Populating the Americas
The history of people on the Americas goes back about 20,000 t0 30,000 years. People came to the Americas from Asia both by walking across a "land bridge" and by boat. The land bridge was created when the tiny strip of water called the Bering Strait that separates modern day Russia and Alaska was frozen into the ice cap. When this water was frozen into the poles, the sea level went down, exposing the land at the bottom of the Bering Strait. People could walk from mainland Asia to North America. People also came by boat on the Pacific Ocean, following the west coast. This is called the coastal route theory.
There is new evidence that suggests people from the Pacific Islands also came to the Americas by boat. They island hopped across the Pacific and created a settlement in South America. These people appeared to have died out at some point, but we don't know why. Because this is a new discovery -- remains from the settlement were found last summer -- we still have a lot to learn about these people.
People indigenous to the Americas have many accepted names. You can call them Native Americans, American Indians, Indigenous People, or First Peoples (this is the most widely accepted term in Canada). Each modern day tribe has its own preference with regard to name, but most prefer to be called by their tribal name (eg: Blackfoot, Cherokee, Seminole, etc).
There is new evidence that suggests people from the Pacific Islands also came to the Americas by boat. They island hopped across the Pacific and created a settlement in South America. These people appeared to have died out at some point, but we don't know why. Because this is a new discovery -- remains from the settlement were found last summer -- we still have a lot to learn about these people.
People indigenous to the Americas have many accepted names. You can call them Native Americans, American Indians, Indigenous People, or First Peoples (this is the most widely accepted term in Canada). Each modern day tribe has its own preference with regard to name, but most prefer to be called by their tribal name (eg: Blackfoot, Cherokee, Seminole, etc).
On the first open note pop quiz, one of the short answer prompt options was "Explain the two theories about how the first people got to the Americas. You must explain both using specific details from class." Below is an example of a response written by one of your classmates that received full credit.
"People first got to the Americans by two options. One of the options was to go through the land bridge. On a map, you can see that Alaska and Russia are very close together, separated by the Bering Strait. 20,000-30,000 years ago, the sea level was low enough that you could walk across the Strait. The other way to get to the Americas would be boats. They took the Coastal Route down the west coast or island-hopped through the Pacific Islands."
"People first got to the Americans by two options. One of the options was to go through the land bridge. On a map, you can see that Alaska and Russia are very close together, separated by the Bering Strait. 20,000-30,000 years ago, the sea level was low enough that you could walk across the Strait. The other way to get to the Americas would be boats. They took the Coastal Route down the west coast or island-hopped through the Pacific Islands."
European Exploration
Portugal dominated Atlantic trade at the start of the Age of Exploration. This was because they did not have any Mediterranean ports and the Mediterranean was the Amazon.com of the ancient world. You could get almost anything there because folks were bringing in goods through the Silk Road from China, India, and the Middle East. These combined with goods from Europe and North Africa to create quite the global market place. Portugal figured, if they could find the best sea routes to get the same goods, they would gain quicker and easier access, making these good cheaper. The image below may help show you just how far out ahead Portugal was with regard to exploration.
However, other European powers, like Spain and France, were quick to join in. Portugal had the lead, which is why they refused to pay for Columbus' trip. They had done the calculations to know how large the Earth was, and they knew his calculations were wrong. Even after making three trips to the Caribbean, and not to India, Columbus died believing he had successfully navigated west and arrived in India. His myth is carried on in two names; what we call the group of people who were already living here when Columbus arrived - American Indians - and the unofficial name for the Caribbean - the West Indies. I want to make this next point very clear. COLUMBUS NEVER SET FOOT ON THE LAND WE CALL THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
However, other European powers, like Spain and France, were quick to join in. Portugal had the lead, which is why they refused to pay for Columbus' trip. They had done the calculations to know how large the Earth was, and they knew his calculations were wrong. Even after making three trips to the Caribbean, and not to India, Columbus died believing he had successfully navigated west and arrived in India. His myth is carried on in two names; what we call the group of people who were already living here when Columbus arrived - American Indians - and the unofficial name for the Caribbean - the West Indies. I want to make this next point very clear. COLUMBUS NEVER SET FOOT ON THE LAND WE CALL THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
To learn more about European exploration, you completed the mapping in color handout and a Nystrom mapping activity about exploration.
