This document provides an overview of the exploration, discovery, and settlement of North America between 1492-1700. It describes the cultures that existed in North America prior to European contact, including both small nomadic groups and larger complex societies. It then outlines factors that drove European exploration such as technological advances, religious conflicts, trade expansion, and the development of nation-states. Key early explorers and their voyages are summarized, including Columbus, Cabot, Cartier, and others. Spanish and English colonial settlements are briefly described.

1. Exploration,
Discovery and
Settlement
1492-1700

2. Introduction
• First migrations: 40,000 years ago
• Beringia: land bridge that
connected Siberia and modern
Alaska
• Native population in the 1490s: 50
to 75 million

3. Cultures of North America
SMALL SETTLEMENTS
• semipermanent
• population under 300
• Men: hunting and toolmaking
• Women: growing crops
• some nomadism--ex. Sioux and
Pawnee

4. Cultures of North America
LARGE SETTLEMENTS
• complex cultures
• Pueblos: multistory buildings
and irrigation
• Mound builders: hunting,
fishing, agriculture led to
permanency
• League of the Iroquois: political
confederation > successful
resistance

5. Cultures of Central and South
America
• as many as 25 million people
• Maya: Yucatan Peninsula
• Aztec: central Mexico
• Inca: modern Peru
• highly organized societies,
including trade, calendars and
science
• Aztec captial Tenochititlan was
as large as largest European
cities

6. Europe Moves Toward
Exploration
• Vikings come to North America
in 1000--no lasting impact
• WHY DID IT TAKE EUROPE
SO LONG?

7. Europe Moves Toward
Exploration
The Renaissance > Technology
• classical learning
• scientific and artistic activity
burst
• late 1400s
• Tech change: gunpowder,
compass, shipbuilding, map
making, printing press
improvements

8. Europe Moves Toward
Religious Conflict
Exploration
• Catholic church threatened by:
Ottoman Turks (outside) and
Protestant revolt (inside)
• Spain: Catholic Isabella and
Ferdinand defeat the last of the
Muslim Moors in Grenada > sign
of renewed Catholic hope
• Northern Europe: Protestant
Reformation threatens authority
of Rome > all want their own
version of Christianity adopted
elsewhere

9. Europe Moves Toward
Exploration
Expanding Trade
• Competition among Europeans
for trade with Africa, India, China
• Land route blocked by Turks in
1453 > search for sea route
• 1st success: Cape of Good Hope to
Africa and India

10. Europe Moves Toward
Exploration
Developing Nation-States
• Politics: monarchs build nation-
states--common culture and
loyalty
• depended on trade for revenue,
and Church for their rule
• Spain: Ferdinand and Isabella
Portugal: Prince Henry the
Navigator
• Both want to spread Catholicism

11. Early Explorations
Columbus
• 8 years of trying, and Ferdinand
and Isabella give him 3 ships and
total control of new lands
• Believed he landed in Asia, never
realized the true impact of his
voyages

12. Early Explorations
Columbus’ Legacy
• Many believed he failed for not
finding Asia and its riches
• Even named America for a
competitor!
• Many injustices done to natives
• However, skilled navigator and
daring to try the untried
• Also responsible for permanent
interaction

13. Blog It
Over the centuries, Columbus has received both praise for his role as a “discoverer” and blame for his actions as a “conqueror.” In the
United States, he has traditionally been viewed as a hero. As early as 1828, Washington Irving wrote a popular biography extolling the
explorer’s virtues. The apex of Columbus’ heroic reputation was reached in 1934 when President Franklin Roosevelt declared October
12 a national holiday.
In recent years, however, revisionist histories and biographies have been highly critical of Columbus, especially those written on the
occasion of the 1992 quincentennial of Columbus’ first voyage. His detractors argue that Columbus was simply at the right place at the
right time. Europe at the end of the 15th century was ready to expand. If Columbus had not crossed the Atlantic in 1492, some other
explorer—perhaps Vespucci or Cabot—would have done so a few years later. According to this interpretation, Columbus was little more
than a good navigator and a self-promoter, who exploited an opportunity.Some revisionists take a harsh view of Columbus and regard
him not as the first discoverer of America but rather as its first conqueror. They portray him as a religious fanatic in the European
Christian tradition who sought to convert the Native Americans to Christianity and liquidated those who resisted.
The revisionist argument has not gone unanswered. The historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., for example, has argued that the chief
motivation for Columbus’ deeds was neither greed for gold nor ambition for conquest. What drove him, in Schlesinger’s view, was the
challenge of the unknown. Columbus’ apologists admit that thousands of Native Americans died as a result of European exploration in
the Americas, but they point out that thousands had also suffered horrible deaths from Aztec sacrifices. Moreover, the mistreatment of
Native Americans was perhaps partially offset by such positive developments as the gradual development of democratic institutions in
the colonies and later the United States.
The debate about the nature of Columbus’ achievement is unresolved. As with other historical questions, it is sometimes difficult to
distinguish between fact and fiction and to separate a writer’s personal biases from objective reality. One conclusion is inescapable: As a
result of Columbus’ voyages, world history took a sharp turn in a new direction. His explorations established a permanent point of
contact between Europe and the Americas, and we are still living with the consequences of that fact.

