Indigenous Peoples
Name a tribe that lived in the Northeast region. In 1-2 sentences, describe the geography and climate of the place they lived and tell a fact about their customs and culture.
Tribes: Alongonquin, Winnebago, Shawnee
Geography/Climate: The Algonquin Indians lived in the northeast in what is now New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. This land varied from ocean beaches and marshlands to forests, rivers, valleys, and rocky highlands.
Customs: Used powwows as a form of democracy and to make alliances. Made canoes, and used spears to fish from them. Were mainly hunter/gatherer/fishers.
Why did Europeans begin exploring? What was their goal?
Which explorer first found a route to the Indies?
How did he get there, and why was it a problem?
European traders hoped to find a new route to the Indies, as East Asia was called at the time, to purchase spices, gold and jewels. Land trade over the Silk Road was difficult, time consuming and expensive, so European explorers wanted to find a sea route to the Indies to save time and money.
Vasco de Gama was the first to travel all the way to the Indies, traveling around the coast of Africa past the Cape of Good Hope.
What are borderlands?
Why did the Spanish want to create borderlands?
Borderlands are barren, mostly empty lands designed to be a barrier against invasion.
The Spanish hoped the stretch of land across the southern US, from Florida to California, could be a barrier against the colonies of the English and French.
What trade did the French and the Dutch build their colonies around?
The fur trade
Name the southern colonies.
Virginia, Maryland, Charleston, and Georgia
Name a tribe that lived in the Southeast region. In 1-2 sentences, describe the geography and climate of the place they lived and tell a fact about their customs and culture.
Tribes: Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw
Geography/Climate: The Cherokee lived in the mountains and valleys of the southern Appalachian Mountains. They moved into the area which is now present day North and South Carolina, Tennessee, northern Georgia, and Alabama.
Customs: Played lacrosse, farmed for pumpkins and sunflowers, hunted deer.
Tell the story of Columbus.
Where did he come from and what was his goal? Was he successful?
Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer working for the rulers of Spain, believed the African route was too long. He believed that if he traveled west, he could reach the Indies much faster.
In 1492, he landed in what is today the Carribbean, discovering the New World instead of a route to the Indies. He established the first Spanish colonies on Hispaniola at Santo Domingo.
What kind of settlement did the Spanish build in the borderlands? Describe life here.
Many of the earliest Spanish settlements were set up not as towns, but as missions.A mission is a religious settlement, designed to colonize the land and convert native cultures to Christianity.
The Spanish built missions throughout Arizona and California. In the missions, priests built homes for the native people, taught them European methods of farming and rising cattle, and tried to convert them to Christianity. Those who tried to resist were recapture by soldiers and punished.
What two colonies did the Dutch establish? What modern-day cities are they located in?
The Dutch built New Netherland, in modern-day Albany, and New Amsterdam, in Manhattan.
What colonies were founded in New England?
Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire
Name a tribe that lived in the Great Plains region. In 1-2 sentences, describe the geography and climate of the place they lived and tell a fact about their customs and culture.
Tribes: Sioux, Crow, Kiowa, Comanche
Geography/Climate: The Plains Indians lived in the area from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to Mexico. The plains area was hotter than 100 degrees in the summer, and could drop to 40 degrees below zero with heavy snows in the winter. The region was so dry that when it rained it often flooded. The rolling land was covered with grassland and a few mountains.
Customs: Hunted buffalo, which was the source of food, hide for clothes and housing; lived in teepees; boys went on spirit quests when they became men.
Name an English explorer and describe their accomplishments.
John Cabot: explored from Canada to Delaware, founded Newfoundland
Henry Hudson: discovered a local bay, claimed territory in NY/NY for England and the Dutch.
Francis Drake: sea dog who tried to find a Northwest Passage from the West Coast
What were Spain's three main goals in settling the New World? Explain.
What kind of settlements did the French build in North America?
Where were they?
The French built forts and mission sites at the fur trading posts established by Samuel de Champlain.
Some of the biggest were Quebec, Montreal, Fort Detroit, and New Orleans.
What colonies were known as the Middle Colonies?
What colonies were known as the Middle Colonies?
Name a tribe that lived in the Northwest region. In 1-2 sentences, describe the geography and climate of the place they lived and tell a fact about their customs and culture.
