ae Cae Colliding Worlds, SO a ola Rear cass BE vA Rar) Transformations of North America 1491-1700 Each of the nine parts in America’ History covers a particular period of time. ‘The choice of beginning and ending dates is called periodization: the process of deciding how to break down history into pieces with coherent themes. ‘Throughout this book, each choice of periodization represeats a form of histor 1 argument, and welll explain and explore each periodization choice as we go. Part 1 of America’s History is about collisions and experiments, Our choice to begin in 1491 is symbolic: it represents the moment before Columbus first voyage in 1492 bridged the Atlantic Ocean. At this time North America, Europe, and Africa were home to complex societies with cistinctive cultures. But their histories were about to collide, bringing vast changes to all three con- tinents, Sustained contact among Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans ‘was one of the most momentous developments in world history. No one knew what European colonies in the Americas would be like. Only by experimenting did new societies gradually emerge. These experiments were neither easy nor peaceful. Warfare, mass enslavement, death, and destruc- tion lay at the heart of colonial enterprise. Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans often clashed violently as they struggled to control their fates. But colonies also created opportunities for new societies to flourish. Actoss two centuries, five European nations undertook colonial experi- ments in dozens of places. Some failed miserably; some prospered beyond anyone's imagining. We bring Part 1 to a close in 1700, when the first fruits of these experiments were clear, though colonial societies remained insecure and unstable. Would other concluding dates be possible for this part—for example, 1607? Yes, but to our minds, its best to consider the carly decades of British and French colonization — 1607 to 1700—in tandem with a deep exploration of precontact Native American and African societies. Chapters 1 and 2 address three main developments that are central to this period: >(GJ CONCEPT CONNECTIONS Native American Diversity and Complexity Native American societies ranged from vast, complex imperial states to small kin-based bands of hunters and gatherers: a spectrum much too broad for the familiar term tribe to cover. Native Americans’ economic and social systems were adapted to the ecosystems they inhabited. Many were productive farmers, and some hunted bison and deer, while others were expert salmon fishermen who plied coastal waters in large oceangoing boats. Native American religions and cul- tures also differed, though many had broad characteristics in common. ‘These variations in Native American societies shaped colonial enterprise. Europeans conquered and co-opted the Native American empires in Mexico and the Andes with relative ease, but smaller societies were harder to exploit. Mobile hunter-gatherers were especially formidable opponents of colonial expansion. ions Museum of he Amero an, Sitnin The Columbian Exchange European colonization triggered a series of sweeping changes that historians have labeled the Columbian Exchange. Plants, animals, and germs crossed the Atlantic as well as people. European grains and weeds were carried westward, while American foods like potatoes and maize (corn) transformed diets in Europe and Asia, Native Americans had domesticated very few animals; the Columbian Exchange invoduced many new creatures to the American landscape. Germs also made the voyage, especially deadly pathogens like smallpox, influenza, and bubonic plague, which took an enormous toll. Having lost on average 90 per- cent of their populations from disease over the first century of contact, Native ‘American societies were forced to cope with European and African newcomers in a weakened and vulnerable state. Inanimate materials crossed oceans as well: enough gold and silver traveled from the Americas to Europe and Asia to transform the world's economies, intensifying competition and empire building in Europe. Experimentation and Transformation The collisions of American, European, and African worlds challenged the beliefs and practices ofall three groups. Colonization was, above all, a long and tortured process of experimentation. Over time, Europeans carved out three distinct types of colonies in the Americas. Where Native American societies were organized into densely settled empires, Europeans conquered the ruling class and established tribute-based empires of their own. In tropical and subtropical settings, coloniz~ ers created plantation societies that demanded large, imported labor forces—a need that was met through the African slave trade. And in temperate regions, col- nists came in largenumbers hoping to create societies similar to the ones they knew in Europe. Everywhere, core beliefs were shaken by contact with radically unfamiliar peoples. Native Americans and Africans struggled to maintain autonomy, while Europeans labored to understand —and profit from —their relations with nonwhite peoples. These transformations are the subject of Part 1.GG3 THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Transformations of North America 1491-1700 ‘This timeline arranges some of the important events of this period into themes. Look at the entries for “Culture and Society” from 1450 to 1700. How did the Protestant Reformation and the response of the Catholic Church influence the colonization of the ‘Americas in these years? In the realm of “Work, Exchange, and Technology” how did colonial economies evolve, and what roles did Native American and African labor play in them? AMERICAN AND INIT UMD Lg * Castle and Aragon join to ‘create Spain; te Inguisition helps create a sense ofa Spach identity ‘+ John Calvin establishes Protestant commornteath in Geneva, Switzerland Mee Wy ay + Rise of monarchical nation- staesin Europe + Azecs and Incas consolidate ‘ther empires * Probable founding ofthe Iroquois Confederacy ‘= Rise ofthe Songhai Empire in fica Dla ec IDR eg nel kelcag * Diversified economies of Native Ameria * Rise ofthe Ottoman Empire blocks Asian vading routes of the alin cy-states| * Europeans fis off North ‘American coast + Portuguese traders explore ‘ican coast + English conquest and perse- ution of native ish + Growing Protestant move> rmentin England + Elzabeths"sea dogs’ plague Spanish shipping * English monarchs adopt met cantlist polices + Defeat ofthe Spanish Armada (1588) * Growth of the outwork system in English textile industry «= Spanish encomienda system ‘organizes native labor in Mexico + Inca mita systems co-opted by the Spanish in the Andes ‘= Pilgrims and Puritans seek to eate godly commonwealths + Powhatan and Virginia Company representatives attempt to extract tribute from each other * ames| daims ds rule England +> Vngnins House of urgesses 1619) * English Puritan Rewoition «= Native Americans rée up against English colonists in Wrainia (1620s nd 1640s) and New England (1630s) + Restoration ofthe English «own (1660) “= English conquer New Netherland (1654) «+ Native American reels {against colonial authority in New England (1676s) and ew Maxiea (16809 + Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia (1675-1676) erght to + First staple exorts from the English mainiind colonies fursand tobacco + Subsstence farms in New England ‘= Transition to sugar plantation systemin the Caribbean. islands +» Social mobil for Africans ends with colapse of tobacco ‘wade and inceased power of ‘gentry * Tobacco trade stagnates ‘= Maturing yeoman economy ‘and emerging Aantic ade jn New Englandavai Qi) Era aag + Protestant Reformation (1517) sparks century of religious warfare “= Henry il creates Church of England (1534) * Founding of Jesuit order (1549) MIGRATION AND SETTLEMENT * Chuistopher Columbus explores the Bahamas and ‘West Indies (1492-1508) * Pedro Alvaes Cabral makes landfalinBrai(1500) * Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru (1519-1535) are UT aa UROL * Native American burn ing practices alter Noth ‘American landscapes “ Martelus map underest- mates distance from Europe t0Asia (1489) + Yellow fever, malaria. and ‘dysentery help keep Evropean traders from African interior + Columbian Exchange begins twtransform global ecology IVa e NLS Pert) «Amerigo Vespucci gives America its name += Spain and Portugal begin to ‘tap American resources © Philip defends the Romen Catholic Church against Protestantism * Elizabeth adopts Protestant Book of Common Prayer (0559) + Castlans and Aficans arrive in Spanich Amerie in large numbers + Englih colonies in Newoundland, Maine, and Roanoke fil + Plantation comple rings sugarcane agriculture tothe Americas * Steep Native Americn pop- lation deine in Hispaniols, ‘Mesoamerica, and the Andes «+ Protestant nations challenge Catholic contro ofthe ‘Americas * American gold and sverflow oEuropeand Asia * Persecuted English Puritans and Cathales migrate to ‘America * Established churches setup in PurtanNew England and ‘Anglican Virginia «= Dissenters sertlen Rhode ‘sland = MetacontsWarin New England (1675-1676) += Bacon Rebellion calls for temaval ef indians and end of. eliterule © Salem witcheraft crisis (1692) + Fist et of Anglo-Indian wars * Afican servitude begins in Vin (1619) + Corbbean islands move from senvitude to slavery + Growing gentry immigration tovigins * White indentured servitude shapes Chesapeake society * ‘Acans defined as property ‘rather than people inthe Chesapeake + Chesapeake colonists suffer from unbalanced sex atios ‘and subtropical ilinesses ‘+ New England colonists benefit from balanced sex ratios and healt climate + Notive Americon burning practices decnein the east- en woodlands. * Cpportunitis for trade and settlement in America atvact Esropean investment + peerican colonies become 2 ‘rime destination for bound kebor ‘England's American colores become a destination for ‘tee mnigrants + Three types of colonies femedin Ameveatebute Pantation, and neo-European “+ French merchants found New Onleans 1450 1600 a PART 1 THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING.CHAPTER Colliding Worlds 1491-1600 The Native American Experience ‘The First Americans ‘American Empires CChiefdoms anc Confederacies Patterns of Trade Sacred Power Western Europe: The Edge of the Old World Hierarchy and Authority Peasant Society Expanding Trade Networks Myths, Religions, and Holy Warriors Slave Trade Empires, Kingdoms, and Ministates ‘Trans-Saharan and Coastal Trade The Spirit World Exploration and Conquest Portuguese Expansion The African Slave Trade Sixteenth-Century incursions of humble origins appeared at the court of Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon along with six Caribbean natives, numerous colorful parrots, and “samples of finest gold, and L April 1493, a Genoese sailor [APPT U erat How did the political, eco- nomic, and religious systems of Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans compare, and how did things change as a result of contacts among them? many other things never before seen or heard tell of in Spain” The sailor was Christopher Columbus, just returned from his first voyage into the Atlantic, He and his party entered Barcelona's fortress in a solemn procession. The monarchs stood to greet Columbus; he knelt to kiss their hands. They talked for an hour and then adjourned to the royal chapel for a ceremony of thanksgiving, Columbus, now bearing the official title Admiral of the Ocean Sea, remained at court for more than a month. The highlight of his stay was the baptism of the six natives, whom Colunbus called indians because he mistakenly believed he had sailed westward all the way to Asia. In the spring of 1540, the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto met the Lady of Cofachiqui, ruler of alarge Native American province in present-day South Carolina. ‘Though an epidemic had carried away many of her people, the lady of the province offered the Spanish expedition as much corn, and as many pearls, as it could catr As she spoke to de Soto, she unwound“a great rope of pearls as large as hazelnuts” and handed them to the Spaniard; in return he gave her a gold ring set with a ruby. De Soto and his men then visited the temples of Cofachiqui, which were guarded by carved statues and held storehouses of weapons and chest upon chest of pearls After loading their horses with corn and pearls, they continued on their way. A Portuguese traveler named Duarte Lopez visited the African kingdom of Kongo in 1578."The men and women are black” he reported, “some approaching olive colour, with black curly hair, and others with red. The men are of middle height, and, excepting the biack skin, are like the Portuguese” The royal city of Kongo sat on a high plain that was “entirely cultivated,’ with a population of more than 100,000. The city included a separate commercial district, a mile around, where Portuguese traders acquired ivory, wax, honey, palm oil, and slaves from the Kongolese. Three glimpses of three lost worlds. Soon these peoples would be trans forming one another's societies, often through conflict and exploitation. But at the moment they first met, Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans stood on roughly equal terms. Even a hundred years after Columbus's discovery of the ‘Americas, no one could have foreseen the shape that their interactions would take in the generations to come. To begin, we need to understand the three worlds as distinct places, each home to unique societies and cultures.ear reroll Relag ‘As you read, ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates and then identify the links among related events. | —— | © 6.13,000- > Asian migrants reach North America | 61350» TheBlack Death sweeps Europes Cahokia goes into 30000. rapid decline ©6000. > Domestication ofmaizebeginsin Mesoamerica ¢,1400.-—-~».Songhal Empire emerges 32 > Roman emperor Constantine converts to as > Portuguese trade begins along West and Central Christianity African coasts «600 > Pueblo cultures emerge | 6.1450» Founding ofthe Iroquois Confederacy 632 » Death of Muhammad | a2 > Christopher Columbus makes first voyage to 632-1100 > Arab people adopt slam and spreaditsinfuence mc «800 > Ghana Empite emerges pe ae ore ©1000 > nigation developed by Hohokam,Mogolln and 555 Tecate ‘Anasazi peoples ae aber ea 61000-1350 > Development of Mississippian culture io a eee Pee ate eee 87 > Martin Luther sparks Protestant Reformation 4os6-1291 > CuradesnkEuropewith Arab raderoues__|_1SI9-1521_ Hern Cons conquers Aztec Em cine Figen Guermenorer 1532-1535 > Francisco Pizarro vangulshes Incas cise, riscicean ees | 156 * soimCatin pubes estes | eee | 1580 > De Soto meets the Lady of Cofachiqui founding of ©1825 Aztecs establish capital at Tenochtitisn | the Jesuit order 1326 > Mansa Musa’ pilgrimage to Mecca | 1576 > Duarte Loper vss the Kongo capital | The Native American Experience When Europeans arrived, pethaps 60 million people occupied the Americas, 7 million of whom lived north of Mexico. In Mesoamerica (present-day Mexico and Guatemala) and the Andes, empires that rivaled the greatest civilizations in world history ruled over millions of people. At the other end of the political spectrum, hunters and gatherers were organized into kin-based bands. Between these extremes, semisedentary societies planted and tended crops in the spring and summer, fished and hunted, made war, and conducted trade. Though we often see this spectrum as a hierarchy in which the empires ‘Turn to the Glossary of are most impressive and important while hunter-gatherers deserve scarcely a mention, esrenlonHiocal this bias toward civilizations that left behind monumental architecture and spawned powerful ruling classes is nuisplaced. To be fully understood, the Americas must be treated in all their complexity, with an appreciation for their diverse societies and cultures. Terms in the back of the book for definitions of bolded terms. The First Americans Archaeologists believe that migrants from Asia crossed a 100-mile-wide land bridge ‘Take detailed notes on the diverse J cOAMecting Siberia and Alaska during the last Ice Age sometime between 13,000 and Native peoples that inhabited | 3000 B.c. and thus became the first Americans. The first wave of this migratory stream the Americas before the | from Asa lasted from about fifteen thousand to eleven thousand years ago, Then the artval of Columbus. | glaciers melted, and the rising ocean submerged the land bridge beneath the Bering Strait (Map 1.1). Around eight thousand years ago, a second movement of peoples, traveling by water across the same narrow strait, brought the ancestors of the Navajos and the Apaches to North America. The forebears of the Aleut and Inuit peoples, the “Eskimos!” came in a third wave around five thousand years ago, Then, for three hun- dred generations, the peoples of the Western Hemisphere were largely cut off from the rest of the world,CHAPTER 1 — Colliding Worlds, 1491-1600 9 Using a global projection, the cartographer bas] face North Arica sth center of the sap AMERT" 2 PACIFIC OCEAN. nae f j peopel tvded on neuro Sup of ; ‘ aocone [Roeland along the Pole coast A the pce 7 \ tec bacen the Evdleran sd Faure lesahees et cve of, robebly ato ‘igpoand 1200016, mgets nya ae cd th lta one peta Sey tote Ameren “Migration Rovtes into America, £.16,000-10,0007.. Co ieeshess 16.0086 Diteesheets.