UNIT 1

Native American Migration - Jefferson's Presidency

PERIOD 1: 1491 - 1607

PERIOD 2: 1607 - 1754

PERIOD 3: 1754 - 1800

Text: Chapters 1-8

• Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States: Chapters 1-5

• Erdoes & Ortiz’s American Indian Myths & Legends: Apache & Lakota Creation Stories

• Bartolomé de las Casas’s Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

• Writings from Thomas Hobbes & John Locke

• A People’s History of the American Revolution. “In the Face of the Enemy”

• Video. How the West was Lost: Divided We Fall (Iroquois participation in the Amer. Rev.)

• A People’s History of the Supreme Court. “The Nauseous Project of Amendments”

• Video clip from Amistad about the Middle Passage

• Handouts

PERIOD 1: 1491 - 1607

Themes and Content:

1. Different native societies adapted to and transformed their environments through innovation in agriculture, resource use, and social structure

   • The spread of maize cultivation from present-day Mexico northward into the present-day American Southwest and beyond supported economic development, settlement, advanced irrigation, and social diversification among societies.

   • Societies responded to the aridity o fthe Great Basin and the grasslands of the western Great Plains by developing largely mobile lifestyles.

   • In the Northeast, the Mississippi River Valley, and along the Atlantic seaboard some societies developed mixed agricultural and hunter-gatherer economies that favored the development of permanent villages.

   • Societies in the Northwest and present-day California supported themselves by hunting and gathering, and in some areas developed settled communities supported by the vast resources of the ocean.

2. European expansion into the Western Hemisphere generated intense social, religious, political, and economic competition and changes iwthin European societies.

   • European nations' efforts to explore and conquer the New World stemmed from a search for new sources of wealth, economic and military competition, and a desire to spread Christianity.

   • The Columbian Exchange brought new crops to Europe from the Americas, stimulating European population growth, and new sources of mineral wealth, which facilitated the European shift from feudalism to capitalism.

   • Improvements in maritime technology and more organized methods for conducting international trade, such as joint-stock companies, helped drive changes to economies in Europe and the Americas.

3. The Columbian Exchange and development of the Spanish Empire in the Western Hemisphere resulted in extensive demographic, economic, and social changes.

   • Spanish exploration and conquest of the Americas were accompanied and furthered by widespread deadly epidemics that devastated native populations and by the introduction of crops and animals not found in the Americas.

   • In the Encomienda system, Spanish colonial economies marshaled Native American labor to support plantation-based agriculture and extract precious metals and other resources.

   • European traders partnered with some West African groups who practiced slavery to forcibly extract slave labor for the Americas. The Spanish imported enslaved Africans to labor in plantation agriculture and mining.

   • The Spanish developed a caste system that incorporated, and carefully defined the status of, the diverse population of Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans in their empire.

4. In their interactions, Europeans and Native Americans asserted divergent worldviews regarding issues such as religion, gender roles, family, land use, and power.

   • Mutual misunderstandings between Europeans and Native americans often defined the early years of interaction and trade as each group sought to make sense of the other. Over time, Europeans and Native Americans adopted some useful aspects of each other's culture.

   • As European encroachments on Native Americans' lands and demands on their labor increased, native peoples sought to defend and maintain their political sovereignty, economic prosperity, relgious beliefs, and concepts of gender relations through diplomatic negotiations and military resistance.

   • Extended contact with Native Americans and Africans fostered a dbate among European religious and political leaders about how non-European religious and political leaders about how non-Europeans should be treated, as well as evolving religious, cultural, and racial justifications for the subjugation of Africans and Native Americans.

PERIOD 2: 1607 - 1754

Themes and Content:

1. Spanish, French, Dutch, and British colonizers had different economic and imperial goals involving land and labor that shaped the social and political development of their colonies as well as their relationships with native populations.

   • Spanish efforts to extract wealth from the land led them to develop institutions based on subjugating native populations, converting them to Christianity, and incorporating them, along with enslaved and free Africans, into the Spanish colonial society.

   • French and Dutch colonial efforts involved relatively few Europeans and relied on trade alliances and intermarriage with American Indians to build economic and diplomatic relationships and acquire furs and other products for export to Europe.

