NPE - Native Populations and European Exploration Module Overview

Native Populations and European Exploration

Introduction

The study of American History often begins with the planting of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown in 1607. However, there is much that occurred in the Americas prior to this. Thousands of years before Europeans arrived, a diverse and thriving culture existed. The first Americans, known as Native Americans or American Indians, had migrated across the Bering Strait and traveled across the North and South American continents. Thousands of diverse people groups built societies that included nomadic people of the Great Plains, fairly permanent towns of the Northeast and Pacific Coast, and large cities complete with pyramids in Central America.

The Vikings arrived in some areas of North America (Greenland and Canada) around the year 1000. However, it was not until almost 500 years later that Europeans began to have a large impact in the New World. When Christopher Columbus landed in what is today the Bahamas in 1492, an exchange began that revolutionized the world. Can you imagine an America without horses or other domesticated animals? What about Italian food without tomatoes? These are just two examples of things that were shared as part of the Columbian Exchange.

The Spanish arrived first. They were followed by the Portuguese, French, Dutch, and eventually the English. These European groups had common goals of wanting to expand their economic and military power, but each group also had a distinct emphasis to their ventures in the Americas. Unfortunately for the American Indians they were not treated as equals. The Europeans also brought with them diseases that ravaged the population wiping out whole people groups. Eventually, rivalry between the European nations would increase. The chain of events set off by this period of contact, exploration, settlement, and conquest would forever alter the American landscape.

Essential Questions

• How did American societies develop in North America and what were some characteristics of these societies?
  
• What were some of the major effects of European exploration/settlement/conquest of the New World?
  
• How were the interactions with the Native peoples similar and different when examined in regards to the different European nations?

 

Textbook Assignment

 Read the chapter in your textbook that relates to this module. Your instructor will provide you with a specific reading schedule. 

 

Key Terms

Look over your key terms for this module. Then review them with the activity below.

• Western Hemisphere - is technically the half of the earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian. It is often used in a general sense to describe the “New World” containing the continents of North and South America.
  
• Maize - corn. This was the main crop of many American Indian people groups in the New World and quickly became a staple crop of the Europeans who settled there.
  
• Northwest Peoples - were people who lived along the Pacific Northwest Coast. They included groups such as the Chinook, Tingit, and Willapa.
  
• Great Basin Peoples - early people groups who lived west of the Rocky Mountains and east of the Sierra Nevada mountains in what is today the western United States. They included such groups as the Paiute and Shoshone.
  
• Northeastern Peoples - also known as the First Nations or Eastern Woodland tribes. They lived in what is today the eastern United States and Canada and the most prominent groups formed the Iroquois Confederacy.
  
• Columbian Exchange - describes the exchange of ideas, plants, and animals between native inhabitants of the New World and the Europeans and Africans that began arriving with the voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492. It greatly changed many areas of the world.
  
• Encomienda System - was employed by the Spanish colonizers. It granted a specific Spaniard control over a number of American Indians whom they were to instruct in the Spanish language and the Roman Catholic faith in return for the opportunity to exact payment in gold and labor. It often resulted in a virtual slave-labor system.
  
• Slavery - is a system where people are held as property and forced to work. In American history this has racial implications as it generally took the form of people of European descent holding people particularly of African descent in bondage.
  
• Motivations for Colonization - varied greatly but in general included: a desire to find new trade routes, spread religious views and practice a certain religion freely, seek riches such as gold, obtain economic resources and markets, gain locations of strategic military importance, and for a sense of adventure.
  
• Spanish Colonists - were the first of the European nations in the Age of Exploration to reach the Americas and initially gained much wealth from the New World. The Spanish claimed most of the territory in the southern regions of the Americas.
  
• Black Legend - term used to describe the Spanish impact on the New World in relation to an overemphasis on the negative aspects of Spanish colonization.
  
• French Colonists - were most common in the northern regions of the Americans. Many were explorers and fur traders. They generally had the best relationship with the American Indians as they engaged in less large-scale agriculture and traded extensively with them.
  
• Dutch Colonists - the Netherlands sent out explorers and settlers to the New World as well. Many were brilliant navigators and skilled businessmen. The Dutch began the colony that would eventually become New York.
  
• Pueblo Revolt - took place in 1680 and is also known as Pope’s Rebellion. The Pueblo Indians were able to drive out the Spanish from the area near Santa Fe, for a time, in a bloody revolt.

RESOURCES IN THIS MODULE ARE OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (OER) OR CREATED BY GAVS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED. SOME IMAGES USED UNDER SUBSCRIPTION.