Before 1492, North America held hundreds of societies shaped by their environments. Then European voyages connected two worlds that had developed apart for thousands of years. This unit covers who lived here, why Europeans came, what the Columbian Exchange and the Spanish Empire changed, and how Europeans, Native Americans and Africans saw each other.
Native societies across North America adapted to very different environments. In Europe, the end of the Reconquista, rivalry for Asian trade, new ships and navigation tools, and Christian missionary zeal pushed explorers across the Atlantic. Contact set off the Columbian Exchange and remade both sides of the ocean.
Maize spread north from Mexico into the Southwest, supporting irrigation, settled towns and more complex societies. Scarce resources in the Great Basin and Great Plains favored mobile hunting and gathering. The Northeast, Mississippi Valley and Atlantic seaboard mixed farming and hunting in permanent villages. The Northwest and California fished and gathered in settled communities.
European nations explored and colonized for new sources of wealth, economic and military advantage over rivals, and to spread Christianity: "God, gold and glory." Portugal led the way down the African coast; Spain sponsored Columbus in 1492.
The Columbian Exchange moved crops, animals and diseases across the Atlantic. American crops fed European population growth; American silver and gold shifted Europe from feudalism toward capitalism. New sailing technology and joint-stock companies made it possible. In the Americas, epidemics killed most Native people, and the Spanish conquered the Aztec and Inca empires.
Through the encomienda system, the Spanish forced Native Americans to work on plantations and in mines. As Native populations collapsed, European traders worked with some West African groups who practiced slavery to buy enslaved Africans for the Americas. Spain sorted its diverse colonial population into a caste system based on ancestry.
Europeans and Native Americans held divergent worldviews on religion, gender roles, family, land use and power. Early contact was full of misunderstanding, though each side adopted useful parts of the other's culture. Native peoples resisted encroachment through diplomacy and war. Europeans debated how non-Europeans should be treated, while building religious, cultural and racial justifications for subjugating them.
Causation means explaining why something happened and what it led to, and judging which causes or effects mattered most. In Period 1, the main chains run from European motives and technology to exploration, from contact to the Columbian Exchange and Native population collapse, and from labor shortages to the encomienda and the Atlantic slave trade.