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Trade
Columbian Exchange
One single story that exists about Columbus is that he "discovered" the Americas and led to great advancement. This isn't necessarily untrue. He did discover the Americas for Europeans, but there were also already people there - the many groups of Native Americans. While the Columbian Exchange was named for Christopher Columbus, he did not participate much in the exchange. It is named for him because he "discovered" the Americas and opened a new area for trade. The Columbian Exchange linked the western hemisphere, the Americas, with the eastern hemisphere, specifically Europe and Africa. One of the most important things to remember is that prior to the 1490s, items indigenous, or native to, Europe and Africa were not found in the Americas. That means American Indians did not have horses before this exchange. Our images of the Plains Indians as horse people, hunting buffalo on horseback could only happen after Columbus's voyage! Without the Columbian Exchange, I could not enjoy my beloved coffee. Going in the other direction, items indigenous to the Americas were not found in Europe before exploration. Countries famous for their chocolate, like Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany, would not have had access to this new trade item. Without the Columbian Exchange, Italian cooks would have no red (tomato) sauce. It is interesting to note that many of our Thanksgiving food treats are indigenous to the Americas; turkey, potatoes, beans, corn, squash, and pumpkin. Why? Because this celebration is, at least in part, about the colonists ability to survive in their new homeland. It also led to the spread of disease that decimated the Native American population. Not everything about Columbian Exchange was positive. It is estimated that 80% of the indigenous population was killed by diseases, like smallpox, that were introduced by European explorers and settlers. We used pages 34-35 and 40 to complete the Columbian Exchange map below and the text on page 41 to answer the questions on the back. |
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Triangular Trade
Trade eventually shifted so that the Atlantic was the most profitable trade region instead of the Mediterranean. Merchants would travel in order to take advantage of the benefits of supply and demand in order to make a profit. They would purchase goods where supply was high, so price was low. They would move those goods to places where supply was low and demand was high. Here they could sell the goods at a high price. Cartier did this when he bought beaver pelts from Native People in Canada and brought them back to sell in France where many animals had been hunted to near extinction in order to satisfy people's desire to have fur coats and accessories. You took advantage of supply and demand during the Triangular Trade simulation.
It's called the triangular trade (not the triangle trade; they weren't trading triangles) because it was most common for ship captains to make two of the three possible stops in the trade. This allowed them to take advantage of the North Atlantic gyre and the currents it created, as well as the trade winds. There were lots of possible triangles to make and there were 4 major players, Europe, Africa, North American colonies, and South America and the Caribbean. The triangular trade is part of the Columbian Exchange and the middle passage is part of the triangular trade.
Trade eventually shifted so that the Atlantic was the most profitable trade region instead of the Mediterranean. Merchants would travel in order to take advantage of the benefits of supply and demand in order to make a profit. They would purchase goods where supply was high, so price was low. They would move those goods to places where supply was low and demand was high. Here they could sell the goods at a high price. Cartier did this when he bought beaver pelts from Native People in Canada and brought them back to sell in France where many animals had been hunted to near extinction in order to satisfy people's desire to have fur coats and accessories. You took advantage of supply and demand during the Triangular Trade simulation.
It's called the triangular trade (not the triangle trade; they weren't trading triangles) because it was most common for ship captains to make two of the three possible stops in the trade. This allowed them to take advantage of the North Atlantic gyre and the currents it created, as well as the trade winds. There were lots of possible triangles to make and there were 4 major players, Europe, Africa, North American colonies, and South America and the Caribbean. The triangular trade is part of the Columbian Exchange and the middle passage is part of the triangular trade.
