Exploration
In 1492, Columbus set out on behalf of Spain to find a quicker route to India, but ended up here instead.
Hispaniola
This was the first Native culture believed to reach the North American mainland and is characterized by its tools. In particular, its projectile points.
Clovis
This Dominican Friar became an advocate for indigenous peoples and an enemy of the encomienda system after his time on the Columbus expedition in Hispaniola.
Bartolome de las Casas
This shift in religious ideology in the mid 16th century, was one of many catalysts for ongoing English exploration and colonization.
Protestant Reformation
This system of exploitation was used to incentivize conquistadores by the Kingdom of Castille. It would eventually be replaced by the repartimiento system.
Encomienda system
These companies allowed Britain to join the imperial exploration race.
Joint Stock Companies
This indigenous culture had elaborate irrigation systems, pottery, and cliff dwellings. They would later stage an important revolt against the Spanish.
Pueblo
Ruler of the Aztec empire, this leader was said to have been kidnapped and held in Tenochtitlan by Cortes during conquest. His death saved him from watching the fall of the great empire under his rule.
Moctezuma II
This system of heirship often caused problems for determining the line of succession and sometime pitted male siblings against each other.
Promogeniture
This colony was the earliest attempt at a colony on the North American mainland by the English. However, the colonists disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the word "Croatoa" carved into a tree.
Roanoke
This group of people preceded Columbus in reaching the North American mainland and had a short lived settlement near Newfoundland in present day Canada.
Vikings
This culture is the latest culture of the early Native occupants and likely met its end in the early 16th century. They too received a visit from the Spanish, including conquistador Hernando de Soto.
Mississippian culture
She was portrayed as an adult in a Disney film whose love interest was an English man by the name of John Smith. Her reality, however, was far different.
Pocahantas
This document from 1295 took away absolutism from the monarch and laid the foundation for a parliament.
Magna Carta
This treaty in 1494 hastened the imperial exploration race by dividing the "new" and "old" world between Portugal and Spain. Portugal's acquisition of Africa, marks the origins of the slave trade.
Treaty of Tordesillas
This device thought to be crafted by Muslim scholars, helped advance the age of exploration.
Mariners compass
This agricultural practice proved quite lucrative for many Native communities and helped to provide food for growing populations.
Three sisters
This woman is a controversial figure in the history of Mexico as she acted as the intermediary between Cortes and Moctezuma II as she spoke both Spanish and Nahuatl.
La Malenche
Although initially friendly with this empire, after 1494, England no longer saw this country as a friend, but rather an imperial foe.
Spain
This colony founded by the English in 1607 led to widespread conflict with indigenous peoples--most notably the Powhatan Confederacy. It also became a lucrative site for tobacco.
Jamestown
In 1519, this Spanish conquistador reached the Yucatan peninsula on a mission to conquer the Aztec Empire.
Hernan Cortes
This is one of the earliest mound building cultures that emerged in the Ohio River valley after the spread of Clovis culture out of New Mexico. One of their sites, Cahokia, is now a national park.
Hopewell
This King and Queen sanctioned the reconquista and later incentivized conquistadores with the encomienda system. Also, the queen was fervently religious and sought to spread catholicism across the land.
Ferdinand and Isabella
These laws shifted once communal lands into the hands of private landholders.
Enclosure laws
This empire also used joint stock companies to finance exploration and although they did have a colony in present day New York for some time, they found it much more profitable to take their colonial ambitions to Asia.
Dutch