1. Find Your Seat
Please sit where you would like to sit for the 1st quarter
All front tables must be filled before any back tables can be!

2. Beyond Just Answering the Questions
Tips to be successful in the class
Try and get your reading done ahead of time
Take notes as you read, don’t just expect the packets to work as your only study tool
You remember things better and therefore learn more, the more you handwrite something
Feel free to take advantage of the prep book
Read each period section as we get to it in the textbook
Use the chapter ppts on the website as study guides before a quiz
Bring your questions to class  While I may not have read the textbook, my outside knowledge and your classmates knowledge will help you fill in any gaps.
At the same time, use Google, if you are struggling at home!
Create outside study groups/teams to work with!

3. Founding the New Nation
Unit 1
Founding the New Nation

4. Chapter 1
New World Beginnings
33,000 B.C.E

5. Overarching Ideas/Topics (Period 1)
Geology of the New World
Native Americans before Columbus
Europeans and Africans
Columbus and the early explorers
Columbian Exchange
The conquest of Mexico
Spain’s new empire

6. Geology of the New World
Environment determined settlement patterns as well as political, cultural, and economic structures
How did interactions with the natural environment shape the institutions and values of various groups living on the North American continent?
Mexico and American Southwest
Drier climates – required more settlement and agriculture – irrigation  more established settlements (Aztecs and Pueblos)
Great Basin and Western Plains
Great Basin and Mississippi – richer soil  larger settlements once farming techniques can be established
Plains – more difficult to grow on, so more nomadic tribes
Northeast and Atlantic Seaboard
Greater access to agriculture, hunting, and fishing.
Larger settlements – Iroquois Confederacy

7. Native Americans before Columbus
Migrated across North America over time and developed complex societies by adapting to and transforming their environment
Incas (Peru), Mayans (Central America), Aztecs (Mexico), Pueblos (Southwest)
Maize cultivation supported economic development and social diversification – present day Mexico and American Southwest
The lack of natural resources in the Great Basin and western Great Plains caused Native American societies to develop largely mobile lifestyles

8. Europeans and Africans
Contact between the two groups challenged each other’s world views
Many Europeans developed a belief in white superiority to justify treatment of Africans
Portuguese developed plantation system in Africa
Beginning stages of the slave trade that would make its way to the New World

9. Columbus and the early explorers
Contacts among Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans challenged world-views of each group
Many Europeans developed a belief in white superiority to justify treatment of Native Americans
Why/How
Spanish
Portuguese
Dutch

10. Columbian Exchange
A series of interaction and adaptations among societies across the Atlantic
Diseases, crops, livestock, minerals
Changed settlement patterns and economic, social, and political developments among Natives and across the Western Hemisphere
New crops and minerals from the Americas stimulated European population growth and a shift from feudalism to capitalism

11. The conquest of Mexico
Sought gold and silver and impressed by complex societies
Treaty of Tordesillas – splits the new world between Spain and Portugal
Encomienda system
Critic – Bartolome de Las Casas
Pope’s Rebellion
Cortes and the Aztecs

12. Spain’s new empire
Spanish and Portuguese explores poorly understood the Native Americans and had debates over how to treat and “civilize” them
Exploration and conquest led to widespread deadly epidemics, emergence of racially mixed populations and caste system
Conquistadores
Mestizos
Black Legend
Why create this new empire
Economic
Political
Cultural
How was it organized