Focusing questions:

 
What were the major patterns of Native American life in NA before Europeans arrived?
 
Indian society revolved around, according to geographic factors, either hunting, fishing, or farming. They believed their
lives were influenced by the supernatural and therefore placed much emphasis on religion, eliminating the boundary
between religion and secularity. Indians viewed their land as a common resource and had no concept of land ownership,
something they struggled bitterly against the Europeans to uphold. In addition, Indian women had many more privileges and
social standing than European women.
 
How did Indian and European ideas of freedom differ on the eve of contact?
 
Indians had little concept of personal and individual freedom since they lived in perpetuity of it. Europeans, on the other
hand, defined freedom as being derived from obedience of a strict societal hierarchy from king over people to man over
family.
 
What impelled European explorers to look west across the Atlantic?
 
Europeans wanted to dispel the Muslim chokehold on the Eurasian gold trade and went to look for an Atlantic route to Asia.
When Christopher Columbus finally enlisted the financial support of the Spanish royals, he ran aground of entirely new
continents. 
 
What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with Europeans?
 
Disease and conflict were rampant. European ideals contrasted sharply with native ones: especially on land, freedom, and
religion, and Europeans conquered, killed, and converted, believing their actions were justified by Native American
barbarity and European superiority, and disease and technological advantages won them battles.
 
What were the chief features of the Spanish Empire in America?
 
The Spanish Empire was focused on conquest and conversion. Despite believing in the superiority of Europeans over
Indians, they did not hesitate to intermarry the natives and created a hybrid culture. They built a hugely urban South
American empire while being less successful at the conquest of North America: they didn’t commit to expansion because
they did not find any advanced civilizations to exploit, nor did they find any gold. Incidents of Indian rebellion also
prompted Spanish authorities to be more tolerant of Indian religion.
 
What were the chief features of the French and Dutch empires in NA?
 
The French and Dutch empires were built on trade and good relationships with natives.
 
Introduction:
 
Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World in 1492 had many impacts: 
 New crops crossed the Atlantic
 New diseases decimated the native population
 The continent of Africa was exploited to provide the labor that was needed in the Americas: out of 10 million who
went to America between 1492 and 1820, 7.7 million were African slaves.
 
Why?
The New World was envisioned by Europeans as a place to seek wealth, religious refuge, and create a new kind of society.
But the only way to do this was through unfree labor.
 
The First Americans:
 
Agriculture and settled society among Native Americans first emerged 9000 years ago in Mexico, and was based off corn,
squash, and beans.
 
Indian Societies in the Americas
 
Native Americans constructed cities, roads, irrigation systems, trade networks, and pyramid-temples- the Aztec and Inca
civilizations provide notable examples of such developed society.
 
Societies in North America were less advanced, though, being illiterate and lacking technologies like wheeled vehicles—
their primitivity was used by Europeans to justify conquest and oppression.
 
However, they engaged in perfected instances of farming, hunting, fishing, religion, trade, and politics.
 
Mississippi River Valley people:
 
These people were part of an early civilization who centered their society around a series of earthen mounds. They
established trade routes and mined copper and flint.
 
After their decline, the people of the city of Cahokia, also in the Mississippi River Valley, built a community in the year
1200.
 
Western Indians
 
In modern-day Arizona, the Hopi and Zuni lived settled village lives for over 3000 years. They built planned towns, canals
and dams, and conducted trade with far-away groups from Mexico and the Mississippi. 
 
Following their decline to drought, they established villages to the south and east, mastering desert farming for corn, beans,
and cotton. Because of their village society, Spanish explorers dubbed them Pueblo Indians.
 
On the densely populated Pacific coast, “hundreds fo distinct groups resided in independent villages” and lived by fishing,
hunting, and gathering: in the Columbia River, salmon provided fishing tribes with abundant food, and on the Great Plains,
the buffalo herds sustained hunting Indians.
 
East North American Indians
 
Tribes on the eastern side of North America lived on farming corn, squash, and beans and hunting deer and turkey.
 
They fought each other for revenge, captives, and goods, and also conducted diplomacy. They existed independently and
without a central authority until some tribes formed confederations to try to bring order: the Choctaw, Cherokee, and
Chickasaw united “dozens of towns”, and in New York/Pennsylvania, “five Iroquois people formed a Great league of Peace,
bringing a period of stability”.
 
