New World Encounters

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Chapter 1

• New World Encounters

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The Arrival

• People arrived on North American continent 35,000
  years ago via land bridge called Beringia -- p.5
  map
• Beringia later covered by water as polar ice cap
  melted
• Those who came were hunters looking for mammoths,
  mastadons, bison, and caribou
• First peoples were of Clovis Culture

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Beringia
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Clovis Culture

• They later became known as Native Americans
• Within 1,000 years they had spread throughout the
  Western Hemisphere
• Language changed as they encountered new objects
  and animals
• Eventually 2,000 distinct languages developed
  belonging to 12 language groups or families

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• Cultures changed as well as languages
• Arawaks
• Encountered Columbus
• Peaceful, gentle people
• Refined basketweaver

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• Mayans
• -Found in southern Mexico and in Guatemala
• -Created cities
• -Were religious
• -Created solar calendar of 365 days
• -Had system of writing
• -Had stadiums and sports
• - Had astronomers

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Mayan
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Mayan Calendar
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• Aztecs
• - Highly structured society
• - division of labor
• -farmers
• -artisans
• -construction workers

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Aztec Calendar
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Aztec Empire
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Aztecs

• Conquered Mayans around 1500 CE
• They adopted and adapted Mayan culture
• had religious ceremonies and sacrifices
• had gold and silver mines
• had laws and rulers

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Others

• Nomadic hunters and gatherers
• ruled by a central authority
• women had respect and power
• Grew the food and raised the children - -fertility

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Misconceptions

• Western Europeans were not the first to encounter
  Native Americans
• contact with Japanese and Chinese fishermen
  around 200 BCE
• contact with West Africans around 1,000-500 BCE
• Contact with Europeans around the 1480s, if not
  earlier

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• Europeans settled a sparsely inhabited land.
• now believed that there were 4 10 million
  Native Americans in the Americas
• Initial contact with Europeans occurred before
  anyone estimated the size of population
  estimates came later
• Europeans were carriers of diseases for which
  Native Americans had no immunities millions died
  as a result

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• Food
• Native Americans were only hunters and gatherers
• many practiced agriculture
• used slash and burn method
• they altered the land
• they grew squash, beans, tomatoes, maize,
  peppers, potatoes, etc.
• they set up fish traps called weirs

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Villages

• Some were walled for protection some were open
• Some were patriarchal some had female leaders
• Sachem or Werowance (leader) only carried out
  wishes of the group
• Leaders chosen for their wisdom
• Leader could be removed for cause

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Religion

• Practiced animism
• believed there were spirits in the things of
  nature
• polytheistic with a main god

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Concept of Ownership

• Was a foreign concept to Native Americans
• Shared what they had crops, land
• Often Europeans who were used to the concept of
  ownership would just take the land and establish
  ownership the Native Americans did not
  understand this

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Hostile Tribes?

• On the whole, tribal villages coexisted
  peacefully
• They forged alliances
• Iroquois Confederacy
• Mohawk
• Oneida
• Onondaga
• Cayuga
• Senaca
• Tuscarora

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• Villages traded with one another
• Europeans helped de-stabilize the harmony that
  once existed among tribes
• they pitted one tribe against another to get the
  goods they wanted
• they paid tribes with firearms altering warfare

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European Exploration

• Irish monk, St. Brendan is said to have come to
  North America in 5th century
• Vikings came in 10th century to establish
  settlements, p. 16 photo
• Eric the Red
• Leif, his son

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• European exploration began in earnest in 15th
  century
• Spain began colonizing by taking Canary Islands
  where they set up a harsh labor system they would
  later use in the Americas
• Christopher Columbus 4 trips, the first in 1492
  landing in the Bahamas
• Conquistadors Hernan Cortes in Mexico and
  Francisco Pizarro in the Andes in South America
  were quite successful

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Columbus and Cortes
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Pizarro
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• Samuel de Champlain settled Quebec for France
• 1497, an Italian, John Cabot, working for Henry
  VII of England, claimed Newfoundland for England
• Sir Walter Raleigh was the first English
  adventurer to found a New World colony, Virginia
• His colonists, however, landed on Roanoke Island
  in North Carolina this colony failed twice the
  Lost Colony

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Roanoke Colony
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• In 1607, the London Virginia Company established
  Jamestown, the first permanent British settlement
  in the New World
• Became successful by following the plantation
  model of settlement and because Native Americans
  helped them

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Jamestown Colony
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Reasons for Colonization

• Wished to be self-sufficient
• using products found in New World, countries
  could reduce their dependence on one another
• Wanted to reduce populations by sending people to
  New World colonies
• God, Gold, and Glory

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Labor

• English tried to enslave Native Americans like
  the Spanish, Natives knew the land and kept
  running away
• So like the Spanish and the Portuguese before
  them , the English became involved in the African
  slave trade
• African slave trade began for Europeans in the
  15th century and didnt end until 1925 the
  Portuguese were the first ones in and the last to
  abandon it