Old World
Africa, Asia, Europe
New World
Americas
Appalachian mountains
Located in Eastern US. Formed before the continental separation 350 million years ago. Barrier against Western expansion by the British colonists.
Tidewater region
Narrow eastern coastal plain creased by many river valleys sloped gently upward to the ridges of the Appalachian mountains. Located south of the Mason Dixon line. Eastern parts of Virginia, Carolinas, and Georgia. Colonists had to plant their tobacco abov
Rocky Mountains
Located in Western US. Formed after the continent was in its current position 135-25 million years ago. "roof of America".
Great Basin
Bounded by the Rockies on the east and the Sierra and Cascade ranges on the west.
Great Lakes
Created by a retreating glacier that scooped out the earth and whose melting water filled the depressions.
Missouri-Mississippi-Ohio River System
Drains the enormous mid-continental basin between the Appalachians and the Rockies.
Land Bridge
Some 35,000 years ago, the Ice Age congealed much of the world oceans into massive icepack glaciers, lowering the level of the sea. As the sea level dropped, it exposed a land bridge connecting Eurasia with North America in the area of the present-day Ber
Maize (Indian corn)
Their advanced agricultural practices, based primarily on the cultivation of maize, which is Indian corn, fed large populations, perhaps as many as 20 million in Mexico alone. Agriculture, especially corn growing, accounted for the size and sophistication
Mayans
The Maya Empire, centered in the tropical lowlands of what is now Guatemala, reached the peak of its power and influence around the sixth century A.D. The Maya excelled at agriculture, pottery, hieroglyph writing, calendar-making and mathematics, and left
Aztecs
The Aztecs, who probably originated as a nomadic tribe in northern Mexico, arrived in Mesoamerica around the beginning of the 13th century. From their magnificent capital city, Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs emerged as the dominant force in central Mexico, deve
Incas
Atahuallpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, dies by strangulation at the hands of Francisco Pizarro's Spanish conquistadors. The execution of Atahuallpa, the last free reigning emperor, marked the end of 300 years of Inca civilization. High in the
Pueblo Indians
Corn growing reached American Southwest by 1200 bc. where it effected the Pueblo culture located in Rio Grande valley. There they constructed intricate irrigation systems to water their cornfields. They dwelled in villages of multistoried, terraced buildi
Mound Builders
Indians from the Ohio river valley. Sustained large settlements after the incorporation of corn planting during the first millennium A.D. Known for constructing thousands of gigantic sculptured earthworks in geometric designs, some reaching 70 ft. Ancesto
Three-Sister Farming
The cultivation of maize, as well as of high yielding strains of beans and squash, reached the southeastern Atlantic seaboard region of North America about A.D. 1000. These plants made possible "three-sister" farming, with beans growing on the trellis of
Cherokee
Since the earliest contact with European explorers in the 16th century, the Cherokee people have been consistently identified as one of the most socially and culturally advanced of the Native American tribes. Cherokee culture thrived many hundreds of year
Iroquois
The Iroquois in the northeastern woodlands, inspired by a legendary leader named Hiawatha, in the sixteenth century created perhaps the closest North American approximation to the great nation states of Mexico and Peru. The Iroquois Confederacy (Mohawks,
Finland
Norse seafarers from Scandinavia chanced upon the new world at about 1000 A.D. They landed on the New England shoulder of North America in present Newfoundland. But no strong nation-state, yearning to
expand, supported these venturesome voyagers. Their se
Crusaders
Christian crusaders fought to end Muslim control over the holy land from the 11th to the 14th century. There the crusaders discovered many goods and luxuries not know to Europeans before. Such as silks, spices (sugar), pain drugs, perfumes, drapes, etc. T
Genoa (Northern Route) / Venice (Southern Route)
Cities in Italy where goods would arrive from Asia (Spice Islands in Indonesia, China, and India) and many seas until they reached the ports of the Mediterranean and finally to Italian merchants. Muslim middlemen exacted a heavy toll en route. By the time
Marco Polo
European appetites were further whetted when footloose Marco Polo, an Italian adventurer, returned to Europe in 1295 and began telling tales of his nearly twenty-year sojourn in China. Though he may in fact never have seen China (legend to the contrary, t
Caravel
Before the middle of that century, European sailors refused to sail southward along the coast of West Africa because they could not beat their way home against the prevailing northerly winds and south-flowing currents. About 1450, Portuguese mariners over
Bartholomeu Dias
The seafaring Portuguese pushed still farther southward in search of the water route to Asia. Edging cautiously down the African coast, Bartholomeu D�as rounded the southernmost tip of the "Dark Continent" in 1488.
Vasco De Gama
In 1498, Vasco da Gama finally reached India (hence the name "Indies," given by Europeans to all the mysterious lands of the Orient), and returned home with a small but tantalizing cargo of jewels and spices.
