NOTE-TAKING GUIDE: Of the People: A History of the United States CHAPTER 1 “Worlds in Motion: 1450 – 1550”

COMMON THREADS
  • In which ways might the Native American societies before the arrival of Europeans be considered egalitarian? What forces shaped their societies?
  • How did Europeans’ prior experiences affect their actions in the New World? In which ways did they adapt to new circumstances?
  • What made conquest possible? What different forms did it take? What role did gender play in conquest?
  • What were the intended and unintended consequences of conquest?

OUTLINE
Great Migrations
The Emergence of Farming
The Cradle of the Americas
The Northern World Takes Shape
The Worlds of Christopher Columbus
The Reconquista
The Age of Exploration
New Ideas Take Root
Collision in the Caribbean
Columbus’s First Voyage
The Origins of a New World Political and Economic Order
The Division of the World
Onto the Mainland
America and the World: Debating the Morality of Conquest
The First Florida Ventures
The Conquest of Mexico
American Landscape: Tenochtitlan
The Establishment of a Spanish Empire
The Return to North America
The Consequences of Conquest
Demographic Disaster
The Columbian Exchange
Men’s and Women’s Lives
Conclusion
WHO?
Francisco Vázquez de Coronado
Hernando Cortés
Malinche (Malintzin, Doña Marina)
Juan Ponce de León
Hernando de Soto / WHAT?
Encomienda
Political Economy
The Requerimiento
Tenochtitlan
REVIEW QUESTIONS
  1. Describe the development of Native Americancivilizations in Central and North America from Archaic times until 1500. What were the major forces of change within these early populations?
  2. What were the forces that led Europeans, and particularly Spain, to explore the New World?
  3. What was the impact of European conquest on the population and environment of the New World?
  4. Compare older ways of explaining the conquest (such as Moctezuma’s supposed belief that Hernando Cortés was a god) with scholars’ more recent explanations. What beliefs about Native Americans does each set of explanations reflect?
  5. How would Native American men and women have experienced conquest differently?
  6. Compare Spain’s treatment of Muslims and Jews in Spain following the reconquista with the country’s later treatment of conquered Native Americans in the New World. Do you think these groups received similar or different treatment? Why?

NOTES: TO FOLLOW UP / QUESTIONS TO ASK IN CLASS