CONTENT
List of Maps • xvii Preface • xxi Acknowledgments • xxxi Part
One A Not-So-“New” World 1 1 The Collision of Cultures 4
Early Cultures in America 7 • European Visions of America 20 • Religious Conflict in Europe 26 • The Spanish Empire 33
• The Columbian Exchange 39 • The Spanish in North America 41 • Challenges to the Spanish Empire 48 • English Exploration of America 51 2 England’s Colonies 54 The English Background 56 • Religious Conflict and War 56 • American Colonies 58 • The English Civil War in America 83
• The Restoration in the Colonies 84 • The Middle Colonies and Georgia 89 • Native Peoples and English Settlers 98 • Slavery in the Colonies 106 • Thriving Colonies 110 3
Colonial Ways of Life 114 The Shape of Early America 116 •
Society and Economy in the Southern Colonies 123 • Society and Economy in New England 124 • Society and Economy in the Middle Colonies 131 • Race-Based Slavery 134 • First Stirrings of a Common Colonial Culture 139 • Colonial Cities 140 • The Enlightenment in America 144 • The Great Awakening 147 ix usahistoryfull11_ch00_fm_i-xxxiv.indd 9 08/10/18 10:47 am x Contents 4 From Colonies to States 156 Competing Neighbors 158 • An Emerging Colonial System 165 • Warfare in the Colonies 166 • Regulating the Colonies 177 • The Crisis Grows 184 • The Spreading Conflict 196 • Independence 199 Part Two Building a Nation 211 5 The American Revolution, 1776–1783 214 Mobilizing for War 216 • American Society at War 226 • Setbacks for the British (1777) 228 • 1778: Both Sides Regroup 230 • A War of Endurance 240 • War as an Engine of Change 247 • The Social Revolution 249 • Slaves and the Revolution 252 • The Emergence of an American Nationalism 258 6 Strengthening the New Nation 262 Power to the People 263 • The Confederation Government 265 • The “Gathering Crisis” 272 • Creating the Constitution 274 • The Fight for Ratification 284 • The Federalist Era 289 • Hamilton’s Vision of a Prosperous America 295 • Foreign and Domestic Crises 303 • Western Settlement 310 • Transfer of Power 313 • The Adams Administration 314 7 The Early Republic, 1800–1815 324 Jeffersonian Republicanism 326 • War in Europe 343 •
The War of 1812 347 • The Aftermath of the War 359 Part Three An Expanding Nation 367 8 The Emergence of a Market Economy, 1815–1850 370 The Market Revolution 372
• Industrial Development 384 • Popular Culture 396 • Immigration 398 • Organized Labor and New Professions 406 usahistoryfull11_ch00_fm_i-xxxiv.indd 10 08/10/18
10:47 am Contents xi 9 Nationalism and Sectionalism, 1815–1828 414 A New Nationalism 416 • Debates over the American System 420 • “An Era of Good Feelings” 421 •
Nationalist Diplomacy 426 • The Rise of Andrew Jackson 430 10 The Jacksonian Era, 1828–1840 442 Jacksonian Democracy 444 • Nullification 458 • War over the B.U.S. 468
• Jackson’s Legacy 478 11 The South, Slavery, and King Cotton, 1800–1860 482 The Distinctiveness of the Old South 484 • The Cotton Kingdom 487 • Whites in the Old South 494
• Black Society in the South 499 • Forging a Slave Community 510 12 Religion, Romanticism, and Reform, 1800–1860 522 A More Democratic Religion 524 • Romanticism in America 536 • The Reform Impulse 546 • The Anti-Slavery Movement 558 Part Four A House Divided and Rebuilt 573 13 Western Expansion, 1830–1848 576 Moving West 578 • The Mexican-American War 606 14 The Gathering Storm, 1848–1860 618 Slavery in the Territories 619 • The Emergence of the Republican Party 637 • The Response in the South 654 usahistoryfull11_ch00_fm_i-
xxxiv.indd 11 08/10/18 10:47 am 15 The War of the Union, 1861–1865 662 Choosing Sides 664 • Fighting in the West 676 • Fighting in the East 680 • Emancipation 683 • The War behind the Lines 694 • The Faltering Confederacy 700 • A Transformational War 723 16 The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877 728 The War’s Aftermath in the South 730 • Debates over Political Reconstruction 732 • Black Society under Reconstruction 747 • The Grant Administration 757 • Reconstruction’s Significance 773 Part Five Growing Pains 777 17 Business and Labor in the Industrial Era, 1860–1900 780 Industrial and Agricultural Growth 782 • The Rise of Big Business 794 • The Alliance of Business and Politics 802 • An Industrial Society 805 18 The New South and the New West, 1865–1900 832 The Myth of the New South 834 • The Failings of the New South 837 • Race Relations during the 1890s 840 • The Settling of the New West 850 • Life in the New West 857 • The Fate of Western Indians 864 • The End of the Frontier 875 19 Political Stalemate and Rural Revolt, 1865–1900 880 Urban America 881 • The New Immigration 885 • Cultural Life 890 • Gilded Age Politics 897 • Hayes to Harrison 901 • Hayes and Civil Service Reform 901 • Farmers and the “Money Problem” 913 xii Contents usahistoryfull11_ch00_fm_i-xxxiv.indd 12 08/10/18 10:47 am Part Six Modern America 931 20 Seizing an American Empire, 1865–1913 934 Toward the New Imperialism 936 •