14. Early Explorations
Exchanges
• New to Old World: beans, corn,
potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco,
syphillis
• Old to New World: sugar, pigs,
horses, wheel, iron, guns,
smallpox and measles
• Diseases in the New World > 90%
mortality rate
• Permanently changed the world

15. Early Explorations
Dividing the New World
• Spain and Portugal argued over
ownership, Pope drew a line:
Spain to the west, Portugal to the
east
• Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)
moved the line west, gave Portugal
rights to Brazil

16. Early Explorations
Spanish Exploration and
Conquest
• Spain dominates with
conquistadores (conquerors)
• Balboa: crosses Panama to Pacific
• Magellan’s crew: circumnavigates
• Cortes: conquer of Aztecs
• Pizzaro: conquer of Incas
• Increased Spanish gold supply by
500% > other nations want in

17. Early Explorations
Spanish Exploration and
Conquest
• encomienda: land grants and
“ownership” of Indians given to
individuals
• Indians farmed and mined until
disease and brutality took their
numbers
• asiento: Spanish paid a tax to
import slaves from Africa

18. Early Explorations
English Claims
• Cabot: explored Newfoundland
• no follow-up--King Henry VIII
preoccupied with divorces, and
church reform
• Elizabeth I: sent Sir Francis Drake
to plunder Spanish ships and seize
wealth (WIN), sent Sir Walter
Raleigh to found Roanoke (FAIL)

19. Early Explorations
French Claims
• French slow to develop, too--
preoccupied with wars and religious
conflict
• Verrazano: looked for NW water
passage to Asia (New York)
• Cartier: St. Lawrence River
• Champlain: Quebec, first
permanent French settlement
• Jolliet and Marquette: Mississippi
River
• La Salle: Mississippi Basin
(Louisiana)

20. Early Explorations
Dutch Claims
• Henry Hudson (English) hired by
Dutch: sailed the river that would
later have his name looking for a
NW passage
• Dutch claimed surrounding area:
New Amsterdam
• Dutch West India Company given
control and directive to make
money

21. Early English Settlements
HOW??
• Defeat of Spanish Armada opens
the way
• Population growing, economy
suffering > better opportunity in
New World
• joint-sto ck com panie s: pooled
savings of average people who
hoped to invest and make money

22. Early English Settlements
Jamestown--Search for Wealth
• 1607: King James charters Virginia
Company as join-stock (for profit)
• Famine: “gentlemen” who never
worked and gold-seekers who
refused to work > dwindling food
supply
• Disease: location chosen was a
swamp--dysentery and malaria
• Indian attacks: relationship
w/Indians ran hot and cold

23. Early English Settlements
Jamestown
• John Smith’s leadership > overcoming
the selfishness
• John Rolfe’s tobacco blend >
economic prosperity
• Indentured servants come first, leads
to attempts at combo of ind. serv. plus
slaves from Africa
• Despite tobacco, Virginia Company
goes into debt -- charter revoked in
1624, and it becomes a royal colony
(under monarchial control)
• House of Burgesses = 1st rep.
assembly in America

24. Early English Settlements
Puritan Colonies--Religious Motivation
• Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay:
both Calvinist (including
predestination)
• Anglican Church is Protestant
instead of under the control of
Rome--but the rituals were still very
Catholic
• Puritans want to “purify” the
church of all Catholic tenets
• James viewed them as a threat and
ordered them jailed > they begin to
look to the New World for relief

25. Early English Settlements
Plymouth Colony
• “Separatist” Puritans want to
separate from Anglicans--these are
the “Pilgrims”
• Mayflower: the boat
Mayflower Compact:
the government = will of majority
• blown off course, and settled in MA
instead of VA
• half died first winter (famine, late
arrival)
• first Thanksgiving (never repeated)
• fish, furs, lumber = economy

26. Early English Settlements
Massachusetts Bay Colony
• non-seperatist Puritans, royal colony
• 1630, founded Boston
• Gre at Migration: 15,000 settlers
come to MA Bay in the 1630s due to
the English Civil Wars
• limited rep. gov’t: all male Puritan
church members participated in
elections

27. Spanish in North America
• 1565: Spanish settle permanently in
St. Augustine FL
• Harsh efforts to “christianize” in
NM > Pueblo Revolt, 1680: drove
the Spanish out of the area for over
20 years
• Settlers tossed from NM settled in
Texas
• San Diego and San Francisco CA
settled by 1776 to keep Russians at
bay -- coastline missions added by
the Franciscan Order

28. European Treatment of Native
Americans
• Spain: conquer, rule, intermarry
• England: occupy and force west
• France: form alliances
• All three viewed natives as inferior
who could be exploited
• 2 long-term effects: destruction by
disease and war, and establishment
of a permanent legacy of
subjugation

29. Spanish Policy
• conquistadore s: methods of war,
enslavement and diseases led to
massive native death rate
• few families came from Spain, so
intermarriage was common
• rigid class system developed...
• peninsulares-upper class,
leaders, born in Spain
• creoles-middle class,
professionals, born in America
and had some wealth
• mestizos-working class, skilled
laborers, often mixed race

30. English Policy
• initially, traded and shared ideas
with the natives
• BUT:
• English had little respect for
“primitive” culture
• natives saw their way of life
threatened by westward
movement

31. French Policy
• always maintained fairly good
relations
• helped the Huron fight their
Iroquois enemy
• built trading posts along the St.
Lawrence, Great Lakes and
Mississippi
• few in number, and posed little
threat