Conclusion on People: 
 
They did not think of themselves as a unified people, a European concept, and instead stuck to the ideals of politics and
religion and language unique to their tribe, village, chiefdom, or confederacy- what Indian identity revolved around
 
Native American Religion
 
Indian societies, despite being so diverse, did share some common traits. Religious ceremony was a big part of life and
ways of life like hunting and farming. They believed spiritual power was everywhere and everything had sacred spirits—
animism. 
 
Every Indian society held in high regard those who “seemed to possess special abilities to invoke supernatural powers”
since they had so much control over events that could hugely impact their lives. Thus, secular and religious activity were not
separated.
 
Indian religion had the one Creator concept in common with Europeans, but Europeans still concluded that they needed
Christianity.
 
Land and Property
 
Indian attitudes toward property baffled the Europeans: land was not owned. Instead, it was assigned to families for
seasonal use and tribes for hunting; unclaimed land was also free for anyone. :Land was viewed as a common resource
instead of an economic commodity.
 
Indians were also unattached to material property, especially east of the Mississippi River and where the environment
forced villages to move “every few years when soil or game became depleted”.
 
Status was important, though; leaders came from a small number of families and chiefs lived in more comfort.
 
Because of the non-value of property, generosity was an important Indian virtue. Trade was not just a commercial
exchange; it involved elaborate gift-giving ceremony. And nobody suffered extreme inequality in Indian society under
normal circumstances.
 
Gender Relations
 
Family defined women’s lives, but they had more freedoms than in Europe: divorce and premarital relationships, for
example. And, Indian societies were sometimes matrilineal. Women also played leadership roles, and owned dwellings and
tools.
 
Because men were often away hunting in regions like the Pacific Northwest, women took charge and Indians were used to
that.
 
European Views of Indians
 
“Indians were regarded either as “noble savages.. or as uncivilized barbarians.” However, a negative image of Indians
became the norm and claims of their barbarity centered on differences in “religion, land use, and gender relations”.
 Animism was viewed as devil worship.
 Land was viewed as “a source of economic opportunity”; Europeans also argued that the Indians “had not actually
‘used’ the land and thus had no claim to it.” 
 Men and women’s roles were viewed as weak and unfree. Europeans thought Indian men were too weak to restrain
their wives and made them do what they thought was the productive labor. They thought that by “subduing the
Indians, they were actually bringing them freedom… of true religion… and from… uncivilized and unchristian
gender roles.
 
Indian Freedom, European Freedom
 
Indian Freedom
 
Indians had no concept of freedom as personal independence based on ownership of private property, absolute freedom
being the state in which they lived. Europeans thought this barbaric and lacked order and discipline, which they viewed as
the “hallmarks of civilization”.
 
However, Indians had their own idea of freedom where small-scale slavery gave space for the idea of personal liberty.
 
They judged each other according to their ability to live up to social norms. So rather than individual freedom, they
emphasized kinship, spiritual values, and group autonomy.
 
Christian Liberty
 
“Europeans held numerous ideas of freedom.” So, freedom was a collection of distinct privileges enjoyed by mostly only a
minority.
 
One common conception held that freedom was more spiritual and moral than social or political. “In this definition,
servitude and freedom were mutually reinforcing, not contradictory states, since those who accepted the teachings of Christ
simultaneously became ‘free from sin’ and ‘servants to God’.”
 
Christians, despite their belief about the freedom that religion brings, restricted people’s freedom to worship other churches.
 
Freedom and Authority
 
“… the equation of liberty with obedience to a higher authority suggested that freedom meant obedience to law.” However,
this resulted in hierarchical inequality in European society, in the form of ruler over country and people down to
patriarch over family. 
 
Male domination and female submission became the norm, and under coverture law, women surrendered their legal
identity upon marriage. 
 
Man’s authority in a marriage and a king’s authority were often compared, and “neither kind of authority could be
challenged without threatening the fabric of social order.”
 
Liberty and Liberties
 
In European society, “liberty came from knowing one’s social place”. Strict law compounded the emphasis on obedience to
form a culture of submission.
 Liberty meant formal, specific privilege like exemption from taxation
 The law decreed appropriate religions to worship, appropriate publications, 
 
Despite this, Europeans claimed to be spreading freedom in their conquest of the Americas and these ideals clashed
especially with Native American’s lives and idea of liberty.
 