   • English colonization efforts attracted a comparatively large number of male and female British migrants, as well as other European migrants, all of whom sought social mobility, economic prosperity, religious freedom, and improved living conditions. These colonists focused on agriculture and settled on land taken from Native Americans, from whom they lived separately.

2. In the 17th century, early British colonies developed along the Atlantic coast, with regional differences that reflected various environmental, economic, cultural, and demographic factors.

   • The Chesapeake and North carolina colonies grew prosperous exporting tobacco -- a labor-intensive product initially cultivated by white, mostly male indentured servants and later by enslaved Africans.

   • The New England colonies, initially settled by Puritans, developed around small towns with family farms and achieved a thriving mixed economy of agriculture and commerce.

   • The middle colonies supported a flourishing export economy based on cereal crops and attracted a broad range of European migrants, leading to societies with greater cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity and tolerance.

   • The colonies of the southern Atlantic coast and the British West Indies used long growing seasons to develop plantation economies based on exporting staple crops. They depended on the labor of enslaved Africans, who often constituted the majority of the population in these areas and developed their own forms of cultural and religious autonomy.

   • Distance and Britain's initially lax attention led to the colonies creating self-governing institutions that were unusually democratic for the era. The New England colonies based power in participatory town meetings, which in turn elected members to their colonial legislatures; in the southern colonies, elite planters exercised local authority and also dominated the elected assemblies.

3. Competition over resources between European rivals and American Indians encouraged industry and trade and led to conflict in the Americas.

   • An Atlantic economy developed in which goods, as well as enslaved Africans and American Indians, were exchanged between Europe, Africa, and the Americas through extensive trade networks. European colonial economies focused on acquiring, producing, and exporting commodities that were valued in Europe and gaining new sources of labor.

   • Continuing trade with Europeans increased the flow of goods in and out of American Indian communities, stimulating cultural and economic changes and spreading epidemic diseases that caused radical demographic shifts.

   • Interactions between European rivals and American Indian populations fostered both accommodation and conflict. French, Dutch, British, and Spanish colonies allied with and armed American Indian groups, who frequently sought alliances with Europeans against other American Indian groups.

   • The goals and interests of European leaders and colonists at times diverged, leading to a growing mistrust on both sides of the Atlantic. Colonists, especially in British North America, expressed dissatisfaction over issues including territorial settlements, frontier defense, self-rule, and trade.

   • British conflict with Americans Indians over land, resources, and political boundaries led to military confrontations, such as Metacom's War (King Philip's War) in New England.

   • American Indian resistance to spanish colonizing efforts in North America, particularly after the Pueblo Revolt, led to Spanish accommodation of some aspects of American Indian culture in the Southwest.

4. Transatlantic commercial, religious, philosophical, and political exchanges led residents of the British colonies to evolve in their political and cultural attitudes as they became increasingly tied to Britain and one another.

   • The presence of different European religious and ethnic groups contributed to a significant degree of pluralism and intellectual exchange, which were later enhanced by the first Great Awakening and the spread of European Enlightenment ideas.

   • The British colonies experienced a gradual Anglicization over time, developing autonomous political communities based on English models with influence from intercolonial commercial ties, the emergence of a trans-Atlantic print culture, and the spread of Protestant evangelicalism.

   • The British government increasingly attempted to incorporate its North American colonies into a coherent, hierarchical, and imperial structure in order to pursue mercantilist economic aims, but conflicts with colonists and American Indians led to erratic enforcement of imperial policies.

   • Colonists' resistance to imperial control drew on local experiences of self-government, evolving ideas of liberty, the political thought of the Enlightenment, greater religious independence and diversity, and an ideology critical of perceived corruption in the imperial system.

5. Like other European empires in the Americas that participated in the Atlantic slave trade, the English colonies developed a system of slavery that reflected the specific economic, demographic, and geographic characteristics of those colonies.

   • All the British colonies participated to varying degrees in the Atlantic slave trade due to the abundance of land and a growing Eruopean demand for colonial goods, as well as a shortage of indentured servants. Small New England farms used relatively few enslaved laborers, all port cities held significant minorities of enslaved people, and the emerging plantation systems of the Chesapeake and the southern Atlantic coast had large numbers of enslaved workers, while the great majority of enslaved Africans were sent to the West indies.