¢. 12.00 86. Vegetation ones 1 Tord Ba Pie a desert Migration oute fee Tanne) MAP 1.1 The ce Age and the Settling of the Americas ‘Some sixteen thousand years ago, a sheet of ice covered much of Europe and North America. As the ice lowered the level ofthe world’s oceans, abroad bridge of land was created between Siberia and Alaska. Using that land bridge, ‘hunting peoples fer Asia migrated to North America as they pursued woolly mammoths and other large game ‘animals and soughtice-fee habitats. 8 10,000 ac, the descendants of these migrant peoples had moved south to present-day Floridaand central Mexico. In time, they would settle as far south asthe tip of South America and as far ‘east a the Atlantic :oast of North America Migrants moved across the continents as they hunted and gathered available resources. Most flowed southward, and the densest populations developed in central “Mexico— home to some 20 million people atthe time of first contact with Europeans — ‘and the Andes Mountains, with a population of pethaps 12 million. In North America, -asecondary trickle pushed to the east, across the Rockies and into the Mississippi Valley and the eastern woodlands. ‘Around 6000 8.c., Native peoples in present-day Mexico and Peru began raising domesticated crops. Mesoamericans cultivated maize (corn) into a nutritious plant Knowledge of the impact of ‘maize cultivation on Native populations is essential for success on the APS exam.10 PART1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1491-1700 PACIFIC OCEAN ATLANTIC OCEAN Gulf of Mexico Dominant Economic Activity Caribbean Sea La ~& MAP 1.2 Native American Peoples, 1492 Having leamed to live in many environments, Native Americans populated the entire Westesn Hemisphere, They created cultures that ranged from centralized empires (thelncas and Aztecs), to societies that combined farming with hunting. fishing, and gathering (the Iroquois and Algonquians) to nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers (the Micmacs {and Shoshones).The great diversity of Native American penples — in language, vibal identity, and ways of lfe— and the long-standing rivalries among neighboring peoples usally prevented them from uniting to resist the European invaders. ESM] | with higher yield per acre than wheat, barley, or rye, the staple cereals of Europe. In ‘causation | Peru theyalso bred the potato, a root crop of unsurpassed nutritional value. The result- ing agricultural surpluses encouraged population growth and laid the foundation for wealthy, urban societies in Mexico and Peru, and later in the Mississippi Valley and the southeastern woodlands of North America (Map 1.2) What factors allowed fer the development of empires in central Mexico and the Andes? American Empires In Mesoamerica and the Andes, the two great empires of the Americas—the Aztecs and Incas — dominated the landscape. Dense populations, productive agriculture, and an aggressive bureaucratic state were the keys to their power. Each had an impressiveCHAPTER 1 capital city. Tenochtitkin, established in 1325 at the center of the Aztec Empire, had at its height around 1500 a population of about 250,000, at a time when the European cities of London and Seville each had perhaps 50,000. The Aztec state controlled the fertile valleys in the highlands of Mexico, and Aztec merchants forged trading routes that crisscrossed the empire. Trade, along with tribute demanded from subject peoples (comparable to taxes in Europe), brought gold, textiles, turquoise, obsidian, tropical bird feathers, and cacao to Tenochtitlin. The Europeans who first encountered this city in 1519 marveled at its wealth and beauty. “Some of the soldiers among us who had been in many parts of the world” wrote Spanish conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, “in Constantinople, and all over Italy, and in Rome, said that [they had never seen] so large a market place and so full of people, and so well regulated and arranged.” ‘Ruled by priests and warrior-nobles, the Aztecs subjugated most of central Mexico. Captured enemies were brought to the capital, where Aztec priests brutally sacrificed thousands of them. The Aztecs believed that these ritual murders sustained the cosmos, ensuring fertile fields and the daily return of the sun Cuzco, the Inca capital located more than 11,000 feet above sea level, had perhaps 60,000 residents. A dense network of roads, storehouses, and administrative centers stitched together this improbable high-altitude empire, which ran down the 2,000-mile- long spine of the Andes Mountains. A king claiming divine status ruled the empire through @ bureaucracy of nobles. As with the Aztecs, the empire consisted of subordi- nate kingdoms that had been conquered by the Incas, and tribute flowed from local centers of power to the imperial core. Chiefdoms and Confederacies Nothing on the scale of the Aztec and Inca empires ever developed north of Mexico, but ‘maize agriculture spread from Mesoamerica across much of North America beginning around A.D. 800, laying a foundation for new ways of life there as wel. The Mississippi Valley The spread of maize to the Mississippi River Valley and the Southeast around A.D. 800 led to the development of a large-scale northern Native ‘American culture, The older Adena and Hopewell cultures had already introduced moundbuilding and distinctive pottery styles to the region, Now residents of the Mississippi River Valley experienced the greater urban density and more complex social organization that agriculture encouraged. ‘The city of Cahokia, in the fertile bottomlands along the Mississippi River, emerged around A.p. 1000 as the foremost center of the new Mississippian culture. At its peak, Cahokia had about 10,000 residents; including satellite communities, the region's popula- tion was 20,000 to 30,000. In an area of 6 square miles, archaeologists have found 120 mounds of varying size, shape, and function. Some contain extensive burials; others, known as platform mounds, were used as bases for ceremonial buildings or rulers’ homes. Cahokia had a powerful ruling class and a priesthood that worshipped the sun. After peaking in size around 1350, it declined rapidly. Scholars speculate that its decline was caused by a period of ruinous warfare, made worse by environmental changes that made the site less habitable. It had been abandoned by the time Europeans arrived in the area. ‘Mississippian culture endured, however, and was still in evidence throughout much of the Southeast at the time of first contact with Europeans. ‘the Lady of Cofachiqui encountered by Hernando de Soto in 1540 ruled over a Mississippian community, and others dotted the landscape between the Carolinas and the lower Mississippi River. In Florida, sixteenth-century Spanish explorers encountered the Apalachee Indians, who occupied a network of towns built around mounds and fields of maize. Eastern Woodlands In the eastern woodlands, the Mississippian-influenced peoples of the Southeast interacted with other groups, many of whom adopted maize agriculture but did not otherwise display Mississippian characteristics. Algonquian and Iroquoian speakers shared related languages and lifeways but were divided into Colliding Worlds, 1491-1600 112 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1491-1700 The Great Serpent Mound Scholars long believed that this mound was the work of the Adene peoples (500 s<-k0. 200) because ofits proximity to an Adena burial site in present-day southern Ohio. Recent research places the mound at a much later date (40. 950-1200) and, because of the serpent imagery ties it to the Fort Ancient culture, Which i closely related to the Miccccipplan compley Tha head ofthe serpent s aligned with the suncet ofthe summer solstice June 20 or 21 in the Northern Hemisphere), an event of great religious significance toa sur-worshipping Culture, neta coo samenan/ey mages dozens of distinct societies. Most occupied villages built around fields of maize, beans, and squash during the summer months; at other times of the year, they dispersed in smaller groups to hunt, fish, and gather. Throughout the eastern woodlands, as in most of North America, women tended crops, gathered plants, and oversaw affairs within the community, while men were responsible for activities beyond it, especially hunting, fishing, and warfare. In this densely forested region, Indians regularly set fires—in New England, twice ‘year, in spring and fall—to clear away underbrush, open fields, and make it easier to hunt big game. The catastrophic population decline accompanying European coloniza- tion quickly pat an end to seasonal burning, but in the years before Europeans arrived in North America, bison roamed east as far as modern-day New York and Georgia, Early European colonists remarked upon landscapes that “resemble{d] a stately Parke.” where men could ride among widely spaced trees on horseback and even a “large army” could pass unimpeded (AP* America in the World). Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples had no single style of political organization. Many were chiefdoms, with one individual claiming authority. Some were paramount chiefdoms, in which numerous communities with their own local chiefs banded together under a single, more powerful ruler. For example, the Powhatan Chiefdom, which dominated the Chesapeake Bay region, was made up of more than thirty subor- dinate chiefdoms, and some 20,000 people, when Englishmen established the colony of Virginia, Powhatan himself, according to the English colonist John Smith, was attended by “a guard of 40 or 50 of the tallest men his Country affords”CHAPTER 1 — Colliding Worlds, 1491-1600 18 The Kincaid Site Located on the north bank ofthe Ohio iver 140 miles from Cahokia, the Kincald site was @ Mississippian town from c. ao, 1050 to 1450. It contains at least nineteen mounds topped by large buldings thought tohave been temples or counell houses, Now a state historic stein Ilinols, it has been studied by anthropologists and archaeologists since the 1930s, Artist Herb Roe depicts the town as it may have looked atits peak. verb so=.Chonesn Elsewhere, especially in the Mid-Atlantic region, the power of chiefs was strictly local. Along the Delaware and Hudson rivers, Lenni Lenape (or Delaware) and Munsee Indians lived in small, independent communities without overarching political organi- zations. Early European maps of this region show a landscape dotted with a bewildering profusion of Indian names. Colonization would soon drive many of these groups into oblivion and force survivors to coalesce into larger groups. Some Native American groups were not chiefdoms at all but instead granted polit- ical authority to councils of sachems, or leaders. This was the case with the Iroquois Confederacy, Sometime shortly before the arrival of Europeans, probably around 1500, five nations occupying the region between the Hudson River and Lake Erie — the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas— banded together to form the Iroquois. These nations had been fighting among themselves for years. Then, according to Iroquois legend, a Mohawk man named Hiawatha lost his family in one of these wars. Stricken by grief, he met a spirit who taught him a series of condolence rituals. He returned to his people preaching a new gospel of peace and power, and the condolence rituals he taught became the foundation for the Iroquois Confederacy. Once bound by these rituals, the Five Nations began acting together as a political confederacy. They(aP] AMERICA IN THE WORLD In the eastern woodlands, Native Americans set fires once or twice a year to clear underbrush and open up landscapes that would otherwise have been densely wooded, The burnings made it easier to plant com, beans, and squash and drew big game animals into the clearings, where hunters could fell them. As European coloni- zation displaced Indian populations, this practice ended. Some scholars have even suggested that the decline in burning caused a drop of carbon in the atmosphere large enough to account for the Little ce Age, an episode of global cooling that lasted from about 1550 to 1850, though the claim is controversial. Altered Landscapes THOMAS MORTON, OF THE CUSTOME IN BURNING THE COUNTRY, AND THE REASON THEREOF (1637) ‘The Savages are accustomed to set fire of the Country in all places where they come, and to burne it twize a yeare, viz: at the Spring, and the fall ofthe leafe. The reason that mooves them to doe so, is because it would other wise be so over- growne with urderweedes that it would be all a coppice ‘wood, and the people would not be able in any wise to passe through the Country out ofa beaten path. ‘The meanes that they do it with, is with certaine minerall stones, that they carry about them in baggs made for that purpose of the skinnes of little beastes, which they convert into good lether, carrying in the same a peece of touch wood, very excellent for that purpose, of their owne making, These minerall stones they have from the Piquenteenes, (which is to the Southward of all the plantations in New England,) by trade and trafficke with those people. ‘The burning of the grasse destroyes the underwoods, and so scorcheth the elder trees that it shrinkes them, and hinders. their grouth very much: so that hee that will ooke to finde large trees and good tymber, must not depend upon the help ‘of a woodden prospect to finde them on the uplandground; but must seeke ‘or them, (as I and others have done,) in the lower grounds, where the grounds are wett, when the Country is fired, by reason of the snow water that remaines there for a time, untill the Sunne by continuance ofthat hath exhaled the vapoures of the earth, and dried up those places where the fire, (by reason of the moisture,) can have no power to doe them any hurt: and ifhe would endevoure to finde out any goodly Cedars, hee must not seeke for them on. the higher grounds, but make his inquest for them in the val- lies, for the Savages, by this custome of theirs, have spoiled all the rest: for this custome hath bin continued from the beginninge. ‘And least their firing of the Country in this manner should be an occasion of damnifying us, and indaingering, ‘our habitations, wee our selves have used carefully about the same times to observe the winds, and fire the grounds about ‘our owne habitations; to prevent the Dammage that might happen by any neglect thereof, ifthe fire should come neere those howses in our absence, For, when the fie is once kindled, it dilates and spreads it sselfe as well against, as with the winde; burning continually night and day, untill a shower of raine falls to quench it. And this custome of firing the Country isthe meanes to ‘make it passable; and by that meanes the trees growe here and there as in our parks: and makes the Country very beautifull and commodious. ‘ounce: Thomas Morton, The New Engl Canaan (Boston: Jon Wilton and Son, 1083 [org pub 1637), 172-173, QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS 1. Whet benefits and dangers does Morton attribute te the practice of indian burning? How did he and his fellow colo- nists respond to the practice? 