One of the things that came up in the simulation was that some regions needed raw materials in order to make manufactured goods. In North America, they needed molasses from South America and the Caribbean in order to make rum. Although it wasn't in the simulation, many sections brought up Europe's need for cotton from North America to make their cloth. This was one of the major reasons why "mother countries" set up colonies; in order to get the raw materials they needed to create manufactured goods. To make manufactured goods, you typically need to have a machine or factory. We used the example of baking a cake to illustrate this relationship (and were thankful for Ms. Stephens' instruction in art).
Transatlantic Slave Trade through the Middle Passage
One part of the Triangular Trade was the middle passage, the leg from Africa to the Americas that transported enslaved Africans. It did not take long for enslaved people to be the most profitable "item" traded in the triangular trade. Only 5% of the enslaved Africans who survived the middle passage were brought to the British North American colonies. 80% were brought to Brazil. To consider this aspect of history, we analyzed the drawing of the Slave Ship Brookes. The image posted here is a very high resolution image. You can zoom in and see the image with incredible detail. This image was created to show how to "humanely" pack a slave ship and gives us a sense of how people involved in the slave trade viewed the people they transported. The middle passage movie that you watched in class is posted on the video page. If you've forgotten the password, please email me. We also completed a Nystrom mapping activity (some did it for homework and some did it in class) and completed the guided reading about the section from your book about slavery in the American colonies. Both are posted below.
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Creating Colonies
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We started looking at colonization while we discussed trade. We started by looking at the very different colonization styles used by the Spanish and Portuguese versus the French. A major difference was their relationship with the indigenous population. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies ended up creating race-based slavery to support their extraction economy while the French created more cooperative relationships to foster their trade based economy. Later, we looked at the colonies in what would become the United States. After the first "OG" colonies - Roanoke, Jamestown, and Plymouth - more Europeans came to settle in the Americas. This area came to be controlled by the British, but people from many European countries came to settle in what came to be called the 13 original colonies. These colonies were created by land grants given by the King to individuals through charters. These charters created the initial governments of the colonies. We took notes about each of the three colonial regions - New England in the north, the middle colonies between New York harbor and the Delaware Bay, and the Southern colonies below the Mason-Dixon line - in a chart after we each read different sections of chapter 3.
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life_in_the_colonies__4.2_.pdf | |
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When we discussed life in the British North American colonies, we went a bit more in depth than your chapter 4.2 reading. Mercantilism is the name for the relationship we have been describing between colonies and their Mother Countries. It's not a new idea for you, we just learned the official name for it. The Navigation Acts are an example of a mercantilist policy. (Fun Fact: Some of the Dutch colonies in the Caribbean were exempt from mercantilism and could use free trade. They became trade hubs as a result!)
Social mobility was limited in England, because in order to be a member of the gentry you needed land. Britain is an island, so expansion was limited. With such a limited supply, land was very expensive and only available to the people who were already members of the gentry. As a result, poor people would sign up to be indentured servants in order to get a chance at social mobility in the colonies. There was lots of land available so it was very cheap. When they finished their indenture, they could buy a small plot of land and move into the middle class. If they did well, they had the opportunity to move into the gentry. This happened in colonial America and we have examples of many people who came to the North American colonies as indentured servants and within a generation were members of the gentry. It didn't happen all the time, but it was impossible in England.
Social mobility was limited in England, because in order to be a member of the gentry you needed land. Britain is an island, so expansion was limited. With such a limited supply, land was very expensive and only available to the people who were already members of the gentry. As a result, poor people would sign up to be indentured servants in order to get a chance at social mobility in the colonies. There was lots of land available so it was very cheap. When they finished their indenture, they could buy a small plot of land and move into the middle class. If they did well, they had the opportunity to move into the gentry. This happened in colonial America and we have examples of many people who came to the North American colonies as indentured servants and within a generation were members of the gentry. It didn't happen all the time, but it was impossible in England.