Tribes: Chinook, Miwok
Geography/Climate: The Northwest Coastal Indians lived in what is now Alaska along the Pacific Ocean down the coast to Northern California. This was a rugged strip of land with many small islands, deep inlets, and narrow beaches. The mountains rise to the shore in many places. Thick forests of spruce, cedar, and fir dominate the area supplying and endless supply of wood. Many rivers and streams cross the land.
Customs: Celebrated potlatches (great group get-togethers); made armor, relied on the rivers and oceans for food.
Name a Portuguese or French explorer and describe their accomplishments.
Ferdinand Magellan: credited with being the first to circumnavigate the world.
Sieur de la Salle: explored the Mississippi River, named Lousiana
Henry the Navigator: prince who founded a school for navigators.
Amerigo Vespucci: discovered South America.
What was the encomienda system? Where was it put into place?
The encomienda system was a system of forced labor the Spanish used in their colonies in Mexico and South America.
Spanish conquistadors granted land to Spanish settlers and creoles – Spanish people born in the new world – and forced native cultures to farm and mine for them.
How did the Dutch convince settlers, rather than merchants, to move to their new colonies?
The Dutch government worked hard to draw farmers to New Netherland and New Amsterdam.
Anyone who could bring 50 families to the settlement would become a patroon – a landowner.
Owning land would lead to wealth and power, so it drew many people to the colony.
What was the largest New England colony? Describe it.
How did the Puritans rule there?
The largest colony in New England was the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was also a Puritan colony.
It was made up of seven towns, including the Port of Boston.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was a Puritan commonwealth – its laws were based on the Puritan religion, and only Puritans were allowed to vote or participate in government.
Name a tribe that lived in the Southwest region. In 1-2 sentences, describe the geography and climate of the place they lived and tell a fact about their customs and culture.
Tribes: Navajo, Apache
Geography/Climate: They lived in what is now northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona. This land contained peaks, grasslands, deserts, and canyons.
Customs: Believed in the Great Spirit, used the tomahawk and jawbone club.
Name an Spanish explorer and describe their accomplishments.
Christopher Columbus: 'discovered' the New World.
Vasco Nunez de Balboa: first European to see the Pacific Ocean
How did the Spanish conquistadors treat the people they conquered? Tell the story of the Taino, Aztecs or Incas to support your answer.
The Spanish were cruel to those they conquered.
The Taino people, who lived on Hispaniola, were conquered by Christopher Columbus. They were forced into slavery and were exposed to European diseases like smallpox. Within 50 years, almost all of the Taino had died out.
The Aztecs, who lived in Mexico, were conquered by Hernando Cortez. Though the Aztecs’ ruler, Montezuma, welcomed the Spanish into the city (believing that they were gods!), Cortez slaughtered the Aztecs and enslaved them under the encomienda system, forcing them to mine gold and silver.
The Inca, who lived in Peru, were conquered by Francisco Pizarro. Pizarro took their ruler, Atalhuapa, prisoner and promised to free him if he could fill his throne room with silver. When his people did so, he changed his mind, asking this time for a room full of gold. When the Inca once again succeeded, Pizarro slew Atalhuapa and conquered the city, establishing the encomienda in South America.
Describe the life of a French fur trader.
Why did this lifestyle make it hard for the French colonies to grow?
Fur traders built their new lives around the fur trade.
In the fall, traders set out to the villages of the local tribes, the Algonquin and the Huron. They lived with them, hunting, trapping and fighting off the Iroquois all winter.
In the spring, they returned to the cities with furs to sell.
This made it hard for the French colonies to grow, because few farmers and families settled there. Only single men worked as fur traders, and it did not require them to build land or expand the territory.
What was the first successful colony in the South?What man saved the colony and helped it become successful?
What crop eventually made it successful?
The first successful colony was the Virginia colony at Jamestown.
Jamestown was almost a failure at first: the colonists were first forced to search for gold and silver, instead of farming. When winter came, they nearly starved to death or died of illnesses like malaria.
One man, John Smith, saved Jamestown from destruction. He met with the local Powhatan culture and begged them for help. Though the chief almost refused, his daughter, Pocahontas, pleaded with him to save them. The Powhatan shared their food and taught the colonists to farm.
Pocahontas later married a settler named John Rolfe, who was the first colonist to learn to farm tobacco. Tobacco became the main crop in Virginia.