Corn or Maize
Staple crop that formed the economic foundation of Indian civilizations.
Portugal
First European nation to send explorers around the west coast of Africa.
Horse
Animal introduced by Europeans that changed Indian way of life on the Great Plains
Treaty of Tordesillas
Treaty that secured Spanish title to lands in Americas by dividing them with Portugal.
Mestizos
Person of mixed European and Indian ancestry.
St. Augustine
Founded in 1565, it's the oldest continually inhabited European settlement in US territory
Black Legend
Belief that the Spanish only killed, tortured, and stole in the Americas while doing nothing good
Roanoke Island, NC
Colony founded by Sir Walter Raleigh that mysteriously disappeared in the 1580's.
Joint-stock
Forerunner of the modern corporation that enabled investors to pool financial capital for colonial ventures.
Charter
Royal document granting a specified group the right to form a colony and guaranteeing settlers their rights as English citizens.
Indentured Servants
Penniless people obligated to forced labor for a fixed number of years, often in exchange for passage to the New World.
Act of Toleration
Maryland statute of 1649 that granted religious freedom to all Christians, but not Jews and atheists.
Squatters
Poor farmers in North Carolina and elsewhere who occupied land and raised crops without gaining legal title to the soil
House of Burgesses
First representative government in New World.
Ferdinand and Isabella
Financiers and beneficiaries of Columbus's voyages of discovery.
Cortes
Conqueror of the Aztecs.
Pizarro
Conqueror of the Incas.
Dias and DaGama
Portuguese navigators who led early voyages of discovery.
Columbus
Italian-born explorer who believed he arrived off the coast of Asia rather than on an unknown continent.
Montezuma
Powerful Aztec monarch who fell to Spanish conquerors
Elizabeth I
Unmarried English ruler who led England to national glory.
Hiawatha
Legendary founder of the powerful Iroquois Confederation
John Cabot
Italian-born explorer sent by the English to explore the coast of North America in 1498
Georgia
Founded as a refuge for debtors by philanthropists.
North Carolina
Colony that was called "a vale of humility between two mountains of conceit".
Smith and Rolfe
leaders who rescued Jamestown from the "starving time".
Maryland
Founded as a haven for Roman Catholics.
Lord Baltimore
Catholic aristocrat who sought to build a sanctuary for his fellow believers.
South Carolina
Colony that turned to disease-resistant African-American slaves for labor in its extensive rice plantations.
Raleigh and Gilbert
Elizabethan courtiers who failed in their attempts to found New World colonies.
Jamestown
Riverbank site where Virginia Company settlers planted the first permanent English colony.
Cause: The Great Ice Age
Effect: Exposure of a "land bridge" between Asia and North America.
Cause: Cultivation of Maize (corn)
Effect: Formation of large, sophisticated civilizations in Mexico and South America
Cause: New sailing technology and desire for spices
Effect: European voyages around Africa and across the Atlantic attempting to reach Asia.
Cause: Portugal's creation of sugar plantations on Atlantic coastal islands
Effect: Rapid expansion of the African slave trade
Cause: Columbus's first encounter with the New World
Effect: A global exchange of animals, plants, and diseases.
Cause: Native Americans' lack of immunity to various diseases
Effect: Decline of 90% in the New World Indian population
Cause: Spanish conquest of larger quantities of New World gold and silver
Effect: Rapid expansion of global economic commerce and manufacturing.
Cause: Aztec legends of a returning god, Quetzalcoatl
Effect: Cortes' relatively easy conquest of the Aztecs.
Cause: Spanish need to protect Mexico against French and English encroachment
Effect: Establishment of Spanish settlements in Florida and New Mexico
Cause: Franciscan friars' desire to convert Pacific coast Indians to Catholicism
Effect: Formation of a chain of mission settlements in California.
Cause: The English victory over the Spanish Armada
Effect: Enabled England to gain control of the North Atlantic sea-lanes.
Cause: The English law of primogeniture
Effect: Led many younger sons of the gentry to seek their fortunes in exploration and colonization.
Cause: The enclosing of English pastures and crop land
Effect: Forced numerous laborers off the land and sent them looking for opportunities elsewhere.
Cause: Lord DeLa Warr's use of brutal "Irish tactics" in Virginia
Effect: led to the two Anglo-Powhatan wars that virtually exterminated Virginia's Indian population.
Cause: The English government's persecution of Roman Catholics
Effect: Led Lord Baltimore to establish Maryland.
Cause: The slave codes of England's Barbados colony
Effect: Became the legal basis for slavery in North America.
Cause: The introduction of tobacco
Effect: created the economic foundation for most of England's southern colonies.
Cause: The flight of poor farmers and religious dissenters from planter run Virginia
Effect: Led to the founding of independent minded North Carolina.
Cause: John Smith's stern leadership in Virginia
Effect: Whipped gold-hungry, nonworking colonists into line.
Cause: Gorgia's unhealthy climate, restrictions on slavery, and vulnerability to Spanish attacks
Effect: Kept the buffer colony poor and largely unpopulated for a long time.
