Outline of The American History.pdf

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Chapter 1:

EARLY AMERICA

"Heaven and Earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's

habitation."

-- Jamestown founder

John Smith, 1607

THE FIRST AMERICANS

At the height of the Ice Age, between 34,000 and 30,000 B.C., much of the

world's water was locked up in vast continental ice sheets. As a result,

the Bering Sea was hundreds of meters below its current level, and a land

bridge, known as Beringia, emerged between Asia and North America. At its

peak, Beringia is thought to have been some 1,500 kilometers wide. A moist

and treeless tundra, it was covered with grasses and plant life,

attracting the large animals that early humans hunted for their survival.

The first people to reach North America almost certainly did so without

knowing they had crossed into a new continent. They would have been

following game, as their ancestors had for thousands of years, along the

Siberian coast and then across the land bridge.

Once in Alaska, it would take these first North Americans thousands of

years more to work their way through the openings in great glaciers south

to what is now the United States. Evidence of early life in North America

continues to be found. Little of it, however, can be reliably dated before

12,000 B.C.; a recent discovery of a hunting lookout in northern Alaska,

for example, may date from almost that time. So too may the finely crafted

spear points and items found near Clovis, New Mexico.

Similar artifacts have been found at sites throughout North and South

America, indicating that life was probably already well established in

much of the Western Hemisphere by some time prior to 10,000 B.C. Around

that time the mammoth began to die out and the bison took its place as a

principal source of food and hides for these early North Americans. Over

time, as more and more species of large game vanished whether from

overhunting or natural causes plants, berries, and seeds became an

increasingly important part of the early American diet. Gradually,

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foraging and the first attempts at primitive agriculture appeared. Native

Americans in what is now central Mexico led the way, cultivating corn,

squash, and beans, perhaps as early as 8,000 B.C. Slowly, this knowledge

spread northward.

By 3,000 B.C., a primitive type of corn was being grown in the river

valleys of New Mexico and Arizona. Then the first signs of irrigation

began to appear, and, by 300 B.C., signs of early village life.

By the first centuries A.D., the Hohokam were living in settlements near

what is now Phoenix, Arizona, where they built ball courts and pyramid

like mounds reminiscent of those found in Mexico, as well as a canal and

irrigation system.

MOUND BUILDERS AND PUEBLOS

The first Native-American group to build mounds in what is now the United

States often are called the Adenans. They began constructing earthen

burial sites and fortifications around 600 B.C. Some mounds from that era

are in the shape of birds or serpents; they probably served religious

purposes not yet fully understood.

The Adenans appear to have been absorbed or displaced by various groups

collectively known as Hopewellians. One of the most important centers of

their culture was found in southern Ohio, where the remains of several

thousand of these mounds still can be seen. Believed to be great traders,

the Hopewellians used and exchanged tools and materials across a wide

region of hundreds of kilometers.

By around 500 A.D., the Hopewellians disappeared, too, gradually giving

way to a broad group of tribes generally known as the Mississippians or

Temple Mound culture. One city, Cahokia, near Collinsville, Illinois, is

thought to have had a population of about 20,000 at its peak in the early

12th century. At the center of the city stood a huge earthen mound,

flattened at the top, that was 30 meters high and 37 hectares at the base.

Eighty other mounds have been found nearby.

Cities such as Cahokia depended on a combination of hunting, foraging,

trading, and agriculture for their food and supplies. Influenced by the

thriving societies to the south, they evolved into complex hierarchical

societies that took slaves and practiced human sacrifice.

In what is now the southwest United States, the Anasazi, ancestors of the

modern Hopi Indians, began building stone and adobe pueblos around the

year 900. These unique and amazing apartment-like structures were often

built along cliff faces; the most famous, the "cliff palace" of Mesa

Verde, Colorado, had more than 200 rooms. Another site, the Pueblo Bonito

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ruins along New Mexico's Chaco River, once contained more than 800 rooms.

Perhaps the most affluent of the pre-Columbian Native Americans lived in

the Pacific Northwest, where the natural abundance of fish and raw

materials made food supplies plentiful and permanent villages possible as

early as 1,000 B.C. The opulence of their "potlatch" gatherings remains a

standard for extravagance and festivity probably unmatched in early

American history.

NATIVE-AMERICAN CULTURES

The America that greeted the first Europeans was, thus, far from an empty

wilderness. It is now thought that as many people lived in the Western

Hemisphere as in Western Europe at that time -- about 40 million.

Estimates of the number of Native Americans living in what is now the

United States at the onset of European colonization range from two to 18

million, with most historians tending toward the lower figure. What is

certain is the devastating effect that European disease had on the

indigenous population practically from the time of initial contact.

Smallpox, in particular, ravaged whole communities and is thought to have

been a much more direct cause of the precipitous decline in the Indian

population in the 1600s than the numerous wars and skirmishes with

European settlers.

Indian customs and culture at the time were extraordinarily diverse, as

could be expected, given the expanse of the land and the many different

environments to which they had adapted. Some generalizations, however, are

possible. Most tribes, particularly in the wooded eastern region and the

Midwest, combined aspects of hunting, gathering, and the cultivation of

maize and other products for their food supplies. In many cases, the women

were responsible for farming and the distribution of food, while the men

hunted and participated in war.