Expansion in the Pacific 938 • The Spanish-American War (The War of 1898) 940 • Consequences of Victory 949 •
Roosevelt’s “Big-Stick” Diplomacy 958 21 The Progressive Era, 1890–1920 972 The Progressive Impulse 974 • The Sources of Progressivism 975 • Progressives’ Aims and Achievements 983 • Progressivism under Roosevelt and Taft 991 • Woodrow Wilson: A Progressive Southerner 1005 22 America and the Great War, 1914–1920 1020 An Uneasy Neutrality 1022 • Mobilizing a Nation 1037 • The American Role in the War 1046 • The Politics of Peace 1055 • Stumbling from War to Peace 1064 23 A Clash of Cultures, 1920–1929 1074 The Nation in 1920 1077 • The “Jazz Age” 1089 • The Modernist Revolt 1103 24 The Reactionary Twenties 1114 Reactionary Conservatism and Immigration Restriction 1116 • A Republican Resurgence 1129 • 1929—A turning point 1149 • The Onset of the Great Depression 1149 • The Human Toll of the Depression 1153 • From Hooverism to the New Deal 1158 25 The New Deal, 1933–1939 1166
Roosevelt’s New Deal 1168 • The New Deal under Fire 1184 • The Second New Deal 1196 Contents xiii usahistoryfull11_ch00_fm_i-xxxiv.indd 13 08/10/18 10:47 am 26 The Second World War, 1933–1945 1208 The Rise of Fascism in Europe 1210 • From Isolationism to Intervention 1213 • Arsenal of Democracy 1230 • The Allied Drive toward Berlin 1242 • The Pacific War 1258 • A New Age Is Born 1265
Part Seven The American Age 1271 27 The Cold War and the Fair Deal, 1945–1952 1274 Truman and the Cold War 1276 • The Containment Policy 1279 • Expanding the New Deal 1287 • The Cold War Heats Up 1301 • Another Red Scare 1309 28 America in the Fifties 1318 Moderate Republicanism 1320 • A People of Plenty 1325 • Cracks in the Picture Window 1336 • The Civil Rights Movement 1342 • Foreign Policy in the Fifties 1351 29 A New Frontier and a Great Society, 1960–1968 1368 The New Frontier 1370 • Civil Rights Triumphant 1384 • The Great Society 1400 • The Tragedy of Vietnam 1411 • The Turmoil of the Sixties 1417 30 Rebellion and Reaction, 1960s and 1970s 1424 “Forever
Young”: The Youth Revolt 1426 • Social Activism Spreads 1437 • Nixon and the Revival of Conservatism 1451 • “Peace with Honor”: Ending the Vietnam War 1459 • The Nixon Doctrine and a Thawing cold war 1467 • Watergate 1470 31 Conservative Revival, 1977–1990 1482 The Carter Presidency 1484 • The Rise of Ronald Reagan 1492 • The Reagan Revolution 1496 • An Anti-Soviet Foreign Policy 1502 • The Changing Economic and Social Landscape 1509 • The Presidency of George H. W. Bush 1514 xiv Contents
usahistoryfull11_ch00_fm_i-xxxiv.indd 14 08/10/18 10:47 am 32 Twenty-First-Century America, 1993–Present 1528
America’s Changing Population 1530 • The Clinton Presidency (1993–2001) 1531 • A Chaotic Start to a New
Century 1542 • Second-Term Blues 1553 • A Historic New Presidency 1557 • The “Angry” 2016 Election 1578 • A Populist President 1587 • The 100-Day Mark 1594 Glossary
A1 Appendix A69 Further Readings A133 Credits A171 Index A17
part one 1 History is filled with ironies. Luck and accidents the unexpected happenings of life often shape events more than intentions do. Long before Christopher Columbus happened upon the Caribbean Sea in search of a westward passage to the Indies (east Asia), the native peoples he mislabeled “Indians” had occupied and transformed the lands of the Western Hemisphere (also called the Americas—North, Central, and South) for thousands of years. The “New World” was thus new only to the Europeans who began exploring, conquering, and exploiting the region at the end of the fifteenth century.
“NEW” WORLD usahistoryfull11_ch01_001-053.indd 1
