new world beginnings created by: beth smitherman

Created By: Beth Smitherman

New World Beginnings


The Shaping of North America

• 10 million years ago the geological shape of North America emerged

• The continent was anchored by the Canadian Shield

• When the glaciers retreated about 10,000 years ago it transformed the North American Landscape


Peopling the Americas

• Some reached America in crude boats

• Some 35,000 years ago some came by land during the ice age walking across a land bridge in the area of the Bering Sea


Peopling of the Americas

• These nomads began to people the Americas

• Ice began to melt and people spread as far as the Southern tip of South America

• By the time Europeans arrived in 1492, 54 million people inhabited North and South America

• Splitting into countless tribes with over 2,000 languages


Peopling of the Americas • Incas in Peru, Mayans in

Central America and Aztecs in Mexico shaped stunningly sophisticated civilizations

• They had advanced agricultural practices in the cultivation of maize

• They built elaborate cities and made astrological predictions

• They offered human sacrifices and slaughtered over 5,000 a year


The Earliest Americans

• Everywhere corn was planted it transformed nomadic bands into settled villages

• By 2,000 B.C.E. Pueblo peoples in the Rio Grande Valley constructed intricate irrigation systems to water cornfields and built terraced dwellings out of cliffs



• No complex nation states like the Aztecs existed in North America outside of the time of European arrival

• The Mound Builders of the Ohio River Valley, and the desert dwelling Anasazi peoples of the Southwest had some large portions of settlement



• The Mississippian settlement at Cahokia was home to 25,000 people but mysteriously these tribes fell in decline by 1300 C.E.

• Soon societies developed 3-sister farming by growing beans on trellises of the cornstalks and squash covering the planting mounds to retain moisture in the soil



• Most Indigenous People developed matrilineal cultures in which power and possession passed down through the female side of the family line


Indirect Discoverers of the New World

• Blond-bearded Norse sea-farers from Scandinavia landed on the North eastern shoulder of North America in 1000 C.E.

• After the crusades Christian Europeans had a taste for Asian goods

• They craved silk, drugs, perfumes, colorful draperies, spices, and sugar


Indirect Discoverers of the New World

• The luxuries of the East were expensive

• They had to be transported long distance by sea or on camel back the arid landscapes

• Muslim middlemen forced traders to pay fees to use the routes from Asia to Europe

• Naturally Europeans were eager for a cheaper route


Europeans Enter Africa• Marco Polo an Italian

adventurer traveled to China and returned home in 1295 he spun tales of rose colored pearls and gold

• This made the desire for a cheaper route to the East unstoppable

• By 1450 the Portuguese developed the caravel, a ship that could sail more closely into the wind placing the new world in grasp of the Europeans


Europeans Enter Africa

• The Portuguese promptly set up trading posts along the African shore for the purchase of gold and slaves

• They became known as flesh merchants often separating slaves from same tribes and mixing slaves from different tribes to prevent organized resistance



• The Portuguese appetite for slaves was enormous

• Some 40,000 slaves were carried away to the Atlantic sugar islands in the later part of the 15th century

• Portuguese found the origins of the modern plantation system based on large-scale commercial agriculture and the wholesale exploitation of slave labor



• Bartholomeu Dias rounded the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488 and by 1498 Vasco da Gama reached India

• Spaniards grew eager to beat the Portuguese to the wealth of the Indies but the Portuguese controlled the sea route to India as a result the Spanish looked Westward


Columbus Comes Upon a New World

• The dawn of the Renaissance in the 14th century nurtured an ambitious spirit of optimism and adventure. Printing presses, introduced about 1450, facilitated the spread of scientific knowledge. The mariner’s compass, eliminated uncertainties of sea travel


Columbus Comes Upon a New World

• Christopher Columbus persuaded the Spanish monarchs to give him 3 tiny ships

• On October 12 with the threat of mutiny looming over him Columbus sighted an island in the Bahamas