2. Since Europeans did not practice widespread burning in the Indian manner, they achieved deforestation only slowly, ‘through many years of backbreaking labo: Thinking compar- atively about European and Native American approaches to landscape management, how would you assess the benefits and challenges of each approach? ‘made peace among themselves and became one of the most powerful Native American, ‘groups in the Northeast. The Iroquois did not recognize chiefs; instead, councils of sachems made decisions. ‘These were matriarchal societies, with power inherited through female lines of author- ity, Women were influential in local councils, though men served as sachems, made war, and conducted diplomacy. Along the southern coast of the region that would soon be called New England, a dense network of powerful chiefdoms — including the Narragansetts, Wampanoags, "4CHAPTER 1 Mohegans, Pequots, and others — competed for resources and dominance, When the Duich and English arrived, they were able to exploit these rivalries and pit Indian ‘groups against one another. Farther north, in northern New England and much of present-day Canada, the short growing season and thin, rocky soil were inhospitable to maize agriculture. Here the Native peoples were hunters and gatherers and therefore had smaller and more mobile communities. The Great Lakes To the west, Algonquian-speaking peoples dominated the Great Lakes. The tribal groups recognized by Europeans in this region included the Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Potawatomis. But collectively they thought of themselves as a single people: the Anishinaabe. Clan identities —beaver, otter, sturgeon, deer, and others — ‘crosscut tribal affiliations and were in some ways more fundamental. The result was a social landscape that could be bewildering to outsiders, Here lived, one French official remarked, “an infinity of undiscovered nations” ‘The extensive network of lakes and rivers, and the use of birchbark canoes, made Great Lakes peoples especially mobile. “They seem to have as many abodes as the year hhas seasons,” wrote one observer. They traveled long distances to hunt and fish, to trade, or to join in important ceremonies or military alliances. Groups negotiated access to resources and travel routes. Instead of an area with clearly delineated tribal territories, it is best to imagine the Great Lakes as @ porous region, where “political power and social identity took on multiple forms)’ as one scholar has written, The Great Plains and Rockies Farther west lies the vast, arid steppe region known, as the Great Plains, which was dominated by small, dispersed groups of hunter- gatherers. The world of these Plains Indians was transformed by a European import — the horse—long before Europeans themselves arrived on the plains. Horses were introduced in the Spanish colony of New Mexico in the late sixteenth century and gradually dispersed across the plains. Bison hunters who had previously relied on stealth became much more successful on horseback, Indians on horseback were also more formidable opponents in war than their counterparts on foot, and some Plains peoples leveraged their control of horses to gain power over their neighbors. The Comanches were a small Shoshonean band on the northern plains that migrated south in pursuit of horses. They became expert raiders, capturing people and horses alike and trading them for weapons, food, clothing, and other necessities. Eventually they controlled a vast territory. Their skill in making war ‘on horseback transformed the Comanches from a small group to one of the region's most formidable peoples. Similarly, horses allowed the Sioux, a confederation of seven distinct peoples who originated in present-day Minnesota, to move west and dominate a vast territory rang- ing from the Mis i River to the Black Hills. The Crow Indians moved from the Missouri River to the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, where they became nomadic bison hunters. Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, they became horse breeders and traders as well. In some places, farming communities were embedded within the much wider terri tories of hunter-gatherers. The Hidatsa and Mandan Indians, for example, maintained settled agricultural villages along the Missouri River, while the more mobile Sioux dominated the region around them. Similarly, the Caddos, who lived on the edge of the southern plains, inhabited farming communities that were like islands in a sea of more mobile peoples. ‘Three broad swaths of Numic-speaking peoples occupied the Great Basin that sep- arated the Rockies from the Sierra Mountains: Bannocks and Northern Paiutes in the north, Shoshones in the central basin, and Utes and Southern Paiutes in the south. Resources were varied and spread thin on the land. Kin-based bands traveled great distances to hunt bison along the Yellowstone River (where they shared territory with the Crows) and bighorn sheep in high altitudes, to fish for salmon, and to gather pine Colliding Worlds, 1491-1600 15; The impact of geography on the diversity of North American cultures is a"must know" for the AP? exam.16 PARTI RANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, Anasazi Ladle Crafted between ao, 1300 and 1600 and found in a site im central Arizona, this Anasazi dipper was coiled and melded by hand and painted with a geometric motif, Anasazi pottery isabundantin archaeological sites, thanks in prt to the Southwest’ dry climate, Clay vessels and ladles helped Anasazi peoples handle water —one of their 1491-1700 ‘nuts when they were in season, Throughout the Great Basin, some groups adopted horses and became relatively power- ful, while others remained foot-borne and impoverished in comparison with their more mobile neighbors. The Arid Southwest In the part of North America that appears to be most hostile to agriculture—the canyon- laced country of the arid Southwest —surprisingly large farming settlements developed. Anasazi peoples were growing maize by the first century a.p., earlier than any- where else north of Mexico, and Pueblo cultures emerged around A.b. 600. By A.D. 1000, the Hohokams, Mogollons, and Anasazis (all Pueblo peoples) had developed irrigation systems to manage scarce water, enabling them to build siz- able villages and towns of adobe and rock that were often molded to sheer canyon walls. Chaco Canyon, in modern New Mexico, supported a dozen large Anasazi towns, while beyond the canyon a network of roads tied these settle most precious resources. Chilkat Tlingit Bowl This bow in the form of brown beat, whieh dates to the mid-nineteenth century, is made ofa with snail shells. The brown bear isa Tlingit clan totem, Animalform bowls like this one, which express an affinity with nonhuman creatures with care, are a common feature of Tingit culture. ts rc ments together with hundreds of small Anasazi villages Extended droughts and soil exhaustion caused the abandonment of Chaco Canyon and other large settle- ments in the Southwest after 1150, but smaller communities still dotted the landscape ‘when the first Europeans arrived. It was the Spanish who called these groups Pueblos: ucblo means “town” in Spanish, and the name refers to their distinctive building style. When Europeans arrived, Pueblo peoples, including the Acomas, Zuis, Tewas, and Hopis, were found throughout much of modern New Mexico, Arizona, and west- ern Texas. The Pacific Coast Hunter-gatherers inhabited the Pacific coast. Before the Spanish arrived, California was home to more than 300,000 people, subdivided into dozens of small, localized groups and speaking at least a hundred distirct languages. This diversity of languages and cultures discouraged intermarriage and kept these societies independent. Despite their differences, many groups did share common characteristics, including clearly defined social hierarchies separating elites from commoners. They gathered acorns and other nuts and seeds, caught fish and shellfish, and hunted game. ‘The Pacific Northwest also supported a dense popula tion that was divided into many distinct groups who con- trolled small territories — both on land and on the sea—and spoke different languages. Their stratified societies were ruled by wealthy families. To maintain contro! of their terti- tories, the more powerful nations, including the Chinooks, Coast Salishes, Haidas, and Tlingits, nurtured strong war- rior traditions. They developed sophisticated fishing tech- nologies and crafted oceangoing dugout canoes, made from enormous cedar trees, that ranged up to 60 feet in length. Their distinctive material culture included large longhouses that were home to dozens of people and totem poles repre senting clan lineages or local legends. Patterns of Trade Expansive trade networks tied together regions and carried valuable goods hundreds and even thousands of miles. ‘Trade goods included food and raw materials, tools, ritual artifacts, and decorative goods. Trade enriched diets, fe wood and inlaidCHAPTER 1 ‘enhanced economies, and allowed the powerful to set themselves apart with luxury ‘items. In areas where Indians specialized in a particular economic activity, regional trade networks allowed them to share resources. Thus nomadic hunters of the southern plains, including the Navajos and Apaches, conducted annual trade fairs with Pueblo farmers, exchanging hides and meat for maize, pottery, and cotton blankets. Similar patterns of exchange occurred throughout the Great Plains, wherever hunters and farmers coexisted. In some parts of North America, a regional trade in war captives who were offered as slaves helped to sustain friendly relations among neighboring groups. One such network developed in the Upper Mississippi River basin, where Plains Indian captives were traded, or given as diplomatic gifts, to Ottawas and other Great Lakes and eastern woodlands peoples. Rare and valuable objects traveled longer distances. Great Lakes copper, Rocky Mountain mica, jasper from Pennsylvania, obsidian from New Mexico and Wyoming, and pipestone from the Midwest have all been found in archaeological sites hundreds of miles from their points of origin. Seashells — often shaped and polished into beads and other artifacts — were highly prized and widely distributed. Grizzly bear claws and eagle feathers were valuable, high-status objects. After European contact, Indian hunt- ers often traveled long distances to trade for cloth, iron tools, and weapons. Historians debate the extent to which such long-distance connections helped to create deeper cul- tural ties (AP* Interpreting the Past) Powerful leaders controlled much of a community's wealth and redistributed it to prove their generosity and strengthen their authority. In small, kin-based bands, the strongest hunters possessed the most food, and sharing it was essential. In chiefdoms, rrulers filled the same role, often collecting the wealth of a community and then redis- tributing it to their followers. Powhatan, the powerful Chesapeake Bay chief, reportedly collected nine-tenths of the produce of the communities he oversaw —“skins, beads, copper, pearls. deer, turkeys, wild beasts, and corn” —and then gave much of it back to his subordinates. His generosity was considered a mark of good leadership. In the Pacific Northwest, the Chinook word potlatch refers to periodic festivals in which ‘wealthy residents gave away belongings to friends, family, and followers. Sacred Power Most Native North Americans were animists who believed that the natural world was suffused with spiritual power. They interpreted dreams and visions to understand the world, and their rituals appeased guardian spirits to ensure successful hunts and other forms of good fortune. Although their views were subject to countless local variations, certain patterns were widespread. ‘Women and men interacted differently with these spiritual forces. In farming com- munities, women grew crops and maintained hearth, home, and village. Native ‘American ideas about female power linked their bodies’ generative functions with the earth fertility, and rituals like the Green Corn Ceremony —a summer ritual of purification and renewal—helped to sustain the life-giving properties of the world around them, For men, spiritual power was invoked in hunting and war. ‘To ensure success in hunting, men took care not to offend the spirits of the animals they killed. They per- formed rituals before, during, and after a hunt to acknowledge the power of those guardian spirits, and they believed that, when an animal had been Killed properly, its spirit would rise from the earth unharmed. Success in hunting and prowess in war were both interpreted as signs of sacred protection and power, Ideas about war varied widely. War could be fought for geopoliticel reasons—to gain ground against an enemy — but for many groups, warfare was a crucial rite of pas- sage for young men, and raids were conducted to allow warriors to prove themselves in battle. Motives for war could be highly personal; war was often more like a blood feud Colliding Worlds, 1491-1600 17. POEerest eas) ‘CAUSATION How did landscape, climate, an¢ resources influence the development of Native ‘American societies? Coleresr POINT OF VIEW How did Native Americans’ conceptions ofthe spiritual ‘world inluence their daly ives?COON 0:92 Cie For along time, American history textbooks largely ignored the thousands of years of history lived by North America's Native peoples befcre the arrival of Europeans. The How Connected Were 0" }s! history was on the planting of European ideas and institutionsin the new Native American world’ More recently, some historians have explored the long history of the Americas. that stretches back more than fifteen thousand years. Peopled by diverse groups with Communities Before distinctive customs and unique cultures, America's early history defies easy categori- zation. In the following excerpts, historians Robert F.Berkhofer Jr. and Neal Salisbury 1492? reach different conclusions regarding the extent to which Native North American peoples interacted with each other prior to European contact. ROBERT F. BERKHOFERJR. NEAL SALISBURY Souncr: Robert F Berklee The White Mar nn: mage ofthe American Source: Neal Salsry, “The Indian’ Ok Wel: Nive Areas andthe Coming nan rom Combo the Pras (Ne Yorke Kap 1978) 3. of aropeans Willan and Mary Quarry $3 (ly 1996 ‘The first residents of the Americas were by modern esti- Given the archaeological record, North American “prehis- ‘mates divided into at least two thousand cultures and more _tory” can hardly be characterized as a multiplicity of discrete societies, practiced a multiplicity of customs and lifestyles, microhistories. Fundamental to the social and economic held an enormous variety of values and beliefs, spoke Patterns... were exchanges that linked peoples across geo- ‘numerous languages mutually unintelligible to the many ‘graphic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries, The effects of speakers, and did not conceive of themselves as a single these links are apparent in the spread of raw materials and people— if they knew about each other at all. finished goods, of beliefs and ceremonies, and of techniques for food production and for manufacturing... . Exchange constitutes an important key to conceptualizing American history before Columbus. ENG) stort answer practice 1. Describe one way inihich these historians disagree intheir Identify a specific passage or section from the textbook chap- Understanding o early Native American history. ter that supports or challenge the arguments presented by 2. How does each of tes historians explain the diversity each ofthese two historians. among Native American peoples? between families than a contest between nations. Ifa community lost warriors in battle, it might retaliate by capturing