08/10/18 8:55 pm 2 Over time, indigenous peoples had developed hundreds of strikingly different societies. Some were rooted in agriculture; others focused on trade or conquest. Many Native Americans (also called Amerindians) were healthier, better fed, and lived longer than Europeans,
but when the two societies—European and Native American collided, Amerindians were exploited, infected, enslaved, displaced, and exterminated. Yet the conventional story of invasion and occupation oversimplifies the process by which Indians, Europeans, and Africans interacted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Native Americans were more than passive victims of European power; they were also trading partners and military allies of the transatlantic newcomers. They became neighbors and advisers, religious converts and loving spouses. As such, they participated actively in the creation of the new society known as America. The European colonists who risked their lives to settle in the Western Hemisphere were a diverse lot. They came from Spain, Portugal, France, the British Isles, the Netherlands (Holland), Scandinavia, Italy, and the German states. (Germany would not become a united nation until the mid–nineteenth century.) What they shared was a presumption that Christianity was superior to other religions and that all other peoples were inferior to them and to their culture. A variety of motives inspired Europeans to undertake the harrowing transatlantic voyage. Some were fortune seekers lusting for gold, silver, and spices. Others were eager to create kingdoms of God in the New World. Still others were adventurers, convicts, debtors, servants, landless peasants,
and political or religious exiles. Most were simply seeking opportunities for a better life. A settler in Pennsylvania noted that workers “here get three times the wages for their labor than they can in England.” Yet such wages never attracted enough workers to keep up with the rapidly expanding colonial economies, so Europeans eventually turned to Africa to supply their labor needs in the New World. Beginning in 1503, European nations—especially Portugal and Spain—transported captive Africans to the Western Hemisphere. Throughout the sixteenth century, slaves were delivered to ports as far south as Chile to as far north as Canada. Thereafter, the English and Dutch joined the effort to exploit enslaved Africans. Few Europeans saw the contradiction between the promise of freedom in America for themselves and the institution of race-based slavery.
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The intermingling of people, cultures, plants, animals, microbes, and diseases from the continents of Africa, Europe, and the Western Hemisphere gave colonial American society its distinctive vitality and variety. The shared quest for a better life also gave America much of its drama—and conflict. The Europeans unwittingly brought to the Americas a range of infectious diseases that would prove disastrous for the indigenous peoples who had no natural immunities to them and no knowledge of how to
cope with them. As many as 90 percent of Native Americans would eventually die from Europeanborne diseases. Proportionally, it would be the worst human death toll in history. At the same time, bitter rivalries among the Spanish, French, English, and Dutch triggered costly wars in Europe and around the world. Amid such conflicts, the monarchs of Europe struggled to manage often-unruly colonies, which, as it turned out, played crucial roles in their frequent wars. Many of the colonists displayed a feisty independence, which led them to resent government interference in their affairs. A British official in North Carolina reported that the colonists were “without any Law or Order. Impudence is so very high, as to be past bearing.” The colonists and their British rulers maintained an uneasy partnership throughout the seventeenth century. As the royal authorities tightened their control during the mid–eighteenth century, however, they met resistance, which exploded into revolution. 3
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The Collision of Cultures 1 De Soto and the Incas This 1596 color engraving shows Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto’s first encounter with King Atahualpa of the Inca Empire. Although artist Theodor de Bry never set foot in North America, his engravings helped shape European perceptions of Native Americans in the sixteenth century.
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1. Why were there so many diverse societies in the Americas before Europeans arrived? 2. What major developments in Europe enabled the Age of Exploration? 3. How did the Spanish conquer and colonize the Americas? 4. How did the Columbian Exchange between the “Old” and “New” Worlds affect both societies? 5. In what ways did the Spanish form of colonization shape North American history? focus questions America was born in melting ice. Tens of thousands of years ago, during a period known as the Ice Age, immense glaciers some two miles thick inched southward from the Arctic Circle at the top of the globe. The advancing ice crushed hills; rerouted rivers; gouged out lakebeds and waterways; and scraped bare all the land in its path. The glacial ice sheets covered much of North America—areas which are now Canada, Alaska, the Upper Midwest, New England, Montana, and Washington. Then, as the continent’s climate began to warm, the ice slowly started to melt, year after year, century after century. So much of the world’s water was bound up in glacial ice that the slow melt ultimately caused sea levels to rise more than 400 feet. As the ice sheets receded, a thick blanket of fertile topsoil scoured from Canada and pushed down the continent was deposited in the Midwest; it would become the world’s richest farmland. The shrinking glaciers also opened valley pathways allowing the first immigrants to
roam the continent. Debate still rages about when and how humans first arrived in North America. Yet one thing is certain: the ancestors of every person living in the United States originally came from somewhere else. As then senator John F. Kennedy asserted in 1958, America is indeed a “nation of immigrants,” a society of striving people attracted by a mythic new world promising new beginnings and a better life in a new place of unlimited space. Geography may be destiny, as the saying goes, but without people of determination and imagination, geography would have destroyed rather than sustained the first Americans. Until recently, archaeologists had assumed that ancient peoples from northeast Asia, clothed in animal hides and furs, began following herds of large game animals across the Bering Strait, a waterway that now connects the usahistoryfull11_ch01_001-053.indd 5 08/10/18 8:56 pm 6
Chapter 1 The Collision of Cultures THE FIRST MIGRATION
Land bridge SOUT H AMERICA N O R T H AMERIC A ASIA
MIDDLE AMERICA A T LANTI C OCEAN PACIFI C OCEAN
BERING SEA ISTHMUS OF PANAMA Principal migration routes Bering land bridge WWN64 America 10e
26593_01map_01 First proof ■ When did people first cross the Bering Sea? What evidence have archaeologists and anthropologists found from the lives of the first people in America? ■ Why did those people travel to North America?
Arctic and Pacific Oceans. During the Ice Age, however, the Bering Strait was dry a vast, treeless, frigid tundra that connected eastern Siberia with Alaska. The place with the oldest traces of human activity in the Bering region is Broken Mammoth, a 14,400-year-old site in central Alaska where the first aboriginal peoples, called Paleo-Indians (Ancient Indians), arrived in North America. More recently, archaeologists in central Texas unearthed evidence of people dating back almost 16,000 years. Over thousands of years, as the climate kept warming and the glaciers and ice sheets continued to melt, small nomadic kinship groups, typically numbering a few dozen, fanned out from Alaska on foot, or by boat down the rugged coast, eventually spreading across the Western Hemisphere—from the Arctic Circle to the southern tip of South America.
