Indigenous America & Geography
This factor most strongly explains why Indigenous societies developed differently across North America.
$100: regional environment/geography
This exchange moved plants, animals, diseases, people, and ideas across the Atlantic.
Columbian Exchange
This cash crop transformed Virginia’s economy.
tobacco
This region was most associated with Puritans and town meetings.
New England
This Virginia institution gave colonists experience with representative government.
House of Burgesses
Indigenous peoples in this region developed irrigation because of the dry climate.
Southwest
This European empire relied heavily on the fur trade and Indigenous alliances.
France
This labor system required workers to serve for a limited number of years.
indentured servitude
This region was known for grain production and ethnic/religious diversity.
Middle Colonies
This religious movement of the 1730s–1740s emphasized emotional preaching and personal conversion.
The Great Awakening
Explain one way geography shaped the economy of an Indigenous society before 1492.
Pacific Northwest peoples relied heavily on fishing because rivers and coastal resources supported it; Southwest peoples used irrigation because of arid conditions.
This Spanish labor system relied on coerced Indigenous labor.
encomienda
This 1676 uprising exposed tensions over land, class, politics, and Indigenous relations in Virginia.
Bacon's Rebellion
Explain one major difference between the Chesapeake and New England economies.
Chesapeake relied heavily on tobacco plantations; New England had a more diversified economy of small farms, fishing, shipping, and commerce.
This Enlightenment thinker influenced ideas about natural rights and government.
John Locke
Why does APUSH begin Period 1 in 1491 rather than 1492?
Because complex Indigenous societies already existed before European arrival; 1491 centers pre-contact America rather than treating 1492 as the beginning of American history.
Compare one major difference between Spanish and French colonization.
Spain emphasized conquest, conversion, and extraction; France relied more on trade alliances and the fur trade.
Explain why tobacco increased both land conflict and labor demand.
Tobacco profits increased demand for land and labor, pushing settlement outward and intensifying conflict with Indigenous peoples.
Which region relied most heavily on plantation agriculture and enslaved African labor?
Southern Colonies
Explain one way salutary neglect contributed to colonial political independence.
It gave colonists experience with local self-government and limited imperial interference, so later tighter British control felt intrusive.
Evaluate which mattered more in shaping Indigenous societies before European contact: environment or culture. Defend with evidence.
specific evidence such as irrigation, fishing, maize agriculture, trade networks, or regional settlement patterns.
Explain one way European colonization reshaped Indigenous societies and one way Indigenous peoples shaped European colonization.
European disease devastated Indigenous populations, while Indigenous trade networks and alliances helped shape where and how European colonies succeeded.
Explain how the transition from indentured servitude to racial chattel slavery changed colonial society.
Slavery became permanent, hereditary, and racialized through law, creating a more rigid social hierarchy than temporary indentured servitude.
Explain why British colonies developed differently even though they were part of the same empire.
Because geography, migration patterns, religious motives, labor systems, and economic goals varied by region.
By 1754, were colonists becoming more British or more distinct from Britain? Defend with two pieces of evidence.
Atlantic trade and British consumer culture on the “more British” side, and local assemblies, town meetings, Great Awakening, Enlightenment, and regional identity on the “more distinct” side.