or killing a like number of warriors in response —a so- called mourning war. Some captives were adopted into new communities, while others were enslaved or tortured. IN YOUR OWN WORDS What factors might best explain the variations among Native American societies and cultures? Western Europe: The Edge of the Old World In 1491, Western Europe lay at the far edge of the Eurasian and African continents. It had neither the powerful centralized empires nor the hunter-gatherer bands and semi- sedentary societies of the Americas. Western Europe was, instead, a patchwork of roughly equivalent kingdoms, duchies, and republics vying with one another and strug- gling to reach out effectively to the rest of the world, No one would have predicted that Europeans would soon become overlords of the Western Hemisphere. A thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe’ populations still relied on subsistence 18CHAPTER 1 agriculture and were never far from the specter of famine, Moreover, around 1350, a deadly plague was introduced from Central Asia—the Black Death — that killed one- third of Europe's people. The lives of ordinary people were aflicted by poverty, disease, and uncertainty, and the future looked as difficult and dark as the past. Hierarchy and Authority In traditional hierarchical societies— American or European —authority came from above. In Europe, kings and princes owned vast tracts of land, forcibly conscripted men for military service, and lived off the peasantry's labor. Yet monarchs were far from supreme: local nobles also owned large estates and controlled hundreds of peasant fam- ilies, Collectively, these nobles challenged royal authority with both their military power and their legislative institutions, such as the French parlements and the English House of Lords. Just as kings and nobles ruled society, men governed families. These were chies, in which property and social identity descended in male family lines. Rich or ‘poor, the man was the head of the house, his power justified by the teachings of the Christian Church. As one English clergyman put it, “The woman is a weak creature not embued with like strength and constancy of mind’; law and custom “subjected her to the power of man” Once married, an Englishwoman assumed her husband’s surname, submitted to his orders, and surrendered the right to her property. Men also controlled the lives of their children, who usually worked for their father into their middle or late twenties. Then landowning peasants would give land to their sons and dowries (property or money given by a bride’ family to her husband) to their daughters and choose marriage partners of appropriate wealth and status. In many regions, fathers bestowed all their land on their eldest son—a practice known as primogeniture— forcing many younger children to join the ranks of the roaming poor. Few men and even fewer women had much personal freedom. Powerful institutions —nobility, church, and village—enforced hierarchy and offered ordinary people a measure of security in a violent and unpredictable world. Carried by migrants to America, these security-conscious institutions would shape the character of family and society well into the eighteenth century. Peasant Society ‘Most Europeans were peasants, farmworkers who lived in small villages surrounded by fields farmed cooperatively by different families. On manorial lands, farming rights ‘were given in exchange for labor on the lord’ estate, an arrangement that turned peas ants into serfs. Gradually, obligatory manorial services gave way to paying rent or, asin France, landownership. Once freed from the obligation to labor for their farming rights, European farmers began to produce surpluses and created local market economies. ‘As with Native Americans, the chythm oflife followed the seasons. In March, villag- rs began the exhausting work of plowing and then planting wheat, rye, and oats. During the spring, the men sheared wool, which the women washed and spun into yarn, In Jane, peasants cut hay and stored it as winter fodder for their livestock. During the summer, life was more relaxed, and families repaired their houses and barns. Fall brought the harvest, followed by solemn feasts of thanksgiving and riotous bouts of merrymaking, As winter approached, peasants slaughtered excess livestock and salted cor smoked the meat. During the cold months, they threshed grain and wove textiles, visited friends and relatives, and celebrated the winter solstice or the birth of Christ. Just before the cycle began again in the spring, they held carnivals, cdebrating with drink and dance the end of the long winter. For most peasants, survival meant constant labor, and poverty corroded family rela- tionships. Malnourished mothers fed their babies sparingly, calling them “greedy and gluitonous;” and many newborn girls were “helped to die" so that their brothers would Colliding Worlds, 1491-1600 Consider the ways that European. societies were similar to and different from Native societies inthe Americas. 920 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1491-1700 ROR ‘COMPARE & CONTRAST Inwhat ways were the lives of Europeans similar to and different from those of Native Americans? have enough to eat. Half of all peasant children died before the age of twenty-one, vic- tims of malnourishment and disease, Many peasants drew on strong religious beliefs, “counting blessings” and accepting their harsh existence, Others hoped for a better life. It was the peasants of Spain, Germany, and Britain who would supply the majority of white migrants to the Western Hemisphere. Expanding Trade Networks In the millennium before contact with the Americas, Western Europe was the barbar- ian fringe of the civilized world. In the Mediterranean basin, Arab scholars carried on the legacy of Byzantine civilization, which had preserved the achievements of the Greeks and Romans in medicine, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and geogra- phy, while Arab merchants controlled trade in the Mediterranean, Africa, and the Near East. This control gave them access to spices from India and silks, magnetic compasses, water-powered mills, and mechanical clocks from China. In the twelfth century, merchants from the Italian city-states of Genoa, Florence, Pisa, and especially Venice began to push their way into the Arab-dominated trade routes of the Mediterranean, Trading in Alexandria, Beirut, and other eastern Mediterranean ports, they carried the Inxuries of Asia into European markets. At its peak, Venice had a merchant fleet of more than three thousand ships. This enormously profitable commerce created wealthy merchants, bankers, and textile manufacturers ‘Who expanded trade, lent vast sums of money, and spurred technological innovation in silk and wool production. Italian moneyed elites ruled their city-states as republics, states that had no prince or king but instead were governed by merchant coalitions. They celebrated civic humanism, an ideology that praised public virtue and service to the state; over time, this tradition profoundly influenced European and American conceptions of govern ment. They sponsored great artists — Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and others — ‘who produced an unprecedented flowering of genius. Historians have labeled the arts Procession in St. Mark’s Square in Venice, 1496 Venice was one of the world’s great trading centers in the fifteenth century. ts merchant houses connected Europe to Asla and the Middle East, while its complex republican ‘government aroused bath admiration and mistrust. Here, Venetian painer Gentile Bellini. 1429-1507) depiets 3 diplomatic procession celebrating the League of Venice, a union of Eurozean states opposed to French expansion into tly. Ga el cater Vee IsbfGrauten/The daemon Lay.CHAPTER 1 and learning associated with this cultural transformation from 1300 to 1450 the Renaissance. ‘The economic revolution that began in Italy spread slowly to northern and western Europe. England’s principal export was woolen cloth, which was prized in the colder parts of the continent but had less appeal in southern Europe and beyond. Northern Europe had its own trade system, controlled by an alliance of merchant communities called the Hanseatic League. Centered on the Baltic and North seas, it dealt in timber, furs, wheat and rye, honey, wax, and amber. {As trade picked up in Europe, merchants and artisans came to dominate its grow- ing cities and towns. While the Italian city-states ruled themselves without a powerful monarch, in much of Europe the power of merchants stood in tension with that of kings and nobles. In general, the rise of commerce favored the power of kings at the expense of the landed nobility. The kings of Western Europe established royal law courts that gradually eclipsed the manorial courts controlled by nobles; they also built bureaucra- cies that helped them centralize power while they forged alliances with merchants and urban artisans. Monarchs allowed merchants to trade throughout their realms; granted privileges to guilds or artisan organizations that regulated trades; and safeguarded commercial transactions, thereby encouraging domestic manufacturing and foreign trade. In return, they extracted taxes from towns and loans from merchants to support their armies and officials. Myths, Religions, and Holy Warriors ‘The oldest European religious beliefs drew on a form of animism similar to that of Native Americans, which held that the natural world — the sun, wind, stones, animals was animated by spiritual forces. Asin North America, such beliefs|ed ancient European peoples to develop localized cults of knowledge and spiritual practice. Wise men and women created rituals to protect their communities, ensure abundant harvests, heal illnesses, and bring misfortunes to their enemies. ‘The pagan traditions of Greece and Rome overlaid animism with elaborate myths about gods interacting directly with the affairs of human beings. As the Roman Empire expanded, it built temples to its gods wherever it planted new settlements. Thus peoples throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Near East were exposed to the Roman pan- theon. Soon the teachings of Christianity began to flow in these same channels, ‘The Rise of Christianity Christianity, which grew out of Jewish monotheism (the belief in one god), held that Jesus Christ was himself divine, As an institution, Christianity benefitted enormously from the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine in A.p. 312. Prior to that time, Christians were an underground sect at odds with the Roman Empire. After Constantine's conversion, Christianity became Rome’ official religion, temples were abandoned or remade into churches, and noble- ‘men who hoped to retain their influence converted to the new state religion. For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church was the great unifying institution in ‘Western Europe. The pope in Rome headed a vast hierarchy of cardinals, bishops, and priests, Catholic theologians preserved Latin, the language of classical scholarship, and imbued kingship with divine power. Christian dogma provided a common under- standing of God and human history, and the authority of the Church buttressed state institutions. Every village had a church, and holy shrines served as points of contact with the sacred world, Often those shrines had their origins in older, animist practices, now largely forgotten and replaced with Christian ritual Christian doctrine penetrated deeply into the everyday lives of peasants. Whil mist traditions held that spiritual forces were alive in the natural world, Christian priests taught that the natural world was flawed and fallen. Spiritual power came from outside nature, from a supernatural God who had sent his divine son, Jesus Christ, into the world to save humanity from its sins. The church devised a religious ristian Colliding Worlds, 1491-1600 21 Take detailed notes on the chang: ing structure of the European ‘economy from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries and how that in tum impacted European society. Coane ‘CHANGE OVERTIME How did the growth of commerce shife the structure of power In European societies?22 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1491-1700 The Beaune Altarpiece, c. th-contury Christiane understood thelr lives te be part of» cosmic ‘drama, Death—and ther fate in the afterlife—loomed large in ther imaginations, and artists depicted their hopes ‘and fears in vivily rendered scenes. In this massive altarpiece by Dutch painter Rogier van der Weyden, Christ sits in judgment a the world ends and the dead rse from their graves. The archangel Michael weighs the souls of the dead in ‘balance to determine thei final fate: either eterna life wit God in heaven or everlasting punishment in hell calendar that transformed animist festivals into holy days. The winter solstice, which had for millennia marked the return of the sun, became the feast of Christmas. The Church also taught that Satan, a wicked supernatural being, was constantly challenging God by tempting people to sin. People who spread heresies — doctrines that were inconsistent with the teachings of the Church —were seen as the tools of Satan, and suppressing false doctrines became an obligation of Christian rulers. The Crusades In their work suppressing false doctrines, Christian rulers were also obliged to combat Islam, the religion whose followers considered Muhammad to be God’ last prophet. Islamis reach expanded until it threatened European Christendom. Following the death of Muhammad in A.p. 632, the newly converted Arab peoples of North Africa used force and fervor to spread the Muslim faith into sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Indonesia, as well as deep into Spain and the Balkan regions of Europe. Between A.p. 1096 and 1291, Christian armies undertook a series of Crusades to reverse the Muslim advance in Europe and win back the holy lands where Christ had lived. Under the banner of the pope and led by Europe’s Christian monarchs, crusad- ing armies aroused great waves of popular piety as they marched off to combat. New orders of knights, ike the Knights Templar and the Teutonic Knights, were created to support them. ‘The crusaders had some military successes, but their most profound impact was on European society. Religious warfare intensified Europe’ Christian identity and prompted the persecution of Jews and their expulsion from many European countries. The byEuropean nations. | Crusades also introduced Western European merchants to the trade routes that stretched from Constantinople to China along the Silk Road and from the Mediterranean Sea through the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean. And crusaders encountered sugar for the first time, Returning soldiers brought it back from the Middle East, and as Europeans began to conquer territory in the eastern Mediterranean, they experimented with raising it themselves. These early experiments with sugar would have a profound impact on European enterprise in the Americas—and European involve- ment with the African slave trade — in the centuries to come, Although Western Europe Evaluate the relationship between religious causes and explorationCHAPTER 1 in 1491 remained relatively isolated from the centers of civilization in Eurasia and Africa, the Crusades and the rise of Italian merchant houses had introduced it to a wider world. The Reformation In 1517, Martin Luther, a German monk and professor at the uni- versity in Wittenberg, took up the cause of reform in the Catholic Church, Luther's Ninety-five Theses condemned the Church for many corrupt practices. More radically, Luther downplayed the role of the clergy as mediators between God and believers and said that Christians must look to the Bible, not to the Church, as the ultimate authority in matters of faith. So that every literate German could read the Bible, previously avail- able only in Latin, Luther translated it into German. Meanwhile, in Geneva, Switzerland, French theologian John Calvin established a rigorous Protestant