Big Idea - Natives of American continents were a diverse people that had diverse societies based on the environments they lived in.

Native Americans before European

• Before Europeans arrived, Native Americans were organized into diverse cultures

• Nomadic hunters, farmers, fishing societies - very diverse set of people to deal with

• Three major civilizations in central and south America

  • Aztecs/Mexica/Seneca

    • Capital city Tenochtitlan

    • Written language

    • Human sacrifice

  • Mayans

    • Irrigation

    • Powerful stone temples

  • Inca

    • Mountains in Peru

    • Covered around 350,000 square miles

    • Elaborate terrace irrigation

  • All three used maize as a primary crop; helped advance irrigation

• Southwest Native Americans

  • Pueblo People

    • Farmers, planted maize

    • Sedentary - didn’t move around a lot

    • Pretty advanced

    • Made urban centers out of clay

• Great Plains/Great Basin

  • Nomadic hunters, not super organized, but stayed in kinship bands

  • Ute

    • Nomadic

• Northwest

  • Fishing villages

  • Developed permanent settlements

  • Examples

    • Chinook

    • Had extensive trade routes

    • Chumash

• Mississippi River Valley

  • Good for farming, fertile soil

  • Trade up and down the river

  • Hopewell People - Traded extensively throughout America

  • Cahokia - Largest settlement, peak was 10-30,000 people

• Northeast

  • Iroquois - Lots of farming, longhouses with extended family living there

European Exploration

• Reasons for exploration

  • Population increase - population was finally rebounding after the Black plague

  • Political Unification - centralized governments led by monarchs

  • Desire for luxury goods - People want more stuff from Asia

• Europeans wanted a water based route to Asia because land based route was controlled by Muslims - meant Europeans had no access to these trade routes

• Prince Henry the Navigator - works for Portugal, wants to use Atlantic Ocean, goes around Africa

  • Updated astronomical charts, easier to keep track of where they were

  • Used Caravels, ships dedicated to trade

  • Astrolabe and Stern-Post Rudder

• Spain wants to do this as well, and want to spread Christianity

• Spain’s monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, sponsor Columbus’ project

• Spain sends Columbus across the Atlantic, he wants to prove the World is round

• End up discovering the Caribbean

• Columbus lands in San Salvadore, Natives were kind to Columbus

• Columbus sees gold, enslaves them

Columbian Exchange

• Transfer of food, animals, minerals, people, and diseases between Old World and New World

• Spanish shows up in Americas, want to conquer

• Hernan Cortes shows up at Tenochtitlan with only around 1000 men, were 200-400 thousand Natives

• Smallpox - Natives were not exposed to this disease, were not immune, heavily damaged them

  • Hispanola - Arawak and Taino People lost 300,000 people

  • Incas - 9 million to 500k

• Food

  • Americas to Europe - Maize, Tomatoes, Potatoes, Cacao, Tobacco

  • Europe/Africa to Americas - Rice, Wheat, Soybeans, Rye, Oats, Lemons, Oranges

• Animals

  • Europe/Africa to Americas - Horses, pigs, cattle, chickens

• Minerals - Spanish plunder the Native American tribes for silver and gold, transforms their wealth - makes them really rich

• Unprecedented Economic Growth

• Europe was mainly defined by Feudalism, work for nobles for protection

• Capitalism grows, economic system based on private ownership and trade between these people

• Slave trade prominent as well - Native Americans, but mainly Africans

  • Middle Passage

• Many European nations would go with Spain to the New World

• Mercantilism - Depends on heavy government intervention

• Joint Stock Companies - new model of funding, limited liability organization in which a plurality of investors pool their money to fund a venture

Labor Systems/Societal Restructuring in Americas

• Europeans get involved in slave trade, change it significantly

• Before, prisoners of war were made slaves, sometimes had more legal rights, and slave status was very rarely inherited

• At ports in Africa, Europeans traded goods for people, specifically guns

• Europeans found Africans weird due to different customs, refused to see them as human to justify slavery

• Europeans say that Africans are descended from Canan, a Biblical figure who was cursed to be a servant for the rest of his life - use this to justify slavery

• Europeans bring slaves over to solve labor problems - Native Americans make bad laborers

• Encomienda System - Encomenderos (leading men) granted land, all natives that lived there are labor force, justified on religious grounds

• Ferdinand and Isabella, monarchs of Spain, issue Requerimiento - pope granted Spanish monarchs to convert whoever was found in the Americas

• Priests would be sent to the New World, whoever converted to Christianity would be protected

• Christian natives would end up being enslaved anyway

• System wasn’t working because the Natives would escape, die from disease, etc.

• Africans didn’t know land as well and were immune to these diseases

• Makes Spanish super wealthy, but mainly the upper class/nobles just getting richer

• Spanish make a caste system so that they can tax people at the bottom more

• Caste system was based on race

  • Peninsulares - Spanish and born in Spain

  • Criollos - Spanish, but born in Americas

  • Mestizos - Spanish and Native-American ancestry

  • Mulattoes - Spanish and African ancestry

  • Africans

  • Native Americans

Cultural Interactions between Europeans, Natives, and Africans

• New society imposed on Americas by Spanish Hegemony

  • Hegemony = Domination of one nation by another

• Spanish continues American expansion northwards, use missionaries to spread Christianity, known as the Mission system

• Fundamentally different worldviews

  • Natives

    • Pantheists/Animists - Believe in natural world filled with spirits

    • Land is not a commodity - Cannot be carved up, bought and sold

    • Kinship networks of up to 70 people

  • Spanish

    • Catholic - Belief in single deity

    • Believe land is meant for private ownership

    • Spanish respects kinship, but focus on nuclear family

  • Adopted any ideas that would be useful

• Natives adopt metal tools and horses, use them for warfare

• Spain wants in on the fur trade, marry into Native tribes to get into it

• Pueblo people do convert to Christianity in a way - worship him along with their other gods

• Conquistadors have forced conversion, Natives see them and their Christ as evil - Pueblo people fight against them, kill 400 conquistadors, burn churches

• Conquistadors return and once again conquer their land

• News reaches Spain about the morality of this

• A lot of people argue that they are bringing the worldview of the Old World to the Natives, and therefore helping them

  • Sepulveda - argues that Natives are less than human, benefit from the labor

• Others disagree, most important was Bartolome de Las Casas - says that people who allowed this would lose god, Natives would end up hating god

  • de Las Casas saw the awful conditions for Natives with the Encomienda System, doesn’t want it in practice

  • de Las Casas ends up suggesting the use of Africans for labor instead, which is what Spain does