American Colonies VoiceThread Project
To learn more about the "13 original colonies," the three earliest colonies (Roanoke, Jamestown, and Plymouth), and two examples of a French settlement (Quebec) and a Spanish settlement (St. Augustine) you will be completing a research project about an assigned colony. The information you will use comes from the Gale databases available through the DC Public Library, which you will paraphrase using NoodleTools. If you would like to challenge yourself, seek academic (we talked about what this means and you have a handout to guide you in making this evaluation) websites able to be cited in academic research. Instead of writing a standard research paper, you will be creating a VoiceThread that uses visual images from Britannica Image Quest to show your knowledge of the history of colony. We've started working on this project in class, but you are expected to also work on this assignment at home. For more information, see the homework page.
Here is the assignment and rubric for the project, as well as the instructions to access NoodleTools, VoiceThread, and the databases. Ms. Hamm's website mockup to help find citation information for websites is also provided. All of these have been provided in hard copy during class.
Here is the assignment and rubric for the project, as well as the instructions to access NoodleTools, VoiceThread, and the databases. Ms. Hamm's website mockup to help find citation information for websites is also provided. All of these have been provided in hard copy during class.
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The Project is due Wednesday, October 4 by 3:15 pm
**New Deadline for Sections C & D**
Sections C & D - due Thursday, October 5 by 3:15
Sections E & F - due Wednesday, October 4 by 3:15
Social Construction of Race
When the colonies were set up, the people living there had to figure out how they would make sense of all these people living together. How we do this depends on what characteristics we choose to make important or meaningful. We started looking at this idea with the exercise in the PowerPoint below, where you had to decide which of the items was not like the others. Gold stars to the cherubs who made arguments for each item. Depending on what you choose to focus, any item could be the odd one out. (We went through this PowerPoint in stages, but the whole thing is posted here.)
There are lots of categories we use today to understand where and how people fit into society as we understand it -- gender, socioeconomic status, religion, language, region where they live, education level, ability, nationality. Race is an extremely important and meaningful category for us today... but it wasn't always. Back in the early 1600s, people were categorized based on many different attributes and you looked at the quotes below, from historians and others who research colonial identity to identify many of these, like ethnicity, nationality, hygiene, family, wealth/class, and religion.
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Notice that in the early 1600s, race was not a category that was particularly meaningful to people. They recognized that people had different skin colors, but that did not necessarily play a role in one's place in society or where someone fit on the social hierarchy. In 1619, when the first enslaved Africans were brought to British North America, at Jamestown, race was not really a widely understood concept. However, by the time Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, in 1776, it was well understood and the judgment that leads to racism was well connected. It was an idea that took time to get established, and was promoted through the laws in each of the colonies. (There was a paragraph about these laws in your chapter 4.3 homework cloze reading.) Many of these laws came into effect after Bacon's Rebellion, where poor White people and Black people, enslaved and indentured, joined together to rise up against some of the native tribes in Virginia. This worried the gentry, who could see the danger in having poor people come together over their shared class interests, regardless of their different races. The gentry passed laws to encourage poor Whites to see themselves as different from and superior to Black people living in the colonies. This is laid out in the ten-minute portion of the documentary "RACE: The Power of an Illusion" posted on the video page along with the guided notes we used. (There are other clips from this documentary on youtube, if you're looking for a little bit of a rabbit hole.)
In going over the notes from the video, we went over the idea of a social construction, something created by people to understand and makes sense of difference in their world. Race is not the only social construction. Gender and money are also social constructions, ideas created by people to make sense of the world. In the case of race, there is no biological basis for race. In genetic terms (that you learned last year in science), race is a phenotype and not a genotype. It exists in our minds and is a thing because we have decided it is a thing. Does that mean it's not real? No, it's absolutely real. We see the consequences of the social construction of race in the news with disappointing regularity and it will continue to come up in this history. Also, because it is socially constructed through history, race can be understood differently in different places. Our American -- as in United States' -- relationship with race is uniquely ours.