The Expansion of Europe
 
“The European conquest of America began as an offshoot of the quest for a sea route to India, China, and the islands of the
East Indies, the source of the silk, tea, spices, porcelain, and other luxury goods on which international trade… centered.”
This was all driven by desire to eliminate Islamic merchants and “win control of the lucrative trade for Christian western
Europe”.
 
Chinese and Portuguese Navigation
 
The Chinese navy in the 15th century under Zheng He could have built a global empire. However, the abandonment of
maritime expeditions by the government in 1433 meant that Portugal could begin exploring the Atlantic.
 
The caravel, compass, and quadrant enabled sailors to sail long-distance and down the coast of Africa from Portugal.
 
Europeans sought to take control of the overland gold trade, which was monopolized by the Muslims.
 
Portugal and West Africa
 
With the development of such technologies, Portugal began sailing down into Africa and establishing colonies. They built
sugar plantations and imported slaves to work them in the Atlantic.
 
Freedom and Slavery in Africa
 
Slavery predated Europeans in Africa, and was not the “basis of the economy”. They had more freedoms and well-
defined rights. When the Europeans came, they “accelerated the buying and selling of slaves”. 
 
Portugal had already established a trading empire with posts in China, Indonesia, and India, and became the major
European trader with the East.
 
The Voyages of Columbus
 
Christopher Columbus had drastically underestimated the Earth’s size and tried to create a new sea route to from Europe to
Asia across the Atlantic.
His motivation for trying to find this route was religious and commercial:
 He wanted to convert Asians to Christianity and to “redeem Jerusalem from Muslim control”
 He wanted to develop European trade with the East
 
Columbus enlisted the financial support of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, as well as Italian and Spanish
merchants, all of whom “desperately desired to circumvent the Muslim stranglehold on eastern trade.”
 
Contact
 
Columbus in the New World
 
 Columbus landed on the Bahamas on October 12, 1492. European colonization began the next year.
 
Exploration and Conquest
 
European exploration occurred with remarkable speed following Columbus’s first voyage. The invention of the printing
press allowed for information about this discovery to be disseminated all over Europe, and prompted others to follow to the
New World.
 
In the race between European empires to explore the Americas, Spain was foremost, “inspired by a search for wealth,
national glory, and the desire to spread Catholicism”.
 
European conquest of the Aztecs and Incas soon happened, brought about by superior technology and disease; gold from
their mines then began crossing the Atlantic back to Spain.
 
The Demographic Disaster
 
The Columbian Exchange of people and goods across the Atlantic altered everything, socially and environmentally:
 Corn, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, tobacco, cotton were introduced to Europe
 Wheat, rice, sugarcane, horses, cattle, pigs, sheep were introduced to the Americas
 Diseases were introduced to the Americas as well.
 
Contact with Europeans and wars, enslavement, and disease, reduced the Native American population:
 Down 90% in Mexico
 From 5 million to 250,000 in the USA
 
The Spanish Empire
 
Spain established an urban New World empire surpassing in size the Roman Empire, in contrast to the rural towns of
English and French North America.
 
Governing Spanish America 
 
Spain replaced its destructive conquistadors with a “system of government headed by lawyers and bureaucrats.”
 
Power:
 Originated from the king in Spain, went through the Council of the Indies, and then to viceroys and local officials.
 Was also held by the Catholic Church, which dictated faith, morality, and treatment of Indians.
 
With the decline of Spanish power in Europe in the 17th century, local American officials enjoyed more independence.
 
Colonists in Spanish America
 
Despite disease and decimation, the native population in Spanish America was large enough to keep it from needing
African slave labor.
 
Indians were sent to large haciendas farms and gold and silver mines and planted pre-colonization crops of corn, beans,
and squash.
 
“Opportunity for social advancement drew numerous colonists from Spain”. Foreigners and non-Christian Spaniards were
barred, however. They emigrated first as young single men, and then as whole families, “all ready to direct the manual
work of Indians”.
 
