1

Transformations
of North America
1450–1700
P A R T

CHAPTER 1 In 1450, North America, Europe, and Africa were each home to complex
Colliding Worlds, societies with their own distinctive cultures. But their histories were
1450–1600
about to collide, bringing vast changes to all three continents. European
CHAPTER 2 voyagers sailing in the wake of Christopher Columbus set in motion one
American Experiments, of the most momentous developments in world history: sustained contact
1518–1700
among Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans in dozens of distinct
colonial settings. Before the arrival of Europeans, a wide range of com-
plex Native American societies claimed the continent as their own.
Although colonization brought profound change, it did not erase what
had come before because Native American societies interacted with colo-
nizers from the beginning. They shaped colonial enterprise in important
ways, enabling some forms of colonization while preventing others.
Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans were surprisingly similar
in many ways, though the differences among them were important as
well. Their distinctive ideas about gods and the spirit world informed
their political systems and animated their approaches to trade and
warfare. Whether they met in peace or war — or whether peaceful inter-
actions quickly turned violent — Native Americans, Europeans, and
Africans viewed one another through lenses that were shaped by these
ideas.
In Part 1, we compare Native American, European, and African soci-
eties on the eve of colonization and then explore how Europeans experi-
mented with various models of colonization in the first two centuries of
sustained transatlantic contacts. The story in Chapters 1 and 2 addresses
three main developments that are central to this period:
2
Native American Diversity Colonial Settlement and the
and Complexity Columbian Exchange
Popular culture can lead us to think of Native American European colonization triggered a series of sweeping
societies as being substantially the same everywhere in changes that historians have labeled the “Columbian
North America: they were organized into tribes, with Exchange.” At the same time that people crossed the
few material possessions and primitive beliefs and Atlantic in large numbers, so too did plants, animals,
cultures, and reliant mostly on hunting for their and germs. Old World grains like wheat and barley
subsistence. This impression distorts a much more were planted in the Americas for the first time, and
complicated picture. Native American political orga- weeds like dandelions were carried across the ocean
nization ran the gamut from vast, complex imperial as well. Potatoes, maize (corn), and tomatoes, among
states to kin-based bands of hunters and gatherers. other foods, crossed the Atlantic in the other direction
Patterns of political organization varied widely, and and transformed dietary practices in Asia as well as
the familiar label of tribe does more to obscure than Europe. Native Americans domesticated very few
to clarify their workings. Native Americans’ economic animals; the Columbian Exchange introduced horses,
and social systems were adapted to the ecosystems pigs, cattle, and a variety of other creatures to the
they inhabited. Many were extremely productive American landscape. Germs also made the voyage,
farmers, some hunted bison and deer, while others especially the deadly pathogens that had so disor-
were expert salmon fishermen who plied coastal dered life in Europe in the centuries prior to
waters in large oceangoing boats. Native American colonization. Smallpox, influenza, and bubonic
religions and cultures also varied widely, though they plague, among others, took an enormous toll
shared some broad characteristics. on Native American populations. Inanimate materi-
These variations in Native American societies shaped als made the voyage as well: enough gold and silver
colonial enterprise. Europeans conquered and coopted traveled from the Americas to Europe and Asia to
Native American empires with relative ease, but smaller transform the world’s economies, intensifying com-
and more decentralized polities were harder to exploit. petition and empire building in Europe.
Mobile hunter-gatherers appeared politically amor- Old World diseases devastated Native American
phous, but they became especially formidable peoples. On average, they lost ninety percent of their
opponents of colonial expansion. numbers over the first century of contact, forcing them
to cope with European and African newcomers in a
weakened and vulnerable state.

PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700 3

 Transformations of
North America
1450–1700

Experimentation Thematic Understanding

and Transformation
The collisions of American, European, and African This timeline arranges some of the important
worlds challenged the beliefs and practices of all
events of this period into themes. Look at
three groups. Colonization was, above all, a long
and tortured process of experimentation. Over time, the entries for “Ideas, Beliefs, and Culture”
Europeans carved out three distinct types of colonies from 1450 to 1700. How did the Protestant
in the Americas, each shaped by the constraints and
Reformation and the response of the Catholic
opportunities presented by American landscapes and
peoples. Where Native American societies were organized Church influence the colonization of the
into densely settled empires, Europeans conquered the Americas in these years? In the realm of
ruling class and established tribute-based empires of
“Work, Exchange, and Technology,” how did
their own. In tropical and subtropical settings, colo-
nizers created plantation societies that demanded colonial economies evolve, and what roles
large, imported labor forces — a need that was met did Native American and African labor play
through the African slave trade. And in the temperate
regions of the mainland North America, where neither in them? >
the landscape nor the native population yielded easy
wealth, European colonists came in large numbers
hoping to create familiar societies in unfamiliar set-
tings.
Everywhere in the Americas, core beliefs and world-
views were shaken by contact with radically unfamiliar
peoples. Native Americans and Africans struggled to
maintain autonomy in their relations with colonizers,
while Europeans labored to understand — and profit
from — their relations with nonwhite peoples. These
transformations are the subject of Part 1.

4
 WORK, PEOPLING POLITICS & IDEAS, BELIEFS, IDENTITY
EXCHANGE, & POWER & CULTURE
TECHNOLOGY

1450 t Diversified economies t Christopher Columbus t Rise of monarchical t Protestant Reformation t Castile and Aragon
of Native America explores the Bahamas nation-states in Europe (1517) sparks century joined to create Spain;
and West Indies of religious warfare the Inquisition helps
t Rise of the Ottoman t Aztecs and Incas
(1492–1504) create a sense of
Empire blocks Asian consolidate their t Henry VIII creates Spanishness
trading routes of the t Pedro Alvares Cabral empires Church of England
Italian city-states makes landfall in Brazil (1534) t John Calvin establishes
t Probable founding
(1500) a Protestant
t Europeans fish off of the Iroquois t Founding of Jesuit order commonwealth in
North American coast t Spanish conquest Confederacy (1540) Geneva, Switzerland
of Mexico and Peru
t Portuguese traders t Rise of the Songhai
(1519–1535)
explore African coast Empire in Africa

1550 t Growth of the outwork t Castilians and Africans t Elizabeth’s “sea t Philip II defends the t English conquest and
system in English textile arrive in Spanish dogs” plague Spanish Roman Catholic Church persecution of native
industry America in large shipping against Protestantism Irish
numbers
t Spanish encomienda t English monarchs adopt t Elizabeth I adopts t Growing Protestant
system organizes native t English colonies in mercantilist policies Protestant Book of movement in England
labor in Mexico Newfoundland, Maine, Common Prayer (1559)
t Defeat of the Spanish
and Roanoke fail
t Inca mita system is Armada (1588)
co-opted by the Spanish
in the Andes

1600 t First staple exports from t First set of Anglo-Indian t James I claims divine t Persecuted English t Pilgrims and Puritans
the English mainland wars right to rule England Puritans and Catholics seek to create godly
colonies: furs and migrate to America commonwealths
t African servitude begins t Virginia’s House of
tobacco
in Virginia (1619) Burgesses (1619) t Established churches t Powhatan and
t Subsistence farms in set up in Puritan New Virginia Company
t Caribbean islands t English Puritan
New England England and Anglican representatives attempt
move from servitude to Revolution Virginia to extract tribute from
t Transition to sugar slavery
t Native Americans rise each other
plantation system in the t Dissenters settle in
up against English
Caribbean islands Rhode Island
invaders (1622, 1640s)

1700 t Tobacco trade stagnates t Growing gentry t Restoration of the t Metacom’s War in New t Social mobility for
immigration to Virginia English crown (1660) England (1675–1676) Africans ends with
t Maturing yeoman collapse of tobacco
economy and emerging t White indentured t English conquer New t Bacon’s Rebellion calls trade and increased
Atlantic trade in New servitude shapes Netherland (1664) for removal of Indians power of gentry
England Chesapeake society and end of elite rule

t Africans defined t Salem witchcraft crisis

as property rather (1692)
than people in the
Chesapeake

PART 1 THEMATIC TIMELINE, 1450–1700 5

PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450-1700 5
 Colliding Worlds

C H A P T E R
1 1450–1600

I
THE NATIVE AMERICAN n April 1493, a Genoese sailor of humble IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA
EXPERIENCE origins appeared at the court of Queen How did the political, economic, and
The First Americans Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand religious systems of Native Ameri-
American Empires of Aragon along with six Caribbean natives, cans, Europeans, and Africans com-
Chiefdoms and Confederacies numerous colorful parrots, and “samples of pare, and how did things change as
Patterns of Trade finest gold, and many other things never a result of contacts among them?
Sacred Power before seen or heard tell of in Spain.” The
sailor was Christopher Columbus, just returned from his first voyage into the Atlantic.
WESTERN EUROPE: He and his party entered Barcelona’s fortress in a solemn procession. The monarchs
THE EDGE OF THE OLD stood to greet Columbus; he knelt to kiss their hands. They talked for an hour and then
WORLD
adjourned to the royal chapel for a ceremony of thanksgiving. Columbus, now bearing
Hierarchy and Authority
the official title Admiral of the Ocean Sea, remained at court for more than a month.
Peasant Society
The highlight of his stay was the baptism of the six natives, whom Columbus called
Expanding Trade Networks Indians because he mistakenly believed he had sailed westward all the way to Asia.
Myths, Religions, and Holy t
Warriors
In the spring of 1540, the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto met the Lady of
WEST AND CENTRAL Cofachiqui, ruler of a large Native American province in present-day South Carolina.
AFRICA: ORIGINS OF THE Though an epidemic had carried away many of her people, the lady of the province
ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE offered the Spanish expedition as much corn, and as many pearls, as it could carry. As
Empires, Kingdoms, and she spoke to de Soto, she unwound “a great rope of pearls as large as hazelnuts” and
Ministates handed them to the Spaniard; in return he gave her a gold ring set with a ruby. De Soto
Trans-Saharan and Coastal Trade and his men then visited the temples of Cofachiqui, which were guarded by carved
The Spirit World statues and held storehouses of weapons and chest upon chest of pearls. After loading
their horses with corn and pearls, they continued on their way.
EXPLORATION AND
CONQUEST t
A Portuguese traveler named Duarte Lopez visited the African kingdom of Kongo in
Portuguese Expansion
1578. “The men and women are black,” he reported, “some approaching olive colour,
The African Slave Trade
with black curly hair, and others with red. The men are of middle height, and, excepting
Sixteenth-Century Incursions
the black skin, are like the Portuguese.” The royal city of Kongo sat on a high plain that
was “entirely cultivated,” with a population of more than 100,000. The city included a
separate commercial district, a mile around, where Portuguese traders acquired ivory,
wax, honey, palm oil, and slaves from the Kongolese.
t
Three glimpses of three lost worlds. Soon these peoples would be transforming one
another’s societies, often through conflict and exploitation. But at the moment they first
met, Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans stood on roughly equal terms. Even a
hundred years after Columbus’s discovery of the Americas, no one could have foreseen
the shape that their interactions would take in the generations to come. To begin, we
need to understand the three worlds as distinct places, each home to unique societies
and cultures.

6
Village of Secoton, 1585 English colonist John White painted this view of an Algonquian village on
the outer banks of present-day North Carolina. Its cluster of houses surrounded by fields of crops closely
resembled European farming communities of the same era. White captured everyday details of the town’s
social life, including food preparation and a ceremony or celebration in progress (lower right). Service
Historique de la Marine Vincennes, France/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library. 7
 8 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700

central Mexico — home to some 20 million people

The Native American at the time of first contact with Europeans — and the
Andes Mountains, with a population of perhaps 12 mil-
Experience lion. In North America, a secondary trickle of migra-
When Europeans arrived, perhaps 60 million people tion pushed eastward, across the Rockies and into the
occupied the Americas, 7 million of whom lived north Mississippi Valley and the eastern woodlands.
of Mexico. In Mesoamerica (present-day Mexico and Around 6000 b.c., some Native American peoples
Guatemala) and the Andes, empires that rivaled the in present-day Mexico and Peru began raising domes-
greatest civilizations in world history ruled over mil- ticated crops. Mesoamericans cultivated maize into a
lions of people. At the other end of the political spec- nutritious plant with a higher yield per acre than
trum, hunters and gatherers were organized into kin- wheat, barley, or rye, the staple cereals of Europe. In
based bands. Between these extremes, semisedentary Peru they also bred the potato, a root crop of unsur-
societies planted and tended crops in the spring and passed nutritional value. The resulting agricultural sur-
summer, fished and hunted, made war, and conducted pluses encouraged population growth and laid the
trade. Though we often see this spectrum as a hier- foundation for wealthy, urban societies in Mexico and
archy in which the empires are most impressive and Peru, and later in the Mississippi Valley and the south-
important while hunter-gatherers deserve scarcely a eastern woodlands of North America (Map 1.2).
mention, this bias toward civilizations that left behind
monumental architecture and spawned powerful rul-
ing classes is misplaced. Regardless of size or political
American Empires
complexity, the energies and innovations of Native In Mesoamerica and the Andes, the two great empires
American societies everywhere profoundly trans- of the Americas — the Aztecs and Incas — dominated
formed American landscapes. To be fully understood, the landscape. Dense populations, productive agricul-
the Americas must be treated in all their complexity, ture, and an aggressive bureaucratic state were the keys
with an appreciation for their diverse societies and to their power. Each had an impressive capital city.
cultures. Tenochtitlán, established in 1325 at the center of the
Aztec Empire, had at its height around 1500 a popula-
tion of about 250,000, at a time when the European cit-
The First Americans ies of London and Seville each had perhaps 50,000. The
Archaeologists believe that migrants from Asia Aztec state controlled the fertile valleys in the high-
crossed a 100-mile-wide land bridge connecting lands of Mexico, and Aztec merchants forged trading
Siberia and Alaska during the last Ice Age sometime routes that crisscrossed the empire. Trade, along with
between 13,000 and 3000 b.c. and thus became the tribute demanded from subject peoples (comparable
first Americans. The first wave of this migratory to taxes in Europe), brought gold, textiles, turquoise,
stream from Asia lasted from about fifteen thousand obsidian, tropical bird feathers, and cacao to
to nine thousand years ago. Then the glaciers melted, Tenochtitlán. The Europeans who first encountered
and the rising ocean submerged the land bridge this city in 1519 marveled at the city’s wealth and beauty.
beneath the Bering Strait (Map 1.1). Around eight “Some of the soldiers among us who had been in many
thousand years ago, a second movement of peoples, parts of the world,” wrote Spanish conquistador Bernal
traveling by water across the same narrow strait, Díaz del Castillo, “in Constantinople, and all over Italy,
brought the ancestors of the Navajos and the Apaches and in Rome, said that [they had never seen] so large a
to North America. The forebears of the Aleut and Inuit market place and so full of people, and so well regu-
peoples, the “Eskimos,” came in a third wave around lated and arranged” (see American Voices, p. 32).
five thousand years ago. Then, for three hundred gen- Ruled by priests and warrior-nobles, the Aztecs
erations, the peoples of the Western Hemisphere were subjugated most of central Mexico. Captured enemies
largely cut off from the rest of the world. were brought to the capital, where Aztec priests bru-
During this long era, migrants tally sacrificed thousands of them. The Aztecs believed
IDENTIFY CAUSES dispersed through the continents that these ritual murders sustained the cosmos, ensur-
What factors allowed as they hunted and gathered avail- ing fertile fields and the daily return of the sun.
for the development of able resources. The predominant Cuzco, the Inca capital located more than 11,000 feet
empires in central Mexico
flow was southward, and the dens- above sea level, had perhaps 60,000 residents. A dense
and the Andes?
est populations developed in network of roads, storehouses, and administrative
 CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 9

Using a global projection, the cartographer has

placed North America in the center of the map,
but parts of four other continents appear.
A S I A

A
I
Scandinavian

R
ice sheet

E
B
80°E
°E
40
°E E U R O P E
0

S I
JAPAN 12

A
KU

160°E

0°
Pack ice

F R
RI
L

°W
S.
I

16

40
25,000–12,000 B.C.

I C
0°
Greenland

W
Land bridge open 120°W 80°
ice sheet W
Evidence indicates that peoples came

A
40°N
BERINGIA

60°N
from Asia to the Americas during the
Bering Ice Age, when the sea level was much lower
Sea than today and a large land bridge-labeled
Beringia on the map-connected the continents. As scholars learn more about the
ALASKA
advances and retreats of the ice sheets,
the camping sites of the migrating
Co

peoples, and changes in vegetation zones,

rd

a more complete picture of the peopling

of the Americas will emerge.
ill
era

N O R T H

20°N
n i

A M E R I C A
ce s

et
she
RO

PACIFIC OCEAN Laurentide ice

heet

ATL A N T I C
CKY

e
Current scholarship holds that the migrating

o a s tli n
peoples initially traveled on a narrow strip of O CEAN
ice-free land along the Pacific coast. As the

ec
MOU

area between the Cordilleran and Laurentide

a te ice-ag

0°
ice sheets lost its cover of ice, probably between
14,000 and 12,000 B.C., migrants may also have
used the inland routes from present-day
N TA I N

m
Alaska to the American interior.

i
rox
N

app
S

W FLORIDA
E
Gulf of
S Mexico
Ice sheets, c. 16,000 B.C. Caribbean Sea
SOUTH
Ice sheets, c. 12,000 B.C. AMERICA
Vegetation zones:
Many groups, accustomed to
Tundra living at the ocean’s edge,
Conifer forest probably continued along
this route, pushing ever
Deciduous forest southward into South America.
Prairie
Desert 0 500 1,000 miles
Migration route 0 500 1,000 kilometers
(after Tanner)

MAP 1.1
The Ice Age and the Settling of the Americas
Some sixteen thousand years ago, a sheet of ice covered much of Europe and North America. The
ice lowered the level of the world’s oceans, which created a broad bridge of land between Siberia
and Alaska. Using that land bridge, hunting peoples from Asia migrated to North America as they
pursued woolly mammoths and other large game animals and sought ice-free habitats. By 10,000
B.C., the descendants of these migrant peoples had moved south to present-day Florida and central
Mexico. In time, they would settle as far south as the tip of South America and as far east as the
Atlantic coast of North America.
10 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700

ARCTIC O CEAN
INUIT

AL
EU INUIT
T

INUIT

DENE

TLINGIT INUIT
DOGRIB

CHIPEWYAN NASKAPI
HAIDA
TSIMSHIAN
MONTAGNAIS
CREE BEOTHUK
KWAKIUTL
BLACKFEET
SALISH MICMAC
NOOTKA KOOTENAI CREE
ASSINIBOINE ALGONQUIAN
CROW OJIBWA ABENAKI
NEZ PERCÉ HIDATSA PASSAMAQUODDY
PAC I F I C MANDAN IROQUOIS WAMPANOAG
CHEYENNE SIOUX MOHEGAN
OCEAN SAUK NARRAGANSETT
PAWNEE PEQUOT
NORTHERN POTAWATOMI SUSQUEHANNOCK
PAIUTE SHOSHONE IOWA MUNSEE
POMO LENNI
LENAPE DELAWARE
ILLINOIS POWHATAN
ARAPAHO
N SOUTHERN SHAWNEE TUSCARORA
UTE
YO

PAIUTE
W KIOWA
K

NAVAJO TE CHEROKEE
AT L A N T I C
BLO
UT

E ZU WAS CHICKASAW
CHUMASH AC ÑI CADDO
PUE

S PAPAGO HO OMA YAMASEE OCEAN

ETCPI COMANCHE
APACHE . CREEK
CHOCTAW
TIMUCUA
LUCAYO
COCHIMI CALUSA
PIMA COAHUILTEC SEMINOLE
Gulf of
ZACATEC
Mex ico
CIBONEY SUB TAINO
TAINO
TOLTEC
Dominant Economic Activity
NAHUATL
Agriculture (AZTEC) MAYA Caribbean Sea
Hunting-gathering MIXTEC
ZAPOTEC MISKITO
Fishing-gathering

0 500 1,000 miles

CUNA
0 500 1,000 kilometers GUAYMI

MAP 1.2
Native American Peoples, 1492
Having learned to live in many environments, Native Americans populated the entire Western
Hemisphere. They created cultures that ranged from centralized empires (the Incas and Aztecs),
to societies that combined farming with hunting, fishing, and gathering (the Iroquois and
Algonquians), to nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers (the Micmacs and Shoshones). The great
diversity of Native American peoples — in language, tribal identity, and ways of life — and the long-
standing rivalries among neighboring peoples usually prevented them from uniting to resist the
European invaders.

centers stitched together this improbable high-altitude

empire, which ran down the 2,000-mile-long spine of Chiefdoms and Confederacies
the Andes Mountains. A king claiming divine status Nothing on the scale of the Aztec and Inca empires
ruled the empire through a bureaucracy of nobles. Like ever developed north of Mexico, but maize agriculture
the Aztecs, the empire consisted of subordinate king- spread from Mesoamerica across much of North
doms that had been conquered by the Incas, and tribute America beginning around a.d. 1000, laying a founda-
flowed from local centers of power to the imperial core. tion for new ways of life there as well.
 CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 11

Understanding the Cosmos

of the Aztecs
Using Aztec sources, German
geographers drew this map of
Tenochtitlán in 1524. Recent
scholarship suggests that the
Aztecs viewed their city as a
cosmic linchpin, where the human
world brushed up against the
divine. In the center of the city
stand two elevated temples that
represent Coatepec, the Serpent
Mountain and the mythic birth-
place of the Aztecs’ tribal god
Huitzilopochtli. Priests sacrificed
thousands of men and women
here, a ritual the Aztecs believed
transformed the temples into the
Sacred Mountain and sustained
the cosmos. Bildarchiv Preussischer
Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY.

The Mississippi Valley The spread of maize to the shape, and function. Some contain extensive burials;
Mississippi River Valley around a.d. 1000 led to the others, known as platform mounds, were used as bases
development of a large-scale northern Native American for ceremonial buildings or rulers’ homes. Cahokia
culture. The older Adena and Hopewell cultures had had a powerful ruling class and a priesthood that wor-
already introduced moundbuilding and distinctive shipped the sun. After peaking in size around 1350, it
pottery styles to the region. Now residents of the declined rapidly. Scholars speculate that its decline was
Mississippi River Valley experienced the greater urban caused by an era of ruinous warfare, exacerbated by
density and more complex social organization that environmental factors that made the site less habitable.
agriculture encouraged. It had been abandoned by the time Europeans arrived
The city of Cahokia, in the fertile bottomlands in the area.
along the Mississippi River, emerged around 1000 as Mississippian culture endured, however, and was
the foremost center of the new Mississippian culture. still in evidence throughout much of the Southeast at
At its peak, Cahokia’s population exceeded 10,000; the time of first contact with Europeans. The Lady of
smaller satellite communities brought the region’s pop- Cofachiqui encountered by Hernando de Soto in 1540
ulation to 20,000 to 30,000. In an area of 6 square miles, ruled over a Mississippian community, and others dot-
archaeologists have found 120 mounds of varying size, ted the landscape between the Carolinas and the lower
12 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700

Mississippi River. In Florida, sixteenth-century Spanish In this densely forested region, Indians regularly
explorers encountered the Apalachee Indians, who set fires — in New England, twice a year, in spring and
occupied a network of towns built around mounds and fall — to clear away underbrush, open fields, and make
fields of maize. it easier to hunt big game. The catastrophic population
decline accompanying European colonization quickly
Eastern Woodlands In the eastern woodlands, the put an end to seasonal burning, but in the years before
Mississippian-influenced peoples of the Southeast Europeans arrived in North America bison roamed
interacted with other groups, many of whom adopted east as far as modern-day New York and Georgia.
maize agriculture but did not otherwise display Mis- Early European colonists remarked upon landscapes
sissippian characteristics. To the north, Algonquian and that “resemble[d] a stately Parke,” where men could
Iroquoian speakers shared related languages and life- ride among widely spaced trees on horseback and even
ways but were divided into dozens of distinct societies. a “large army” could pass unimpeded (America
Most occupied villages built around fields of maize, Compared, p. 14).
beans, and squash during the summer months; at other Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples had no single
times of the year, they dispersed in smaller groups to style of political organization. Many were chiefdoms,
hunt, fish, and gather. Throughout the eastern wood- with one individual claiming preeminent power in a
lands, as in most of North America, women tended community. Some were paramount chiefdoms, in
crops, gathered plants, and oversaw affairs within the which numerous communities with their own local
community, while men were responsible for activities chiefs banded together under a single, more powerful
beyond it, especially hunting, fishing, and warfare. ruler. For example, the Powhatan Chiefdom, which

The Great Serpent Mound

Scholars long believed that this mound was the work of the Adena peoples (500 B.C.–A.D. 200) because of its
proximity to an Adena burial site in present-day southern Ohio. Recent research places the mound at a much
later date (A.D. 950–1200) and, because of the serpent imagery, ties it to the Fort Ancient culture, which is
closely related to the Mississippian complex. The head of the serpent is aligned with the sunset of the
summer solstice (June 20 or 21 in the Northern Hemisphere), an event of great religious significance to a
sun-worshipping culture. © Bettmann/Corbis.
 CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 13

The Kincaid Site

Located on the north bank of the Ohio River 140 miles from Cahokia, the Kincaid site was a Mississippian
town from c. A.D. 1050 to 1450. It contains at least nineteen mounds topped by large buildings thought to
have been temples or council houses. Now a state historic site in Illinois, it has been studied by anthropolo-
gists and archaeologists since the 1930s. Artist Herb Roe depicts the town as it may have looked at its peak.
Herb Roe, Chromesun Productions.

dominated the Chesapeake Bay region, embraced more drive many of these groups into oblivion and force sur-
than thirty subordinate chiefdoms, and some 20,000 vivors to coalesce into larger groups.
people, by the time Englishmen established the colony Some Native American groups were not chief-
of Virginia in Powhatan territory. Powhatan himself, doms at all, but instead granted political authority to
according to the English colonist John Smith, was councils of sachems, or leaders. This was the case with
attended by “a guard of 40 or 50 of the tallest men his the Iroquois Confederacy. Sometime shortly before
Country affords.” the arrival of Europeans, probably around 1500, five
Elsewhere, especially in the Mid-Atlantic region, nations occupying the region between the Hudson
the power of chiefs was strictly local. Along the River and Lake Erie — the Mohawks, Oneidas,
Delaware and Hudson rivers, Lenni Lenape (or Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas — banded together
Delaware) and Munsee Indians lived in small, inde- to form the Iroquois.
pendent communities without overarching political These groups had been fighting among themselves
organizations. Early European maps of this region for years, caught in a destructive cycle of wars of retri-
show a landscape dotted with a bewildering profusion bution. Then, according to Iroquois legend, a Mohawk
of Indian names. European colonization would soon man named Hiawatha lost his family in one of these
AMERICA
C O M PA R E D

In the eastern woodlands, Native Americans set fires once or twice a year to clear
underbrush and open up landscapes that would otherwise have been densely
wooded. The burnings made it easier to plant corn, beans, and squash and drew
big game animals into the clearings, where hunters could fell them. As European
Altered Landscapes colonization displaced Indian populations, this practice ended. Some scholars
have even suggested that the decline in burning caused a drop of carbon in the
atmosphere large enough to account for the Little Ice Age, an episode of global
cooling that lasted from about 1550 to 1850, though the claim is controversial.