In order to solidify the idea that social constructions, including race, are fluid, we looked at the example of Anthony Johnson. He was an African brought to colonial Virginia as an indentured servant (and was not enslaved). In each part of the reading we did, a different part of Anthony's life was highlighted. He became became free, changed his name, got married, and acquired a small farm. Next, he moved up the social hierarchy and had more servants of his own, gained a fair bit of land, and was supported by the local government. However, as the race became a more important part of how the social structure was set up, and laws were put in place to encourage a more racial view, many of the gains Anthony Johnson and his family made were taken from the next generation. Through this example, and others we did not look at, we can see the start of structures that were put in place during the colonial era not only to separate races, but to make one appear to be superior to others.
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Colonization Unit Test
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
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Some of your classmates wrote particularly good responses to the short answer questions on the unit test. Below are the questions from the test and three examples of responses that received full credit.
1. Compare and contrast the French relationship with Native Americans to the Spanish relationship.
- The relationship that the Spanish had with the Native Americans was very harsh. They had the encomienda system which let the Spanish collect taxes or forced labor from the Native people. They also set up missions where Native Americans could live and eat, but only if they converted to Catholicism. The French were less forceful in their relationship with Native people. The French learned the Native American languages and the Native Americans learned French. The Native and French people intermarried and incorporated parts of of each other's culture in their lives. Both the French and the Spanish tried to convert the Native people and claimed their land, but the French had a better relationship with the Native Americans than the Spanish did. The Native Americans were reluctant to help the Spanish, but they supported the French in the French and Indian War.
- The relationship that the French had with the indigenous people was different than the relationship the Spanish had with them. The French were friends with indigenous people. The Spanish set up missions and used the encomienda system to get the Natives to either pay taxes or become enslaved. The French lived with the indigenous people and set up trading posts instead of missions. They evangelized instead of forcing the indigenous people to convert, like the Spanish did in the missions. So, both nations tried to change indigenous peoples' religion and claimed a ton of land, but they did this in very different ways.
- The French were very friendly with Native Americans because they did not try and push the Native Americans off their land. The Spanish did the opposite of this because they forced Native Americans off their land using the encomienda system. This was the system that made Native Americans leave their own land if they did not want to work on the plantations or pay taxes. The French sent Christian priests to live with the Native Americans. These priests learned native languages to try to convince them to convert. The Spanish set up missions and told the Native Americans they would be safe in these buildings. The Spanish then refused to let the Native Americans leave until they converted to Catholicism. The Spanish were different than the French because they forced the Native Americans off their land. The French and Spanish were similar because they both wanted to convert Native Americans to Christianity.
2. How did geography effect the economic development of the British North American colonies? Be specific about at least one of the colonial regions in your explanation.
- Geography was a large factor in the development of the British colonies in North America. In some places, the land was more fertile and weather conditions were better for running plantations and growing cash crops. These colonies, in the South, began to have economies that were based around plantation agriculture. This was the opposite from New England, that had an economy based around trade because of its lack of fertile land and abundance of deep water ports.
- The economy of the British North American colonies depended on the geography of that place. For example, in New England the land was rocky and the climate was colder so large-scale farming was a challenge. Instead, they could trade because they had the most deep water ports of the three regions. In the Southern colonies, the land was fertile and the growing season was long. This is why there were so many plantations there and why the Southern colonies had more enslaved people than New England or the Middle colonies.