Colonists and Indians
 
The Indian population always outnumbered the white population in Spanish America, unlike in later British colonies. Also
unlike the English, they were eager to assimilate Indians into colonial society and granted them “certain rights”.
 
With a royal decree for colonists to marry and very few European women in the New World, they soon began turning to
native women: their intermingling was approved of by the Spanish government.
 
The result was a population of mixed race and culture under a single system of religion, language, and government.
 
Justifications for Conquest
 
The moral question of what allows someone to take over someone else’s land was mostly ignored by European settlers.
 
“They had immense confidence in the superiority of their own cultures to those they encountered in America”, and
brought with them not only violence but also “missionary zeal”.
 
The Pope also legitimized European claims to the New World by drawing a east-west line of division where Portugal got
Brazil and Spain got the rest of the Western Hemisphere.
 
Spreading the Faith
 
“The pope justified this…. by requiring Spain and Portugal to spread Catholicism among the native inhabitants of the
Americas.” 
 
The Catholic Church was pressured by Martin Luther’s calls for Protestant religious reform and “redoubled its efforts to
convert the Indians” to Catholicism and “prevent them from falling under the sway of Protestantism.
 
“The aim was neither to exterminate nor to remove the Indians, but to transform them into obedient, Christian subjects of
the crown.” The Spaniards ignored the concept of race and even believed that Indians could be elevated to be as ”civilized
as Europeans”, though only through the “destruction of existing Indian power structures”. 
 
Over time, millions of Indians were converted to Christianity, and millions of Indians died due to brutal treatment and
disease.
 
La Casas’s Complaint
 
Anti-enslavement sentiment began with Pope Paul III, who outlawed Indian slaves. Bartolome de Las Casas began preaching
against “the injustices of Spanish rule” and “the death of millions of innocent people”.
 
He suggested racial equality and the guarantee of rights and liberty to Indians who found themselves under Spanish rule.
 
Reforming the Empire
 
“Las Casas believed that the main justification for empire was converting the Indians to Christianity. Spanish cruelty, he
feared, undermined this effort.”
 
Because of Las Casas, Spain commanded that Indians no longer be enslaved, and abolished the encomienda system in
1550. In its place was installed the repartifmiento system, where Indians were legally free and earned wages but were still
required to do labor. However, the labor requirement still allowed for Spanish abuse and exploitation.
 
So the Spanish empire’s labor force “consisted largely of forced wage labor by native inhabitants and slave labor by
Africans”. Spain’s brutality provided a “potent justification for other European powers to challenge Spain’s predominate
in the New World”, and “contributed to the spread of the Black Legend”, an image of Spain as brutal and exploitative.
 
Exploring North America
 
Spain established the first permanent USA colony in 1508: Puerto Rico. Explorers then sailed on to Florida and Mexico. In
the 1530s and 1540s, Spaniards explored the Pacific coast and the southwest, as well as the Great Plains.
 
These explorers “spread disease and devastation among Indian communities.” 
 
Spanish Florida
 
“These explorations established Spain’s claim to a large part of what is now the American South and Southwest. The first
region to be colonized within the present-day United States was Florida.”
 
They set up forts as well as missionary posts, but Florida “failed to attract settlers” and remained “an isolated military
settlement”.
 
Spain in the Southwest
 
“Spain took even longer to begin the colonization of the American Southwest”, largely because they did not discover any
gold nor “advanced civilizations”. It was only 1598 that 400 Spaniards established a permanent settlement; they were
attacked by Indians and destroyed the city of Acoma in retaliation. The officer, Juan de Onate, was sent back to Spain and
punished.
 
Spain finally established Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, in 1610.
 
The Pueblo Revolt
 
New Mexico’s colonist population had a strained relationship with local Indians, whose labor they had tried to exploit,
and whose people they tried to force Catholicism on.
 
Indians accepted Christianity, but practiced it with their old religions. The Spanish Inquisition that was happening at the time
prompted local missionaries to “stamp out traditional religious ceremonies”.
 
This, compounded with Spanish failure to protect the locals from Navajo and Apache attack, added to local discontent.
 
The disunited Pueblo people, led by an Indian named Pope, carried out a coordinated uprising and threw the Spanish
out of Santa Fe and New Mexico.
 