   • As chattel slavery became the dominant labor system in many southern colonies, new laws created a strict racial system that prohibited interracial relationships and defined the descendants of African American mothers as black and enslaved in perpetuity.

   • Africans developed both overt and covert means to resist the dehumanizing aspects of slavery and maintain their family and gender systems, culture, and religion.

PERIOD 3: 1754 - 1800

Themes and Content:

1. The competition among the British, French, and American Indians for economic and political advantage in North America culminated in the Seven Years' War (the French and Indian War), in which Britain defeated France and allied American Indians.

   • Colonial rivalry intensified between Britain and France in the mid-18th century, as the growing population of the British colonies expanded into the interior of North America, threatening French-Indian trade networks and American Indian autonomy.

   • Britain achieved a major expansion of its territorial holdings by defeating the French, but at tremendous expense, setting the stage for imperial efforts to raise revenue and consolidate control over the colonies.

   • After the British victory, imperial officials' attempts to prevent colonists from moving westward generated colonial opposition, while native groups sought to both continue trading with Europeans and resist the encroachments of colonists on tribal lands.

2. The desire of many colonists to assert ideals of self-government in the face of renewed British imperial efforts led to a colonial independence movement and war with Britain.

   • The imperial struggles of the mid-18th century, as well as new British efforts to collect taxes without direct colonial representation or consent and to assert imperial authority in the colonies, began to unite the colonists against perceived and real constraints on their economic activities and political rights.

   • Colonial leaders based their calls for resistance to Britain on arguments about the rights of British subjects, the rights of the individual, local traditions of self-rule, and the ideas of the Enlightenment.

   • The effort for American independence was energized by colonial leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, as well as by popular movements that included the political activism of laborers, artisans, and women.

   • In the face of economic shortages and the British military occupation of some regions, men and women mobilized in large numbers to provide financial and material support to the Patriot movement.

   • Despite considerable loyalist opposition, as well as Great Britain's apparently overwhelming military and financial advantages, the Patriot cause succeeded because of the actions of colonial militias and the Continental Army, George Washington's military leadership, the colonists' ideological commitment and resilience, and assistance sent by European allies.

3. The ideals that inspired the revolutionary cause reflected new beliefs about politics, religion, and society that had been developing over the course of the 18th century.

   • Enlightenment ideas and philosophy inspired many American political thinkers to emphasize individual talent over hereditary privilege, while religion strengthened Americans' view of themselves as a people blessed with liberty.

   • The colonists' belief in the superiority of republican forms of government based on the natural rights of the people found expression in Thomas Paine's Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence. The ideas in these documents resonated throughout american history, shaping Americans' understanding of the ideals on which the nation was based.

   • During and after the American Revolution, an increased awareness of inequalities in society motivated some individuals and groups to call for the abolition of slavery and greater political democracy in the new state and national governments.

   • In response to women's participation in the American Revolution, Enlightenment ideas, and women's appeals for expanded roles, an ideal of "republican motherhood" gained popularity. It called on women to teach republican values within the family and granted women a new importance in American political culture.

   • The American Revolution and the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence reverberated in France, Haiti, and Latin America, inspiring future independence movements.

4. After declaring independence, American political leaders created new constitutions and declarations of rights that articulated the role of the state and federal governments while protecting individual liberties and limiting both centralized power and excessive popular influence.

   • Many new state constitutions placed power in the hands of the legislative branch and maintained property qualification for voting and citizenship.

   • The Articles of Confederation unified the newly independent states, creating a central government with limited power. After the Revolution, difficulties over international trade, finances, interstate commerce, foreign relations, and internal unrest led to calls for a stronger central government.

   • Delegates from the states participated in a Constitutional Convention and through negotiation, collaboration, and compromise proposed a constitution that created a limited but dynamic central government embodying federalism and providing for a separation of power between its three branches.

   • The Constitutional Convention compromised over the representation of slave states in Congress and the role of hte federal government in regulating both slavery and the slave trade, allowing the prohibition of the international slave trade after 1808.

   • In the debate over ratifying the Constitution, Anti-Federalists opposing ratification battled with Federalists, whoe principles were articulated in the Federalist Papers (primarily written by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison). Federalists ensured the ratification of the constitution by promising the addition of a Bill of Rights that enumerated individual rights and explicitly restricted the powers of the federal government.

