FALL 2013 BROOKLYN COLLEGE HISTORY 3401 AMERICAN PLURALISM TO 1877 BRENDAN O’MALLEY, INSTRUCTOR

1. CHAPTER ONEThe Collision of Cultures FALL 2013 BROOKLYN COLLEGE HISTORY 3401 AMERICAN PLURALISM TO 1877 BRENDAN O’MALLEY, INSTRUCTOR BOMALLEY@BROOKLYN.CUNY.EDU

2. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS • Scholars now believe that most of the human of the Americas came across the Bering Strait from Asia to North America roughly between 16,000 – 14,000 B.C. • New archaeological evidence points to some migrants having come from Asia by boat to South America, and a few may have even come from Europe before Columbus. • Nonetheless, the DNA of most Native Americans is mostly similar to Mongolians and Siberians. • Archaic Period in the Americas (8,000 – 1,000 B.C.): Hunting and gathering with stone tools at first, and some groups begin to practice agriculture near the end of the period. • Agricultural areas produce first sedentary populations.

3. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures PRECONTACT CIVILIZATIONS IN THE SOUTH MESOAMERICA • Olmecs (1200 – 400 B.C.): Centered on the southern Mexican Gulf Coast and famed for giant stone heads; not much known about this culture since it did not have a writing system. • Teotihuacan (100 B.C. – 700 A.D.) This great city further north than the Olmecs or Maya, is noted for the largest Mesoamerican pyramidal structures. • Classical Maya (250 A.D. – 900 A.D.) Complex society featuring large-scale urbanism, written language, and sophisticated astronomy. • Mexica or Aztec (ca. 1,400 – 1521 A.D.) This complex “empire” was a network of city-states that paid tribute to the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan, which had a population of 100,000 by 1500 A.D.

4. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures Olmec Stone Head

5. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures THE CIVILIZATIONS OF THE NORTH The ways in which North American Natives lived largely depended on geography and and and climate.

6. Chapter One:The Collision of CulturesTHE CIVILIZATIONS OF THE NORTH • Arctic: Inuit • Subarctic: Cree, Montagnais, Algonquin, Micmac, Penobscot, Abenaki • Eastern Woodland: Wampanoag, Mohegan, Pequot, Narragansett, Iroquois, Huron, Shawnee, Pamlico, Tuscatora, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Yamasee, Choctaw, Natchez (speakers of related Algonquian language stretched from Canadian East Cost down to Virginia) • Prairie: Winnebago, Sauk, Fox, Pawnee, Sioux, Arapaho, Iowa, Wichita • Great Plains: Flathead, Crow, Shoshone, Blackfeet • Southwest: Pima, Zuni, Pueblo, Yaqui • Far West: Chumash, Nez Perce, Paiute peoples • Northwest Coast: Chinook, Tlingit, Makah, Nootkah

7. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures THE CIVILIZATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA • Mostly nomadic hunter/gather societies; not as complex as the Incas or Mexica peoples of South America and Mesoamerica • Northeast peoples practiced some agriculture, but remained mobile. Northwest and Arctic people heavily reliant on fishing. • Some exceptions: • Pueblo people in the arid Southwest organize agriculture and irrigation, and live in large complexes of stone and adobe mud. • Cahokia: Large trading center near modern-day St. Louis on the Mississippi River that had a population of 40,000 by 1200 A.D., and was known for building large mounds.

8. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures THE CIVILIZATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA Artist’s rendition of what Cahokia may have looked like

9. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures QUESTION: HOW MANY PEOPLE LIVED IN THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS? ANSWER: NO ONE KNOWS FOR CERTAIN. • Nineteenth-century naturalist George Catlin believed there had been 16 million in North America. Most of Catlin’s contemporaries believed that Indians were too primitive to sustain such a large population. • James Mooney, an ethnologist in the early twentieth-century, estimated 1.15 million natives north of Mexico. • In 1934, anthropologist Alfred Kroebler estimated 8.4 million in all of the Americas, with half of this number in each continent. • In the 1960s, anthropologist Henry Dobyns estimated between 10 and 12 million north of Mexico, and between 90 and 112 million across the Americas, which most think is too high. • A 1970s estimate puts the figure at 55 million total, but only 4 million north of Mexico. • The lack of any substantial data makes these estimates guesswork at best. One thing is for sure: smallpox and other diseases had a devastating effect on Indian populations.

10. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures WHY DID EUROPEANS BEGIN REACHING OUT INTO THE BROADER WORLD AROUND 1500? • Sizeable increase in population since the Black Death ca. 1350. • Revival of commerce: rise of a new merchant class looking to meet the growing demand for goods from abroad. • Emergence of stronger governments that wished to enhance the commercial development of their countries. • Improvements in maritime technology and navigation techniques made sea voyages to East Asia begin to look safer and cheaper than the tough and expensive overland journey. • Why were the Portuguese the early maritime leaders?

11. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures LURE OF THE EAST • Ever since the Venetian merchant Marco Polo traveled to China in the late 1200s, European elites were fascinated by East Asian luxury goods like silk and spices. • Europeans wanted to find a better alternative to get to the Far East than Marco Polo’s treacherous route. Marco Polo Leaves for the Far East

12. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures EARLY PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS • Prince Henry the Navigator (1394 – 1460): Encouraged Portuguese maritime efforts and the exploration of the African coast. • Bartholomeu Dias (1451 – 1500): Rounded the Cape of Good Hope of Africa into the Indian Ocean in 1488 • Vasco da Gama (ca. 1460 – 1524): First European to sail all the way to India, landing there in 1498. • Portuguese thought Columbus’s idea to sail west across the Atlantic to get to Asia was not worth their time as they were already making progress by going East around Africa.

13. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS (1451 – 1506) • Turned to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain when the Portuguese turned him down. • Columbus thought the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan was about 2,300 miles, when in fact is about 12,200 miles, a distance beyond the capacity of ships at that time. • Most educated contemporaries thought Columbus’s idea was wrong and that his voyage was dangerous and stupid. • Sailed from Spain with ninety men and three ships in August 1492, and landed in the Bahamas ten weeks later. • Columbus first thought that he had found islands near Japan; he called the natives “Indians” since he thought he was in the East Indies.

14. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures SPANISH EXPLORATION  • Columbus’s voyages triggers greater Spanish exploration. • On his second voyage in 1493, he created a temporary colony on the island of Hispaniola, and on the third voyage in 1498, Columbus finally realized he had found a new continent. • Spaniard Vasco de Balboa sees the Pacific Ocean in 1513 after crossing the Isthmus of Panama. • Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan is employed by the Spanish to circumnavigate the world; he dies on the voyage, but a small number of his crew survives to complete it. • Italian merchant Amerigo Vespucci observed and published accounts about several Portuguese voyages to the New World, leading a well known mapmaker, Martin Waldseemüller, to name the new continent “America.”

15. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures  Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 Universalis Cosmographia, the map that named “America” and first showed it as a separate continent from Asia.

16. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures SPANISH CONQUEST AND EMPIRE • After 1500, the Spanish begin to see the New World as a source of potential profit in itself rather than just an obstacle to Asia. • Spanish claimed the whole New World except for the portion that became Brazil, which was given to the Portuguese by papal decree. THE CONQUISTADORES • Hernando Cortés led an expedition of 600 men against the Aztec/Mexica in 1518, assaulting their capital of Tenochtitlán. • Francisco Pizarro completed the conquest of the Incan Empire in what is now Peru in 1533. • By the end of the 1500s, the Spanish Empire included Carribbean Islands, Mexico, souther North America, and what is now Chile, Peru, and Argentina.

17. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures Artist’s rendering of Tenochtitlán right before conquest

18. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS (c. 1484 – 1566) • He was an early conquistador, one of the first Spanish settlers of the New World, and possessed an encomienda; but he soon renounced his Indian slaves and became a strong advocate for the Native Americans. • In 1522, he tried to establish a non-exploitative colony in what is now Venezuela, but it failed; he eventually becoming a Dominican friar so that he could convert Indians to Christianity. • He wrote extensively about Spanish abuse of the natives, most famously in his book, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (written 1542), which describes the brutal treatment of the Indians during the Spanish colonization of the Greater Antilles islands. The account was written for King Charles I of Spain, who was also the Holy Roman Emperor. • In 1550, he participated in a famed debate against an opponent who believed the Indians were less than full humans and needed Spanish masters to be civilized; Las Casas argued that they were already fully human.

19. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures SPANISH OUTPOSTS IN WHAT WOULD BECOME THE UNITED STATES • ST. AUGUSTINE: The Spanish established this small fort on what is now the northern Atlantic coast of the state of Florida in 1565. It is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in North America. (The British would gain the city in 1763, give it back to the Spanish in 1783, and eventually it would be given to the United States in 1819). • EAST COAST OUTPOSTS: In the late 1500s, the Spanish attempted to create small outposts on the coast of what is now South Carolina and Virginia, but these failed. Founding of St. Augustine, 1565(Library of Congress)

20. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures SPANISH OUTPOSTS IN WHAT WOULD BECOME THE U.S. • CONQUEST OF THE PUEBLO INDIANS: The colonial government in Mexico wanted to expand into what is now the U.S. Southwest. • JUAN DE OÑATE: This Mexican-born Spanish explorer colonized northern region of “New Spain” in 1598 and comes into conflict with Pueblo Indians. • ACOMA MASSACRE: In 1599, in retaliation for natives killing his nephew, Oñate kills 800 Acoma men, women, and children; enslaves surviving females; and amputates one foot from surviving men over twenty-five. • OÑATE’S FOOT: In 1998, native vandals cut off a foot from an equestrian statue of Oñate (pictured with foot restored).

21. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures SPANISH OUTPOSTS IN WHAT WOULD BECOME THE UNITED STATES • SANTA FE: This outpost among the Pueblo Indians in what is now New Mexico established in 1609. Priests began converting natives to Christianity. • POPÉ’S REBELLION: A bloody revolt led by a Pueblo religious figure named Popé took place in 1680 when the Spanish priests tried to stop the Pueblos from practicing their old religious rituals. The revolt temporarily expelled the Spaniards, but they returned in 1692, and crushed one last revolt in 1696. Pueblo Indian Kachina dolls—the Spanish priests’ attempt to destroy them may have been a factor triggering the 1680 revolt

22. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures BIOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL EXCHANGES • DISEASE: Europeans gave Indians diseases to which they had no resistance: influenza, typhus, measles, and especially smallpox. Disease and harsh treatment reduced the Taino of Hispaniola from roughly 1 million to 500 over the 1500s. What disease did the Indians give to the Europeans? • CROPS AND LIVESTOCK FROM THE OLD WORLD: Sugar, and sugar; cattle, pigs, and sheep • CROPS FROM THE NEW WORLD: Maize, pumpkins, beans, squash, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers

23. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures SOCIAL RELATIONS AND LABOR • MIXING OF EUROPEANS AND NATIVES: In the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, there were few European women. Men often had sex with native women, producing mixed-race children known as mestizos. • COERCIVE LABOR: Spaniards often forced natives to serve as laborers for a fixed term, working in mines or plantations, for a small wage. • SLAVE LABOR: Indian labor was not reliable, so as early as 1502, Europeans began importing African slaves to work on sugar plantations.

24. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures THE “ATLANTIC WORLD” IDEA • New way of looking at the history of the New World and the entire rim of the Atlantic Ocean that was popularized in the 1980s. • Does not look at the development of New World colonies in an individual, national context, but rather looks at the entire Atlantic rim as an interrelated field of study: developments in the Caribbean, for example, affected West Africa and Western Europe. • Focuses not only on political developments, but also commercial, cultural, social, biological, and environmental ones (i.e. the “Columbian Exchange”). • Typically periodized from 1450s to the early 1800s: the Age of Exploration to the Age of Revolutions. • Can be seen as an exploring an early form of globalization. • Oceanic rims in general (Pacific, Indian, etc.)—not just the Atlantic—recently have become “systems” for historical investigation.

25. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures AFRICA AND THE AMERICAS • Over half of immigrants to the New World between 1500 and 1800 were enslaved Africans. • West African states traded with the Mediterranean and became early converts to Islam; traded gold, ivory, and slaves for finished goods; further South there was less trade and contact. • African societies tended to be matrilineal: they traced heredity and property through mothers. • Slavery existed well before the Europeans arrived; slaves often were war captives, criminals, or debtors. They served fixed terms and children did not inherit their condition. • Europeans wanted slaves for growing sugar cane: first in the Mediterranean, then the Atlantic islands, and then the Caribbean.

26. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures THE SLAVE TRADE • 1500s: Portuguese dominated the African slave trade. • 1600s: Dutch come to dominate the trade. • 1700s: English dominate the trade. Elmina Castle, built in 1482 by the Portuguese on the coast of what is now Ghana as a fortress where slaves would be kept to await transport across the sea.

27. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures THE ARRIVAL OF THE ENGLISH • First English exploration of the New World by Genoan John Cabot, hired by Henry VII in 1497. • Journey was a failed attempt to find a “Northwest Passage” through the New World and on to Asia. • A serious English attempt at colonization would not start for over a century, in the 1580s.

28. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures WHAT PROMPTED ENGLISH COLONIZATION? • England’s population was growing rapidly in the 1500s while its land and food resources became more scarce. • Dominance of Mercantilist Ideology: Idea that one nation could only become wealthy at the expense of another spread across Europe and influenced England’s desire to challenge Spain in the New World. • Religion: Separatist Puritans were looking for a refuge to practice a “pure” form of Protestantism; they saw the Church of England as too much like the Roman Catholic Church, and were persecuted. • Success of Irish Colonization: English colonizers made considerable progress in conquering Ireland in the 1500s. They believed that they should keep a rigid separation between themselves and the natives, a practice that was imported to the New World (unlike the Spaniards, who mixed freely).

29. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures FRENCH AND DUTCH IN THE NEW WORLD • First French permanent settlement founded at Quebec in 1608, mainly to trade for furs with Indians. • By 1624, the Dutch set up a colony of New Netherlands, with trading posts up the Hudson, Delaware, and Connecticut Rivers. • The capital of the new Dutch colony was New Amsterdam, on the southern tip of Manhattan.

30. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures FIRST ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS  • ROANOKE COLONY: Sir Walter Raleigh, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, financed and organized an attempt to set up a colony on an island off what is now North Carolina in 1585 and again in 1587. • WAR WITH SPAIN: War cut off Roanoke from England for three years, but when Raleigh returned in 1590, he found that he colonists had disappeared, leaving one mysterious word carved on a post: “Croatoan.” Raleigh fell from favor with this disastrous efforts. Although he would win back her affections, she died in 1603, and he would be imprisoned for being involved in a plot to overthrow her successor, James I. • KING JAMES: In 1606 King James I issued a new charter that divided the North American coast between two groups—the Plymouth merchants (northern coast) and the London merchants (southern coast—this group would later become the “Virginia Company”). The London merchants would invest in the voyage leading to the Jamestown colony in Virginia in 1607, the first English colony to succeed.

31. Chapter One:The Collision of Cultures Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh