize the so-named West Indies for Spain, but no golden fortune for the king and queen. German geographer labeled the continents “America” after Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who had argued that this region was not part of Asia but a nuevo mundo, or a “new world.” 2. The Spanish Invasion – Spanish explorers probed the mainland for gold and slaves. In 1513, Juan Ponce de León and Vasco Núñez de Balboa reported on explorations and encouraged veterans of the reconquista to invade the mainland; 1519–1521 Hernán Cortés and his army (aided by European diseases) conquer the Aztec Empire and the Mayan city-states of the Yucatan Peninsula; 1524–1532 Francisco Pizarro and his small army conquered the already weakened Inca Empire, making Spain the master of the New World. 3. Cabral and Brazil – In 1500, Pedro Alvares Cabral and his fleet discovered Brazil; by the 1530s, Portuguese settlers began to create sugar plantations worked by Native Americans, but African slaves gradually replaced them. Brazil became the first American example of the plantation system.

Ask students to describe the action taking place here in this illustration of the conquistadors’ battle against the Aztecs. 1. What does this image convey about these two groups? Who are they? What are their similarities and differences? (Answer: On the left are Spanish conquistadors; on the right are Aztec warriors. Both are carrying weapons and wearing military garb. Weapons are similar—swords versus spears. Military garb is very different; Spaniards are wearing helmets and armor, while Aztecs are wearing brightly colored costumes demonstrating affinity with animals.) 2. Which group, in this image, is portrayed as the aggressor? Why might the artist have portrayed the two sides in this way? (Answer: Spaniards are shown as victims—smaller and boxed in to a tiny space. They look confined and nearly defenseless against the larger Aztec warriors. Perhaps the artist was aiming to suggest that the conquistadors’ violent defeat of the Aztecs was necessary and justifiable.)

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