PRE-COLUMBIAN AMERICA AND

EUROPEAN COLONIZATION

How Do We Know… And Why??

ArchaeologyPhysical anthropology

DNA analysisLinguistics

Writing?

04/13/2023

Timeline23000-16500 years ago

16500-13000 years ago-- Pre-Clovis sites at Meadowcroft Rockshelter (PA), Cactus Hill (VA) and…. Monte Verde (Chile)

13000-10000 years ago-- Clovis (NM)

Dated about 11000 years ago

04/13/2023

Post-Archaic Period: Southwest

The Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) were the largest group in the Southwest

Centered around the Four Corners area

Chaco Canyon, Ancestral Pueblo

Agriculture in the Southwest

• Ancestral Pueblo: Dry farming techniques, garden “grids,” terracing, and check dams

• Hohokam: Irrigation

Eastern Woodlands: Mississippian

● Mississippian: flourished 900-1500 (contact)

● Mounds

● Maize-based agriculture

● Widespread trade networks

● Development of the chiefdom and social inequality

Cahokia

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/cahokia/hodges-text

Age of Discovery

15th -17th centuries

Direct contact with Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania established

Continent mapping

Search for alternate routes to “the Indies”

Portuguese ExpansionExplored West African coast in 1418 and reached Indian Ocean in 1488

Prince Henry the Navigator New technology:

caravel, astronomical charts

Objectives:

Explore the African coastline to find a better route to the Indies

Spanish ExpansionThe Reconquista, 1492

Treaty of Grenada: The relinquishment in January 1492 of the sovereignty of the Moorish Emirate of Granada (founded five centuries earlier) to the Catholic monarchs of Spain.

Bypass of the Portuguese lock on the African trade routes

Columbus

Believed that it was possible to reach the Indies by sailing west from Europe

Landed in Hispaniola in 1492

After four trips, he refused to believe he did not reach China

Pssst….. Columbus wasn’t first!

Columbian Exchange

● Intentional-- and unintentional-- transfers between Old World and New World

● Includes transfers from Asia to Europe (bubonic plague, Asian flu)

Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)

Spanish Colonization

Encomienda system: Crown granted a person a specified number of natives for whom they were to take responsibility.

Theory: the receiver of the grant was to protect the natives from warring tribes and to instruct them in the Spanish language and in the Catholic faith. In return: extract tribute from the natives in the form of labor, gold or other products.

SPANISH COLONIZATION IN 1600•Interaction with Native Americans changes

•Spanish and Native Americans frequently intermingled, leading to a class of Spanish citizens known as Mestizos

•Half Spanish, Half Native American

•Spanish crown took this seriously, gave the Mestizos a decent amount of rights as Spanish citizens

•Crown also began a series of preventative measures to ensure Spanish explorers and colonists did not further exploit Native Americans: Leyes de Indias

Spread of CatholicismAjacan: 1570

• Reductions and missions• Created to Christianize tax, and

govern natives more efficiently• Missions:

• Sought to incorporate indigenous people into the Spanish colonial empire, Catholicism, and certain aspects of Hispanic culture

• Jesuit reductions:• Indigenous people expected to convert

to Christianity but not necessarily adopt European values and lifestyles

PUEBLO REVOLT

● First native peoples to successfully revolt against Europeans-- Pueblo Revolt, 1680

● Leader: Pope

04/13/2023

French Colonization

Founding of Port Royal in 1605

Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in 1608

Helped establish an empire from the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River

● France slow to colonize-- Spanish protection of its own interests and distractions caused by the French Wars of Religion

● Early attempts to colonize in Brazil, the Carolinas, and Florida were unsuccessful

French Colonization

● Emphasis on trade rather than agricultural settlements

● Establish control-- albeit loose-- over large areas of North American continent through series of First Nations alliances

● Relatively little interest in colonialism; France concentrated more on dominance in Europe

Black Robe

Dutch Colonization● 1609: Henry Hudson claims

for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) parts of Canada and Northeastern North America

● 1614: Adriaen Block explores the lower Hudson River

● 1615: First Dutch settlement at Fort Nassau, near present-day Albany

● 1621: Dutch West India Company (WIC) formed

– Granted trade monopoly in the West Indies and exclusive rights to the Atlantic slave trade

● 1626-- Peter Minuit buys Manhattan; New Amsterdam settled

Swedish Colonization

● New Sweden on the Delaware, includes parts of modern-day DE, PA, NJ, and MD

● Settled in 1638-- wiped out by the Dutch by 1655