CHAPTER 1 OUTLINE OUT OF OLD WORLDS, NEWI. Introduction: The Cherokee Creation Myth When different peoples tell stories to explain their origins, sometimes the stories seem fantastical or heretical. Often, as in the Cherokee myth of creation, certain themes sound familiar to listeners or readers because different cultures share certain views of the world. Most of these myths are not historical accounts of migrations, lives of kings, or daily affairs. But they are more than mere fictions intended to entertain people. Over the centuries the Cherokee retold and reshaped the details of their creation myth, putting in order the component parts of the world and giving words to physical and psychological phenomena as they understood them. The evolving myth gave names and causes to what they experienced in their everyday lives and collective expression to core values and what each person might imagine as his or her reason for existence.II. The First Americans, to 1500 A. Earliest North Americans 1. The Paleo-Indians 2. Climatic Change and Adaptation 3. The Agricultural Revolution B. North American Cultures 1. Eastern Woodland Cultures 2. Adena and Hopewell Cultures 3. Mound-Builders of the Mississippi River Valley 4. Southwestern Cultures a) The Hohokam b) The Anasazi c) The Pueblo 5. Algonquian a) The Chesapeake Tribes b) The Eastern Coastal Tribes 6. The Iroquoian a) The Five Nations of the Iroquois b) Hiawatha and the Great League of Peace
C. Mesoamerican and South American Cultures 1. The Olmec 2. The Toltec 3. The Maya 4. The Mexica (Aztec) 5. Early Andean Cultures a) The Chavin Mountain Culture b) The Mochicans c) The Tiwanaku 6. The IncasIII. Old World Peoples in Africa and Europe, to 1500 A. West African Cultures and Kingdoms 1. West African Social and Community Structures 2. Ghana 3. The Songhai Empire B. Traditional European Societies 1. European Social and Community Structures a) Peasant Families b) Peasant Relationships to the Land c) Laws and Social Customs 2. The Economic Expansion of Europe 3. The Black Death 4. Commercial Expansion and Early Voyages of ExplorationIV. Europe’s Internal Transformation, 1400–1600 A. Agriculture and Commerce 1. Impact of Recurring Plagues on European Agriculture 2. Urban Development and an Expanding Middle Class 3. New Technology and Transoceanic Travel 4. Markets and Fairs 5. Changing Relationships to the Land 6. New Social and Legal Arrangements 7. Urban Expansion 8. Changing Commercial Relationships B. The Nation-State and the Renaissance, 1400–1600 1. The Formation of the Nation State a) Portugal and Spain b) France c) England 2. The Renaissance
a) Greco-Roman Influences b) The Renaissance Impact on the Arts and Sciences (1) Galileo Galilei (2) William Shakespeare (3) Machiavelli and The Prince C. The Reformation, 1517–1563 1. Martin Luther and the 95 theses Image 1: Martin Luther who, in attempting to reform the Catholic Church, set off the Reformation. 2. The Impact of the Reformation a) Germany b) France c) England 3. The English PuritansV. From Across the Seas, 1420–1600 A. Portuguese Exploration and African Slavery 1. Old World Slavery 2. The Portuguese Slave Trade 3. Sugar and Slaves B. Christopher Columbus 1. Columbus’ First Voyage and Early Native American Encounters a) The Arawak b) The Taino 2. The Treaty of Tordesillas 3. Columbus’ Later Voyages C. The Spanish Century 1. The Conquistadors 2. Hernan Cortes and the Aztec
Image 2: Aztec religion practiced human sacrifice 3. Pizarro and the Incas 4. Juan Ponce de Leon and Florida 5. Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and Texas 6. Hernando de Soto and the Mississippi Valley 7. Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and the Search for Cibola D. The Effects of Contact 1. The Columbian Exchange 2. New World Slavery and the Middle Passage 3. European Cultural Adaptations 4. Native American Cultural AdaptationsVI. Conclusion Native American, African, and European peoples had all been experiencing centuries of profound changes before they encountered each other. By the time Africans and Europeans came to the western hemisphere, most peoples of the Caribbean and the coastal mainland lived in sedentary villages or semi-permanent encampments. They had organized themselves into clusters of families and hierarchical communities that were recognizable to Europeans, and they identified among themselves leaders, servants, and specialists of many kinds. From Aztec and Inca, to Pueblo and Seminole, the Native Americans who experienced the most contact with the first Europeans were sometimes closer culturally to the strangers from across the Atlantic Ocean than they were to nomads or hunter-gatherers who lived in high altitudes or remote regions of their own American interior. But differences ran deep as well. Long before peoples of different continents mixed, thousands of different North
American cultures rose, flourished, and profoundly changed—sometimes repeatedly—in dynamic interaction with each other.Peoples of Africa and Europe, too, underwent significantchanges that laid the foundations for both cultural sharing andcultural conflicts when they did finally meet.Portuguese and Spanish explorers pushed aside Islamiccommercial supremacy with a burst of energy in the 1400s, andwent on to conquer islands and empires stretching overthousands of miles in the New World. As we have seen, by 1450medieval technological, agricultural, and commercialinnovations had changed living conditions dramatically withinEurope. Religious and political turmoil had uprooted hugenumbers of Europeans, many of whom became migrants in theexplorations westward to come. But changes were just asmomentous in the city-states and villages in the Americas, and arich and fluctuating heritage accompanied African peoplesforcibly removed from their homelands. These dynamicconditions set certain parameters for the blending amongcultures in the New World.Initial European dreams of glory and gold gave way quickly tothe reality of difference, disappointment, and sharpeningtensions among strangers. The first crude toeholds of Europeansin the Americas contrasted sharply with the great NativeAmerican city-states of Mound Builders, Aztec, Inca, andsouthwestern peoples. And yet, within only a short period oftime, the demographic tables reversed. While life was no doubtdifficult for European colonizers, who experienced starvation,death, and disease in the first years of each settlement,millions of Indians and Africans throughout the Americasperished by the steel weapons, harsh work regimens, oppressivepolitical authority, and especially the diseases of migratingEuropean strangers. As Spain extracted shiploads of hides andprecious metals from new lands, deadly diseases took a greatertoll on Native Americans than Europeans had ever experiencedin the bloodiest of wars. At the same time, Spanish andPortuguese explorers and settlers required greater and greaterreplenishment of slaves from Africa who, by the early 1500s,performed an array of tasks as forced labor. This pattern, as we
shall see, repeated itself when other European empires arose inthe coming generations.