Thomas Morton, Of the Custome in burning the by this custome of theirs, have spoiled all the rest: for this
Country, and the reason thereof (1637) custome hath bin continued from the beginninge.
The Savages are accustomed to set fire of the Country in And least their firing of the Country in this manner
all places where they come, and to burne it twize a yeare, should be an occasion of damnifying us, and indaingering
viz: at the Spring, and the fall of the leafe. The reason that our habitations, wee our selves have used carefully about
mooves them to doe so, is because it would other wise be the same times to observe the winds, and fire the grounds
so overgrowne with underweedes that it would be all a about our owne habitations; to prevent the Dammage that
coppice wood, and the people would not be able in any might happen by any neglect thereof, if the fire should
wise to passe through the Country out of a beaten path. come neere those howses in our absence.
The meanes that they do it with, is with certaine min- For, when the fire is once kindled, it dilates and
erall stones, that they carry about them in baggs made spreads it selfe as well against, as with the winde; burning
for that purpose of the skinnes of little beastes, which continually night and day, untill a shower of raine falls to
they convert into good lether, carrying in the same a quench it.
peece of touch wood, very excellent for that purpose, And this custome of firing the Country is the meanes
of their owne making. These minerall stones they have to make it passable; and by that meanes the trees growe
from the Piquenteenes, (which is to the Southward of all here and there as in our parks: and makes the Country
the plantations in New England,) by trade and trafficke very beautifull and commodious.
with those people.
The burning of the grasse destroyes the underwoods, Source: Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan (Boston: John Wilson and Son, 1883
and so scorcheth the elder trees that it shrinkes them, and [orig. pub. 1637]), 172–173.
hinders their grouth very much: so that hee that will looke
to finde large trees and good tymber, must not depend
upon the help of a woodden prospect to finde them on
the uplandground; but must seeke for them, (as I and oth-
ers have done,) in the lower grounds, where the grounds QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
are wett, when the Country is fired, by reason of the snow 1. What benefits and dangers does Morton attribute to the
water that remaines there for a time, untill the Sunne by practice of Indian burning? How did he and his fellow
colonists respond to the practice?
continuance of that hath exhaled the vapoures of the earth,
2. Since Europeans did not practice widespread burning
and dried up those places where the fire, (by reason of the in the Indian manner, they achieved deforestation only
moisture,) can have no power to doe them any hurt: and slowly, through many years of backbreaking labor. Think-
if he would endevoure to finde out any goodly Cedars, ing comparatively about European and Native American
hee must not seeke for them on the higher grounds, but approaches to landscape management, how would you
assess the benefits and challenges of each approach?
make his inquest for them in the vallies, for the Savages,

14
 CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 15

wars. Stricken by grief, he met a spirit who taught him The Great Plains and Rockies Farther west lies the
a series of condolence rituals. He returned to his people vast, arid steppe region known as the Great Plains,
preaching a new gospel of peace and power, and the which was dominated by the hunting and gathering
condolence rituals he taught became the foundation activities of small, dispersed groups. The geopolitics of
for the Iroquois Confederacy. the Plains Indians was transformed by a European
Once bound by these rituals, the Five Nations import — the horse — long before Europeans them-
began acting together as a political confederacy. They selves arrived. Livestock was introduced in the Spanish
avoided violence among themselves and became one of colony of New Mexico in the late sixteenth century,
the most powerful Native American groups in the and from there horses gradually dispersed across the
Northeast. The Iroquois did not recognize chiefs; plains. Bison hunters who had previously relied on
instead, councils of sachems made decisions. These stealth became much more successful on horseback.
were matriarchal societies, with power inherited Indians on horseback were also more formidable
through female lines of authority. Women were influ- opponents than their counterparts on foot, and some
ential in local councils, though men served as sachems, Plains peoples leveraged their control of horses to
made war, and conducted diplomacy. gain power over their neigh-
Along the southern coast of the region that would bors. The Comanches were a EXPLAIN
soon be called New England, a dense network of small Shoshonean band on the CONSEQUENCES
powerful chiefdoms — including the Narragansetts, northern plains that migrated How did landscape,
Wampanoags, Mohegans, Pequots, and others — south in pursuit of horses. They climate, and resources
competed for resources and dominance. When the became expert raiders, captur- influence the develop-
Dutch and English arrived, they were able to exploit ing people and horses alike and ment of Native American
these rivalries and play Indian groups against one trading them for weapons, food, societies?
another. Farther north, in northern New England and clothing, and other necessities.
much of present-day Canada, the short growing season Eventually they controlled a vast territory. From their
and thin, rocky soil were inhospitable to maize agricul- humble origins, their skill in making war on horseback
ture. Here the native peoples were hunters and gather- made the Comanches one of the region’s most formi-
ers and therefore had smaller and more mobile com- dable peoples.
munities, though they were no less complex than their Similarly, horses allowed the Sioux, a confederation
agriculturally oriented cousins. of seven distinct peoples who originated in present-day
Minnesota, to move west and dominate a vast territory
The Great Lakes To the west, Algonquian-speaking ranging from the Mississippi River to the Black Hills.
peoples dominated the Great Lakes. The tribal groups The Crow Indians moved from the Missouri River to
recognized by Europeans in this region included the the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, where they
Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Potawatomis. But collectively became nomadic bison hunters. Beginning in the mid-
they thought of themselves as a single people: the eighteenth century, they became horse breeders and
Anishinaabe. Clan identities — beaver, otter, sturgeon, traders as well.
deer, and others — crosscut tribal affiliations and were In some places, farming communities were
in some ways more fundamental. The result was a embedded within the much wider geographical range
social landscape that could be bewildering to outsiders. of hunter-gatherers. Thus the Hidatsa and Mandan
Here lived, one French official remarked, “an infinity of Indians maintained settled agricultural villages along
undiscovered nations.” the Missouri River, while the more mobile Sioux dom-
The extensive network of lakes and rivers, and the inated the region around them. Similarly, the Caddo
use of birchbark canoes, made Great Lakes peoples Indians, who lived on the edge of the southern plains,
especially mobile. “They seem to have as many abodes inhabited agricultural communities that were like
as the year has seasons,” wrote one observer. They trav- islands in a sea of more mobile peoples.
eled long distances to hunt and fish, to trade, or to join Three broad swaths of Numic-speaking peoples
in important ceremonies or military alliances. Groups occupied the Great Basin that separated the Rockies
negotiated access to resources and travel routes. Instead from the Sierra Mountains: Bannocks and Northern
of a map with clearly delineated tribal territories, it is Paiutes in the north, Shoshones in the central basin,
best to imagine the Great Lakes as a porous region, and Utes and Southern Paiutes in the south. Resources
where “political power and social identity took on mul- were varied and spread thin on the land. Kin-based
tiple forms,” as one scholar has written. bands traveled great distances to hunt bison along the
16 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700

Yellowstone River (where they shared territory with The Pacific Coast Hunter-gatherers inhabited the
the Crows) and bighorn sheep in high altitudes, to fish Pacific coast. Before the arrival of the Spanish,
for salmon, and to gather pine nuts when they were in California was home to more than 300,000 people,
season. Throughout the Great Basin, some groups subdivided into dozens of small, localized groups and
adopted horses and became relatively powerful, while speaking at least a hundred distinct languages. This
others remained foot-borne and impoverished in com- diversity of languages and cultures discouraged inter-
parison with their more mobile neighbors. marriage and kept these societies independent. Despite
these differences, many groups did share common
The Arid Southwest In the part of North America characteristics, including clearly defined social hierar-
that appears to be most hostile to agriculture — chies separating elites from commoners. They gathered
the canyon-laced country of the arid Southwest — acorns and other nuts and seeds, caught fish and shell-
surprisingly large farming settlements developed. fish, and hunted game.
Anasazi peoples were growing maize by the first cen- The Pacific Northwest also supported a dense pop-
tury a.d., earlier than anywhere else north of Mexico, ulation that was divided into many distinct groups who
and Pueblo cultures emerged around a.d. 600. By controlled small territories and spoke different lan-
a.d. 1000, the Hohokams, Mogollons, and Anasazis (all guages. Their stratified societies were ruled by wealthy
Pueblo peoples) had developed irrigation systems to families. To maintain control of their territories, the
manage scarce water, enabling them to build sizable more powerful nations, including the Chinooks, Coast
villages and towns of adobe and rock that were often Salishes, Haidas, and Tlingits, nurtured strong warrior
molded to sheer canyon walls. Chaco Canyon, in mod- traditions. They developed sophisticated fishing tech-
ern New Mexico, supported a dozen large Anasazi nologies and crafted oceangoing dugout canoes, made
towns, while beyond the canyon a network of roads from enormous cedar trees, that ranged up to 60 feet
tied these settlements together with hundreds of small in length. Their distinctive material culture included
Anasazi villages. large longhouses that were home to dozens of people
Extended droughts and soil exhaustion caused the and totem poles representing clan lineages or local
abandonment of Chaco Canyon and other large settle- legends.
ments in the Southwest after 1150, but smaller com-
munities still dotted the landscape when the first
Europeans arrived. It was the Spanish who called these Patterns of Trade
groups Pueblo Indians: pueblo means “town” in Expansive trade networks tied together regions and
Spanish, and the name refers to their distinctive build- carried valuable goods hundreds and even thousands
ing style. When Europeans arrived, Pueblo peoples, of miles. Trade goods included food and raw materials,
including the Acomas, Zuñis, Tewas, and Hopis, were tools, ritual artifacts, and decorative goods. Trade
found throughout much of modern New Mexico, enriched diets, enhanced economies, and allowed the
Arizona, and western Texas. powerful to set themselves apart with luxury items.

Anasazi Ladle
Crafted between A.D. 1300 and 1600 and
found in a site in central Arizona, this
Anasazi dipper was coiled and molded by
hand and painted with a geometric motif.
Anasazi pottery is abundant in archaeologi-
cal sites, thanks in part to the Southwest’s
dry climate. Clay vessels and ladles helped
Anasazi peoples handle water — one of
their most precious resources — with care.
National Museum of the American Indian,
Smithsonian Institution.
 CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 17

Chilkat Tlingit Bowl

This bowl in the form of a brown bear,
which dates to the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury, is made of alder wood and inlaid
with snail shells. The brown bear is a
Tlingit clan totem. Animal-form bowls like
this one, which express an affinity with
nonhuman creatures, are a common
feature of Tlingit culture. National Museum
of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution.

