Indigenous America (before 1491)
The cultivation of this agricultural staple crop transformed nomadic hunter-gatherer societies into settled, complex agricultural civilizations across Mexico and the American Southwest.
What is maize (corn)?
The three famous "G"s that summarized the primary European motivations for overseas exploration and conquest during the Age of Discovery.
What are Gold, God, and Glory?
This European epidemic disease wiped out an estimated 80%–90% of the Native American population following first contact due to a lack of immunity.
What is smallpox?
The colonial labor system under which the Spanish Crown granted colonists control over Native Americans to work on plantations or in mines in exchange for converting them to Christianity.
What is the Encomienda System?
Spanish Dominican friar who famously advocated for the humane treatment of Native Americans and exposed the brutality of the Encomienda system in writings like A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.
Who was Bartolomé de Las Casas?
Native American tribe in the American Southwest known for building complex multi-story adobe structures and sophisticated irrigation systems.
Who are the Pueblo?
An economic system popular in Europe during the 16th–18th centuries that measured a nation's wealth by its gold reserves and promoted a favorable balance of trade through colonies.
What is mercantilism?
Two major New World food crops introduced to Europe during the Columbian Exchange that triggered a massive European population boom.
What are potatoes and maize (corn)?
As indigenous populations declined from disease, the Spanish increasingly turned to this forced labor source to work on sugar plantations and in mines.
What is the African slave trade (West African enslaved labor)?
The 1550–1551 formal debate in Spain between Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda over the moral and legal treatment of Native Americans.
What is the Valladolid Debate?
This famous confederacy of five (later six) Northeastern tribes formed a powerful military alliance to maintain peace and present a united front against rivals.
What is the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee)?
Technological innovations like this navigational tool and the Portuguese-designed caravel made long-distance transatlantic voyages possible in the 15th century.
What is the astrolabe (or magnetic compass)?
Introduced by Spanish explorers, this animal transformed Plains Indian culture, transportation, and warfare.
What is the horse?
Term for the complex racial hierarchy established in Spanish America that ranked individuals based on their heritage, such as Peninsulares, Creoles, and Mestizos.
What is the Casta System?
Spanish scholar who argued at Valladolid that Native Americans were "natural slaves" and that Spanish conquest was justified under natural law.
Who was Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda?
Native American groups living in this geographic region relied primarily on hunting American bison and lived semi-nomadic lifestyles, especially after the reintroduction of horses.
What is the Great Plains (or Great Basin)?
The 1494 papal agreement mediated by the Pope that drew a line of demarcation dividing the non-Christian world between Spain and Portugal.
What is the Treaty of Tordesillas?
This precious metal, mined heavily at places like Potosí, flooded into Spain and Western Europe, causing widespread inflation known as the Price Revolution.
What is silver?
A person of mixed Spanish and Native American ancestry in the Spanish colonial social hierarchy.
What is a Mestizo?
Propagated by Spain's Protestant European rivals, this term describes the historical perception that Spanish conquerors were uniquely cruel, bloodthirsty, and fanatical.
What is the "Black Legend" (La Leyenda Negra)?
Located near modern-day St. Louis, this massive pre-Columbian Mississippian city was famous for its large earthen ceremonial mounds and peak population exceeding 10,000.
What is Cahokia?
Joint-stock business arrangements allowed multiple investors to pool capital, leading to the rise of this economic system in early modern Western Europe.
What is capitalism?
The movement of disease, crops, animals, and populations across the Atlantic Ocean is formally named after this Italian explorer who sailed for Spain in 1492.
Who was Christopher Columbus?
The Spanish established this network of religious outposts across the Southwest and California to convert Native Americans to Catholicism and integrate them into Spanish society.
What are the Spanish Missions?
The 1680 uprising led by Popé in modern-day New Mexico that temporarily drove Spanish colonizers out of the region for over a decade.
What is the Pueblo Revolt (or Popé's Rebellion)?