regime. Even more than Luther, Calvin stressed human weakness and God’ omnipotence. His Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536) depicted God as an absolute ruler. Calvin preached the doctrine of predestination, the idea that God chooses certain people for salvation before they are born and condemns the rest to eternal damnation. In Geneva, he set up a model Christian community ruled by minis- ters who prohibited frivolity and luxury. “We know” wrote Calvin, “that man is of so perverse and crooked a nature, that everyone would scratch out his neighbor’ eyes if there were no bridle to hold them in.” Calvin's authoritarian doctrine won converts all ‘over Europe, including the Puritans in Scotland and England. Luther’ criticisms triggered a war between the Holy Roman Empire and the north- ern principalities in Germany, and soon the controversy between the Roman Catholic jurch and radical reformers like Luther and Calvin spread throughout much of Western Europe. The Protestant Reformation, as this movement came to be called, triggered a Counter-Reformation in the Catholic Church that sought change from within and created new monastic and missionary orders, including the Jesuits (founded in 1540), who saw themselves as soldiers of Christ. The competition between these divergent Christian traditions did much to shape European colonization of the ‘Americas, Roman Catholic powers —Spain, Portugal, and France—sought to win souls in the Americas for the Church, while Protestant nations—England and the Netherlands — viewed the Catholic Church as corrupt and exploitative and hoped instead to create godly communities attuned to the true gospel of Christianity. IN YOUR OWN WORDS How had recent developments changed Western Europe by 1491? West and Central Africa: Origins of the Atlantic Slave Trade ‘Homo sapiens originated in Aftica, Numerous civilizations had already risen and fallen there, and contacts with the Near East and the Mediterranean were millennia old, when ‘Western Europeans began sailing down its Atlantic coast, Home to pethaps 100 million in 1400, Africa was divided by the vast expanse of the Sahara Desert, North Arica bordered on the Mediterranean, and its peoples fell under the domination of Christian Byzantium until the seventh century, when Muslim conquests brought the region under Islamic influ- ence. In its coastal seaports, the merchandise of Asia, the Near East, Africa, and Europe converged. South of the Sahara, by contrast, the societies of West and Central Africa bor- dering on the Atlantic were relatively isolated. After 1400, that would quickly change. Empires, Kingdoms, and Ministates West Atrica—the part of the continent that bulges into the Atlantic—can be visualized! as a broad horizontal swath divided into three climatic zones. The Sahel is the mostly Colliding Worlds, 1491-1600 23 Painaes eed CHANGE OVERTIME How did the growing influence of the Chistian Church affect events in Europe?24 PART1 — TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1491-1790 flat, semiarid zone immediately south of the Sahara. Below it lies the savanna, a grass. land region dotted with trees and shrubs. South of the savanna, in a band 200 to 300 miles wide along the West African coast, lies a tropical rain forest. A series of four major watersheds —the Senegal, Gambiz, Volta, and Niger—dominate West Africa (Map 1.3). Sudanic civilization took root at the eastern end of West Africa beginning around 9000 n.c. and traveled westward. Sudanic peoples domesticated cattle (8500-7500 8.c.) and cultivated sorghum and millet (7500-7000 .c.). Over several thousand years, these peoples developed a distinctive style of pottery, began to grow and weave cotton (6500-3500 &.¢.), and invented techniques for working copper and iron (2500-1000 8.¢.). Sudanic civilization had its own tradition of monotheism distinct from that of Christians, Muslims, and Jews, Most Sudenic peoples in West Africa lived in stratified states ruled by kings and princes who were regarded as divine, Lbeaon, re 2 j ATLANTIC OCEAN va ye INDIAN OCEAN ome § | eer x j Ney 5 ae cre Pe teh j ia) oxco pie 20 some Pe sBokomen SAFES { TE Grain Coast ERY Gold Goan : <— Overland tade vous Td tory Coast Stave Cone ss Seatrade routes MAP 1.3 West Africa and the Mediterranean in the Fifteenth Century Trade routes across the Sahara hac long connected West Arica with the Mediterranean region, Gold, ivory, and slaves ‘moved north and east fine textiles, spices, and the Muslim faith traveled south. Beginning in the 1430s, the Portuguese ‘opened up maritime trade with the coastal regions of West fica, which were home to many peoples and dozens of large and smal states. Over the next century the movemnert of gold and slaves into the Atlantic would surpass that {across the Sahara,CHAPTER 1 — Colliding Worlds, 1491-1600 25 From these cultural origins, three greal empires arose in succession in the northern savanna. The first, the Ghana Empire, appeared sometime around 4.p. 800, Ghana capi talized on the recently domesticated camel to pioneer trade routes across the Sahara o North Africa, where Ghana trad- ers carried the wealth of West Africa, The Ghana Empire gave way to the Mali Empire in the thirteenth century, which ‘was eclipsed in turn by the Songhai Empire in the fifteenth century, All three empires were composed of smaller vassal Kingdoms, nol unlike the Aztec and Laca empires, and relied on military might to control their valuable trade routes. Gold, abundant in West Africa, was the cornerstone of power and an indispensable medium of international trade. By 1450, West African traders had carried so much of it across the Sahara that it constituted one-half to two-thirds of all the gold in circulation in Europe, North Africa, and Asia. Mansa Musa, the tenth emperor of Mali, was @ devout Muslim famed for his construction projects and his support of mosques and schools. In 1326, he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca with a vast retinue that crossed the Sahara and passed through Egypt. They spent so much gold along the way that the region’s money supply was devalued for more than a decade after their visit. ‘To the south of these empires, the lower savanna and tropical rain forest of West Africa were home to a complex mosaic of kingdoms that traded among themselves and with the empires to the north. In such a densely populated, Terracotta Figure from Mali Dating tothe thirteenth or fourteenth resource-rich region, they also fought frequently ina com- Suny ths teacorta ure ime fom an ardaeloga ere petition for local power. A few of these coastal Kingdoms gecorative covering an its head. The Mal Emp relied on a large cavalry were quite large in size, but most were small enough that to expand and defend its borders, and the horse was an important symbol they have been termed ministates by historians. Comparable __of Malis wealth and power. wererFornayannesuce to the city-states of Italy, they were often about the size of a modern-day county in the United States. The tropical ecosystem prevented them from raising livestock, since the tsetse fly (which carries @ parasite deadly to livestock) was endemic to the region, as was malaria. In place of the grain crops of the savanna, these peoples pioneered the cultivation of yams; they also gathered resources from the rivers and seacoast. Roars COMPARE & CONTRAST How do the statesof the savanna compareto those of the Americas and Europe? Trans-Saharan and Coastal Trade For centuries, the primary avenue of trade for West Africans passed through the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai empires, whose power was based on the monopoly they enjoyed over the trans-Saharan trade. Their caravans carried West African goods — including gold, copper, salt, and slaves — from the south to the north across the Sahara, then returned with textiles and other products. For the smaller states clustered along the West African coast, merchandise originating in the world beyond the Sahara was scarce and expen- sive, while markets for their own products were limited. Beginning in the mid-fifteenth century, a new coastal trade with Europeans offered many West African peoples a welcome alternative. As European sailors made their way along the coast of West and then Central Africa, they encountered a bewilderingly complicated political landscape. Around the mouths of the Senegal and Gambia rivers, numerous Mande-speaking states controlled access to he trade routes into the interior. Proceeding farther along the coast, they encountered the Akan states, a region of sev- eral dozen independent but culturally linked peoples. The Akan states had goldfields of their own, and this region soon became known to Europeans as the Gold Coast. East ofTHINKING LIKE A HISTORIAN Colliding Cultures 1. Mississippian warrior gorget (neck guard), a.0. 1250-1350. 2. Portuguese officer's account of de Soto's expedition, 1557. This excerpt describes indian resistancein the face of de ‘Soto's campaign of conquest against Indians inthe southeast- ern United States. {Spanish soldiers} went over a swampy land where the horsemen could not go. A half league from camp they came upon some Indian huts near the river; (but) the people who were inside them plunged into the river. They captured four Indian women, and twenty Indians came at us and attacked us so stoutly that we had to retreat to the camp, because of their being (as they are) so skillful with their weapons. Those people are so war like and so quick that they make no account of foot sol diers; for if these go for them, they flee, and when their adversaries turn their backs they are immediately on them, The farthest they flee is the distance of an arrow shot. They are never quiet but always running and cross- ing from one side to another so that the crossbows or the arquebuses can not be aimed at them; and before a cross- bowman can fire a shot, an Indian can shoot three or four arrows, and very seldom does he miss what he 26 Carefully consider each of the objects or texts below. What meanings might you— thinking like a historian —impart to them? shoots at. If the arrow does not find armor, it penetrates as deeply asa crossbow. The bows are very long and the arrows are made of certain reeds like canes, very heavy and so tough that a sharpened cane passes through a shield. Some are pointed with a fish bone, as sharp as an awl, and others with a certain stone like a diamond point. . Duarte Lopez, A Report on the Kingdom of Kongo, 1591.4 Portuguese explorer’ account of his travels in southern Africa in the sixteenth century. {T]he Kingdom of Sofala lies between the two rivers, Magnice and Cuama, on the sea-coast. It is small in size, and has but few villages and towns. ... Itis peopled by Mohammedans, and the king himself belongs to the same sect. He pays allegiance to the crown of Portugal, in order not to be subject to the government of Monomotapa {Mutapa]. On this account the Portuguese have a fortress at the mouth of the River Cuama, trading with those countries in gold, amber, and ivory, all found on that coast, as well as in slaves, and giving in exchange silk stuffs and taffetas. ... Itis said, that from these regions the gold was brought by sea which served for Solomon's Temple at Jerusalem, a fact by no means improbable, for in these countries of Monomotapa are found several ancient buildings of stone, brick, and wood, and of such wonderful workmanship, and archi- tecture, as is nowhere seen in the surrounding provinces. ‘The Kingdom of Monomotapa is extensive, and has a large population of Pagan heathens, who are black, of middle stature, swift of foot, and in battle fight with great bravery, their weapons being bows and arrows, and light darts. There are numerous kings tributary to Monomotapa, who constantly rebel and wage war against it. The Emperor maintains large armies, which in the provinces are divided into legions, after the manner of the Romans, for, being a great ruler, he must be at constant warfare in order to maintain his dominion. Amon; his warriors, those most renowned for bravery, are the female legions, greatly valued by the Emperor, being the sinews of his military strength.‘4, Benin figurine of a Portuguese soldier from the seven- 6. Sixteenth- or seventeenth-century Spanish silver real teenth century. This brass figure would have been kept on an ‘Spain minted enormous quantities of American silver; much altar or on the roof ofthe royal palace of Benin. oft was shipped to Manila, where it was exchanged for Asian luxury goods. Sounces (2) john E, Worth, “Account ofthe Northern Conquest and Discovery of Hernando de Soto by Rodeo Range” tan. john E. Worth, ia Lawrence A. Clayton tal, eds, The De Solo Chronicle: The Expedition of Herando de Sao to North ‘Ameria 1539-1549 (Unlvestyof Alabama Pres, 1993), 59; (3) Fllppo Pista ‘A Report ofthe Kingdom of Congo, tans. Margarit Hutchinson (London: John Murray 1681), 117-10. 5. Sixteenth-century Portuguese coin made from African (gold. Before the discovery of the Americas, half of the Old Worlds gold came from sub-Saharan Africa. ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE 1. What can you infer bout cultural values among ‘Mississippian peoples from source 1? About the cultural values of the Spanis and Portuguese from sources 5 end 62 What can’t you infer from these objects? | 2, How does de Soto describe the Native peoples he encoun- ters in Florida (source 2)? How does that compare to the traits of the African kingdoms that Lopez comments tupon in source 3? Way might the king of Sofala prefer a Portuguese alliance to subjection to Monomotapa? 3. What does source 4suggest about Benin relations with the Portuguese? (EG psa practice ‘What do these sources tellus about the ways Native ‘Americans, Europeans, and Afticans thought about them- selves, perceived one another, and capitalized on cross-cultural exchanges as they came into sustained contact? Write a short essay that considers the connection between the impulses of warfare and commerce, which appear again and again in contact settings. 2728 PART 1 — TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1491-1700 ‘CONTEXTUALIZATION Why were West African lenders. eager to engage intrade with Europeans? Take detailed notes on the impact of technology on Europeans’ ability to-explore away from the Atlantic coast and reach the Americas, the Akan states lay the Bight of Benin, which became an early center of the slave trade and thus came to be called the Slave Coast. Bending south, fifteenth-century sailors encountered the Kingdom of Kongo in Central Africa, the largest state on the Atlantic seaboard, with a coastline that ran for some 250 miles. It was here in 1578 that Duarte Lopez visited the capital city of more than 100,000 residents. Wherever they went ashore along this route, European traders had to negotiate contacts on local terms (AP* Thinking Like a Historian). The Spirit World Some West Africans who lived immediately south of the Sahara—the Fulanis in Senegal, the Mande-speakers in Mali, and the Hausas in northern Nigeria —learned about Islam from Arab merchants and Muslim leaders called imams. Coaverts to Islam knew the Koran and worshipped only a single God. Some of their cities, lke Timbuktu, the legendary commercial center on the Niger River, became centers of Idamic learning and instruction, But most West Africans acknowledged multiple gods, as well as spirits that lived in the earth, animals, and plants. Like animists in the Americas and Europe, African communities had wise men and ‘women adept at manipulating these forces for good or ill. The Sudanic tradition of divine kingship persisted, and many people believed that their kings could contact the spirit world. West Africans treated their ancestors with great respect, believing that the ead resided in a nearby spiritual realm and interceded in their lives, Most West African peoples had secret societies, such as the Poro for men and the Sande for women, that united people from different lineages and clans. These societies conducted rituals that celebrated male virility and female fertility. “Without children you are naked,” said a Yoruba proverb, Happy was the man with a big household, many wives, many children, and many relatives—and, in a not very different vein, many slaves. IN YOUR OWN WORDS How was sub-Saharan Africa affected bythe arrival of European traders? Exploration and Conquest Beginning around 1400, the Portuguese monarchy propelled Europe into overseas expansion. Portugal soon took a leading role in the African slave trade, while the newly unified kingdom of Spain undertook Europe’ first conquests in the Americas. These two ventures, though not initially linked, eventually became cornerstones in the cre- alion of the “Atlantic World” which connected Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Portuguese Expansion As a young soldier fighting in the Crusades, Prince Henry of Portugal (1394-1460) learned about the trans-Saharan trade in gold and slaves. Seeking a maritime route to the source of this trade in West Africa, Henry founded a center for oceanic navigation. Henry's mariners, challenged to find a way through the treacherous waters off the northwest Afican coast, designed a better-handling vessel, the caravel, which was rigged with a lateen (triangular) sail that enabled the ship to tack into the wind. This innovation allowed them to sail far into the Atlantic, where they discovered and colo- nized the Madeira and Azore islands. From there, they sailed in 1435 to sub-Saharan Sierra Leone, where they exchanged salt, wine, and fish for African ivory and gold. Henry’ efforts were soon joined to those of Italian merchants, who were being forced out of eastern Mediterranean trade routes by the rising power of the Ottoman Empire. Cut off from Asia, Genoese traders sought an Atlantic route to the lucrativeCHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1491-1600 Bonza in the Kingdom of Kongo; ¢. 