By all accounts, Native-American society in North America was closely tied

to the land. Identification with nature and the elements was integral to

religious beliefs. Their life was essentially clan-oriented and communal,

with children allowed more freedom and tolerance than was the European

custom of the day.

Although some North American tribes developed a type of hieroglyphics to

preserve certain texts, Native-American culture was primarily oral, with a

high value placed on the recounting of tales and dreams. Clearly, there

was a good deal of trade among various groups and strong evidence exists

that neighboring tribes maintained extensive and formal relations -- both

friendly and hostile.

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THE FIRST EUROPEANS

The first Europeans to arrive in North America -- at least the first for

whom there is solid evidence -- were Norse, traveling west from Greenland,

where Erik the Red had founded a settlement around the year 985. In 1001

his son Leif is thought to have explored the northeast coast of what is

now Canada and spent at least one winter there.

While Norse sagas suggest that Viking sailors explored the Atlantic coast

of North America down as far as the Bahamas, such claims remain unproven.

In 1963, however, the ruins of some Norse houses dating from that era were

discovered at L'Anse-aux-Meadows in northern Newfoundland, thus supporting

at least some of the saga claims.

In 1497, just five years after Christopher Columbus landed in the

Caribbean looking for a western route to Asia, a Venetian sailor named

John Cabot arrived in Newfoundland on a mission for the British king.

Although quickly forgotten, Cabot's journey was later to provide the basis

for British claims to North America. It also opened the way to the rich

fishing grounds off George's Banks, to which European fishermen,

particularly the Portuguese, were soon making regular visits.

Columbus never saw the mainland of the future United States, but the first

explorations of it were launched from the Spanish possessions that he

helped establish. The first of these took place in 1513 when a group of

men under Juan Ponce de Leanded on the Florida coast near the present

city of St. Augustine.

With the conquest of Mexico in 1522, the Spanish further solidified their

position in the Western Hemisphere. The ensuing discoveries added to

Europe's knowledge of what was now named America -- after the Italian

Amerigo Vespucci, who wrote a widely popular account of his voyages to a

"New World." By 1529 reliable maps of the Atlantic coastline from Labrador

to Tierra del Fuego had been drawn up, although it would take more than

another century before hope of discovering a "Northwest Passage" to Asia

would be completely abandoned.

Among the most significant early Spanish explorations was that of Hernando

De Soto, a veteran conquistador who had accompanied Francisco Pizarro in

the conquest of Peru. Leaving Havana in 1539, De Soto's expedition landed

in Florida and ranged through the southeastern United States as far as the

Mississippi River in search of riches.

Another Spaniard, Francisco V•uez de Coronado, set out from Mexico in 1540

in search of the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola. Coronado's travels took

him to the Grand Canyon and Kansas, but failed to reveal the gold or

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treasure his men sought. However, his party did leave the peoples of the

region a remarkable, if unintended, gift: Enough of his horses escaped to

transform life on the Great Plains. Within a few generations, the Plains

Indians had become masters of horsemanship, greatly expanding the range

and scope of their activities.

While the Spanish were pushing up from the south, the northern portion of

the present-day United States was slowly being revealed through the

journeys of men such as Giovanni da Verrazano. A Florentine who sailed for

the French, Verrazano made landfall in North Carolina in 1524, then sailed

north along the Atlantic Coast past what is now New York harbor.

A decade later, the Frenchman Jacques Cartier set sail with the hope --

like the other Europeans before him -- of finding a sea passage to Asia.

Cartier's expeditions along the St. Lawrence River laid the foundation for

the French claims to North America, which were to last until 1763.

Following the collapse of their first Quebec colony in the 1540s, French

Huguenots attempted to settle the northern coast of Florida two decades

later. The Spanish, viewing the French as a threat to their trade route

along the Gulf Stream, destroyed the colony in 1565. Ironically, the

leader of the Spanish forces, Pedro Menéndez, would soon establish a town

not far away -- St. Augustine. It was the first permanent European

settlement in what would become the United States.

The great wealth that poured into Spain from the colonies in Mexico, the

Caribbean, and Peru provoked great interest on the part of the other

European powers. Emerging maritime nations such as England, drawn in part

by Francis Drake's successful raids on Spanish treasure ships, began to

take an interest in the New World.

In 1578 Humphrey Gilbert, the author of a treatise on the search for the

Northwest Passage, received a patent from Queen Elizabeth to colonize the

"heathen and barbarous landes" in the New World that other European

nations had not yet claimed. It would be five years before his efforts

could begin. When he was lost at sea, his half brother, Walter Raleigh,

took up the mission.

In 1585 Raleigh established the first British colony in North America, on

Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. It was later abandoned,

and a second effort two years later also proved a failure. It would be 20

years before the British would try again. This time -- at Jamestown in

1607 -- the colony would succeed, and North America would enter a new era.

EARLY SETTLEMENTS

The early 1600s saw the beginning of a great tide of emigration from

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