Columbus Comes Upon A New World

• Columbus was so certain that he found the “Indies” that he called the native peoples Indians

• This sent the world into convulsions, Europe provided the markets, capital, and technology; Africa furnished the labor; and the New World offered its raw materials


When Worlds Collide

• This is often called the Columbian Exchange

• Europeans marveled at rattlesnakes, tobacco, maize, beans, tomatoes, potatoes which revolutionized the European diet


When Worlds Collide

• Columbus returned to Hispaniola in 1493 with 17 ships and 12,000 men, with cattle, swine, and horses

• Many North American tribes quickly adopted the horse making their tribes highly mobile


When Worlds Collide

• A “sugar revolution” took place in the European diet, and led to the forced migration of millions of Africans to work in the cane fields of the New World


When Worlds Collide• Europeans also brought other

organisms in the dirt of their boots and dust on their clothes such as Kentucky bluegrass, dandelions and daisies

• They also carried germs that caused smallpox, yellow fever and malaria

• Indigenous Americans died in droves (90% perished)

• Natives shared the disease syphilis


The Spanish Conquistadores

• Spain sought to claim Columbus’ discovery in the Treaty of Tordesillas dividing Portugal the New World

• Spanish explorers called conquistadores spread across the Americas in the name of gold, God, and glory


The Spanish Conquistadores• Vasco Nunez Balboa discovered

Panama Ferdinand Magellan sailed the tip of South America and was killed by Philippine Inhabitants

• Juan Ponce de Leon explored Florida between 1513-1521 he was also killed by natives

• Francisco Coronado found the adobe pueblos in Arizona and New Mexico

• Hernando de Soto 1539-1542 discovered the Mississippi River but was vengefully killed for mistreating Natives

• Francisco Pizarro conquered the Incas of Peru in 1532 and found tons of gold for the Spanish



• All discoveries sparked a price revolution in Europe increasing consumer costs by 500 percent

• This fueled the growth of capitalism



• The Spanish used the institution known as the encomienda

• This allowed the government to commend or give, Indians to certain colonists in return for the promise to try to Christianize them


The Conquest of Mexico• In 1519 Hernan Cortes set sail

from Cuba with 16 horses and several hundred men on 11 ships bound for Mexico

• On Cozumel he rescued a Spanish castaway who was enslaved by Mayan-speaking Indians and came across Malinche who spoke Mayan, Nahuatal and Spanish

• Malinche was baptized and took the Spanish name Dona Marina


The Conquest of Mexico• Cortes set sail for Mexico

burning his ships to cut off hope of retreat

• He marched with native allies to Tenochtitlan

• Moctezuma sent ambassadors to welcome the Spaniards

• On Noche Triste on June 30, 1520 the Aztec attacked the Spanish but Cortes conquered the city destroying Aztec monuments to set up catholic cathedrals


The Conquest of Mexico

• Cortes and his men intermarried with surviving Indians creating a distinctive mestizo culture


The Spread of Spanish America

• The English sent John Cabot to explore the northeastern coast of North America in 1497 and 1498

• The French sent Giovanni da Verrazano and Jacques Cartier to journey the North East and eventually discovered the St. Lawrence River



• Some Spanish explored the west. Don Juan de Onate cruelly abused the Pueblo resulting in the Battle of Acoma in 1599 where the Spanish severed one foot of each survivor and claimed the province to be New Mexico in 1609



• The Catholic mission became the central institution in colonial New Mexico and Catholic customs provoked the Pope’s Rebellion in 1680

• The Pueblos destroyed killed priests and destroyed Catholic churches



• Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo explored the California coast in 1542 but found nothing of interest

• In 1769 Spanish missionaries founded missions in San Diego



• The way in which Catholic Spaniards treated the natives gave birth to the Black Legend “killing for Christ”

• The Spanish grafted their culture, laws, religion and language onto Native society

new world beginnings created by: beth smitherman

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