Pre Columbian North America

Craig Self

The Americas Before 1492…

• Before the arrival of Europeans, native populations in North America developed a wide variety of social, political, and economic structures based in part on interactions with the environment and each other

The Americas Before 1492…

• As settlers migrated and settled across the vast expanse of North America, they developed quite different and increasingly complex societies by adapting to and transforming their diverse environments.

Corn & the Pueblo

• Corn was the main staple of the Pueblo

• Adapted to live near corn (water, fertile soil, perma housing)

• Combined hunting, gathering and farming• Domesticated turkeys

• Deer attracted to fields

• Became vulnerable to drought and nature

Chinook and Trade

• Chinook language the basis of NW trade

• Peaceful due to prosperity

• Internal conflict handled via ritual challenge

• Head flattening…?

Plains Indians & the Horse

• Adaptation to the dependence on buffalo

• From farming cultures but abandoned it

• American midwest & high desert

Skill 1: Historical Causation

• Identifying and analyzing the RELATIONSHIPS among historical events as both CAUSE and EFFECT.

Iroquois & Algonquin

• NE seaboard

• Mixed Agricultural and Hunter-Gatherer society

• Permanent villages

Algonquin

• Semi nomadic (seasonal villages)

• Farming, hunting, fishing

• Southern settlements more stable and larger than northern

• Eventually would make dozens of treaties with Europeans

• Villages structured on clans

Iroquois

• Confederation of 5 main tribes• Council to keep

the peace• Matrilineal

descent• Hiawatha

Cahokia

Spanish & Portuguese Exploration

• Racially based caste system• Mestizo

• Peninsulares (Gauchupino)

• Zambo

• Introduction of the slave trade

Spanish Economic Systems

• Livestock

• Plantation agriculture

• Encomienda system

The Columbian Exchange

Europeans Other Than the Spanish & Portuguese

• English

• Dutch

• French

Dutch & French Fur Trade, 17th c.

Walter Raleigh

• English explorer, privateer and colonist

• Friend of Queen Elizabeth

• Names Virginia after her

• Founds Roanoke, which fails• Base for privateers

Privateers

• A privateer or "corsair" was a private person or ship authorized by a government by letters of marque to attack foreign vessels during wartime.

• English royal “pyrates”

• Allowed to plunder Spanish ships and ports

The Black Legend

• Portrayal of the Spanish as excessively cruel, bigoted and self-righteous

• Shapes much western thought on Spain

• Attributable to racial beliefs and the Spanish treatment of the Americas

St. Augustine

• Founded in 1565 and considered (wrongly!) to be oldest continually settled city in the USA• Served as capital of Spanish Florida for 200+ years

• Penitas, TX - 1520

Spanish Mission System

•  to convert, educate, and "civilize" the indigenous population and transform the natives into Spanish colonial citizens.

• The indigenous people weren’t always thrilled…

• American southwest & west

• The Alamo, The Presidio…

Juan Oñante

• Spanish governor of the Southwest, late 1590s

• Claimed all of N.M.

• Reputation as cruel

• Battle of Acoma• 800 killed and 80 men had feet amputated, 200+ women sold as slaves

• Eventually called to answer for behavior but pardoned

• “The Last Conquistador”