lOMoARcPSD 31101189 Chapter 1 Notes Chapter 1 Notes United States History Ii Northern Virginia Community College United States History Ii Northern Virginia Community College Studocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university Studocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university Downloaded by Arya Shah apancake99 gmail com lOMoARcPSD 31101189 Introduction The American Yawp The First Americans o Humans have lived in the Americans for over 10 000 years o Dynamic and diverse they spoke hundreds of languages and created thousands of distinct cultures o The arrival of Europeans and the resulting global exchange of people animals plants and microbes the Columbian Exchange bridged more than 10 000 years of geographic separation inaugurated centuries of violence unleashed the greatest biological terror the world had ever seen and revolutionized the history of the world o Native Americans passed down stories through the millennia that tell of their creation and reveal the contours of indigenous belief o The Salinan people of what is now California tell of a bald eagle that formed the first man out of clay and the first woman out of a feather o According to a Lenape tradition the earth was made when Sky Woman fell into a watery world with the help of a muskrat and beaver landed safely on a turtle s back thus creating Turtle Island North America o The last global ice age trapped much of the world s water in enormous o 20 000 years ago ice sheets extended across North America as far south continental glaciers as Illinois o With so much of the world s water captured in these massive ice sheets global sea levels were much lower and a land bridge connected Asia and North America across the Bering Strait o Glacial sheets receded about 14 000 years ago opening a corridor to warmer climates and new resources some migrating south and eastward o Modern native American communities recount histories in America that date long before human memory o In the Northwest Native groups exploited the great salmon filled rivers o On the plains and prairie lands hunting communities followed bison herds and moved according to seasonal patterns o Agriculture arose sometime between 5 000 9 000 years ago o Mesoamericans in modern day Mexico and central America relied on domesticated maize corn to develop the hemisphere s first settled population around 1200 BCE o 3 crops in particular corn beans and squash known as the Three Sisters provided nutritional needs necessary to sustain cities and civilations o Many groups used shifting cultivation in which farmers cut the forest burned the undergrowth and then planted seeds in the nutrient rich ashes When crop yields began to decline farmers moved to another field and allowed the land to recover and the forest to regrow before again cutting the forest burning the undergrowth and restarting the cycle Downloaded by Arya Shah apancake99 gmail com lOMoARcPSD 31101189 o Typically in Woodland communities women practiced agriculture while men hunted and fished o Many Native cultures understood ancestry as matrilineal family and clan identity proceeded along the female line through mothers and daughters rather than fathers and sons o Fathers for instance often joined mothers extended families and sometimes even a mother s brothers took a more direct role in child raising than biological fathers o Therefore mothers often wielded enormous influence at local levels and men s identities and influence often depended on their relationships to women o Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico was home to ancestral Puebloan peoples between 900 and 1300 CE As many as fifteen thousand individuals lived in the Chaco Canyon complex in present day New Mexico o Puebloan spirituality was tied both to the earth and the heavens as generations carefully charted the stars and designed homes in line with the path of the sun and moon o As with many of the peoples who lived in the Woodlands life and death in Cahokia were linked to the movement of the stars sun and moon and their ceremonial earthwork structures reflect these important structuring forces o Slavery War captives were enslaved and these captives formed an important part of the economy in the North American Southeast Native American slavery was not based on holding people as property Instead Native Americans understood slaves as people who lacked kinship networks Slavery then was not always a permanent condition Very often a former slave could become a fully integrated member of the community Adoption or marriage could enable a slave to enter a kinship network and join the community Slavery and captive trading became an important way that many Native communities regrew and gained or maintained power o Around 1050 Cahokia experienced what one archaeologist has called a big bang which included a virtually instantaneous and pervasive shift in all things political social and ideological 15 The population grew almost 500 percent in only one generation and new people groups were absorbed into the city and its supporting communities By 1300 the once powerful city had undergone a series of strains that led to collapse o Scandinavian seafarers reached the New World long before Columbus o At their peak they sailed as far east as Constantinople and raided settlements as far south as North Africa o They established limited colonies in Iceland and Greenland and around the year 1000 Leif Erikson reached Newfoundland Canada Downloaded by Arya Shah apancake99 gmail com European Expansion lOMoARcPSD 31101189 o The Norse colony failed and were driven back to sea by food shortages limited resources bad weather and native resistance o Centuries before Columbus the Crusades linked Europe with the wealth power and knowledge of Asia o Europeans rediscovered or adopted Greek Roman and Muslim knowledge o A series of military conflicts between England and France the 100 years war accelerated nationalism and cultivated the financial and military administration necessary to maintain nation states o In Spain the marriage between Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile consolidated the 2 most powerful kingdoms in the Iberian peninsula o The Crusades had never ended in Iberia the Spanish crown concluded centuries of intermittent warfare the Reconquista by expelling Muslim Moors and Iberian Jews from the Iberian peninsula in 1492 just as Christopher Columbus sailed west o With new power these new nations and their newly empowered monarchs yearned