AP®︎ US History: Unit 1 Flashcards

Ice Age land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska that enabled the ancestors of many Native Americans to migrate into the Americas

Corn farming spread north from present-day Mexico and supported food surpluses, population growth, permanent settlements, irrigation, specialization, and social differentiation

Intercropping maize, beans, and squash so corn supported beans, beans replenished nitrogen, and squash retained moisture and suppressed weeds

Southwestern maize farmers who built organized stone-and-adobe pueblos, multistory dwellings, kivas, and irrigation systems; ancestors of later Pueblo communities

A southern Arizona society that constructed extensive canals to carry river water to maize fields in an arid environment

An arid region where Shoshone, Paiute, and other peoples generally lived in small groups and moved seasonally among scattered plant and animal resources

Drier western grasslands favored mobile bison hunting, while wetter eastern river valleys supported maize farming, seasonal hunting, and longer-lasting villages

Maize-farming societies that built permanent towns around ceremonial and platform mounds and developed organized leadership, trade, and social hierarchies

The largest Mississippian urban center, near present-day St. Louis, where maize surpluses supported mounds, specialized labor, trade, hierarchy, and a dense population

A confederacy of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca that coordinated diplomacy and collective decisions while preserving substantial national autonomy

Many distinct Northeastern and Atlantic peoples whose economies combined agriculture, fishing, hunting, and gathering according to local conditions

Northwest Coast peoples who lived in permanent villages near the Columbia River and prospered through salmon fishing, trade, food storage, and abundant coastal resources

California peoples who established permanent coastal villages and relied on fishing, gathering, hunting, trade, and sophisticated plank canoes

A society in which descent, clan identity, and certain inheritance or property rights pass through the mother's line

Belief that animals, plants, landscapes, and other parts of the natural world possess spirits or spiritual power

Revival of geographical study, mapmaking, and worldly inquiry that aided exploration, though wealth, rivalry, and religion were more direct causes

Centuries-long Christian reconquest of Muslim-ruled Iberia, completed at Granada in 1492, which strengthened Spain’s militant Catholic expansion

Religious movement beginning in 1517 that intensified overseas competition between Protestant and Catholic powers for territory, trade, and converts

Economic system in which governments sought national power by accumulating wealth, controlling colonial trade, and maintaining a favorable balance of exports over imports

Summary of Europe’s motives: wealth and trade, national and personal power, and the spread of Christianity

Portuguese prince whose sponsorship supported exploration of Atlantic islands and the western African coast

Small, maneuverable Portuguese sailing ship suited to coastal exploration and unfamiliar waters

Genoese mariner sponsored by Spain who sailed west in 1492, reached the Bahamas, and initiated sustained European contact with the Americas

Caribbean people encountered by Columbus whose population collapsed under disease, violence, displacement, and Spanish exploitation

Agreement dividing Spanish and Portuguese claims along an Atlantic line; Portugal received claim rights east of it, including the territory that became Brazil, while Spain claimed most lands to the west

Hoped-for water route through or around North America that Europeans sought as a western connection to Asian markets

Italian navigator sailing for Henry VII who reached northeastern North America in 1497 and supported later English claims

French explorer who traveled through the Gulf and River of St. Lawrence in the 1530s and claimed northeastern territory for France

English colony founded on an island off present-day North Carolina in the 1580s whose settlers disappeared before a relief expedition returned in 1590

Movement of plants, animals, diseases, people, commodities, and knowledge across the Atlantic after 1492; American crops and silver aided Old World growth and commerce, while diseases and introduced species transformed the Americas

Imported diseases such as smallpox, measles, and influenza spread among Native peoples with little prior exposure, causing catastrophic deaths and weakening resistance to conquest

Early modern expansion of European trade, banking, investment, and overseas commerce that helped shift Europe toward a market-based capitalist economy

Feudalism emphasized landholding and inherited obligations, while capitalism emphasized private investment, markets, profit, wage labor, and reinvested capital; American wealth accelerated the shift toward capitalism

Business organization in which investors purchased shares, pooling capital for expensive overseas ventures while distributing the risk of loss

Spanish military adventurers who pursued wealth, territory, status, and conversion, generally with royal authorization but privately raised men and resources

Spanish conquistador who led the campaign against the Aztec Empire beginning in 1519 and captured Tenochtitlan with extensive Native support

Powerful tribute-based Mesoamerican empire centered at Tenochtitlan that was defeated by Cortés and numerous Indigenous allies in 1521

Spanish conquistador who captured Atahualpa at Cajamarca in 1532 and occupied Cuzco in 1533

Large centralized Andean empire connected by roads and labor obligations that the Spanish conquered amid epidemics, civil war, and internal divisions

Spanish settlement founded in Florida in 1565 to defend sea routes and territorial claims; the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the present-day United States

Exchange of animal pelts for European goods that drove French exploration and encouraged commercial and diplomatic alliances with Native peoples

Catholic institutions intended to convert Native peoples and transform their ceremonies, family practices, labor, and community authority

Crown grants allowing encomenderos to compel tribute or labor from designated Indigenous communities in return for supposed protection and Christian instruction

Government-supervised labor draft requiring Native communities to provide supposedly paid workers for limited periods, though the labor remained compulsory and abusive

Forced Atlantic transportation of enslaved Africans, expanded by European demand and cooperation with some West and West Central African traders and rulers

Brutal forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic under crowded, violent, and deadly shipboard conditions

Hereditary system in which enslaved Africans were treated as property and forced to labor especially in plantation agriculture and mining

Crown contracts granting a person or company the right and obligation to supply a specified number of enslaved Africans to Spanish America

Spanish ancestry-based hierarchy that favored Europeans and assigned unequal legal, economic, and social status to Europeans, Native Americans, Africans, and mixed-ancestry people

Mixed-ancestry groups in the Spanish caste system: mestizos had European and Indigenous ancestry, while mulattoes had European and African ancestry

Spanish Dominican friar who argued that Native peoples were rational, possessed natural rights, and should be converted peacefully rather than conquered or enslaved

Spanish humanist and theologian who defended conquest by portraying Native peoples as inferior and war as a means to impose government and facilitate conversion

The 1550–1551 dispute in which Las Casas defended Native rights and voluntary conversion while Sepúlveda justified Spanish conquest; it produced no clear winner and did not end conquest

Anti-Spanish portrayal of Spain as uniquely cruel, intolerant, and exploitative that rival European powers used to condemn Spanish colonial rule

The blending or coexistence of beliefs and practices from different religious traditions, such as Indigenous traditions and Christianity