Key Terms and Figures of Early American History
The Inca Empire
Also known as the Incan Empire, was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was located in Cusco in modern-day Peru.
The Three Sisters
The Three Sisters are the three main agricultural crops of various Native American groups in North America: winter squash, maize (corn), and climbing beans. One of the major Native American tribes that used these “Three Sisters” to trade with others was the Iroquois Confederacy.
Conquistadors
Conquistadors is a term used to refer to the soldiers and explorers of the Spanish Empire or the Portuguese Empire in a general sense. During the Age of Discovery conquistadores sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, Oceania, Africa and Asia, conquering territory and opening trade routes. They colonized much of the world for Spain and Portugal in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.
The Black Legend
The Black Legend is a style of nonobjective historical writing or propaganda that demonizes the Spanish Empire, its people and its culture in an intentional attempt to damage its reputation. The Black Legend propaganda originated in the 16th century, a time of strong rivalry between European colonial powers.
Hernando de Soto
Hernando de Soto was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who led the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States, and the first documented European to have crossed the Mississippi River.
The Encomienda
The encomienda was a dependency relation system, that started in Spain during the Roman Empire, where the stronger people protected the weakest in exchange for a service. It was later used during the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the Philippines. The Spanish monarch would assign a Spaniard with the task of “protecting” a specific group of Native Americans.
Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century. Cortés was part of the generation of Spanish colonizers who began the first phase of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Predestination
Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. Explanations of predestination often seek to address the “paradox of free will”, whereby God’s omniscience seems incompatible with human free will. In this usage, predestination can be regarded as a form of religious determinism; and usually predeterminism.
Antinomianism
The term antinomianism emerged soon after the Protestant Reformation (c.1517) and has historically been used as a pejorative against Christian thinkers or sects who carried their belief in justification by faith further than was customary. Antinomianism in modern times is commonly seen as the theological opposite to Legalism or Works righteousness, the notion that obedience to religious law earns salvation.
The Mayflower Compact
The Mayflower Compact was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was written by separatist Congregationalists who called themselves “Saints”. Later they were referred to as Pilgrims or Pilgrim Fathers. They were fleeing from religious persecution by King James of England. They traveled aboard the Mayflower in 1620 along with adventurers, tradesmen, and servants, most of whom were referred to by the Separatists as “Strangers”.
Pocahontas
Pocahontas was a Virginia Indian notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, the paramount chief of a network of tributary tribal nations in the Tsenacommacah, encompassing the Tidewater region of Virginia. In a well-known historical anecdote, she is said to have saved the life of an Indian captive, Englishman John Smith, in 1607 by placing her head upon his own when her father raised his war club to execute him. Some historians have suggested that this story, as told by Smith, is untrue.
John Smith
John Smith, Admiral of New England, was an English soldier, explorer, and author. He was knighted for his services to Sigismund Bathory, Prince of Transylvania, and his friend Mózes Székely. He was considered to have played an important part in the establishment of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America. He was a leader of the Virginia Colony between September 1608 and August 1609, and led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay. He was the first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay area and New England.
John Rolfe
John Rolfe was one of the early English settlers of North America. He is credited with the first successful cultivation of tobacco as an export crop in the Colony of Virginia and is known as the husband of Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Confederation.
Bacon’s Rebellion
Bacon’s Rebellion was an armed rebellion in 1676 by Virginia settlers led by Nathaniel Bacon against the rule of Governor William Berkeley. The colony’s dismissive policy as it related to the political challenges of its western frontier, combined with accumulating grievances, helped to motivate a popular uprising against Berkeley, who had failed to address the demands of the colonists regarding their safety.
Salutary Neglect
Salutary neglect is an American history term that refers to the unofficial, long-term seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British Crown policy of avoiding strict enforcement of parliamentary laws meant to keep American colonies obedient to England.
Massasoit Sachem Ousamequin
Massasoit Sachem Ousamequin was the sachem, or leader, of the Wampanoag, and “Massasoit” of the Wampanoag Confederacy. The term Massasoit means Great Sachem.
Squanto
Squanto, was a Patuxet man who assisted the Pilgrims after their first winter in what is now Massachusetts. He was integral to their very survival. He was a member of the Patuxet tribe, a tributary of the Wampanoag Confederacy. During his lifetime, he crossed the Atlantic Ocean six times, traveling with colonists to London and back.
Fort Necessity
Fort Necessity National Battlefield is a National Battlefield Site in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, which preserves the site of the Battle of Fort Necessity. The battle, which took place on July 3, 1754, was an early battle of the French and Indian War, and resulted in the surrender of British colonial forces under Colonel George Washington, to the French and Indians, under Louis Coulon de Villiers.
James Edward Oglethorpe
James Edward Oglethorpe was a British general, Member of Parliament, philanthropist, and founder of the colony of Georgia. As a social reformer, he hoped to resettle Britain’s poor, especially those in debtors’ prisons, in the New World.
The Salem Witch Trials
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. The trials resulted in the executions of twenty people, most of them women, and all but one by hanging. Twelve other women had previously been executed in Massachusetts and Connecticut during the 17th century. Despite being generally known as the Salem witch trials, the preliminary hearings in 1692 were conducted in several towns: Salem Village, Salem Town, Ipswich and Andover. The most infamous trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town.
The Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of Africans were shipped to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manufactured goods, which were traded for purchased or kidnapped Africans, who were transported across the Atlantic as slaves; the slaves were then sold or traded for raw materials, which would be transported back to Europe to complete the voyage. Voyages on the Middle Passage were large financial undertakings, generally organized by companies or groups of investors rather than individuals.
Enumerated Goods
Enumerated goods: Products grown or extracted from England’s North American colonies that could be shipped only to England or other colonies within the empire. Goods on the first enumeration list included tobacco, indigo, and sugar. Later furs, molasses, and rice would be added to a growing list of products that the English colonies could not sell directly to foreign nations.
Virtual Representation
Virtual representation stated that the members of Parliament, including the Lords and the Crown-in-Parliament, reserved the right to speak for the interests of all British subjects, rather than for the interests of only the district that elected them or for the regions in which they held peerages and spiritual sway. Virtual Representation was the British response to the First Continental Congress in the American colonies. The Congress asked for representation in Parliament in the Suffolk Resolves, also known as the first olive branch petition. Parliament claimed that their members had the well being of the colonists in mind. The Colonies rejected this premise.
General Edward Braddock
General Edward Braddock was a British officer and commander-in-chief for the 13 colonies during the actions at the start of the French and Indian War (1754–1765) which is also known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). He is generally best remembered for his command of a disastrous expedition against the French-occupied Ohio River Valley then in western Virginia or Pennsylvania (depending on which Royal grants) in 1755, in which he lost his life.