First Encounters: Indigenous People and Europeans in the Americas

Introduction

The study of United States history often begins with the planting of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown in 1607. However, millions of people were in the Americas and thousands of years of history occurred in the Americas prior to the indigenous people’s first encounters with European explorers, traders, and colonizers.

Experts estimate that a diverse and thriving indigenous culture existed in the Americas as long as 50,000 years ago. The first Americans, known as indigenous people, Native Americans, or American Indians, migrated across the Bering Strait from Asia and traveled through present-day Alaska and Canada south and east across the North and South American continents. Thousands of diverse groups established 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 indigenous people in South America mined silver and built sprawling networks of roads for trade and military defense along the western coast.

The Vikings arrived in some areas of North America (Greenland and Canada) around 1000 c.e. 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 that revolutionized the world began.

Can you imagine the Americas 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 term “Columbian Exchange” was coined by Alfred Crosby, Jr. in the early 1970s to refer to the exchange of animals, plants, diseases, and later culture between the Old World (Europe and Africa) and the New World (the Americas.) This exchange accelerated with European colonization.

Between 1492 with Columbus’ landing in the Caribbean and 1607, the Spaniards arrived, followed by the Portuguese, French, Dutch, and eventually the English. The European groups had common goals of expansion of economic and military power, but each group also had a distinct focus for their ventures in the Americas.

Unfortunately for the American Indians, Europeans did not treat the indigenous people as equals. The Europeans also brought with them diseases that ravaged the population wiping out entire groups of Native Americans. Eventually, rivalry between the European nations increased.

The chain of events set off by this initial period of contact, exploration, settlement, and conquest by Europeans would forever alter the American landscape for the indigenous people who had occupied the Americas for thousands of years.

Photographs from left to right:
Machu Picchu

Indian Mound near Helen, GA

Module Lessons Preview

In this module, we will study the following topics:

Key Concepts Lesson: an overview of the module with important vocabulary and pertinent information.
Document Analysis Lesson: a lesson to show you how to analyze primary source documents.
Destruction of Indigenous Civilizations: a lesson to help you understand how the interactions with Europeans negatively affected Indigenous populations in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.
Short Answer/Multiple Choice Questions Lesson: a recap of the tips and tricks in Module 1.
Review Lesson: a lesson including a review of important vocabulary terms and information as well as a study guide to help you review for the multiple choice and short answer tests for this module.

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 Europeans’ interactions with the Native peoples similar and different for both groups?

By the end of this module you will be able to:

explain how indigenous societies developed in North America and what some characteristics of these societies were.
explain some of the major effects of European exploration, settlement, and conquest of the New World.
describe and compare Europeans’ interactions with the indigenous people.

Textbook Readings

Read the chapter(s) in the textbooks to learn more about encounters between the indigenous people and the Europeans as well as the effects of such interactions.

Reading Assignments Boundless: Early Inhabitants of the Americas

Boundless: Pre-Colonial Development of America

Boundless: The Expansion of Europe

Boundless: The Exploration and Conquest of the New World

Boundless: Conclusion: European Empires in the New World

Digital History: The First Americans

American Yawp

Key Terms

Look over your key terms for this module. Then review with the activity below before moving on to the next section.

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.

[CC BY 4.0] UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED | IMAGES: LICENSED AND USED ACCORDING TO TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION