Chapter 1 New World Beginnings 8/10/06

I. The Shaping of North America

A. single continent existed
1. 225 million years ago
2. evidence – similar species found on separate continents
B. landforms of newly formed North America
1. Great Lakes formed by glaciers
2. Cut-off rivers lead to deserts

II. Peopling the Americas

A. Populating the continent
1. nomadic Asians enter through the Bering isthmus
2. last for 250 centuries
3. end of Ice Age leads to American seclusion
4. people continue to migrate south
B. New people
1. 54 million people in the Americas by 1492
2. over 2000 separate languages evolved
3. sophisticated tribes form
a. Aztecs – Mexico
b. Mayans – Central America
c. Incas – Peru

III.The Earliest Americans

A. Innovations
1. corn planting
2. irrigation
3. Iroquois Confederacy
4. three-sister planting – corn, squash, and beans
a. Creek
b. Choctaw
c. Cherokee
B. Other tribes
1. Pueblo – Rio Grande valley
2. Mound Builders – Ohio River valley
3. Mississippian culture – lower Midwest
4. Anasazi – southwest
C. Characteristics of North American natives
1. lived in small, scattered, impermanent settlements
2. women tended crops
3. men hunted, fished, gathered fuel, and cleared fields for planting
4. matrilinear cultures (passed on through female side of family)
5. occasionally created forest fires in order to improve hunting

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IV. Indirect Discoveries of the New World

A. Vikings
1. discovered around a.d. 1000
2. landed in Newfoundland (Vinland)
3. evidence not found until 1960s
B. Christian crusaders
1. reasons for expeditions
a. spices, especially sugar
b. silk for clothing
c. drugs for aching flesh
d. perfumes for bathed bodies
e. colorful draperies for gloomy castles
C. Europeans search for new routes
1. Marco Polo’s influence
2. before 1400s – refusal to travel south because of unknown return
3. Portuguese impact
a. Invent the caravel and discover the prevailing westward breezes
b. Set up trading posts along the African shore for gold and slaves
c. Slavery – idea of Arabs and Africans
d. Used slaves on sugar plantations off the coast of Africa
e. Forty thousand Africans were carried away to plantations by the late
1400s
f. Explorers continue to push south
• Bartholomeu Dias – rounds the Cape of Good Hope in 1488
• Vasco da Gama – reaches India in 1498
4. Spanish impact
a. Ferdinand (Aragon) and Isabelle (Castile) defeat the Moors
b. Marriage leads to uniting of Spain
c. Christopher Columbus requests three ships to sail east
d. After six weeks, October 12, 1492, they sight the Bahamas
e. Columbus named them “Indies,” convinced he was near India

V. Collision of Worlds
A. Introduced to the New World
1. animals – cattle, swine, horses
2. plants – sugar cane, grass, flowers
3. disease – smallpox, yellow fever, malaria
4. other – slave labor
B. Introduced to the Old World
1. animals – iguanas, rattlesnakes
2. plants – tobacco, maize, beans, tomatoes, potatoes
3. disease – syphilis
4. other – gold, silver
C. 90% of Native Americans die because of disease

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VI. Spanish Conquistadores

A. Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)
1. Spain secured claim to Columbus’s discovery
2. Divided with Portugal the “New World”
3. Portugal receives compensating territory in Africa, Asia, and Brazil
B. Vasco Balboa (1513)
1. discovers Pacific Ocean
2. claimed all land touched by the sea for Spain
C. Ferdinand Magellan (1519)
1. left Spain with five ships
2. slain by inhabitants of the Philippines
3. one ship, the Victoria, reached home in 1522
4. first circumnavigation of the globe
D. Juan Ponce de Leon (1513)
1. explores Florida
2. seeked gold, not the “fountain of youth”
3. killed by an Indian’s arrow
E. Francisco Coronado (1540 – 1542)
1. searched for golden cities (in reality  adobe pueblos)
2. wandered through Arizona and New Mexico and as far east as Kansas
3. discovered the Grand Canyon
4. discovered enormous herds of buffalo
F. Hernando de Soto (1539 – 1542)
1. went on a gold-seeking expedition
2. discovered the Mississippi River just north of the Arkansas River
3. mistreated Indians
G. Francisco Pizarro (1532)
1. crushed the Incas of Peru
2. added a huge amount of wealth to Spain

VII. The Conquest of Mexico

A. Hernan Cortes sets sail from Cuba in 1519
B. Found enslaved and marooned people who became translators
C. Gathered twenty thousand Indian allies and planned to overtake Tenochtitlan
D. Cortes is believed to be a god by Moctezuma
E. Aztecs attack the Spaniards
F. Disease led to downfall of the Aztecs
G. Incorporated European customs and intermarried forming Mestizos