APUSH Chapter 1

Page 1

Native American Experience

- 60 Million people in America when Europeans arrived

- Great political range

- Empires to Hunter Gatherers

- Aztecs and Incas dominated Mesoamerica/Andes

- Dense populations, productive agriculture, aggressive bureaucratic state

- Geographic Regions of NA

- Mississippi Valley

- Urban density and Complex Social Organization

- Cahokia (major city)

- Moundbuilding and Maize Farming

- Eastern Woodlands

- Iroquois and Algonquin

- Farmed in Summer, Hunter/Gather in Winter

- Mainly chiefdoms

- Mid-Atlantic: power strictly local

- Iroquois Confederacy

- Union of Five Tribes, granted power to councils of sachems (leaders)

- New England: Mainly Hunter-Gatherers

- Great Lakes

- Very mobile due to geography

- Variety of political structures

- The Great Plains and the Rockies

- Hunter-Gatherers

- Transformed by the introduction of the Horse

- Helped Bison Hunting and War

- Some farming communities

- The Arid Southwest

- surprisingly good farmers (irrigation systems)

- The Pacific Coast

- Hunter-Gatherers

- Localized, lots of different languages

- Very defined social structures

- Strong Warrior Traditions

- Patterns of Trade

- Expansive trade networks

- Between Native-American Tribes and eventually Europeans

- In most societies, powerful rulers collected most of the wealth and then redistributed it

- Sacred Power

- Mostly animists

- for men spiritual power linked to hunting and war

- crucial right of passage

Western Europe

- 1450: Neither centralized empires nor hunter-gatherer

- filled with semi-equal chiefdoms

- relied on subsistence agriculture

- authoritarian, patriarchal

- primogeniture

- power held by established institutions, such as the nobility and the church

- mostly peasants, constants labor

- extreme poverty

- trade starts to resurge in Italy

- Myths and Religion

- oldest beliefs similar to animism

- Christianity rises

- very hierarchical

- crucial to lives of peasants

West and Central Africa: Origins of the Atlantic Slave Trade

- Broad horizontal swath with three climatic zones

- Semiarid zone, savana, and rainforest

- Gold the main cornerstone of trade

- Empires in the North, complex mosaic of kingdoms in the South

- Began trading with Europeans

Exploration and Conquest

- Prince Henry the Navigator invents a new ship, increased trade with Africa

- European salt, wine, and fish for African Ivory and Gold

- Italy joined in

- Looking for Route to Asia- Cape of Good Hope

- Portuguese traders ousted Arab merchants as the primary purveyors of African slaves

- Columbus believes Atlantic Ocean is smaller than believed to be

- Reaches Bahamas

- surprised by crude living but claims natives "easily converted to Christianity"

- Montezuma (aztec ruler) welcomes Hernan Cortes (Spanish explorer) with great ceremony, taken captive

- Cut off city's food supply

- Smallpox ravaged Aztec Empire

- Francisco Pizarro achieves similar feat over Incas