Paleo-Indians were skilled hunters and gatherers in search of game animals, whales, seals, fish, and wild plants, berries, nuts, roots, and seeds. They lived in transportable huts with wooden frames covered by animal skins or grasses (“thatch”). As people moved southward, they trekked across prairies and plains, working in groups to track and kill massive animals unlike any found there today: mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, camels, lions, sabertoothed tigers, cheetahs, and giant wolves, beavers, and bears. Recent archaeological discoveries in California,
Florida, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Chile, Brazil, and Venezuela, however, suggest that prehistoric humans from various parts of Asia could have arrived as early as 25,000 or even 50,000 years ago. Findings indicate that some may even have crossed the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans in boats, traveling from Polynesian islands in the southern Pacific or from southwestern Europe. Regardless of when, where, or how humans first set foot in North America, the continent eventually became a dynamic crossroads for adventurous peoples from around the world, all bringing with them distinctive backgrounds, cultures, technologies, religions, and motivations that helped form the multicultural society known as America. Early Cultures in America Archaeologists have labeled the earliest humans in North America the Clovis peoples, named after a site in New Mexico where ancient hunters some 13,000 years ago killed tusked woolly mammoths using distinctive “Clovis” stone spearheads. Over the centuries, as the climate warmed, days grew hotter and many of the largest mammals—mammoths, mastodons, and camels became extinct. Hunters then began stalking more-abundant mammals: deer, antelope, elk, moose, and caribou. Over time, the Ancient Indians adapted to their diverse environments coastal forests, grassy plains, southwestern deserts, eastern woodlands. Some continued
to hunt with spears and, later, bows and arrows; others fished or trapped small game. Some gathered wild plants and herbs and collected acorns and seeds, while others farmed using stone hoes. Most did some of each. By about 7000 b.c.e. (before the Common Era), Ancient American societies began transforming into farming cultures, supplemented by seasonal hunting and gathering. Agriculture provided reliable, nutritious food, which accelerated population growth and enabled once nomadic people to settle down in villages. Indigenous peoples became expert at growing plants that would become the primary food crops of the hemisphere, chiefly maize (corn), beans, and squash but also chili peppers, avocados, and pumpkins. usahistoryfull11_ch01_001-053.indd 7 08/10/18
8:56 pm 8 Chapter 1 The Collision of Cultures Maize-based societies viewed corn as the “gift of the gods” because it provided many essential needs. They made hominy by soaking dried kernels in a mixture of water and ashes and then cooking it. They used corn cobs for fuel and the husks to fashion mats, masks, and dolls. They also ground the kernels into cornmeal, which could be mixed with beans to make protein-rich succotash. The Mayans, Incas, and Mexica Around 1500 b.c.e., farming towns appeared in what is now Mexico. Agriculture supported the development of sophisticated communities complete with gigantic temple-
topped pyramids, palaces, and bridges in Middle America (Mesoamerica, what is now Mexico and Central America). The Mayans, who dominated Central America for more than 600 years, developed a written language and elaborate works of art. Mayan civilization featured sprawling cities, hierarchical government, terraced farms, and spectacular pyramids. Yet in about a.d. 900, Mayan culture collapsed. Why it disappeared remains a mystery, but a major factor was ecological. The Mayans destroyed much of the rain forest, upon whose fragile ecosystem they depended. As an archaeologist has explained, “Too many farmers grew too many crops on too much of the landscape.” Widespread deforestation led to hillside erosion and a catastrophic loss of nutrient-rich farmland. Overpopulation added to the strain on Mayan society, prompting civil wars. The Mayans eventually succumbed to the Toltecs, a warlike people who conquered most of the region in the tenth century. Around a.d. 1200, however, the Toltecs mysteriously withdrew after a series of droughts, fires, and invasions. the incas Much farther south, many diverse people speaking at least twenty different languages made up the sprawling Inca Empire. By the fifteenth century, the Incas’ vast realm stretched 2,500 miles along the Andes Mountains in the western part of South America. It featured irrigated farms, stone buildings, and interconnected networks of roads made of stone. the