1668. The city of fanz, or Mbanza Kongo, was the capital of the Kingdom ‘of Kongo when Portuguese traders first arrived in 1483, Kongo’ king, Nzinga a Nkuwu, chose to bebaptized to cement an alliance with Portugal and took the name Jodo |. Kongo became officially Christian, and Banza came to be known 2s Séo Salvador. Duarte Lopez visited and described the cty In 1578; this engraving chows the city seit appeared a Century later. incon ie snqaamotknns Son sto om let Lappe. 1 Pe sec Costa & Acre markets of the Indian Ocean. They began to work with Portuguese and Castilian mati- ners and monarchs to finance trading voyages, and the African coast and its offshore islands opened to their efforts. European voyagers discovered the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands, and So Tomé; all of them became laboratories for the expansion of Mediter-anean agriculture, On these Atlantic islands, planters transformed local ecosystems to experiment with a variety of familiar cash crops: wheat, wine grapes, and woad, a blue dye plant; livestock and honeybees; and, where the climate permitted, sugar. By 1500, Madeira ‘was producing 2,500 metric tons a year, and Madeira sugar was available—in small, expensive quantities—in London, Paris, Rome, and Constantinople. Most of the islands were unpopulated. The Canaries were the exception; it took Castilian adventur- ‘ers decades to conquer the Guanches who lived there. Once defeated, they were enslaved to labor in the Canaries or on Madeira, where they carved irrigation canals into the island's steep rock cliff Eurcpeans made ao such inroads on the continent of Africa itself. The coastal king- doms were well defended, and yellow fever, malaria, and dysentery quickly struck down Europeans who spent any time in the interior of West Africa. Instead they maintained ‘small, fortified trading posts on offshore islands or along the coast, usually as guests of the local king, Portuguese sailors continued to look for an Atlantic route to Asia. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, the southern tip of Africa. Vasco da ‘Gama reached East Africa in 1497 and India in the following year; his ships were mis- taken fo: those of Chinese traders, the last pale-skinned men to arrive by sea. Although30 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1491-1700 PACIFIC etm OCEAN a ILIPPINES / ‘COAST Su path 0 INDIAN OCEAN PACIFIC OCEAN Trade Routes aan + = Trans-Asian/stongol Columbus (1493-96) — European Cabot 1497) == AateciNorth American da Gama (1497-98) — tncalAndean Vespuci (1501) de Soto (1539-1542) MAP 1.4 The Eurasian Trade System and European Maritime Ventures, ¢. 1500 For centuries, the Mediterranean Sea was the meeting point for the commerce of Europe, North fica, and Asia —via the Sil Road from China and the Spice Route from india. Beginning in the 1490s, Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch ‘rulers and merchants subsidized Christian maritime explorers who discovered new trade routes around Africa and new sources of wealth in the Americas. These initiatives undermined the commercial primacy ofthe Ara Muslim dominated Mediterranean, da Gamat inferior goods—tin basins, coarse cloth, honey, and coral beads —were snubbed by the Arab and Indian merchants along India’s Malabar Coast, he managed to acquire a highly profitable cargo of cinnamon and pepper. Da Gama returned to India in 1502 with twenty-one fighting vessels, which outmaneuvered and outgunned the ‘AP” PRACTICES & SKILLS Arab fleets, Soon the Portuguese government set up fortified trading posts for its mer- CAUSATION 1 chants at key points around the Indian Ocean, in Indonesia, and along the coast of Mow did Europes desiefor China (Map 1.4). In a transition that sparked the momentous growth of European an Sanne wealth and power, the Portuguese and then the Dutch replaced the Arabs as the leaders in Asian commerce. The African Slave Trade Portuguese traders also ousted Arab merchants as the leading suppliers of African slaves. Coerced labor — through slavery, serfdom, or indentured servitude —was the ‘rade ysteninthe Atonte [| HOfm in most premodern societies, and in Africa slavery was widespread. Some world is cea to success on Africans were held in bondage as security for debts; others were sold into servitude by the AP exam. | their kin in exchange for food in times of famine; many others were war captives. Slaves were a key commodity, sold as agricultural laborers, concubines, or military recruits. Sometimes their descendants were freed, but others endured hereditary bondage. Sonni Ali (1, 1464-1492), the ruler of the powerful Songhai Empire, person- ally owned twelve “tribes” of hereditary agricultural slaves, many of them seized in raids against neighboring peoples. Identifying the origins ofthe slaveCHAPTER 1 —Colliding Worlds, 1491 160034 Slaves were also central to the trans-Saharan trade. When the renowned Tunisian adventurer Iba Battuta crossed the Sahara from the Kingdom of Mali around 1350, he traveled with a caravan of six hundred female slaves, destined for domestic service or concubinage in North Africa, Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire. Between a.D. 700 and 1900, it is estimated that as many as nine million Africans were sold in the trans- Saharan slave trade. Europeans initially were much more interested in trading for gold and other com- modities than in trading for human beings, but gradually they discovered the enor- mous value of human trafficking. 'To exploit and redirect the existing African slave trade, Portuguese merchants established fortified trading posts like those in the Indian ‘Ocean beginning at Elmina in 1482, where they bought gold and slaves from African princes and warlords. First they enslaved a few thousand Africans each year to work on sugar plantations on Sao Tomé, Cape Verde, the Azores, and Madeira; they also sold slaves in Lisbon, which soon had an African population of 9,000. After 1550, the Atlantic slave trade, a forced diaspora of African peoples, expanded enormously as Europeans set up sugar plantations across the Atlantic, in Brazil and the West Indies. Coarenest? ‘CHANGE OVERTIME How was the African slave trade adapted to European needs? Sixteenth-Century Incursions As Portuguese traders sailed south and east, the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile financed an explorer who looked to the west. As Renaissance rulers, Perdinand (1, 1474-1516) and Isabella (1. 1474-1504) saw national ‘The Map Behind Columbus's Voyage In 1489, Henricus Martells, a German cartographer living in Florence, produced this huge (4 fet by 6 feet view ofthe known world, probably working from a map devised by Chelstopher Columbus’ brother, Bartholomew. The map uses the spatial projection ofthe ancient Greek philosopher Claudius Ptolemy (4.0. 90-168) and incorporates information from Marco Polo's explorations in Asia and Bartolomeu Dias recent voyage around the tp of fica. Most important, greatly exaggerates the width of Eurasia, thereby suggesting that Asiales only 5,000 miles west of Europe (rather than the actual distance of 15,000 miles). Using Martelluss map, Columbus persuaded the Spanish monarchs to supporthis westward voyage. sksdageu Sev suasiBekau Ben32° PART1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1491-1700 unity and foreign commerceas the keys to power and prosperity. Married in an arranged ‘match to combine their Christian kingdoms, the young rulers completed the centuries- long reconquista, the campaign by Spanish Catholics to drive Muslim Arabs from the European mainland, by capturing Granada, the last Islamic territory in Western Europe, in 1492. Using Catholicism to build a sense of “Spanishness” they launched the brutal Inquisition against suspected Christian heretics and expelled or forcibly converted thousands of Jews and Muslims. Columbus and the Caribbean Simultaneously, Ferdinand and Isabella sought trade and empire by subsidizing the voyages of Christopher Columbus, an ambitious and daring mariner from Genoa. Columbus believed that the Atlantic Ocean, long feared by Arab merchants as a 10,000-mile-wide “green sea of darkness” was a much nar- rower channel of water separating Europe from Asia. After six years of lobbying, Columbus persuaded Genoese investors and Ferdinand and Isabella to accept his dubious theories and finance a western voyage to Asia Columbus set sail in three small ships in August 1492. Six weeks later, after a peril- cous voyage of 3,000 miles, he disembarked on an island in the present-day Bahamas. Believing that he had reached Asia—“the Indies.’ in fifteenth-century parlance— Columbus called the native inhabitants Indians and the istands the West Indies. Hie was surprised by the crude living conditions but expected the Native peoples “easily [to] be ‘made Christians” He claimed the islands for Spain and then explored the neighboring Caribbean islands, demanding tribute from the local Taino, Arawak, and Carib peoples. Columbus left forty men on the island of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and returned triumphantly to Spain (Map 1.5). ‘aw Gulf of Mexico PACIFIC| GALAPAGOS IS. (BB Artecmpire —% Miningarea Columbus's voyages Cortés’ conquest <= IESG = 1519-1521 eR Eapie! - SE Siren <= 1502-1504 Pizarro's conquest, Bi incatmpice — G Gold 152-1535 MAP 1.5 The Spanish Conquest of America’s Great Empires ‘The Spanish first invaded the islands ofthe Caribbean, largely wiping out the Native peoples. Rumors ofa gold-rch Civilization led to Cortés's invasion of the Aztec Empire in 1519. By 1535, other Spanish conquistadors had conquered the Mayan temple cities and the hica Empire in Pevu, completing one ofthe great conquests it work historyCHAPTER ‘The Spanish monarchs supported three more voyages. Columbus colonized the West Indies with more than 1,000 Spanish settlers —all men —and hundreés of domes- tic animals. But he failed to find either golden treasures or great kingdoms, and his death in 1506 went virtually unnoticed. ‘A German geographer soon named the newly found continents “America” in honor of a different explorer. Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine explorer who had visited the coast of present-day South America around 1500, denied that the region was part of Asia. He called it a nuevo mundo, a “new world” The Spanish crown called the two continents Las Indias (“the Indies’) and wanted to make them a new Spanish world. The Spanish Invasion After brutally subduing the Arawaks ard Tainos on Hispaniola, the Spanish probed the mainland for gold and slaves. In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leén explored the coast of Florida and gave that peninsula its name. In the same year, Vasco Najiez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Darien (Panama) aad became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean, Rumors of rich Indian kingdoms encouraged other Spaniards, including hardened veterans of the reconquista, to invade the mainland. ‘The Spanish mon- archs offered successful conquistadors noble titles, vast 33 Colliding Worlds, 1491-1600 Tose alonger excerpt of Columbus's views of the West Indies, along with other primary sources from this period, see Sources for America’s History. estates, and Indian laborers (AP* Analyzing Voices). ee ee With these inducements before him, in 1519 Eee ‘i Hernan Cortés (1485-1547) led an army of 600 men to the Yucatin Peninsula. Gathering allies among Native [rane ste | peoples who chafed under Aztec rule, he marched on ome “xy ood aes am ‘Tenochtitlan and challenged its ruler, Moctezuma. ‘Awed by the Spanish invaders, Moctezuma received Cortés with geeat ceremony. But Cortés soon took the emperor captive, and after a long siege he and his men captured the city. The conquerors cut off the city’s sup- ply of food and water, causing great suffering for the residents of Tenochtithin. By 1521, Cortés and his men had toppled the Aztec Empire. ‘The Spanish had a silent ally: disease. Having been separated from Eurasia for thousands of years, the inhabitants of the Americas had no immunities to com- eB ‘mon European diseases. After the Spaniards arrived, a aes massive smallpox epidemic ravaged Tenochtitlan, ing everywhere in the city. according to an Aztec source, and killing Moctezuma’s brother and thousands more. “They could not move, they could not sti... Covered, mantled with pustules, very many people died of them? Subsequent outbreaks of smallpox, influenza, and measles killed hundreds of thousands of Indians and sapped the survivors’ morale. Exploiting this advantage, Cortés quickly extended Spanish rule over the Aztec Empire. His lieutenants then moved against the Mayan city-states of the Yucatan Peninsula, eventu- ally conquering them as well. i In 1524, Francisco Pizarro set out to accomplish the ‘fst f= ety ue ree we py ne: epuncge teepotepecse® _sepesbing OP / oe ue faMater oe al ‘same feat in Peru. By the time he and his small force of 168 men and 67 horses finally reached their destination in 1532, half of the Inca population had already died from European diseases. Weakened militarily and divided between rival claimants to the throne, the Inca nobility was easy prey: Pizarro killed Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, and seized his enormous wealth. ‘The Codex Mendoza Millions of people spoke Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec Empire It as also a written language: a pictographic system allowed scribes to record histores, tribute list, and other official texts. Spanish ‘colonizers systematically destroyed Aztec records but later encouraged Native Scribes to re-create them. The Codex Mcrlica, which dates to the 1540s gives _ahistory ofthe Aztec Empire. This page depicts the conquests of Ahuitzot, the figure in a white cloak and turquoise crown. The toppling temples surrounding him symbolize the city-states he conquered. © f:iea rien 1i0,:hainh i ech Sdn Qe The i oe tt ee[AP] ANALYZING VOICES Primary sources are documents, images, or artifacts that were created during the time you are studying, To analyze a primaty source, you need to ask some basic questions about the source: + Who is the author, and what circumstances led to the document: creation? + Who was the author's intended audience? A Spanish Priest + What was the author's goal in creating the document? ree f + What ideas, arguments, and images does the author use to make his or her Criticizes His Fellow point? How effective are they? 5 + What outside information can you bring to bear on this document? How does Colonists the primary source enhance your understanding of the textbook, and how does the textbook enhance your understanding of the source? + What does this source tell you about the society in which it was produced? ‘These are general questions that you should have in mind whenever you read a pri- mary source. Try to answer them for yourself as you read the following document. Then, once you have read it, answer the Questions for Analysis that fellow. BARTOLOME DE LAS CASAS. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies 66 Most high anc most mighty Lord: ‘As Divine Providence has ordained that the world shall, for the benefit and proper government of the human race, be divided into kingdoms and peoples and that these shall be Bartolomé de las Casas first emigrated from Spain to the isand ruled by kings, who are... the noblest and most virtuous of of Hispaniola asa colonst and slave owner After determining beings, there is no doubt. that these kings entertain aoth- that Sains treatment of Native Americans wascrueland unjust. ing ave that which ie morally unimpeachable It follove thet tas Casas became a Dominican flr, or preacher, and argued th commonwealth suifers from sree. ev the reson that the Spanish king should intervene to protect Native popu- s lations. His writings persuaded King Charles V to impose the an only be that the ruler is unaware of it; once the matter is “New Lawsof the Indies or the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians” (1542), which outlawed Indian slavery. Ironically, because they depicted Spanish cruelty to Native Americans so vividly, Las Casas's writings were quickly translated into other languages, including English, and Spain's enemies used these texts to support the so-called Black Legend—the view that Spanish cclonization was uniquely exploitative and cruel. ounce A Sart Account ofthe Deron ofthe Indie by Bartolomé De Las Casas, ‘eed and trarlated by Nigel Gea, inrodetion by Anthony Papden (Penguin Css, 2008) The Tanltion and Notes copyright© Nigl Grif, 192 inrodction ‘copyright © AuthonyPagden, 192. Reprodced by permission of Pengun Books Li. brought to his notice, he will work with the utmost diligence to set matters right... God made all the peoples of this area [the Americas], many and varied as they are, as open and as innocent as can be imag- ined. The simplest people in the world —unassuming, long- suffering, unassertve, and submissive —they are without malice or guile, and are utterly faithful and obedient both to their own native lords and to the Spaniards in whose service they now find themselves. .. . They are also among the poorest people on the face of the earth; they own next to nothing and Although Inca resistance continued for a generation, the conquest was complete by 1535, and Spain was now the master of the wealthiest and most populous regions of the Western Hemisphere. The Spanish invasion changed life forever in the Americas. Disease and warfare wiped out virtually all ofthe Indians of Hispaniola —at least 300,000 people. In Peru, the popula- tion of 9 million in 1530 plummeted to fewer than 500,000 a century later Mesoamerica suffered the greatest losses: in one of the great demographic disasters in world history, its population of 20 million Native Americans in 1500 had dwindled to just 3 million in 1650, ‘The pattems established by the early cenflicts between the Spanish and Native populations 2are critica to identify to evaluate colonial systems Cabral and Brazil At the same time, Portuguese efforts to sail around the southern tip of Africa led to a surprising find. As Vasco da Gama and his contemporaries experi- ‘mented with winds and currents, their voyages carried them ever farther away from the African coast and into the Atlantic. On one such voyage in 1500, the Portuguese 34hhave no urge to acquire material possessions. As a result they are neither ambitious nor greedy, and are totally uninterested in worldly power... They are innocent and pure in mind and have a lively intelligence, all of which makes them particularly receptive to learning and understanding the truths of our Catholic faith and to being instructed in virtue. twas upon these gentle lambs, imbued by the Creator with all the qualities we have mentioned, that from the very first day they clapped eyes on them the Spanish fell ike rav- ening wolves upon the fold, or like tigers and savage lions who have not eaten meat for days. The pattern established at the outset has remained unchanged to this day, and the Spaniards still do nothing save tear the natives to shreds, murder them and inflict upon them untold misery, suffering and distress, tormenting, harrying and persecuting them mercilessly. ‘When the Spanish first journeyed there, the indigenous population of the island of Hispaniola stood at some three million; today only two hundred survive. The island of Cuba, which extends fora distance almost as great as that separating Valladolid from Rome, is now to all intents and purposes uninhabited; and two other large, beautiful and fertile islands, Puerto Rico and Jamaica, have been similarly devastated. Not a living soul remains today on any of the islands of the Bahamas. . . . On the mainland, we know for sure that our fellow-countrymen have, through their cruelty and wickedness, depopulated and laid waste an area which ‘once boasted more than ten kingdoms, each of them larger in area than the whole of the Iberian Peninsula. .. . At acon- servative estimate, the despotic and diabolical behaviour of the Christians has, over the last forty years, led to the unjust and totally unwarranted deaths of more than twelve million souls, women and children among them, and there are grounds for believing my own estimate of more than fifteen million to be neater the mark. There are two main ways in which those who have trav- elled to this part of the world pretending to be Christians have uprooted these pitiful peoples and wiped them from the face of the earth. First, they have waged war on them: ‘unjust, cruel, bloody and tyrannical war. Second, they have murdered anyone and everyone who has shown the slightest sign of resistance, or even of wishing to escape the torment to which they have subjected him. This latter policy has been instrumental in suppressing the native leaders, and, indeed, given that the Spaniards normally spare only ‘women and children, it has led to the annihilation of all adult males, whom they habitually subject to the harshest and most iniquitous and brutal slavery that man has ever devised for his fellow-men, treating them, in fact, worse than animals... . ‘The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale and killed anyone and everyone in their way is purely and simply greed. They have set out to line their pockets, with gold and to amass private fortunes as quickly as possi- ble so that they can then assume a status quite at odds with that into which they were born. Their insatiable greed and overweening ambition know no bounds. . .. ‘One fact in all this is widely known and beyond dispute, for even the tyrannical murderers themselves acknowledge the truth of it: the indigenous peoples never did the Europeans any harm whatever; on the contrary, they believed them to have descended from the heavens, at least until they or their fellow-citizens had tasted, at the hands of these oppressors, a diet of robbery, murder, violence, and all othermanner of rials and tribulations. 99 QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS 11, Whos Las Casas’ intended audience? What does the ‘opening passage tell you about his view of royal authority? 2. How does Las Casas want the king to view Native ‘Americans? Why does he thinkits especially important to treat Native Americans humanely? 3. How does Las Casas want the king to view Spanish colo- nists? What imagery does he use to make his point? ‘4, How does the use of population figures strengthen the ‘case Las Casas is presenting? 5. Using the information on pages 31-36, how would you place Las Casas‘ argument in context? What does Las Casas writing tell you about Spanish colonial society? commander Pedro Alvares Cabral and his fleet were surprised to see land loom in the west. Cabral named his discovery Thla da Vera Cruz—the Island of the True Cross— and continued on his way toward India, Others soon followed and changed the regions name to Brazil after the indigenous tree that yielded a valuable red dye; for several decades, Portuguese sailors traded with the Tupi Indians for brazilwood. Then in the 1530s, to secure Portugal’ claim, King Dom Jodo III sent settlers, who began the long, painstaking process of carving out sugar plantations in the coastal lowlands. For several decades, Native Americans supplied most of the labor for these opera- tions, but Aftican slaves gradually replaced them. Brazil would soon become the world’s leading producer of sugar it would also devour African lives. By introducing the plan- tation system to the Americas —a form of estate agriculture using slave labor that was pioneered by Italian merchants and crusading knights in the twelfth century and trans planted to the islands off the coast of Africa in the fifteenth century —the Portuguese ‘Take detailed notes on the Portuguese plantation system since twill be important to compare it, ‘tothe Spanish encomienda system that will be introduced in Ch 2. 3536 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1491-1700 set in motion one of the most significant developments of the early modern era. By the end of the sixteenth century, the European colonization of the Americas had barely begun. Yet sev- eral of its most important elements were already taking shape. Spanish efforts demonstrated that densely popu- lated empires were especially vulnerable to conquest and were also especially valuable sources of wealth. The Portuguese had discovered the viability of sugar planta- tions in the tropical regions of the Americas and pio- neered the transatlantic slave trade as a way of manni them, And contacts with Native peoples revealed their devastating vulnerabilities to Eurasian diseases—one part of the larger phenomenon of the Columbian Exchange (discussed in Chapter 2). IN YOUR OWN WORDS What motivated Portuguese and Spanish expansion into the Atlantic, and what were its unintended consequences? SUMMARY Native American, European, and African societies devel- oped independently over thousands of years befoze they experienced direct contacts with one another. In the Americas, residents of Mesoamerica and the Andes were fully sedentary (with individual ownership of land and European Map of Brazil, c. 1519 This lavishly lustrated map of Brazil Is drawn from the Miller Atias, made by order of King Manvel | of Portugal f P around 1519. It features images of Indians harvesting brazilwood: mecaws intensive agriculture), but elsewhere societies were ser and other colorful birds: a monkey: and—improbably— fire-breathing sedentary (with central fidds and villages that were occu- ragon, Note, too, the dense annotations and placenames along the coast— pied seasonally) or nonsedentary (hunter-gatherers). 2 reminder that Portuguese familiarity with Brazil was confined almost entirely to the seaboard, scstnte mene Resource NY ‘West and Central Africa also had a mix of sedentary, semisedentary, and nonsedentary settlements. Western Europe, by contrast, was predominantly sedentary. All three continents had a complex patchwork of political organizations, from empires, to kingdoms and chiefdoms, to principalities, duchies, and ministates; everywhere, ruler- ship was imbued with notions of spiritual power. Ruling classes relied on warfare, trade, and tribute (or taxes) to dominate those around them and accumulate precious goods that helped to set them apart from ordinary laborers, but they also bore responsibility for the well-being of their subjects and offered them various forms of protection. As sailors pushed into the Atlantic, they set in motion a chain of events whose con- sequences they could scarcely imagine. From a coastal trade with Africa that was sec ondary to their efforts to reach the Indian Ocean, from the miscalculations of Columbus and the happy accident of Cabral, developed a pattern o’ transatlantic exploration, con- quest, aud exploitation thal no one could have foretold cr planned. In the tropical zones of the Caribbean and coastal Brazil, invading Europeans enslaved Native Americans and quickly drove them into extinction or exile. The demands of plantation agriculture soon led Europeans to import slaves from Africa, initiating a transatlantic trade that would destroy African lives on both sides of the ocean. And two of the greatest empires in the world —the Aztec and Incan empires — collapsed in response to unseen biolog- ical forces that acted in concert with small invading armies.CHAPTER 1 REVIEW (EGR CONTENT REVIEW Answerthese questions to demonstrate your understanding of the chapter's main ideas 11. What factors might best explain the variations among Native American societies and cultures? 2. How had recent developments changed Western Europe by 14917 3. How was sub-Saharan Africa affected by the arrival of European traders? ‘4, What motivated Portuguese and Spanish expansion into the Atlantic, and what were its unintended consequences? 5. Review the events listed under “Work, Exchange, and Technology” and “Migration and Settlement” on the thematic timeline on pages 4-5. How did contacts among Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans alter the ‘economies of the three continents? (GJ TERMS TO KNOW déentify and explain the significance ofeach term below. Key Concepts and Events hunters and gatherers (p. 8) semisedentary societies (p. 8) Mississippian culture (p. 11) eastern woodlands (p. 11) Algonquian cultures/ languages (p. 11) Key People Hiawatha (p. 13) Martin Luther (p. 23) Key Academic Terms symbolic (p. 2) culture (p.2) society (p. 2) warfare (p.2) colonization (p. 2) imperial (p. 3) adaptation (p. 3) ‘ecosystem (p. 3) enterprise (p. 3) domesticate (p. 3) smallpox (p. 3) disease (p. 3) tribute (p. 3) plantation (p. 3) ‘autonomy (p.3) profit (p.3) Iroquoian cultures/ languages (p. 11) Iroquois Confederacy (p. 13) Great Lakes (p. 15) Great Plains (p. 15) Rocky Mountains (p. 15) Christopher Columbus (p.32) epidemic (p.6) exploitation (p. 6) architecture (p. 8) sedentary (p.8) archaeologist (p. 8) bureaucracy (p. 10) merchant (p. 11) ‘conquistador (p. 11) subjugate (p. 11) ‘matriarchy (p. 14) alliance (p. 15) steppe (p. 15) impoverished (p. 16) stratification (p. 16) patriarchy (p. 19) dowry (p. 19) Great Basin (p. 15) peasants (p. 19) republic (p. 20) Christianity (p. 21) Islam (p. 22) Crusades (p. 22) Hernan Cortés (p. 33) Moctezuma (p. 33) nobility (p. 19) ‘manorial (p. 19) millennium (p. 20) medicine (p. 20) philosophy (p. 20) innovation (p.20) coalition (p. 20) ideology (p. 20) artisan (p. 21) paganism (p. 21) buttress (p. 21) heresy (p. 22) expulsion (p. 22) missionary (p.23) Vig becme coy 1558-1603 > Reign of Elizabeth |, queen of England | 1625-1649" > Reign of Charles king of England | 18601629.» Goth fsgun Puan rover 100 > Patna sachs ay Clery 15771580.» fnchOnte olen tingederneseonaptes | 88» Cobni ann Mand Sparsree et 1636 > Beginning of Puritan-Pequot War TER Strand nhs est Sn Aaa > geile donee 1602-165 got nes bing tan 107 > Anetcniontanhes on Mc o 1607 > English traders settle Jamestown (Virginia) ee Teor > Feline rd Méos > Samlde hanna Qs 182-1689.» Partinoon nnd 1609 » Henry Hudson explores North America for the Dutch 2 1650» Reston fan monary 164 > Oh ft ot Forge Ua) ee 1619» Fst Abra Gest agen Te ie > Honor come aig 1-676 > Bacns Reb inin 1620» Painted hmathCalny ae 160-1680 Chess cle ey tc bom ag See Spain's Tribute Colonies European interest in the Americas took shape under the influence of Spain's conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires. There, Spanish colonizers