- Geography was a big factor in the economies of the British North American colonies. It determined what the colonies' economies were supported by. In the New England colonies, there wasn't good farm land or growing climate, so the New England colonies traded. They had lots of deep water ports that were very helpful for loaded ships coming in from across the ocean. On the other side, the Southern colonies were focused on growing cash crops. They relied on enslaved labor to work large plantations. The South had very good soil for growing and a helpful climate, but soft, sandy shores that made it difficult for transatlantic trade ships to dock and trade. In conclusion, geography was a big piece of the economies of the British North American colonies.
3. What was the Triangular Trade and how did it work? Use examples from our simulation and what you have learned in class to illustrate your points.
- The Triangular Trade was the trading of goods between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. It took place in the 1600s and 1700s. Each place brought something to the table that other places wanted. The Americas brought raw materials, Europe brought manufactured goods, and Africa brought enslaved people. Trade ships could only go along certain routes because of something called a gyre, the way the ocean circulates due to the spinning of the Earth. The trade winds also encourage the use of certain routes. In our simulation, if you went against these natural forces, you could die because you would become shipwrecked.
- The Triangular Trade was when Europe, North America, South America, and Africa all traded with each other. It is called the Triangular Trade because the seasons allowed for two stops before needing to head back, thus creating a series of triangles. North America had tobacco, run, and cotton, South American had molasses. Europe had weapons, cloth, and glass. Africa had slaves and gold. This was very important because each area needed something provided by another area in order to keep working. For example, Europe needed cotton, a raw material, to make cloth, a manufactured good. Sometimes in our simulation, Ms. CK took materials away if North America didn't have the molasses needed to make rum. I realized how much everyone needed slaves. In our simulation, South America had almost nothing left because Europe would not bring slaves to them, so they could not produce the raw materials that others needed.
- The Triangular Trade got its name from the routes that merchants would use to trade different things. They had to follow the North Atlantic gyre and the trade winds to get where they were going. Although the Triangular Trade involved four continents (North America, South America and the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa) one continent would trade with two others before needing to return home. Africa provided enslaved people needed by the Americas to make raw materials (like cotton and timber), which was required by Europe to make manufactured goods (like cloth and ships). Portugal is in Europe, so Europe had boats suitable for Atlantic travel and started the whole thing by bringing Africans to the Americas. They also created the colonies in the Americas in order to provide the raw materials they needed to make manufactured goods.
4. The idea of race was socially constructed during the colonial era. Explain what that means and how it happened?
- Race in the colonial era, before African slavery took hold by the mid-1650s, did not play a big role in people's socioeconomic standing. The two main factors at that time were religion and wealth. Once African slavery started providing a labor force, replacing indentured servants, race became more important. By the time Thomas Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal" he also wanted to keep his slaves enslaved. So, he implied all rich White men are created equal and others followed along. It took this idea a while to get started, but when more and more Africans came to British North America as enslaved people, a lot of white people started seeing black people as supposed to be slaves and at the bottom of the social ladder. Poor white people supported this idea because now, since another group was below them, they were able to move up the ladder just because they were white. The gentry also tried to encourage this idea of black people being at the bottom because they didn't want the poor white people and poor black people to come together and revolt, like they did in Bacon's Rebellion, because there were a lot more of them than the gentry.
- Social construction means that race was made in people's minds. It is an idea and it is not biological. The idea of race was constructed over a period of about a hundred years. What happened was that white people mostly saw black people in service so they assumed they were not able to do other things. The founding fathers and the gentry tried to create a wedge between poor white people and black people. Eventually the laws started changing to enforce the idea that black people were different and inferior or others. The social construction of race happened slowly and was not done by just one person.
- The idea of race was socially constructed during the colonial era. This means that the concept of race was built by people in society. It happened when Africans were enslaved and brought to the Americas to work on plantations. For a while, enslaved Africans worked alongside indentured servants, but soon the wealthy gentry began to fear that these two would band together and rise up, like they did in Bacon's Rebellion. To prevent a revolt, the idea of race was constructed, enforcing the concept that white people were somehow superior. This was accepted by the poorer white population because it gave them a boost up the social hierarchy.