mexica (aztecs) During the twelfth century, the Mexica (MeSHEE-ka) whom Europeans later called Aztecs (“People from Aztlán,” the place they claimed as their original homeland)—began drifting southward from northwest Mexico. Disciplined, determined, and aggressive, they eventually took control of central Mexico, where in 1325 they built the city of Tenochtitlán (“place of the stone cactus”) on an island in Lake Tetzcoco, at the site of present-day Mexico City. Tenochtitlán would become one of the grandest cities in the world. It served as the capital of a sophisticated Aztec Empire ruled by a powerful emperor and usahistoryfull11_ch01_001-053.indd 8 08/10/18 8:56 pm
Early Cultures in America 9 divided into two social classes: noble warriors and priests (about 5 percent of the population) and the free commoners—merchants, craftsmen, and farmers. When the Spanish invaded Mexico in 1519, they found a vast Aztec Empire connected by a network of roads serving 371 city-states organized into 38 provinces. Towering stone temples, broad paved avenues, thriving marketplaces, and some 70,000 adobe (sunbaked mud) huts dominated Tenochtitlán. As the empire Mayan society A fresco depicting the social divisions of Mayan society. A Mayan high priest, at the center, is ceremonially dressed. usahistoryfull11_ch01_001-053.indd 9 08/10/18 8:56 pm 10 Chapter 1 The Collision of Cultures expanded
across central and southern Mexico, the Aztecs developed elaborate societies supported by detailed legal systems and a complicated political structure. They advanced efficient new farming techniques, including terracing of fields, crop rotation, large-scale irrigation, and other engineering marvels. Their arts flourished; their architecture was magnificent. Mexica rulers were invested with godlike qualities, and nobles, priests, and warrior-heroes dominated the social order. The emperor’s palace included 100 rooms and 100 baths replete with amazing statues, gardens, and a zoo; the aristocracy lived in large stone dwellings, practiced polygamy (multiple wives), and were exempt from manual labor. Like most agricultural peoples, the Mexica, “people of the sun,” were intensely spiritual and worshipped multiple gods. Their religious beliefs focused on the interconnection between nature and human life and especially the sacredness of natural elements the sun, moon, stars, rain, mountains, rivers, and animals. They believed that the gods had sacrificed themselves to create the sun, moon, people, and maize. They were therefore obliged to feed the gods, especially Huitzilopochtli, the Lord of the Sun and War, with the vital energy provided by human hearts and blood. So the Mexica, like most Mesoamerican societies, regularly offered live human sacrifices captives, slaves, women, and children by the thousands. Mexica
sacrifices to the gods Renowned for their military prowess, the Mexica (Aztecs) preferred to capture and then sacrifice their enemies. usahistoryfull11_ch01_001-053.indd 10
08/10/18 8:56 pm Early Cultures in America 11 SOUT H
AMERIC A MIDDLE AMERIC A MEXICO CHIBCHAS M A YA S A
Z T E C S INCAS (QUECHUAS) TOLTECS A T LANTI C OCEA N
P A C IFIC OCEAN CARIBBEAN SEA GULF OF MEXICO
Tenochtitlán Monte Albán Teotihuacán A N D E S M O U N T A
I N S ISTHMUS OF PANAMA 0 250 500 Miles 0 250 500
Kilometers WWN64 America 10e 26593_01map_02 First proof ■ What were the major pre-Columbian civilizations? ■ What factors caused the demise of the Mayan civilization? ■ When did the Mexica build Tenochtitlán? PRE-COLUMBIAN INDIAN CIVILIZATIONS IN Middle AND SOUTH AMERICA
Warfare was a sacred ritual for the Mexica, but it involved a peculiar sort of combat. Warriors fought with wooden swords to wound rather than kill; they wanted live captives to sacrifice to the gods and to work as slaves. Gradually, the Mexica conquered many neighboring societies, forcing them to make payment of goods and labor as tribute to the empire. In elaborate weekly rituals, captured warriors or virgin girls would be daubed with paint, given a hallucinatory drug, and marched up many steps to the temple platform where priests using ceremonial knives made of obsidian (a shiny black volcanic glass) cut out the victims’ beating
hearts and offered them to the sun god to strengthen him for his fight against the darkness of the night. The victims’ severed heads were displayed in the central plaza.
