Native Peoples & Geography
The cultivation of this crop spread northward from Mexico, fostering economic growth and social diversification in the Southwest.
What is corn (maize)?
European land routes to Asia were blocked in 1453 after this empire seized control of Constantinople.
Who are the Ottoman Turks?
Up to 90% of native populations in the Americas died within a century of contact due to a lack of immunity to these.
What are European diseases / germs (smallpox, measles)?
The Spanish royal grant system bestowing native labor upon settlers in exchange for forced Catholic conversion and "care".
What is the encomienda system?
The Spanish priest who wrote accounts condemning Spanish atrocities against Native Americans and urged the abolition of encomiendas.
Who was Bartolomé de Las Casas?
Nomadic tribes in the Great Basin and Great Plains survived by hunting buffalo and residing in these easily disassembled shelters.
What are tepees?
The 1494 agreement mediated by the Pope that divided new territorial claims between Spain and Portugal.
What is the Treaty of Tordesillas?
Two American crops introduced to Eurasia that drastically improved farm productivity and drove rapid European population growth.
What are corn (maize) and potatoes?
The Spanish tax system requiring colonists to pay the king for every enslaved African imported to the Americas.
What is the asiento system?
The scholar who argued at the 1550 Valladolid Debate that Native Americans were "naturally inferior" and properly subjugated.
Who was Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda?
Pacific Northwest groups like the Chinook maintained permanent longhouses by relying on hunting, gathering, and this primary ocean resource.
What is fish / salmon?
The Renaissance invention of the 1450s that accelerated the spread of scientific and navigational knowledge across Europe
What is the printing press?
Reintroduced to North America by Spanish settlers, this animal transformed Great Plains tribal hunting and mobility
What is the horse?
The Spanish conquistador responsible for subduing the Aztec Empire in central Mexico.
Who was Hernán Cortés?
Political units that replaced small feudal kingdoms in Europe, characterized by shared culture and central government loyalty.
What are nation-states?
This Mississippian settlement near present-day East St. Louis grew to 30,000 inhabitants and built massive earthen mounds.
What is Cahokia?
Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand consolidated power and funded Columbus after conquering this final Moorish stronghold in 1492.
What is Granada?
This economic system replaced feudalism as control of money and machinery grew more valuable than land control.
What is capitalism?
The ocean voyage across the Atlantic that forcibly transported millions of Africans, during which 10% to 15% died.
What is the Middle Passage?
The founding year of Jamestown, Virginia, marking the first permanent English settlement in North America
What is 1607?
The powerful political alliance formed by six tribes in present-day New York to battle rivals and European colonists.
What is the Iroquois Confederation (Haudenosaunee)?
Sir Walter Raleigh’s failed 1587 English colonial attempt off the coast of North Carolina
What is Roanoke Island?
A business model where multiple investors pooled capital to fund overseas voyages while limiting individual financial risk.
What is a joint-stock company?
The group occupying the top tier of the rigid Spanish colonial caste system (sistema de castas).
Who were pure-blooded Spaniards (Peninsulares)?
The 16th-century religious movement in Northern Europe that revolted against papal authority and heightened colonial competition.
What is the Protestant Reformation?