capitalized on preexisting systems of tribute and labor discipline to tap the enormous wealth of Mesoamerica and the Andes. Once native rulers were overthrown, the Spanish monarchs trans- ferred their institutions — municipal councils, the legal code, the Catholic Church to America; the empire was centrally controlled to protect the crown’s immensely J) Turn to the Glossary of valuable holdings. The Spanish conquest also set in motion a global ecological trans Saar formation through a vast intercontinental movement of plants, animals, and diseases EO ae aR that historians call the Columbian Exchange. And the conquest triggered hostile responses from Spain's European rivals, especially the Protestant Dutch and English. A New American World After Cortés toppled Moctezuma and Pizarro defeated Atahualpa (see Chapter 1), leading Compare the Spanish encomienda J Conduistadors received encomiendas from the crown, which allowed them to claim trib- ‘system with other European {| ute in labor and goods from Indian communities. Later these grants were repartitioned, bbut the pattern was set early: prominent men controlled vast resources and monopolized Indian labor. The value of these grants was dramatically enhanced by the discovery of gold and, especially, silver deposits in both Mexico and the Andes. In the decades after the conquest, mines were developed in Zacatecas, in Guanajuato, and—most famously —at Potosi, high in the Andes. There, Spanish officials co-opted the mita system, which had made laborers available to the Inca Empire, to force Indian workers into the mines. At its peak, Potosi alone produced 200 tons of silver per year, accounting for half the world’s supply. ‘The two great indigenous empires of the Americas thus became the core of an colonial systems in the Americas astonishingly wealthy European empire, Vast amounts of silver poured across the 40CHAPTER 2 — American Experiments, 1521-1700 44 Pacific Ocean to China, where it was minted into money; in exchange, Spain received valuable Chinese silks, spices, and ceramics. In Europe, the gold that had formerly hon- ored Aztec and Inca gods now flowed into the countinghouses of Spain and gilded the Catholic churches of Europe. The Spanish crown benefitted enormously from all this ‘wealth —at least initially. In the long run, it triggered ruinous inflation. As a French traveler noted in 1603, “Everything is dear [expensive] in Spain, except silver” A new society took shape on the conquered lands. Between 1500 and 1650, at least. 350,000 Spaniards migrated to Mesoamerica and the Andes. About two-thirds were males drawn from a cross section of Spanish society, many of them skilled tradesmen. ‘Also arriving were 250,000 to 300,000 Africans. Racial mixture was widespread, and such groups as mestizos (Spaniard-Indian) and mulattos (Spaniard-AMftican) grew rap- idly. Zambo (indian-African) populations developed gradually as well. Over time, a system of increasingly complex racial categories developed—the casta system — buttressed by « legal code that differentiated among the principal groups. Indians were always in the majority in Mexico and Peru, but profound changes came as their numbers declined and peoples of Spanish and mixed-race descent grew in number. Spaniards initially congregated in cities, but gradually they moved into the countryside, creating large estates (known as haciendas) and regional networks of mar- ket exchange. Most Indians remained in their Native communities, under the authority of Native rulers and speaking Native languages. However, Spanish priests suppressed religious ceremonies and texts and converted Natives to Christianity en masse. Catholicism was transformed in the process: Catholic parishes took their form from Indian communities; indigenous ideas and expectations reshaped Church practices; and new forms of Native American Christianity emerged in both regions. The Columbian Exchange ‘The Spanish invasion permanently altered the natural as well as the human environ- ‘ment. Smallpox, influenza, measles, yellow fever, and other silent killers carried from Europe and Africa ravaged Indian communities, whose inhabitants had never encoun tered these diseases before and thus had no immunities to them. In the densely popu- lated core areas, populations declined by 90 percent or more in the first century of contact with Europeans. On islands and in the tropical lowlands, the toll was even heavier; Native populations were often wiped out altogether. Syphilis was the only sig. nificant illness that traveled in the opposite direction: Columbus’ sailors carried a virulent strain of the sexually transmitted disease back to Europe with them. ‘The movement of diseases and peoples across the Atlantic was part of a larger pat- tern of biological transformation that historians call the Columbian Exchange (Map 2.1), Foods of the Western Hemisphere —especially maize, potatoes, manioc, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes — significantly increased agricultural yields and popula- tion growth in other continents. Maize and potatoes, for example, reached China around 1700; in the following century, the Chinese population tripled from 100 million to 300 million, At the same time, many animals, plants, and germs were carried to the ‘Americas. European livestock transformed American landscapes. While Native ‘Americans domesticated very few animals—dogs and llamas were the principal exceptions— Europeans brought an enormous Old World bestiary to the Americas, including cattle, swine, horses, oxen, chickens, and honeybees. Eurasian grain crops — wheat, barley, rye, and rice—made the transatlantic voyage along with inadvertent imports like dandelions and other weeds. The Protestant Challenge to Spain Beyond the core regions of its empire, Spain claimed vast American dominions but struggled to hold them. Controlling the Caribbean basin, which was essential for Spain's transatlantic shipping routes, was especially difficult, since the net of tiny islands ‘The relationship between the encomienda system and the casta system is a*must know” for tie AP? exam, Liars ens CONTEXTUALIZATION How did the ecological context of colonization shape interactions betwee Europeans and Native Americans?42 PART1_— TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1491-1700 pico Cap MAP 2.1 The Columbian Exchange AAs European traders and adventurers traversed the world between 1430 and 1600, they began what historians call ‘the Columbian Exchange, a vast intercontinental movernent of plants, animals, and diseases that changed the course ‘of historical development. The nutritious, high-yielding American crops of corn and potatoes enriched the diets of Europeans, Africans, and Asians, However, the Eurasian and African diseases of smallpox, diphtheria, malaria, and yellow fever nearly wiped out the native inhabitants ofthe Western Hemisphere and virtually ensured that they would lose control oftheir lands. spanning the eastern Caribbean — the Lesser Antilles — provided many safe harbors for pirates and privateers. Fortified outposts in Havana (Cuba) and St. Augustine (Florida) provided some protection, but they were never sufficient to keep enemies at bay. And Spain had powerful enemies, their animosity sharpened by the Protestant ‘Take detalled noteson | __Reformation and the resulting split in European Christendom (see Chapter 1). In the religion as ore driving force | Wake of Martin Luther's attack on the Catholic Church, the Protestant critique of for imperial competition | Catholicism broadened and deepened. Gold and silver from Mexico and Peru made between European nations. | Spain the wealthiest nation in Europe, and King Philip I (r. 1556-1598)—an ardent ‘Catholic — its most powerful ruler. Philip was determined to root out challenges to the Catholic Church wherever they appeared. One such place was in the Spanish Netherlands, a collection of Dutch- and Flemish-speaking provinces that had grown wealthy from textile manufacturing and trade with Portuguese outposts in Africa and Asia. To protect their Calvinist faith and political liberties, they revolted against Spanish rule in 1566, After fifteen years of war, the seven northern provinces declared their independence, becoming the Dutch Republic (or Holland) in 1581. ‘The English king Henry VII (t. 1509-1547) initially opposed Protestantism. However, when the pope refused to annul his marriage to the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon in 1534, Henry broke with Rome and placed himself at the head of the new Church of England, which prompily granted an annulment. Although Henry’s new church maintained most Catholic doctrines and practices, Protestant teachings continued to spread. Faced with popular pressure for reform, Henry'sCHAPTER2 American Experiments, 1821-17004 daughter and successor, Queen Elizabeth I(r. 1558-1603), approved a Protestant con- fession of faith. But she also retained the Catholic ritual of Holy Communion and left the Church in the hands of Anglican bishops and archbishops, Flizabeth’s compromises angered radical Protestants, but the independent Anglican Church was anathema to the Spanish king, Philip W. Elizabeth supported a generation of English seafarers who took increasingly aggressive actions against Spanish control of American wealth. The most famous of these Elizabethan “sea dogs” was Francis Drake, a rough-hewn, devoutly Protestant farmer's son from Devon who took to the sea and became a scourge to Philips ‘American interests. In 1577, he ventured into the Pacific to disrupt Spanish shipping to Manila. Drake’ fleet lost three ships anda hundred men, but the survivors captured two Spanish treasure ships and completed the first English circumnavigation of the globe. When Drake's flagship, the Golden Hind, returned to England in 1580, it brought enough silver, gold, silk, and spices to bring his investors a 4,700 percent return on their investment. ‘At the same time, Elizabeth imposed English rule over Gaelic-speaking Catholic Ireland. Calling the Irish “wild savages” who were “more barbarous and more brutish in their customs... than in any other part of the world,” English soldiers brutally massa cred thousands, prefiguring the treatment of Indians in North America, ‘To meet Elizabeth’ challenges, Philip sent a Spanish Armada — 130 ships and 30,000 men—against England in 1588. Philip intended to restore the Roman Church in England and then wipe out Calvinism in Kolland. But he failed utterly: a fierce storm and English ships destroyed the Spanish fleet. Philip continued to spend his American goldand silver on religious wars, an ill-advised policy that diverted workers and resources from Spains fledgling industries. The gold was like a “shewer of Raine,” complained one critic, that left “no benefite behind” Oppressed by high taxes on agriculture and fearful of military service, more than 200,000 residents of Castile, once the most prosperous region of Spain, migrated to America. By the time of Philip’ death in 1598, Spain was in serious economic decline. By contrast, England’s population soared from 3 million in 1500 to 5 million in 1630. English merchants had long supplied European weavers with high-quality wool around 1500, they created their own textile indus- 4+ try, Merchants bought wool from the oc ag ‘owners of great estates and sent it to landless peasants in small cottages to spin and weave into cloth. The gov- ernment aided textile entrepreneurs by setting low wage rates and helped merchants by giving them monopo: lies in foreign markets. This system of state-assisted manufacturing and trade became known as mercantilism. By encour- aging textile production, Elizabeth reduced imports and increased exports. The resulting favorable bal- ance of trade caused gold and silver to flow into England and stimulated fur- by an anonymous artist depict a pai of Dutch ambassadors being received by England's Queen ther economic expansion, Increased Elizabeth The seventeen provinces that constituted the Dutch Republic were in rebellion against trade with Turkey and. India also Sbaishruein the ater decades ofthe shteenth century and hoped for Eleabetis supper. n 1585 Boosted import duties which swelled abet soned the Treaty of Nonsuch pledaing her suport forthe Dutch cause, A ndelre War ‘vith Span ensued punctuated bythe defeat ofthe Spanish Arad In 588, tis ats ol Gener 9 the royal treasury and the monarchs aretunasrnrae nonsense 744° PART1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1491-1700 power. By 1600, Elizabethis mercantile policies had laid the foundations for overseas colonization. Now the Englis had the merchant fleet and wealth needed to challenge Spain's control of the Western Hemisphere. CGE arest ed CHANGE OVERTIME Why did Spain's economy deteriorate and England's economy IN YOUR OWN WORDS How did Spanish colonization affect people in the improve in the sixteenth century? eee Plantation Colonies As Spain hammered out its American empire and struggled against its Protestant rivals, Portugal, England, France, and the Netherlands created successful plantation settle- ‘ments in Brazil, Jamestown, Maryland, and the Caribbean islands (Map 2.2). Worldwide ‘demand for sugar and tobacco fueled the growth of these new colonies, and the result- ing influx of colonists diminished Spain's dominance in the New World, At the same time, they imposed dramatic new pressures on Native populations, who scrambled to survive and carve out pathways to the future, Brazil's Sugar Plantations Portuguese colonists transformed the tropical lowlands of coastal Brazil into a sugar plantation zone like the ones they had recently created on Madeira, the Azores, the Cape Verdes, and Sio Tomé. The work proceeded slowly, but by 1590 more than a ATLANTIC cxwm came ere eaaioein | _carivanned - “aaneavos PACIFIC OCEAN BRAZIL Mlntation colony 3000 mies Jot Gone MAP 2.2 The Plantation Colonit “The plantation zone inthe Americas extended from the tropical coast of Brasil yer tinestwatd through the West Indies and into the tropical and subtropical lowlands of southeastern North America, Sugar was the most important plantation crop in the Americas, but where the soil or climate could not support it planters experimented with a wide variety of ether possiblities including tobacco, jndigy, cotiun, ceceu at iteCHAPTER 2 — American Experiments, 1521-1700 45: thousand sugar mills had been established in Pernambuco re and Bahia. ach large plantation had its own milling opera- ~ tion: because sugarcane is extremely heavy and rots quickly, it ‘must be processed on site. Thus sugar plantations combined backbreaking agricultural labor with milling, extracting, and F refining processes that made them look like Industrial Revolution-era factories. Initially. Portuguese planters hoped that Brazil’ indige- nous peoples would supply the labor required to operate their sugar plantations. But, beginning with a smallpox epi- demic in 1559, unfamiliar diseases ravaged the coastal Indian population. As a result, planters turned to African slaves in ever-growing numbers; by 1620, the switch was complete. While Spanish colonies in Mexico and Peru took shape with astonishing speed following conquest, Brazil’ development required both trial and error and prolonged hard work. England's Tobacco Colonies England was slow to pursue colonization in the Americas. ‘There were fumbling aitempts in the 1580s in Newfoundland ‘and Maine, privately organized and poorly funded. Sir Walter Raleigh’ three expeditions to North Carolina ended in disas- ter when 117 settlers on Roanoke Island, left unsupplied for several years, vanished. The fate of Roanoke —the “lost colony” —remainsa compelling puzzle for modern historians. The Jamestown Settlement Merchants then took charge Carolina indians Fishing, 188. Though maze wasa mainstay ofthe Of English expansion, Tn 1606, King James I (1605-1625) Indo cet Native peoples along the Ata rasta harvested protein granted to the Virginia Company of London all the lands van chs onc ovs arn dogo canoe) nthe stretching from present-day North Carolina to southern —

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