usahistoryfull11_ch01_001-053.indd 11 08/10/18 8:56 pm 12 Chapter 1 The Collision of Cultures The scale of the ritualistic slaughter is mind boggling. In 1487, for example, the dedication of a new Great Temple saw thousands of prisoners sacrificed. The prisoners stood in four columns, stretching over two miles. Priests collapsed from exhaustion after tearing out bleeding hearts, hours on end. The constant need for human sacrifices fed the Mexica’s relentless warfare against other indigenous groups. A Mexica song celebrated their warrior code: “Proud of itself is the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlán. Here no one fears to die in war. This is our glory.” North American Civilizations Many indigenous societies blossomed in the lands north of Mexico in the early 1500s, as Europeans began to explore the area that is now the United States. Over the centuries, small kinship groups (clans) had joined together: first to form larger bands involving hundreds of people, which then evolved into much larger regional groups, or tribes, whose members spoke the same Navajo creation myth This nineteenth-century blanket illustrates supernatural beings surrounded by a rainbow, with the sacred maize plant at the center.
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Early Cultures in America 13 language. Although few had an alphabet or written language, the different societies developed rich oral traditions that passed on spiritual myths and social beliefs, especially those concerning the sacredness of nature, the necessity of communal living, and a deep respect for elders. Like the Mexica, most indigenous peoples believed in many “spirits.” To the Sioux, God was Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, who ruled over all spirits. The Navajo believed in the Holy People: Sky, Earth, Moon, Sun, Thunders, Winds, and Changing Woman. Many Native Americans believed in ghosts, who acted as their bodyguards in battle. The importance of hunting to many Indian societies helped nurture a warrior ethic in which courage in combat was the highest virtue. War dances the night before a hunt or battle invited the spirits to unleash magical powers. Yet, Native American warfare mostly consisted of small-scale raids intended to enable individual warriors to demonstrate their courage rather than to seize territory or destroy villages. Casualties were minimal. Taking a few captives often signaled victory. Diverse Societies For all their similarities, the indigenous peoples of North America developed markedly different ways of life. In North America alone in 1492, when the first Europeans arrived, there were perhaps several million native peoples organized into 240 different societies speaking many different
languages. These Native Americans practiced diverse customs and religions, passed on distinctive cultural myths, and developed varied economies. Some wore clothes they had woven or made using animal skins, others wore nothing but colorful paint, tattoos, or jewelry. Some lived in stone houses, others in circular timber wigwams or bark-roofed longhouses. Still others lived in sodcovered or reedthatched lodges or in portable tipis made from animal skins. Some cultures built stone pyramids graced by ceremonial plazas and others constructed huge burial or ritual mounds topped by temples. Few North American Indians permitted absolute rulers. Tribes had chiefs, but the “power of the chiefs,” reported an eighteenth-century British trader, “is an empty sound. They can only persuade or dissuade the people by the force of good-nature and clear reasoning.” Likewise, Henry Timberlake, a British soldier, explained that the Cherokee government, “if I may call it a government, which has neither laws nor power to support it, is a mixed aristocracy and democracy, the chiefs being chosen according to their merit in war.” For Native Americans, exile from the group was the most feared punishment. They owned land in common rather than individually as private usahistoryfull11_ch01_001-053.indd 13 08/10/18 8:56 pm 14 Chapter 1 The Collision of Cultures property, and they had well-defined social roles. Men were hunters, warriors,
and leaders. Women tended children; made clothes, blankets, jewelry, and pottery; cured and dried animal skins; wove baskets; built and packed tipis; and grew, harvested, and cooked food. When the men were away hunting or fighting, women took charge of village life. Some Indian nations, like the Cherokee and Iroquois, gave women political power. the southwest The arid (dry) Southwest (present-day Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah) featured a landscape of high mesas, deep canyons, vast deserts, long rivers, and snow-covered mountains that hosted corn-growing societies. The Hopis, Zunis, and others still live in the multistory adobe cliff-side villages (called pueblos by the Spanish), which were erected by their ancient ancestors. N O R T H AMERICA ANASAZI PUEBLOHOHOKAM M SI SISSIPPIAN ADENA-HOPEWELL PACIFIC