 This incident made “colonial authorities (adopt) a more tolerant attitude toward traditional religious practices and
made fewer demands on Indian labor.”
 
The French and Dutch Empires
 
Spain’s brutality prompted other European countries to feel superior; inspired by the American gold they saw flow into
Spain’s coffers, “the French, Dutch, and English established colonies in North America”:
 English colonies were agricultural settlements hungry for land
 French and Dutch colonies were “commercial ventures that never attracted large numbers of colonists” and
allowed natives more freedom.
 
French Colonization
 
France was the first country to explore the New World after Spain. They initially sought the Pacific from the Atlantic and
only “explorers, fishermen, pirates preying on Spanish shipping farther south… and fur trappers visited the east coast
of North America.”
 
They only established a permanent settlement in NA in the 17th century.
 
Quebec was founded by an explorer sponsored by a fur trading company in 1608 and the Mississippi River valley was
claimed for France in 1681.
 
French Canada was ruled by a company through an official based in Paris and had “no representative assembly” until
1663, when a newly established government company granted American land to nobles and army officers who would
transport colonists to populate a feudal society.
 
New France was sparsely populated and of ill repute, because:
 French were reluctant to go to the Americas,
 Government feared mass migration would undermine its power.
 
New France and the Indians
 
New France depended on its relationship with Indians since it was commercial rather than agricultural:
 The French did not need Indian labor or land.
 
They worked out the “most enduring alliances between Indians and settlers in colonial North America” with military,
commercial, and diplomatic connections.
 
Explorer Samuel de Champlain occupied a unique stance regarding religious tolerance as well as treatment of Indians. And
the French Jesuits converted Indians to Catholicism but allowed them independence and traditional social structure, unlike
the early Spanish.
 
Despite these positives, 
 European contact spread disease
 Natives were introduced to new goods and turned hunting from a survival-based activity to a commercial one
 Natives were also drawn into European conflicts and vice versa. 
 
Cultural exchange happened in abundance:
 Indians and whites had children called “Metis”
 Indians were encouraged to speak French.
 
The Dutch Empire
 
English explorer Henry Hudson claimed the fur-and-trade-rich NY area for the Dutch in 1609. In 1614, Dutch traders
established a outpost, and in 1624, the Dutch West India Company settled Manhattan island.
 
During the seventeenth century, the Dutch held an overseas empire and was in a golden age of wealth, art, and science.
 
Dutch Freedom 
 
The Dutch believed in freedoms of press and religion. They attracted emigrants from all over Europe, who helped populate
its overseas colonies.
 
Freedom in New Netherland
 
New Netherland was not very democratic despite the Dutch emphasis on freedom.
 
It was:
-Governed by their West India Company without an elected assembly.
 
Its people did enjoy more liberty than other NA settlers and slaves:
 Slaves held rights, and some had “half-freedom”, where they paid an annual fee to the company and need d to
work when called upon, but were also given land.
 Slaves did not need to do grueling work on large plantations and worked crafts or on family farms.
 Women enjoyed ore independence and retained their legal identity after marriage.
 
The Dutch and Religious Toleration
 
New Netherlands had a diverse population coming from Africa, Belgium, England, Germany, and Scandinavia who
practiced diverse religions. However, though the Dutch Reformed Church did not persecute them, they also did not accept
open worship of those religions.
 
Basically, the Dutch tolerated religious dissent and other religions as long as it involve open and public worship.
 
Settling New Netherland
 
The Dutch West India Company tried to attract settlers with promise of land and cheap livestock.
 
Then, they adopted a feudal plan where a “patroon” would transport tenants for labor and they would work on medieval
terms. This inspired uprisings into the mid-nineteenth century.
 
New Netherland and the Indians
 
The Dutch’s goal in NA was to trade and not to conquer.
The Dutch:
 Recognized native sovereignty
 Sympathized with native victims of the Spanish
 Fought wars but also established alliances.
 
Borderlands and Empire in Early America
 
A borderland is defined as a place whose geographical and cultural borders are not clearly defined.
 
In America, hybrid cultures and overlapping claims to authority all sprung up around borderlands.
 
European conquest was not  “a simple story of expanding domination” but “a continual struggle to establish authority”.
 
Dreams of freedom inspired and justified colonization, and brought so much to the New World, both creating and
destroying.