In areas where Indians specialized in a particular essential. In chiefdoms, rulers filled the same role,
economic activity, regional trade networks allowed often collecting the wealth of a community and then
them to share resources. Thus nomadic hunters of the redistributing it to their followers. Powhatan, the
southern plains, including the Navajos and Apaches, powerful Chesapeake Bay chief, reportedly collected
conducted annual trade fairs with Pueblo farmers, nine-tenths of the produce of the communities he
exchanging hides and meat for maize, pottery, and cot- oversaw — “skins, beads, copper, pearls, deer, turkeys,
ton blankets. Similar patterns of exchange occurred wild beasts, and corn” — but then gave much of it back
throughout the Great Plains, wherever hunters and to his subordinates. His generosity was considered a
farmers coexisted. In some parts of North America, a mark of good leadership. In the Pacific Northwest, the
regional trade in war captives who were offered as Chinook word potlatch refers to periodic festivals in
slaves helped to sustain friendly relations among neigh- which wealthy residents gave away belongings to
boring groups. One such network developed in the friends, family, and followers.
Upper Mississippi River basin, where Plains Indian cap-
tives were traded, or given as diplomatic gifts, to Ottawas
and other Great Lakes and eastern woodlands peoples. Sacred Power
Across longer distances, rare and valuable objects Most Native North Americans were animists who
traveled through networks that spanned much of the believed that the natural world was suffused with spir-
continent. Great Lakes copper, Rocky Mountain mica, itual power. They sought to understand the world by
jasper from Pennsylvania, obsidian from New Mexico interpreting dreams and visions, and their rituals
and Wyoming, and pipestone from the Midwest have appeased guardian spirits that could ensure successful
all been found in archaeological sites hundreds of miles hunts and other forms of good fortune. Although their
from their points of origin. Seashells — often shaped views were subject to countless local variations, certain
and polished into beads and other artifacts — traveled patterns were widespread.
hundreds of miles inland. Grizzly bear claws and eagle Women and men interacted differently with these
feathers were prized, high-status objects. After spiritual forces. In agricultural communities, women
European contact, Indian hunters often traveled long grew crops and maintained hearth, home, and village.
distances to European trading posts to trade for cloth, Native American conceptions of female power linked
iron tools, and weapons. their bodies’ generative functions with the earth’s fertility,
Within Native American groups, powerful leaders and rituals like the Green Corn Ceremony — a summer
controlled a disproportionate share of wealth and ritual of purification and renewal — helped to sustain
redistributed it to prove their generosity and strengthen the life-giving properties of the world around them.
their authority. In small, kin-based bands, the strongest For men, spiritual power was invoked in hunting
hunters possessed the most food, and sharing it was and war. To ensure success in hunting, men took care
 18 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700

not to offend the spirits of the ani- conscripted men for military service, and lived off the
UNDERSTAND POINTS
mals they killed. They performed peasantry’s labor. Yet monarchs were far from supreme:
OF VIEW
How did Native Americans’
rituals before, during, and after a local nobles also owned large estates and controlled
conceptions of the spiritual hunt to acknowledge the power of hundreds of peasant families. Collectively, these nobles
world influence their daily those guardian spirits, and they challenged royal authority with both their military
lives? believed that, when an animal had power and their legislative institutions, such as the
been killed properly, its spirit French parlements and the English House of Lords.
would rise from the earth unharmed. Success in hunt- Just as kings and nobles ruled society, men gov-
ing and prowess in war were both interpreted as signs erned families. These were patriarchies, in which prop-
of sacred protection and power. erty and social identity descended in male family lines.
Ideas about war varied widely. War could be fought Rich or poor, the man was the head of the house, his
for geopolitical reasons — to gain ground against an power justified by the teachings of the Christian
enemy — but for many groups, warfare was a crucial Church. As one English clergyman put it, “The woman
rite of passage for young men, and raids were con- is a weak creature not embued with like strength and
ducted to allow warriors to prove themselves in battle. constancy of mind”; law and custom “subjected her to
Motives for war could be highly personal; war was the power of man.” Once married, an Englishwoman
often more like a blood feud between families than a assumed her husband’s surname, submitted to his
contest between nations. If a community lost warriors orders, and surrendered the right to her property.
in battle, it often retaliated by capturing or killing a like When he died, she received a dower, usually the use
number of warriors in response — a so-called mourn- during her lifetime of one-third of the family’s land and
ing war. Some captives were adopted into new commu- goods.
nities, while others were enslaved or tortured. Men also controlled the lives of their children, who
usually worked for their father into their middle or late
twenties. Then landowning peasants would give land
to their sons and dowries to their daughters and choose
Western Europe: The Edge marriage partners of appropriate wealth and status.
of the Old World In many regions, fathers bestowed all their land on
their eldest son — a practice known as primogeniture —
In 1450, Western Europe lay at the far fringe of the forcing many younger children to join the ranks of the
Eurasian and African continents. It had neither the roaming poor. Few men and even fewer women had
powerful centralized empires nor the hunter-gatherer much personal freedom.
bands and semisedentary societies of the Americas; it Hierarchy and authority prevailed in traditional
was, instead, a patchwork of roughly equivalent king- European society because of the power held by estab-
doms, duchies, and republics vying with one another lished institutions — nobility, church, and village — and
and struggling to reach out effectively to the rest of the because, in a violent and unpredictable world, they
world. No one would have predicted that Europeans offered ordinary people a measure of security. Carried
would soon become overlords of the Western by migrants to America, these security-conscious insti-
Hemisphere. A thousand years after the fall of the tutions would shape the character of family and society
Roman Empire, Europe’s populations still relied on well into the eighteenth century.
subsistence agriculture and were never far from the
specter of famine. Moreover, around 1350, a deadly
plague introduced from Central Asia — the Black Peasant Society
Death — had killed one-third of Europe’s population. In 1450, most Europeans were peasants, farmworkers
The lives of ordinary people were afflicted by poverty, who lived in small villages surrounded by fields farmed
disease, and uncertainty, and the future looked as diffi- cooperatively by different families. On manorial lands,
cult and dark as the past. farming rights were given in exchange for labor on the
lord’s estate, an arrangement that turned peasants into
serfs. Gradually, obligatory manorial services gave way
Hierarchy and Authority to paying rent, or, as in France, landownership. Once
In traditional hierarchical societies — American or freed from the obligation to labor for their farming
European — authority came from above. In Europe, rights, European farmers began to produce surpluses
kings and princes owned vast tracts of land, forcibly and created local market economies.
 CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 19

As with Native Americans, the rhythm of life fol-

lowed the seasons. In March, villagers began the Expanding Trade Networks
exhausting work of plowing and then planting wheat, In the millennium before contact with the Americas,
rye, and oats. During the spring, the men sheared Western Europe was the barbarian fringe of the civi-
wool, which the women washed and spun into yarn. lized world. In the Mediterranean basin, Arab scholars
In June, peasants cut hay and stored it as winter fodder carried on the legacy of Byzantine
for their livestock. During the summer, life was more civilization, which had preserved COMPARE AND
relaxed, and families repaired their houses and barns. the achievements of the Greeks CONTRAST
Fall brought the harvest, followed by solemn feasts of and Romans in medicine, philos- In what ways were
thanksgiving and riotous bouts of merrymaking. As ophy, mathematics, astronomy, the lives of Europeans
winter approached, peasants slaughtered excess live- and geography, while merchants similar to and different
stock and salted or smoked the meat. During the cold controlled trade in the Mediter- from those of Native
months, they threshed grain and wove textiles, visited ranean, Africa, and the Near East. Americans?
friends and relatives, and celebrated the winter sol- This control gave them access to
stice or the birth of Christ. Just before the cycle began spices from India and silks, magnetic compasses,
again in the spring, they held carnivals, celebrating water-powered mills, and mechanical clocks from
with drink and dance the end of the long winter China.
(Figure 1.1). In the twelfth century, merchants from the Italian
For most peasants, survival meant constant labor, city-states of Genoa, Florence, Pisa, and especially
and poverty corroded family relationships. Mal- Venice began to push their way into the Arab-
nourished mothers fed their babies sparingly, calling dominated trade routes of the Mediterranean. Trading
them “greedy and gluttonous,” and many newborn in Alexandria, Beirut, and other eastern Mediterranean
girls were “helped to die” so that their brothers would ports, they carried the luxuries of Asia into European
have enough to eat. Half of all peasant children died markets. At its peak, Venice had a merchant fleet of
before the age of twenty-one, victims of malnourish- more than three thousand ships. This enormously prof-
ment and disease. Many peasants drew on strong reli- itable commerce created wealthy merchants, bankers,
gious beliefs, “counting blessings” and accepting their and textile manufacturers who expanded trade, lent
harsh existence. Others hoped for a better life. It was vast sums of money, and spurred technological innova-
the peasants of Spain, Germany, and Britain who tion in silk and wool production.
would supply the majority of white migrants to the Italian moneyed elites ruled their city-states as
Western Hemisphere. republics, states that had no prince or king but instead

FIGURE 1.1
The Yearly Rhythm of Rural Life and Death Conceptions Deaths
The annual cycle of nature profoundly
affected life in the traditional agricul- Winter Spring Summer Fall
tural world. The death rate soared by 20
percent in February (from viruses) and  
September (from fly-borne dysentery). 120 
Summer was the healthiest season, with
the fewest deaths and the most successful
conceptions (as measured by births nine
months later). A value of 100 indicates an 100
equal number of deaths and conceptions.

80

Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov.
 20 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700

Procession in St. Mark’s Square in Venice, 1496

Venice was one of the world’s great trading centers in the fifteenth century. Its merchant houses connected
Europe to Asia and the Middle East, while its complex republican government aroused both admiration and
mistrust. Here, Venetian painter Gentile Bellini (c. 1429–1507) depicts a diplomatic procession celebrating the
League of Venice, a union of European states opposed to French expansion into Italy. Galleria dell ’Accademia,
Venice, Italy/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

were governed by merchant coalitions. They celebrated with that of kings and nobles. In general, the rise of
civic humanism, an ideology that praised public virtue commerce favored the power of kings at the expense of
and service to the state and in time profoundly influ- the landed nobility. The kings of Western Europe estab-
enced European and American conceptions of govern- lished royal law courts that gradually eclipsed the
ment. They sponsored great artists — Michelangelo, manorial courts controlled by nobles; they also built
Leonardo da Vinci, and others — who produced an bureaucracies that helped them centralize power while
unprecedented flowering of genius. Historians have they forged alliances with merchants and urban arti-
labeled the arts and learning associated with this sans. Monarchs allowed merchants to trade through-
cultural transformation from 1300 to 1450 the out their realms; granted privileges to guilds, or artisan
Renaissance. organizations that regulated trades; and safeguarded
The economic revolution that began in Italy spread commercial transactions, thereby encouraging domes-
slowly to northern and western Europe. England’s tic manufacturing and foreign trade. In return, they
principal export was woolen cloth, which was prized in extracted taxes from towns and loans from merchants
the colder parts of the continent to support their armies and officials.
TRACE CHANGE but had less appeal in southern
OVER TIME Europe and beyond. Northern
How did the growth of Europe had its own trade system, Myths, Religions, and Holy Warriors
commerce shift the struc- controlled by an alliance of mer- The oldest European religious beliefs drew on a form of
ture of power in European chant communities called the animism similar to that of Native Americans, which
societies? Hanseatic League centered on the held that the natural world — the sun, wind, stones,
Baltic and North seas, which dealt animals — was animated by spiritual forces. As in
in timber, furs, wheat and rye, honey, wax, and amber. North America, such beliefs led ancient European
As trade picked up in Europe, merchants and arti- peoples to develop localized cults of knowledge and
sans came to dominate its growing cities and towns. spiritual practice. Wise men and women developed rit-
While the Italian city-states ruled themselves without uals to protect their communities, ensure abundant
having a powerful monarch to contend with, in much harvests, heal illnesses, and bring misfortunes to their
of Europe the power of merchants stood in tension enemies.
 CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 21

The pagan traditions of Greece and Rome overlaid converted to the new state religion. For centuries, the
animism with elaborate myths about gods interacting Roman Catholic Church was the great unifying institu-
directly with the affairs of human beings. As the Roman tion in Western Europe. The pope in Rome headed a
Empire expanded, it built temples to its gods wherever vast hierarchy of cardinals, bishops, and priests.
it planted new settlements. Thus peoples throughout Catholic theologians preserved Latin, the language of
Europe, North Africa, and the Near East were exposed classical scholarship, and imbued kingship with divine
to the Roman pantheon. Soon the teachings of power. Christian dogma provided a common under-
Christianity began to flow in these same channels. standing of God and human history, and the authority
of the Church buttressed state institutions. Every vil-
The Rise of Christianity Christianity, which grew lage had a church, and holy shrines served as points of
out of Jewish monotheism (the belief in one god), held contact with the sacred world. Often those shrines had
that Jesus Christ was himself divine. As an institution, their origins in older, animist practices, now largely
Christianity benefitted enormously from the conver- forgotten and replaced with Christian ritual.
sion of the Roman emperor Constantine in a.d. 312. Christian doctrine penetrated deeply into the every-
Prior to that time, Christians were an underground day lives of peasants. While animist traditions held that
sect at odds with the Roman Empire. After Constantine’s spiritual forces were alive in the natural world, Christian
conversion, Christianity became Rome’s official reli- priests taught that the natural world was flawed and
gion, temples were abandoned or remade into churches, fallen. Spiritual power came from outside nature, from
and noblemen who hoped to retain their influence a supernatural God who had sent his divine son, Jesus

The Last Judgment, 1467–1471

Death — and their fate in the after-
life — loomed large in the minds of
fifteenth-century Christians, and artists
depicted their hopes and fears in vividly
rendered scenes. In this painting by the
German-Flemish artist Hans Memling
(c. 1433–1494), Christ and his apostles sit
in judgment as the world ends and the
dead rise from their graves. The archangel
Michael weighs the souls of the dead in a
balance to determine their final fate:
either eternal life with God in heaven or
everlasting punishment in hell. Erich Lessing/
Art Resource, NY.
 22 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700

Christ, into the world to save humanity from its sins. the centers of civilization in Eurasia and Africa, but the
The Christian Church devised a religious calendar that Crusades and the rise of Italian merchant houses had
transformed animist festivals into holy days. The win- introduced it to a wider world.
ter solstice, which had for millennia marked the return
of the sun, became the feast of Christmas. The Reformation In 1517, Martin Luther, a Ger-
The Church also taught that Satan, a wicked super- man monk and professor at the university in Witten-
natural being, was constantly challenging God by berg, took up the cause of reform in the Catholic
tempting people to sin. People who spread here- Church. Luther’s Ninety-five Theses condemned the
sies — doctrines that were inconsistent with the teach- Church for many corrupt practices. More radically,
ings of the Church — were seen as the tools of Satan, Luther downplayed the role of the clergy as mediators
and suppressing false doctrines became an obligation between God and believers and said that Christians
of Christian rulers. must look to the Bible, not to the Church, as the ulti-
mate authority in matters of faith. So that every literate
The Crusades In their work suppressing false German could read the Bible, previously available only
doctrines, Christian rulers were also obliged to com- in Latin, Luther translated it into German.
bat Islam, the religion whose followers considered Meanwhile, in Geneva, Switzerland, French theolo-
Muhammad to be God’s last prophet. Islam’s reach gian John Calvin established a rigorous Protestant
expanded until it threatened European Christendom. regime. Even more than Luther, Calvin stressed human
Following the death of Muhammad in a.d. 632, the weakness and God’s omnipotence. His Institutes of the
newly converted Arab peoples of North Africa used Christian Religion (1536) depicted God as an absolute
force and fervor to spread the Muslim faith into sub- sovereign. Calvin preached the doctrine of predestina-
Saharan Africa, India, and Indonesia, as well as deep tion, the idea that God chooses certain people for sal-
into Spain and the Balkan regions of Europe. Between vation before they are born and condemns the rest
a.d. 1096 and 1291, Christian armies undertook a to eternal damnation. In Geneva, he set up a model
series of Crusades to reverse the Muslim advance in Christian community and placed spiritual authority in
Europe and win back the holy lands where Christ had ministers who ruled the city, prohibiting frivolity and
lived. Under the banner of the pope and led by Europe’s luxury. “We know,” wrote Calvin, “that man is of so
Christian monarchs, crusading armies aroused great perverse and crooked a nature, that everyone would
waves of popular piety as they marched off to combat. scratch out his neighbor’s eyes if there were no bridle to
New orders of knights, like the Knights Templar and hold them in.” Calvin’s authoritarian doctrine won
the Teutonic Knights, were created to support them. converts all over Europe, including the Puritans in
The crusaders had some military successes, but Scotland and England.
their most profound impact was on European society. Luther’s criticisms triggered a war between the
Religious warfare intensified Europe’s Christian iden- Holy Roman Empire and the northern principalities
tity and prompted the persecution of Jews and their in Germany, and soon the controversy between the
expulsion from many European countries. The Roman Catholic Church and radical reformers like
Crusades also introduced Western European merchants Luther and Calvin spread throughout much of Western
to the trade routes that stretched from Constantinople Europe. The Protestant Reformation, as this move-
to China along the Silk Road and from the Medi- ment came to be called, triggered a Counter-
terranean Sea through the Persian Gulf to the Indian Reformation in the Catholic Church that sought
Ocean. And crusaders encountered sugar for the first change from within and created new monastic and
time. Returning soldiers brought it back from the missionary orders, including the Jesuits (founded in
Middle East, and as Europeans began to conquer terri- 1540), who saw themselves as soldiers of Christ. The
tory in the eastern Mediterranean, they experimented competition between these divergent Christian tradi-
with raising it themselves. These early experiments with tions did much to shape European colonization of the
sugar would have a profound Americas. Roman Catholic powers — Spain, Portugal,
TRACE CHANGE impact on European enterprise and France — sought to win souls in the Americas for
OVER TIME in the Americas — and European the Church, while Protestant nations — England and
How did the growing involvement with the African the Netherlands — viewed the Catholic Church as cor-
influence of the Christian
slave trade — in the centuries to rupt and exploitative and hoped instead to create
Church affect events in
come. By 1450, Western Europe godly communities attuned to the true gospel of
Europe?
remained relatively isolated from Christianity.
 CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 23

North Africa, where Ghana traders carried the wealth

West and Central Africa: of West Africa. The Ghana Empire gave way to the Mali
Empire in the thirteenth century, which was eclipsed in
Origins of the Atlantic turn by the Songhai Empire in the fifteenth century. All
Slave Trade three empires were composed of smaller vassal king-
doms, not unlike the Aztec and Inca empires, and
Homo sapiens originated in Africa. Numerous civiliza- relied on military might to control their valuable trade
tions had already risen and fallen there, and contacts routes.
with the Near East and the Mediterranean were millen- Gold, abundant in West Africa, was the corner-
nia old, when Western Europeans began sailing down stone of power and an indispensable medium of inter-
its Atlantic coast. Home to perhaps 100 million in national trade. By 1450, West African traders had
1400, Africa was divided by the vast expanse of the carried so much of it across the Sahara that it consti-
Sahara. North Africa bordered on the Mediterranean, tuted one-half to two-thirds of all the gold in circula-
and its peoples fell under the domination of Christian tion in Europe, North Africa, and Asia. Mansa Musa,
Byzantium until the seventh century, when Muslim the tenth emperor of Mali, was a devout Muslim
conquests brought the region under Islamic influence. famed for his construction projects and his support of
In its coastal seaports, the merchandise of Asia, the mosques and schools. In 1326, he embarked on a pil-
Near East, Africa, and Europe converged. South of the grimage to Mecca with a vast retinue that crossed the
Sahara, by contrast, the societies of West and Central Sahara and passed through Egypt. They spent so much
Africa bordering on the Atlantic were relatively iso- gold along the way that the region’s money supply was
lated. After 1400, that would quickly change. devalued for more than a decade after their visit.
To the south of these empires, the lower savanna
and tropical rain forest of West Africa were home to a
Empires, Kingdoms, and Ministates complex mosaic of kingdoms that traded among them-
West Africa — the part of the continent that bulges into selves and with the empires to the north. In such a
the Atlantic — can be visualized as a broad horizontal densely populated, resource-rich region, they also
swath divided into three climatic zones. The Sahel is fought frequently in a competition for local power. A
the mostly flat, semiarid zone immediately south of the few of these coastal kingdoms were quite large in size,
Sahara. Below it lies the savanna, a grassland region but most were small enough that they have been
dotted with trees and shrubs. South of the savanna, in termed ministates by historians. Comparable to the
a band 200 to 300 miles wide along the West African city-states of Italy, they were often about the size of a
coast, lies a tropical rain forest. A series of four major modern-day county in the United States. The tropical
watersheds — the Senegal, Gambia, Volta, and Niger — ecosystem prevented them from raising livestock, since
dominate West Africa (Map 1.3). the tsetse fly (which carries a parasite deadly to live-
Sudanic civilization took root at the eastern end stock) was endemic to the region,
of West Africa beginning around 9000 b.c. and trav- as was malaria. In place of the COMPARE AND
eled westward. Sudanic peoples domesticated cattle grain crops of the savanna, these CONTRAST
(8500–7500 b.c.) and cultivated sorghum and millet peoples pioneered the cultivation How do the states of
(7500–7000 b.c.). Over several thousand years, these of yams; they also gathered the savanna compare to
those of the Americas and
peoples developed a distinctive style of pottery, began resources from the rivers and
Europe?
to cultivate and weave cotton (6500–3500 b.c.), and seacoast.
invented techniques for working copper and iron
(2500–1000 b.c.). Sudanic civilization had its own tra-
dition of monotheism distinct from that of Christians, Trans-Saharan and Coastal Trade
Muslims, and Jews. Most Sudanic peoples in West For centuries, the primary avenue of trade for West
Africa lived in stratified states ruled by kings and Africans passed through the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai
princes who were regarded as divine. empires, whose power was based on the monopoly
From these cultural origins, three great empires they enjoyed over the trans-Saharan trade. Their
arose in succession in the northern savanna. The first, caravans carried West African goods — including
the Ghana Empire, appeared sometime around a.d. gold, copper, salt, and slaves — from the south to the
800. Ghana capitalized on the recently domesticated north across the Sahara, then returned with textiles
camel to pioneer trade routes across the Sahara to and other foreign goods. For the smaller states clustered
24 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700

.
aR
London Amsterdam
lg

Vo
Rh
ine
N

R.
Paris Danube
R.
W E
Venice
S Genoa
Aral
Sea

Ca
Black Sea

sp
ATLANTIC Istanbul

ia n
Madrid
OCEAN

S ea
Lisbon

Tunis Antioch Silk Road

Fez Med from Asia
iterr
Madeira anean
Sea
Alexandria

Pe
CANARY IS.

r si
n

a
Gu
Cape lf
Bojador
S A H A R A D E S E R T

Re
dS
ea
Senega Timbuktu Bilma Arabian Sea
l
DAURA KANEM
R.

CAPE Gao
TAKRUR Djenné from India
Ni

VERDE
Gambia R HAUSA
ge

IS.

e R.
Songhay
rR

.
Volta R .

BORNU

N il
MALI
GUINEA
OYO YORUBA KINGDOMS
BENIN
Elmina INDIAN OCEAN
o
Cong R.

Senega MOORS
l
WOLOF FULANI BERBERS
R.

Cape
Ni

Verde a mbia MANDINGO

G R
ge

.
rR

LOANGO
.
Volta R.

SUSU KONGO
FONS
KR ASHANTI YORUBA 0 250 500 miles
UM
EN AWIKAM EWE IBIBIO ANGOLA
Bight of IBO EFIK 0 250 500 kilometers
Benin
Grain Coast Gold Coast Bight of SEKE
Biafra Overland trade routes
Ivory Coast Slave Coast Sea trade routes

MAP 1.3
West Africa and the Mediterranean in the Fifteenth Century
Trade routes across the Sahara had long connected West Africa with the Mediterranean region.
Gold, ivory, and slaves moved north and east; fine textiles, spices, and the Muslim faith traveled
south. Beginning in the 1430s, the Portuguese opened up maritime trade with the coastal regions
of West Africa, which were home to many peoples and dozens of large and small states. Over the
next century, the movement of gold and slaves into the Atlantic would surpass that across the
Sahara.

along the West African coast, merchandise originating the mouths of the Senegal and Gambia rivers, numer-
in the world beyond the Sahara was scarce and expen- ous Mande-speaking states controlled access to the
sive, while markets for their own products were trade routes into the interior. Proceeding farther along
limited. the coast, they encountered the Akan states, a region
Beginning in the mid-fifteenth century, a newly of several dozen independent but culturally linked
opening coastal trade with Europeans offered many peoples. The Akan states had goldfields of their own,
West African peoples a welcome alternative. As and this region soon became known to Europeans as
European sailors made their way along the coast of the Gold Coast. East of the Akan states lay the Bight of
West and then Central Africa, they encountered a Benin, which became an early center of the slave trade
bewilderingly complicated political landscape. Around and thus came to be called the Slave Coast. Bending
 CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 25

Africans acknowledged multiple gods, as well as spirits

that lived in the earth, animals, and plants.
Like animists in the Americas and Europe, African
communities had wise men and women adept at
manipulating these forces for good or ill. The Sudanic
tradition of divine kingship persisted, and many
people believed that their kings could contact the spirit
world. West Africans treated their ancestors with great
respect, believing that the dead resided in a nearby spir-
itual realm and interceded in their lives. Most West
African peoples had secret societies, such as the Poro
for men and the Sande for women,
that united people from different PLACE EVENTS IN
lineages and clans. These societies CONTEXT
conducted rituals that celebrated Why were West African
male virility and female fertility. leaders eager to engage in
“Without children you are naked,” trade with Europeans?
said a Yoruba proverb. Happy was
the man with a big household, many wives, many chil-
dren, and many relatives — and, in a not very different
vein, many slaves.

Terracotta Figure from Mali Exploration and Conquest

Dating to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, this terracotta
European engagement with the wider Atlantic world
figure came from an archaeological site near Djenna. The
rider wears a large, ornate necklace, while the horse has a began around 1400, when the Portuguese monarchy
decorative covering on its head. The Mali Empire relied on a propelled Europe into overseas expansion. Portugal
large cavalry to expand and defend its borders, and the horse soon took a leading role in the African slave trade,
was an important symbol of Mali’s wealth and power. Werner
Forman/Art Resource, NY.
while the newly unified kingdom of Spain undertook
Europe’s first conquests in the Americas. These two ven-
tures, though not initially linked, eventually became
south, fifteenth-century sailors encountered the King- cornerstones in the creation of the “Atlantic World.”
dom of Kongo in Central Africa, the largest state on the
Atlantic seaboard, with a coastline that ran for some
Portuguese Expansion
250 miles. It was here in 1578 that Duarte Lopez visited
the capital city of more than 100,000 residents. As a young soldier fighting North African Moors with
Wherever they went ashore along this route, European the Crusading Order of Christ, Prince Henry of
traders had to negotiate contacts on local terms Portugal (1394–1460) learned of Arab merchants’ rich
(Thinking Like a Historian, p. 26). trade in gold and slaves across the Sahara. Seeking a
maritime route to the source of this trade in West
Africa, Henry founded a center for oceanic navigation.
The Spirit World Henry’s mariners, challenged to find a way through the
Some West Africans who lived immediately south treacherous waters off the northwest African coast,
of the Sahara — the Fulanis in Senegal, the Mande- designed a better-handling vessel, the caravel, rigged
speakers in Mali, and the Hausas in northern with a lateen (triangular) sail that enabled the ship to
Nigeria — learned about Islam from Arab merchants tack into the wind. This innovation allowed them to
and Muslim leaders called imams. Converts to Islam sail far into the Atlantic, where they discovered and
knew the Koran and worshipped only a single God. colonized the Madeira and Azore islands. From there,
Some of their cities, like Timbuktu, the legendary com- they sailed in 1435 to sub-Saharan Sierra Leone, where
mercial center on the Niger River, became centers of they exchanged salt, wine, and fish for African ivory
Islamic learning and instruction. But most West and gold.
THINKING LIKE
A HISTORIAN

Carefully consider each of the objects or texts below. What meanings might
Colliding Cultures you — thinking like a historian — impart to them?

1. Mississippian warrior gorget (neck guard), A.D. does he miss what he shoots at. If the arrow does not find
1250–1350. armor, it penetrates as deeply as a crossbow. The bows are
very long and the arrows are made of certain reeds like
canes, very heavy and so tough that a sharpened cane
passes through a shield. Some are pointed with a fish
bone, as sharp as an awl, and others with a certain stone
like a diamond point.

3. Duarte Lopez, A Report on the Kingdom of Kongo,

1591. A Portuguese explorer’s account of his travels
in southern Africa in the sixteenth century.
[T]he Kingdom of Sofala lies between the two rivers,
Magnice and Cuama, on the sea-coast. It is small in size,
and has but few villages and towns. . . . It is peopled by
Mohammedans, and the king himself belongs to the same
sect. He pays allegiance to the crown of Portugal, in order
not to be subject to the government of Monomotapa
[Mutapa]. On this account the Portuguese have a fortress
Source: The National Museum of the American Indian/George Gustav Heye at the mouth of the River Cuama, trading with those
Center/New York, NY William E. Meyer Collection 15/853.
countries in gold, amber, and ivory, all found on that
coast, as well as in slaves, and giving in exchange silk
2. Portuguese officer’s account of de Soto’s expedi- stuffs and taffetas. . . . It is said, that from these regions
tion, 1557. This excerpt describes Indian resistance the gold was brought by sea which served for Solomon’s
in the face of de Soto’s campaign of conquest Temple at Jerusalem, a fact by no means improbable, for
against Indians in the southeastern United States. in these countries of Monomotapa are found several
ancient buildings of stone, brick, and wood, and of such
[Spanish soldiers] went over a swampy land where the
wonderful workmanship, and architecture, as is nowhere
horsemen could not go. A half league from camp they
seen in the surrounding provinces.
came upon some Indian huts near the river; [but] the
The Kingdom of Monomotapa is extensive, and has a
people who were inside them plunged into the river. They
large population of Pagan heathens, who are black, of
captured four Indian women, and twenty Indians came at
middle stature, swift of foot, and in battle fight with great
us and attacked us so stoutly that we had to retreat to the
bravery, their weapons being bows and arrows, and light
camp, because of their being (as they are) so skillful with
darts. There are numerous kings tributary to Monomo-
their weapons. Those people are so warlike and so quick
tapa, who constantly rebel and wage war against it. The
that they make no account of foot soldiers; for if these go
Emperor maintains large armies, which in the provinces
for them, they flee, and when their adversaries turn their
are divided into legions, after the manner of the Romans,
backs they are immediately on them. The farthest they
for, being a great ruler, he must be at constant warfare in
flee is the distance of an arrow shot. They are never quiet
order to maintain his dominion. Amongst his warriors,
but always running and crossing from one side to another
those most renowned for bravery, are the female legions,
so that the crossbows or the arquebuses can not be aimed
greatly valued by the Emperor, being the sinews of his
at them; and before a crossbowman can fire a shot, an
military strength.
Indian can shoot three or four arrows, and very seldom

26
4. Benin figurine of a Portuguese soldier from the 6. Sixteenth- or seventeenth-century Spanish silver
seventeenth century. This brass figure would have real. Spain minted enormous quantities of Ameri-
been kept on an altar or on the roof of the royal can silver; much of it was shipped to Manila, where
palace of Benin. it was exchanged for Asian luxury goods.

Source: © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.

Sources: (2) John E. Worth, “Account of the Northern Conquest and Discovery of
Hernando de Soto by Rodrigo Rangel,” trans. John E. Worth, in Lawrence A. Clayton et
al., eds., The De Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America
in 1539–1543 (University of Alabama Press, 1993), 59; (3) Filippo Pigafetta, A Report of
Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY. the Kingdom of Congo, trans. Margarite Hutchinson (London: John Murray, 1881),
117–119.

5. Sixteenth-century Portuguese coin made from

African gold. Before the discovery of the Americas,
half of the Old World’s gold came from sub- ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
Saharan Africa. 1. What can you infer about cultural values among Missis-
sippian peoples from source 1? About the cultural values
of the Spanish and Portuguese from sources 5 and 6?
What can’t you infer from these objects?
2. How does de Soto describe the native peoples he
encounters in Florida (source 2)? How does that com-
pare to the traits of the African kingdoms that Lopez
comments upon in source 3? Why might the king
of Sofala prefer a Portuguese alliance to subjection
to Monomotapa?
3. What does source 4 suggest about Benin relations with
the Portuguese?

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

What do these sources tell us about the ways Native Ameri-
cans, Europeans, and Africans thought about themselves,
perceived one another, and capitalized on cross-cultural
exchanges as they came into sustained contact? Write a
short essay that considers the connection between the
impulses of warfare and commerce, which appear again
and again in contact settings.
Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY.

27
 28 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700

Banza in the Kingdom of Kongo, c. 1670

The city of Banza, or Mbanza Kongo, was the capital of the Kingdom of Kongo when Portuguese traders
first arrived in 1483. Kongo’s king, Nzinga a Nkuwu, chose to be baptized to cement an alliance with Por-
tugal and took the name João I. Kongo became officially Christian and Banza came to be known as São
Salvador. Duarte Lopez visited and described the city in 1578; this engraving shows the city as it appeared
a century later. Banza in the Kingdom of Kongo, San Salvador, from Olfert Dapper, ca. 1668.

Henry’s efforts were soon joined to those of Italian Madeira was producing 2,500 metric tons a year,
merchants, who were being forced out of eastern and Madeira sugar was available — in small, expensive
Mediterranean trade routes by the rising power of the quantities — in London, Paris, Rome, and Constan-
Ottoman Empire. Cut off from Asia, Genoese traders tinople. Most of the islands were unpopulated. The
sought an Atlantic route to the lucrative markets of the Canaries were the exception; it took Castilian adven-
Indian Ocean. They began to work with Portuguese turers decades to conquer the Guanches who lived
and Castilian mariners and monarchs to finance trad- there. Once defeated, they were enslaved to labor in the
ing voyages, and the African coast and its offshore Canaries or on Madeira, where they carved irrigation
islands opened to their efforts. European voyagers dis- canals into the island’s steep rock cliffs.
covered the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands, and São Europeans made no such inroads on the continent
Tomé; all of them became laboratories for the expan- of Africa itself. The coastal kingdoms were well
sion of Mediterranean agriculture. defended, and yellow fever, malaria, and dysentery
On these Atlantic islands, planters transformed quickly struck down Europeans who spent any time in
local ecosystems to experiment the interior of West Africa. Instead they maintained
IDENTIFY CAUSES with a variety of familiar cash small, fortified trading posts on offshore islands or
How did Europe’s desire crops: wheat, wine grapes, and along the coast, usually as guests of the local king.
for an ocean route to Asia woad, a blue dye plant; livestock Portuguese mariners continued to look for an
shape its contacts with
and honeybees; and, where the Atlantic route to Asia. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias
Africa?
climate permitted, sugar. By 1500, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, the southern tip of
 CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 29

Africa. Vasco da Gama reached East Africa in 1497 and

India in the following year; his ships were mistaken for The African Slave Trade
those of Chinese traders, the last pale-skinned men to Portuguese traders likewise ousted Arab merchants
arrive by sea. Although da Gama’s inferior goods — tin as the prime purveyors of African slaves. Coerced
basins, coarse cloth, honey, and coral beads — were labor — through slavery, serfdom, or indentured servi-
snubbed by the Arab and Indian merchants along tude — was the norm in most premodern societies,
India’s Malabar Coast, he managed to acquire a highly and in Africa slavery was wide-
profitable cargo of cinnamon and pepper. Da Gama spread. Some Africans were TRACE CHANGE
returned to India in 1502 with twenty-one fighting ves- held in bondage as security for OVER TIME
sels, which outmaneuvered and outgunned the Arab debts; others were sold into ser- How was the African slave
fleets. Soon the Portuguese government set up fortified vitude by their kin in exchange trade adapted to Euro-
trading posts for its merchants at key points around the for food in times of famine; pean needs?
Indian Ocean, in Indonesia, and along the coast of many others were war captives.
China (Map 1.4). In a transition that sparked the Slaves were a key commodity of exchange, sold as agri-
momentous growth of European wealth and power, the cultural laborers, concubines, or military recruits.
Portuguese and then the Dutch replaced the Arabs as Sometimes their descendants were freed, but others
the leaders in Asian commerce. endured hereditary bondage. Sonni Ali (r. 1464–1492),

EUROPE
Novgorod
ENGLAND A S I A
CABOT (1497) Kiev
Bruges
MONGOLIA
Venice Kaffa
Genoa Ansi
Granada Constantinople Merv Kashgar Beijing
N O RTH AMERICA Antioch
Balkh JAPAN
ATLANTIC OCEAN Fez Tunis Mediterranean Sea Baghdad Hangzhou
Basra CHINA
DE SOTO (1539–42) Alexandria Aleppo PERSIA PACIFIC
AZTEC Ormuz
EMPIRE ARABIA INDIA Guangzhou OCEAN
COLUMBUS (1493–94) Surat
Mecca Cambay
Tenochtitlán Timbuktu
Aden Masulipatam PHILIPPINES
Bilma Calicut
) Jenne
01

AFRICA Ceylon
15

DI
AS
I(

Malacca
CC

(14 Mogadishu
MALABAR
SOUTH 87 MOLUCCAS
U

–8 COAST Sumatra
SP

8)
AMERICA
VE

Zanzibar Java
INCA Cuzco
EMPIRE Sofala INDIAN OCEAN
PACIFIC OCEAN AUSTRALIA
DA
GAM
A (1497–98)
Trade Routes European Explorations to 1500
Arab Dias (1487–88)
N Trans-Asian/Mongol Columbus (1493–94)
European Cabot (1497)
W E
Aztec/North American da Gama (1497–98)
S Inca/Andean Vespucci (1501)
0 2,000 4,000 miles
de Soto (1539–1542)
0 2,000 4,000 kilometers