5. New forms of national culture and political institutions developed in the United States alongside continued regional variations and differences over economic, political, social, and foreign policy issues.

   • During the presidential administrations of George Washington and John Adams, political leaders created institutions and precedents that put the principles of the Constitution into practice.

   • Political leaders in the 1790s took a variety of positions on issues such as the relationship between the national government and the states, economic policy, foreign policy, and the balance between liberty and order. This led to the formation of political parties -- most significantly the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the Democratic-Republican Party, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

   • The expansion of slavery in the deep South and adjacent western lands and rising antislavery sentiment began to create distinctive regional attitudes toward the institution.

   • Ideas about national identity increasingly found expression in works of art, literature, and architecture.

6. In the decades after American independence, interactions among different groups resulted in competition for resources, shifting alliances, and cultural blending.

   • Various American Indian groups repeatedly evaluated and adjusted their alliances with Europeans, other tribes, and the U.S., seeking to limit migration of white settlers and maintain control of tribal lands and natural resources British alliances with American Indians contributed to tensions between the U.S. and Britain.

   • As increasing numbers of migrants from North America and othe rparts of the world continued to move westward, frontier cultures that had emerged in the colonial period continued to grow, fueling social, political, and ethnic tensions.

   • As settlers moved westward during the 1780s, Congress enacted the northwest Ordinance for admitting new states; the ordinance promoted public education, the protection of private property, and a ban on slavery in the Northwest Territory.

   • An ambiguous relationship between the federal government and American Indian tribes contributed to problems regarding treaties and American Indian legal claims relating to the seizure of their lands.

   • The Spanish, supported by the bonded labor of the local American Indians, expanded their mission settlements into California; these provided opportunities for social mobility among soldiers and led to new cultural blending.

7. The continued pressure of European powers in North America challenged the United States to find ways to safeguard its borders, maintain neutral trading rights, and promote its economic interests.

   • The United States government forged diplomatic initiative aimed at dealing with the continued British and spanish presence in North America, as U.S. settlers migrated beyond the Appalachians and sought free navigation of the Mississippi River.

   • War between France and britain resulting from the French Revolution presented challenges to the United States over issues of free trade and foreign policy and fostered political disagreement.

   • George Washington's Farewell Address encouraged national unity, as he cautioned against political factions and warned about the danger of permanent foreign alliances.

Deeper Discussions:

• Should we pay more attention to native oral tradition as educational, rather than just fascinating curiosities?

• Why still Columbus Day? How about De Las Casas Day?

• Enlightenment question: Are we good or evil? Reflections of this question in U.S. Constitution and form of government.

• African Americans had the “One Drop Law” to determine race, while Native Americans have to prove they're “Indian enough”? Why the difference?

• Did the Iroquois Confederacy influence colonial unity?

• Lessons about military discipline vs. guerilla warfare? Youtube Skit

• “All men are created equal…” but after that they’re on their own.

• Do politicians still fear the “ignorant masses”? Or do they count on them?

Movies:

Apocalypto- As Mayans face their decline, the rulers order more human sacrifices. Jaguar Paw, a young man captured for sacrifice, escapes & runs for his life.

1492: Conquest of Paradise - Christopher Columbus' discovery of the Americas and the effect this has on the local, native people.

Black Robe– Hurons guide a Jesuit priest & a companion through early Quebec.

The Crucible- A 17th-century Salem woman accuses an ex-lover's wife of witchcraft.

The Scarlet Letter – A woman in the Massachusetts Bay Colony has a child out of wedlock and pays for it with public humiliation.

The Mission - 18th century Spanish Jesuits try to protect a remote South American Indian tribe in danger of falling under the rule of pro-slavery Portugal.

Last of the Mohicans- Three Mohicans protect a British Colonel's daughters from the French and their Huron allies in the midst of the French and Indian War.

The Patriot– Farmer & veteran of the French & Indian War, Benjamin Martin is driven back into action during the Amer. Rev. when a cruel British officer murders his son.

John Adams - The life of one of the Founding Fathers, its second President, and his role in the nation's first 50 years.

The Broken Chain(TV movie) - Iroquois brothers find themselves on opposite sides in the American Revolution.

Revolution – A New York trapper becomes an unwilling participant in the American Revolution after his son is drafted into the Army.