Ferdinand & Isabella
Meanwhile, the kingdom of Spain became united�an event pregnant with destiny�in the late fifteenth century. This new unity resulted primarily from the marriage of two sovereigns, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, and from the brutal expulsion o
Christopher Columbus
Onto this stage stepped Christopher Columbus. This skilled Italian seafarer persuaded the Spanish monarchs to outfit him with three tiny but seaworthy ships, manned by a motley crew. Daringly, he unfurled the sails of his cockleshell craft and headed west
Corn & potatoes
Native New World plants such as tobacco, maize, beans, tomatoes, and especially the lowly potato eventually revolutionized the international economy as well as the European diet, feeding the rapid population growth of the Old World. These foodstuffs were
Sugar
Columbus also brought seedlings of sugar cane, which thrived in the warm Caribbean climate. A "sugar revolution" consequently took place in the European diet, fueled by the forced migration of millions of Africans to work the canefields and sugar mills of
Horses
In exchange the Europeans introduced Old World crops and animals to the Americas. Columbus returned to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in 1493 with seventeen ships that unloaded twelve hundred men and a vi
Smallpox
Europeans introduced Old World diseases such as smallpox into the New World which diminished as much as 90% of the native american populations.
Treaty of Tordesillas
Spain secured its claim to Columbus's discovery in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), dividing with Portugal the "heathen lands" of the New World. The lion's share went to Spain, but Portugal received compensating territory in Africa and Asia, as well as t
Vasco Nunez Balboa
Spanish conquistador/explorer hailed as the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean, waded into the foaming waves off Panama in 1513 and boldly claimed for his king all the lands washed by that sea!
Ferdinand Magellan
Portuguese explorer known for organizing the first circumnavigation of the Earth. Started from Spain in 1519 with five tiny ships. After beating through the storm-lashed strait off the tip of South America that still bears his name, he was slain by the in
Juan Ponce de Leon
Spanish explorer and conquistador that led the first European expedition in Florida, which he named. In 1513 and 1521, Juan Ponce de Le�n explored Florida, which he at first thought was an island. Seeking gold�and probably not the mythical "fountain of yo
Francisco Coronado
Spanish conquistador who led expeditions from 1540-1542 in a quest of fabled golden cities that turned out to be adobe pueblos, wandered with a clanking cavalcade through Arizona and New Mexico, penetrating as far east as Kansas. En route his expedition d
Hernando de Soto
A Spanish explorer and conquistador who with six hundred armor plated men, undertook a fantastic gold-seeking expedition during 1539-1542. Floundering through marshes and pine barrens from Florida westward, he discovered and crossed the majestic Mississip
Francisco Pizarro
Spanish conquistador who conquered the Inca empire in 1532.
Encomienda
The loosely organized and vulnerable native communities of the West Indies also provided laboratories for testing the techniques that would eventually subdue the advanced Indian civilizations of Mexico and Peru. The most important such technique was the i
Granada & Moors
In 1492, the same year that Columbus sighted In America, the great Moorish city of Granada, in Spain, fell after a ten-year siege. For five centuries the Christian kingdoms of Spain had been trying to drive the North African Muslim Moors ("the Dark Ones,
Reconquista
But the lengthy "Reconquista" had left its mark on Spanish society. Centuries of military and religious confrontation nurtured an obsession with status and honor, bred religious zealotry and intolerance, and created a large class of men who regarded manua
Hernan Cortes
A Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec empire.
Tenochtitlan
300,000 inhabitants. Capital of Aztec Empire. Rivaled in size any city in Europe. Rose from island in center of lake. Captured by Spanish in 1521 and ruled for 300 years. Temples were destroyed for christian cathedrals on top of site in Mexico city. Disea
Montezuma
Aztec cheiftain who believed Cortes to be a god. Cortes' men held him hostage. Killed by thrown stone.
Mestizos
People of mixed Indian and European heritage.
John Cabot
John Cabot was an Italian navigator and explorer whose 1497 discovery of parts of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England is commonly held to have been the first European encounter with the mainland of North America since the Norse Viki
Giovannida Verazano
Giovanni da Verrazzano was a Florentine explorer of North America, in the service of the King Francis I of France. He is renowned as the first European since the Norse expeditions to North America around AD 1000 to explore the Atlantic coast of North Amer
Jacques Cartier
Jacques Cartier was a French explorer of Breton origin who claimed what is now Canada for France. Jacques Cartier was the first European to describe and map the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River. Voyaged from the 1530's-154
St. Augustine
In a move to block French ambitions and to protect the sea-lanes to the Caribbean, the Spanish erected a fortress at St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, thus founding the oldest continually inhabited European settlement in the future United States.
New Mexico
- Proclaimed province in 1609 by men led by Don Juan de Onate after the battle of Acoma in 1599. Capital of Santa Fe was founded the following year. The Spanish settlers found few furs and little gold. but they discovered many Indians to convert to their
Pope's Rebellion
- The Roman Catholic mission became the central institution in colonial New Mexico until the missionaries' efforts to suppress native religious customs provoked an Indian uprising called Pop�'s Rebellion in 1680. The Pueblo rebels destroyed every Catholic
Mission Indians
Mission Indians is a term for many indigenous peoples of California. The tribes had established comparatively peaceful cultures varying from 250 to 8,000 years before Spanish contact. These resident indigenous peoples of the Americas were forcibly relocat
Black Legend
The misdeeds of the Spanish in the New World obscured their substantial achievements and helped give birth to the "Black Legend." This false concept held that the conquerors merely tortured and butchered the Indians ("killing for Christ"), stole their gol
Columbian Exchange
The Columbian exchange refers to the exchange of plants and animals between the New World and Europe following the discovery of America in 1492. New World crops such as corn, tomatoes, and potatoes had a dramatic effect on the European diet. At the same t
Mercantilism
(Mercantilism was the economic philosophy of Great Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Like other mercantile powers, Great Britain sought to increase its wealth and power by obtaining large amounts of gold and silver and by establishing a