MAP 1.4
The Eurasian Trade System and European Maritime Ventures, c. 1500
For centuries, the Mediterranean Sea was the meeting point for the commerce of Europe, North
Africa, and Asia — via the Silk Road from China and the Spice Route from India. Beginning in the
1490s, Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch rulers and merchants subsidized Christian maritime explorers
who discovered new trade routes around Africa and new sources of wealth in the Americas. These
initiatives undermined the commercial primacy of the Arab Muslim–dominated Mediterranean.
30 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700

the ruler of the powerful Songhai Empire, personally where they bought gold and slaves from African
owned twelve “tribes” of hereditary agricultural slaves, princes and warlords. First they enslaved a few thou-
many of them seized in raids against stateless peoples. sand Africans each year to work on sugar plantations
Slaves were also central to the trans-Saharan trade. on São Tomé, Cape Verde, the Azores, and Madeira;
When the renowned Tunisian adventurer Ibn Battuta they also sold slaves in Lisbon, which soon had an
crossed the Sahara from the Kingdom of Mali around African population of 9,000. After 1550, the Atlantic
1350, he traveled with a caravan of six hundred female slave trade, a forced diaspora of African peoples,
slaves, destined for domestic service or concubinage expanded enormously as Europeans set up sugar plan-
in North Africa, Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire. tations in Brazil and the West Indies.
Between a.d. 700 and 1900, it is estimated that as many
as nine million Africans were sold in the trans-Saharan
slave trade. Sixteenth-Century Incursions
Europeans initially were much more interested in As Portuguese traders sailed south and east, the Spanish
trading for gold and other commodities than in trad- monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of
ing for human beings, but gradually they discovered Castile financed an explorer who looked to the west. As
the enormous value of human trafficking. To exploit Renaissance rulers, Ferdinand (r. 1474–1516) and
and redirect the existing African slave trade, Portuguese Isabella (r. 1474–1504) saw national unity and foreign
merchants established fortified trading posts like those commerce as the keys to power and prosperity. Married
in the Indian Ocean beginning at Elmina in 1482, in an arranged match to combine their Christian

The Map Behind Columbus’s Voyage

In 1489, Henricus Martellus, a German cartographer living in Florence, produced this huge (4 feet by 6 feet)
view of the known world, probably working from a map devised by Christopher Columbus’s brother,
Bartholomew. The map uses the spatial projection of the ancient Greek philosopher Claudius Ptolemy
(A.D. 90–168) and incorporates information from Marco Polo’s explorations in Asia and Bartolomeu Dias’s
recent voyage around the tip of Africa. Most important, it greatly exaggerates the width of Eurasia,
thereby suggesting that Asia lies only 5,000 miles west of Europe (rather than the actual distance
of 15,000 miles). Using Martellus’s map, Columbus persuaded the Spanish monarchs to support his
westward voyage. Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY.
 CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 31

kingdoms, the young rulers completed the centuries- Columbus set sail in three small ships in August
long reconquista, the campaign by Spanish Catholics 1492. Six weeks later, after a perilous voyage of 3,000
to drive Muslim Arabs from the European mainland, by miles, he disembarked on an island in the present-day
capturing Granada, the last Islamic territory in Western Bahamas. Believing that he had reached Asia — “the
Europe, in 1492. Using Catholicism to build a sense of Indies,” in fifteenth-century parlance — Columbus
“Spanishness,” they launched the brutal Inquisition called the native inhabitants Indians and the islands
against suspected Christian heretics and expelled or the West Indies. He was surprised by the crude living
forcibly converted thousands of Jews and Muslims. conditions but expected the native peoples “easily [to]
be made Christians.” He claimed the islands for Spain
Columbus and the Caribbean Simultaneously, and then explored the neighboring Caribbean islands
Ferdinand and Isabella sought trade and empire by and demanded tribute from the local Taino, Arawak,
subsidizing the voyages of Christopher Columbus, an and Carib peoples. Buoyed by stories of rivers of gold
ambitious and daring mariner from Genoa. Columbus lying “to the west,” Columbus left forty men on the
believed that the Atlantic Ocean, long feared by Arab island of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the
merchants as a 10,000-mile-wide “green sea of darkness,” Dominican Republic) and returned triumphantly to
was a much narrower channel of water separating Spain (Map 1.5).
Europe from Asia. After cajoling and lobbying for six
years, Columbus persuaded Genoese investors in
Seville; influential courtiers; and, finally, Ferdinand To see a longer excerpt of Columbus’s views of the
and Isabella to accept his dubious theories and finance West Indies, along with other primary sources from
this period, see Sources for America’s History.
a western voyage to Asia.

110W NORTH 100W 90W 80W 70W 60W

AMERICA ATL A N TI C
 Gulf of Mexico CUBA
OCEAN
S
 8[PDO
HISPANIOLA 20N
7HQRFKWLWOiQ  9HUDFUX]
 &KROXOD G 6DQWR
'RPLQJR

 7LNDO PUERTO
RICO

0 250 500 miles  &RSDQ


G
Caribbean Sea
N
0 250 500 kilometers

W E
TRINIDAD
S 
G 10N


G
PAC I F I C O C E A N
SOUTH
AMERICA
INCA
EMPIRE

G
Area of
main map SOUTH GALÁPAGOS IS.
0
AMERICA
Aztec Empire  Mining area Columbus’s voyages Cortés’s conquest
1498–1500 1519–1521
Mayan Empire S Silver 1502–1504 Pizarro’s conquest
Inca Empire G Gold 1524–1535

MAP 1.5
The Spanish Conquest of America’s Great Empires
The Spanish first invaded the islands of the Caribbean, largely wiping out the native peoples.
Rumors of a gold-rich civilization led to Cortés’s invasion of the Aztec Empire in 1519. By 1535,
other Spanish conquistadors had conquered the Mayan temple cities and the Inca empire in Peru,
completing one of the great conquests in world history.
AMERICAN
VOICES

How could a Spanish force of 600 men take control of an empire of 20 million
people? That the Spanish had steel swords, armor, some guns, horses, and attack
dogs certainly gave them a military advantage. Still, concerted attack by the
armies of the Aztecs and their allies would have overwhelmed the invaders
before they reached the capital of Tenochtitlán. Why was there no such attack?
The Spanish Conquest One reason was that Cortés’s force was bolstered by a sizable army from Tlaxcala,
an independent kingdom hostile to the Aztecs. A later tradition also suggests
of Mexico that some Aztecs, including Moctezuma, thought that Cortés might be an emis-
sary of their god Quetzalcoatl.
These documents come from people who experienced the conquest. Consider
them first as sources: How trustworthy are they? Are they biased in any way?
Then think about their contents: Do their accounts agree? Do they explain why
the Spaniards reached the city unmolested?

Bernal Díaz del Castillo When Cortés was told that the Great Moctezuma was
Cortés and Moctezuma Meet approaching, and he saw him coming, he dismounted
from his horse, and when he was near Moctezuma, they
Bernal Díaz was an unlikely chronicler of great events. simultaneously paid great reverence to one another.
Born poor, he went to America as a common soldier in Moctezuma bade him welcome and our Cortés replied
1514 and served under conquistadors in Panama and Cuba. through Doña Marina [Malinali, also called Malinche,
In 1519, Bernal Díaz joined Cortés’s expedition, fought Cortés’s Indian interpreter who bore him a child] wish-
in many battles, and as a reward received an estate in ing him very good health. . . . And then Cortés brought
present-day Guatemala. In his old age, Díaz wrote The out a necklace which he had ready at hand, made of glass
True History of the Conquest of New Spain, a compelling stones, . . . which have within them many patterns of
memoir written from the perspective of a common soldier. diverse colours, these were strung on a cord of gold and
In fresh and straightforward prose, it depicts the conquest with musk so that it should have a sweet scent, and he
as a divinely blessed event that saved the non-Aztec placed it round the neck of the Great Moctezuma. . . .
peoples of Mexico from a barbarous regime. Then Cortés through the mouth of Doña Marina told him
The Great Moctezuma had sent these great Caciques in that now his heart rejoiced having seen such a great
advance to receive us, and when they came before Cortés Prince, and that he took it as a great honour that he had
they bade us welcome in their language, and as a sign of come in person to meet him. . . .
peace, they touched their hands against the ground. . . . Thus space was made for us to enter the streets of
When we arrived near to [Tenochtitlán], . . . the Great Mexico, without being so much crowded. But who could
Moctezuma got down from his litter, and those great now count the multitude of men and women and boys
Caciques [aristocrats] supported him with their arms who were in the streets and in canoes on the canals, who
beneath a marvelously rich canopy of green coloured had come out to see us. It was indeed wonderful. . . .
feathers with much gold and silver embroidery . . . which Coming to think it over it seems to be a great mercy that
was wonderful to look at. The Great Moctezuma was our Lord Jesus Christ was pleased to give us grace and
richly attired according to his usage, and he was shod courage to dare to enter into such a city; and for the many
with sandals, the soles were of gold and the upper part times He has saved me from danger of death . . . I give
adorned with precious stones. . . . Him sincere thanks. . . .
Many other Lords walked before the Great They took us to lodge in some large houses, where
Moctezuma, sweeping the ground where he would tread there were apartments for all of us, for they had belonged
and spreading cloths on it, so that he should not tread on to the father of the Great Moctezuma, who was named
the earth. Not one of these chieftains dared even to think Axayaca. . . .
of looking him in the face, but kept their eyes lowered Cortés thanked Moctezuma through our interpreters,
with great reverence. . . . and Moctezuma replied, “Malinche, you and your breth-
ren are in your own house, rest awhile,” and then he went

32
to his palaces, which were not far away, and we divided And their bodies were everywhere covered; only their
our lodgings by companies, and placed the artillery point- faces appeared. They were very white; they had chalky
ing in a convenient direction, and the order which we had faces; they had yellow hair, though the hair of some was
to keep was clearly explained to us, and that we were to be black. . . . And when Moctezuma so heard, he was much
much on the alert, both the cavalry and all of us soldiers. terrified. It was as if he fainted away. His heart saddened;
A sumptuous dinner was provided for us according to his heart failed him. . . . [but] he made himself resolute;
their use and custom, and we ate it at once. So this was he put forth great effort; he quieted, he controlled his
our lucky and daring entry into the great city of heart; he submitted himself entirely to whatsoever he was
Tenochtitlan Mexico on the 8th day of November to see, at which he was to marvel. . . . [He then greeted
the year of our Saviour Jesus Christ, 1519. Cortés, as described above.]
And when [the Spaniards] were well settled, they
Source: Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, trans. thereupon inquired of Moctezuma as to all the city’s trea-
A. P. Maudslay (1632; London: Routledge, 1928), 272–275.
sure . . . the devices, the shields. Much did they importune
him; with great zeal they sought gold. . . . Thereupon were
Friar Bernardino de Sahagún brought forth all the brilliant things; the shields, the
Aztec Elders Describe the Behavior of golden discs, the devils’ necklaces, the golden nose cres-
Moctezuma cents, the golden leg bands, the golden arm bands, the
golden forehead bands.
During the 1550s, Friar Bernardino de Sahagún published
General History of the Things of New Spain. His History Source: From Friar Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of New
Spain, translated by Arthur O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. Copyright © 1975.
compiled the stories of Aztec elders who lived through the
Reprinted by permission of Utah Press.
conquest. They told their stories to Sahagún in a repetitive
style, according to the conventions of Aztec oral histories,
and he translated them into Spanish.
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
Moctezuma enjoyed no sleep, no food, no one spoke to 1. Both Díaz’s account and that of the Aztec elders were
him. Whatsoever he did, it was as if he were in torment. written in retrospect, and both reflect their authors’
Ofttimes it was as if he sighed, became weak, felt awareness of the impending conquest. Compare the
tone of these accounts. How does each reflect the
weak. . . . Wherefore he said, “What will now befall us? author’s knowledge of what is to come?
Who indeed stands [in charge]? Alas, until now, I. In 2. Why does Moctezuma pay “great reverence” to Cortés?
great torment is my heart; as if it were washed in chili Why does Cortés return the honor? What is the strategy
water it indeed burns.” And when he had so heard of each leader?
what the messengers reported, he was terrified, he was 3. What is Díaz’s explanation for the easy entry of the
Spanish into the city? What explanation is suggested by
astounded. . . . Especially did it cause him to faint away the elders’ account?
when he heard how the gun, at [the Spaniards’] com-
mand, discharged: how it resounded as if it thundered
when it went off. It indeed bereft one of strength; it shut
off one’s ears. And when it discharged, something like
a round pebble came forth from within. Fire went show-
ering forth; sparks went blazing forth. And its smoke
smelled very foul; it had a fetid odor which verily
wounded the head. And when [the shot] struck a
mountain, it was as if it were destroyed, dissolved . . .
as if someone blew it away.
All iron was their war array. In iron they clothed
themselves. With iron they covered their heads. Iron were
their swords. Iron were their crossbows. Iron were their
shields. Iron were their lances. And those which bore
them upon their backs, their deer [horses], were as tall as
roof terraces.
33
34 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700

Although Columbus brought back no gold, the de León explored the coast of Florida and gave that
Spanish monarchs supported three more of his voy- peninsula its name. In the same year, Vasco Núñez de
ages. Columbus colonized the West Indies with more Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Darien (Panama) and
than 1,000 Spanish settlers — all men — and hundreds became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean.
of domestic animals. But he failed to find either golden Rumors of rich Indian kingdoms encouraged other
treasures or great kingdoms, and his death in 1506 Spaniards, including hardened veterans of the recon-
went virtually unnoticed. quista, to invade the mainland. The Spanish monarchs
A German geographer soon labeled the newly offered successful conquistadors noble titles, vast
found continents America in honor of a Florentine estates, and Indian laborers.
explorer, Amerigo Vespucci. Vespucci, who had With these inducements before him, in 1519
explored the coast of present-day South America Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) led an army of 600 men to
around 1500, denied that the region was part of Asia. the Yucatán Peninsula. Gathering allies among native
He called it a nuevo mundo, a “new world.” The Spanish peoples who chafed under Aztec rule, he marched on
crown called the two continents Las Indias (“the Indies”) Tenochtitlán and challenged its ruler, Moctezuma.
and wanted to make them a new Spanish world. Awed by the Spanish invaders, Moctezuma received
Cortés with great ceremony (American Voices, p. 32).
The Spanish Invasion After brutally subduing the However, Cortés soon took the emperor captive, and
Arawaks and Tainos on Hispaniola, the Spanish probed following a prolonged siege, he and his men captured
the mainland for gold and slaves. In 1513, Juan Ponce the city. The conquest took a devastating toll: the

Mexican Counterattack
This image, which comes from a history of the Aztecs written in 1570 by the Spanish Dominican monk Diego
Durán, illustrates a successful counterattack by Mexica warriors against Spanish soldiers prior to the final
conquest of Tenochtitlán. The Spaniards try to hold their position as the Mexicans prepare to strike. Institut
Amatller d’Art Hispanic/Arxiu Mas.
 CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600 35

conquerors cut off the city’s supply of food and water, continued on his way toward India. Others soon fol-
and the residents of Tenochtitlán suffered spectacu- lowed and changed the region’s name to Brazil after the
larly. By 1521, Cortés and his men had toppled the indigenous tree that yielded a valuable red dye; for sev-
Aztec Empire. eral decades, Portuguese sailors traded with the Tupi
The Spanish had a silent ally: disease. Having been Indians for brazilwood. Then in the 1530s, to secure
separated from Eurasia for thousands of years, the Portugal’s claim, King Dom João III sent settlers who
inhabitants of the Americas had no immunities to com- began the long, painstaking process of carving out
mon European diseases. After the Spaniards arrived, a sugar plantations in the coastal lowlands. For several
massive smallpox epidemic ravaged Tenochtitlán, decades, Native Americans supplied most of the labor
“striking everywhere in the city,” according to an Aztec for these operations, but African slaves gradually
source, and killing Moctezuma’s brother and thousands replaced them. Brazil would soon become the world’s
more. “They could not move, they could not leading producer of sugar; it would also devour African
stir. . . . Covered, mantled with pustules, very many lives. By introducing the plantation system to the
people died of them.” Subsequent outbreaks of small- Americas — a form of estate agriculture using slave
pox, influenza, and measles killed hundreds of thou- labor that was pioneered by Italian merchants and cru-
sands of Indians and sapped the survivors’ morale. sading knights in the twelfth century and transplanted
Exploiting this demographic weakness, Cortés quickly to the islands off the coast of Africa in the fifteenth
extended Spanish rule over the Aztec Empire. His lieu- century — the Portuguese set in motion one of the
tenants then moved against the Mayan city-states of the most significant developments of the early modern era.
Yucatán Peninsula, eventually conquering them as well. By the end of the sixteenth century, the European
In 1524, Francisco Pizarro set out to accomplish colonization of the Americas had barely begun. Yet
the same feat in Peru. By the time he and his small several of its most important elements were already
force of 168 men and 67 horses finally reached their taking shape. Spanish efforts demonstrated that densely
destination in 1532, half of the Inca population had populated empires were especially vulnerable to con-
already died from European diseases. Weakened mili- quest and were also especially valuable sources of
tarily and divided between rival claimants to the wealth. The Portuguese had discovered the viability of
throne, the Inca nobility was easy prey. Pizarro killed sugar plantations in the tropical regions of the Americas
Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, and seized his enor- and pioneered the transatlantic slave trade as a way of
mous wealth. Although Inca resistance continued for a manning them. And contacts with native peoples
generation, the conquest was complete by 1535, and revealed their devastating vulnerabilities to Eurasian
Spain was now the master of the wealthiest and most diseases — one part of the larger phenomenon of the
populous regions of the Western Hemisphere. Columbian Exchange (discussed in Chapter 2).
The Spanish invasion changed life forever in the
Americas. Disease and warfare wiped out virtually all
of the Indians of Hispaniola — at least 300,000 people.
In Peru, the population of 9 million in 1530 plum-
SUMMARY
meted to fewer than 500,000 a century later. Native American, European, and African societies de-
Mesoamerica suffered the greatest losses: In one of the veloped independently over thousands of years before
great demographic disasters in world history, its popu- they experienced direct contacts with one another. In
lation of 20 million Native Americans in 1500 had the Americas, residents of Mesoamerica and the Andes
dwindled to just 3 million in 1650. were fully sedentary (with individual ownership of
land and intensive agriculture), but elsewhere societies
Cabral and Brazil At the same time, Portuguese were semisedentary (with central fields and villages
efforts to find a sailing route around the southern tip of that were occupied seasonally) or nonsedentary
Africa led to a surprising find. As Vasco da Gama and (hunter-gatherers). West and Central Africa also had a
his contemporaries experimented with winds and cur- mix of sedentary, semisedentary, and nonsedentary
rents, their voyages carried them ever farther away settlements. Western Europe, by contrast, was predom-
from the African coast and into the Atlantic. On one inantly sedentary. All three continents had a complex
such voyage in 1500, the Portuguese commander Pedro patchwork of political organization, from empires, to
Alvares Cabral and his fleet were surprised to see land kingdoms and chiefdoms, to principalities, duchies,
loom up in the west. Cabral named his discovery Ihla and ministates; everywhere, rulership was imbued
da Vera Cruz — the Island of the True Cross — and with notions of spiritual power. Ruling classes relied on
36 PART 1 TRANSFORMATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 1450–1700

warfare, trade, and tribute (or taxes) to dominate those exploration, conquest, and exploitation that no one
around them and accumulate precious goods that could have foretold or planned. In the tropical zones of
helped to set them apart from ordinary laborers, but the Caribbean and coastal Brazil, invading Europeans
they also bore responsibility for the well-being of their enslaved Native Americans and quickly drove them
subjects and offered them various forms of protection. into extinction or exile. The demands of plantation
As Portuguese and Castilian (later Spanish) seafar- agriculture soon led Europeans to import slaves from
ers pushed into the Atlantic, they set in motion a chain Africa, initiating a transatlantic trade that would
of events whose consequences they could scarcely destroy African lives on both sides of the ocean. And
imagine. From a coastal trade with Africa that was sec- two of the greatest empires in the world — the Aztec
ondary to their efforts to reach the Indian Ocean, from and Incan empires — collapsed in response to unseen
the miscalculations of Columbus and the happy acci- biological forces that acted in concert with small invad-
dent of Cabral, developed a pattern of transatlantic ing armies.

European Map of Brazil,

c. 1519
This lavishly illustrated map of
Brazil is drawn from the Miller
Atlas, made by order of King
Manuel I of Portugal around
1519. It features images of
Indians harvesting brazilwood;
macaws and other colorful birds;
a monkey; and — improbably — a
fire-breathing dragon. Note, too,
the dense annotations and place
names along the coast — a
reminder that Portuguese famil-
iarity with Brazil was confined
almost entirely to the seaboard.
Bibliotheque Nationale de France.
 CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER REVIEW 37

C H A P T E R R E V I E W
M A K E I T S T I C K Go to LearningCurve to retain what you’ve read.

TERMS TO KNOW Identify and explain the significance of each term below.

Key Concepts and Events

tribute (p. 8) Christianity (p. 21)
matriarchy (p. 15) heresy (p. 22)
animism (p. 17) Islam (p. 22)
patriarchy (p. 18) Crusades (p. 22)
primogeniture (p. 18) predestination (p. 22)
peasants (p. 18) Protestant Reformation (p. 22)
republic (p. 19) Counter-Reformation (p. 22)
civic humanism (p. 20) trans-Saharan trade (p. 23)
Renaissance (p. 20) reconquista (p. 31)
guilds (p. 20)

Key People
Hiawatha (p. 13) Christopher Columbus (p. 31)
Martin Luther (p. 22) Hernán Cortés (p. 34)
Mansa Musa (p. 23) Moctezuma (p. 34)
Vasco da Gama (p. 29) Pedro Alvares Cabral (p. 35)

REVIEW QUESTIONS Answer these questions to demonstrate your

understanding of the chapter’s main ideas.

1. How did the rulers of Native American, European, 4. Compare the societies of the eastern woodlands of
and African empires and kingdoms secure and sus- North America with the kingdoms of Western
tain their power? How did ordinary people benefit Europe. What similarities do you see? Differences?
from, or suffer under, their rule? How do you weigh their relative importance?
2. What role did religious and spiritual ideas play in 5. THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the
shaping the experience of ordinary people on the events listed under “Peopling” and “Work,
three continents? Exchange, and Technology” on the thematic time-
line on page 5. How did contacts among Europeans,
3. Why was long-distance trade in exotic goods such
Native Americans, and Africans alter the econo-
an important phenomenon in North America,
mies of the three continents?
Europe, and Africa?
38 PART 1 CHAPTER REVIEW

MAKING Recognize the larger developments and continuities within

CONNECTIONS and across chapters by answering these questions.

1. ACROSS TIME AND PLACE The century 2. VISUAL EVIDENCE Return to the image of The
following the first contacts among Europe, sub- Last Judgment on page 21. How does the emphasis
Saharan Africa, and the Americas brought some of on universal truth and everlasting punishment and
the most momentous changes in world history: a reward make Christianity different from animism?
dramatic reconfiguration of human populations How might faith in such a religious system shape
across the globe, new patterns of trade and warfare, the values and priorities of believers?
and immense challenges to peoples’ worldviews.
Thinking about our contemporary world, what
monumental changes are currently affecting our
lives? How would you compare them with the
events described in this chapter?

MORE TO EXPLORE Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.

Philip D. Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation David Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe: 1450–
Complex, 2nd ed. (1998). Traces the long evolution of 1850, 2nd ed. (2008). European-African interactions
plantations and slavery in world history. from an African perspective.
Peter C. Mancall, ed., Travel Narratives from the Age of Timothy R. Pauketat, Cahokia (2009). An evocative
Discovery (2006). Travelers’ accounts from Asia, account of North America’s great city and archaeolo-
Africa, the Americas, and Europe. gists’ efforts to unearth it.
Charles C. Mann, 1491 (2005) and 1493 (2011). These “1492: An Ongoing Voyage” (loc.gov/exhibits/1492
two books explore the Americas before Columbus and /intro.html). Offers images and analysis of the native
the global changes unleashed by his voyages. cultures of the Western Hemisphere.
 CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER REVIEW 39

TIMELINE Ask yourself why this chapter begins and ends with these dates
and then identify the links among related events.

c. 13,000–3000 B.C. t Asian migrants reach North America

c. 6000 B.C. t Domestication of maize begins in Mesoamerica

312 t Roman emperor Constantine converts to Christianity

c. 600 t Pueblo cultures emerge

632 t Death of Muhammad

632–1100 t Arab people adopt Islam and spread its influence

c. 800 t Ghana Empire emerges

c. 1000 t Irrigation developed by Hohokam, Mogollon, and Anasazi peoples

c. 1000–1350 t Development of Mississippian culture

c. 1050 t The founding of Cahokia

1096–1291 t Crusades link Europe with Arab trade routes

c. 1150 t Chaco Canyon abandoned

c. 1200 t Mali Empire emerges

1300–1450 t The Renaissance in Italy

c. 1325 t Aztecs establish capital at Tenochtitlán

1326 t Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage to Mecca

c. 1350 t The Black Death sweeps Europe; Cahokia goes into rapid decline

c. 1400 t Songhai Empire emerges

1435 t Portuguese trade begins along West and Central African coasts

1492 t Christopher Columbus makes first voyage to America

1497–1498 t Portugal’s Vasco da Gama reaches East Africa and India

1500 t Pedro Alvares Cabral encounters Brazil

c. 1500 t Founding of the Iroquois Confederacy

1513 t Juan Ponce de León explores Florida

1517 t Martin Luther sparks Protestant Reformation

1519–1521 t Hernán Cortés conquers Aztec Empire

1532–1535 t Francisco Pizarro vanquishes Incas

1536 t John Calvin publishes Institutes of the Christian Religion

1540 t De Soto meets the Lady of Cofachiqui; founding of the Jesuit order

1578 t Duarte Lopez visits the Kongo capital

KEY TURNING POINTS: The domestication of maize (6000 b.c.), the founding of Tenochtit-
lán (1325), and the conquest of the Aztec empire (1519–1521). How did the domestication of
maize make the city of Tenochtitlán possible? What characteristics of the Aztec empire and its
capital city made it vulnerable to conquest?