OCEAN A T L ANTI C OCEAN GULF OF M EXICO Mesa Verde
R O C K Y M O U N T A I N S MISSISSIPPI VALLEY OHIO
VALLEY APPALAC H IA N M OU N TAI NS 0 250 500 Miles 0 250 500 Kilometers WWN64 America 10e 26593_01map_03
First proof ■ What were the dominant pre-Columbian civilizations in North America? ■ Where was the AdenaHopewell culture centered? ■ How was the Mississippian civilization similar to that of the Mayans or the Mexica? ■ What made the Anasazi culture different from the other North American cultures? PRE-COLUMBIAN INDIAN
CIVILIZATIONS IN NORTH AMERICA
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Early Cultures in America 15 Ruins of Anasazi Vast villages were constructed into the sides of these cliffs in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. About 500 c.e. (Common Era), the Hohokam (“those who have vanished”) people migrated from Mexico northward to southern and central Arizona, where they built extensive canals to irrigate crops. They also crafted decorative pottery and turquoise jewelry, and constructed temple mounds (earthen pyramids used for sacred ceremonies). The most widespread and best known of the Southwest pueblo cultures were the Anasazi (Ancient Ones), or Basketmakers. Unlike the Aztecs and Incas, however, Anasazi society did not have a rigid class structure. The religious leaders and warriors worked much as the rest of the people did. the northwest Along the narrow coastal strip running up the heavily forested northwest Pacific coast, from northern California to Alaska, shellfish, salmon, seals, whales, deer, and edible wild plants were abundant. Here, there was little need to rely on farming. In fact, many of the Pacific Northwest peoples, such as the Haida, Kwakiutl, and Nootka, needed to work only two days to provide enough food for a week. Such population density enabled the Pacific coast cultures to develop intricate religious rituals and sophisticated woodworking skills. They
carved usahistoryfull11_ch01_001-053.indd 15 08/10/18
8:56 pm 16 Chapter 1 The Collision of Cultures towering totem poles featuring decorative figures of animals and other symbolic characters. For shelter, they built large, earthen-floored, cedar-plank houses up to 500 feet long, where groups of families lived together. They also created sturdy, oceangoing canoes made of hollowed-out red cedar tree trunks—some large enough to carry fifty people. Socially, they were divided into slaves, commoners, and chiefs. Warfare was usually a means to acquire slaves. the great plains The many tribal nations living on the Great Plains, a vast, flat land of cold winters and hot summers west of the Mississippi River, included the Arapaho, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Apache, and Sioux. As nomadic hunter-gatherers, they tracked herds of buffaloes (technically called bison) across a sea of grassland, collecting seeds, nuts, roots, and berries as they roamed. At the center of most hunter-gatherer religions is the idea that the hunted animal is a willing sacrifice provided by the gods (spirits). To ensure a successful hunt, these nomadic peoples performed sacred rites of gratitude beforehand. Once a buffalo herd was spotted, the hunters would set fires to drive the stampeding animals over cliffs, often killing far more than they could harvest and consume. the mississippians East of the Great Plains, in the vast
woodlands reaching from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean, several “moundbuilding” cultures that were predominantly agricultural societies prospered growing crops of corn, beans, and squash. Between 700 b.c.e. and 200 c.e., the Adena and later the Hopewell societies developed communities along rivers in the Ohio Valley. The Adena-Hopewell cultures grew corn, squash, beans, and sunflowers, as well as tobacco for smoking. They left behind enormous earthworks and elaborate burial mounds shaped like snakes, birds, and other animals, several of which were nearly a quarter mile long. Like the Adena, the Hopewell developed an extensive trading network with other societies from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada, exchanging exquisite carvings, metalwork, pearls, seashells, copper ornaments, bear claws, and jewelry. By the sixth century, however, the Hopewell culture disappeared, giving way to a new phase of development east of the Mississippi River, the Mississippian culture, which thrived from 800 c.e. to the arrival of Europeans. The Mississippians were corn-growing peoples who built substantial agricultural towns around central plazas and temples. They developed a far-flung trading network that extended to the Rocky Mountains, and their ability to grow large amounts of corn in the fertile floodplains spurred population growth around regional centers.
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