AP US History Unit 1

Question 1

Christopher Columbus

Answer 1

European explorer famous for “discovering” the Americas

Question 2

pre-Columbian era

Answer 2

The period before Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the “New World”

Question 3

Native Americans

Answer 3

Populated North America during the pre-Columbian era
Not to be confused with all native-born Americans
Most historians believe that they are the descendants of migrants who traveled from Asia to North America between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago

Question 4

Land bridge from Siberia to Alaska

Answer 4

Native Americans walked across it during their migrations

Question 5

Bering Strait

Answer 5

As sea levels rose the land bridge was submerged and formed the Bering Strait.

Question 6

How many Native Americans lived in the New World at the time of Columbus’s arrival?

Answer 6

Between 1 million and 5 million in modern Canada and the US
Another 20 million in Mexico

Question 7

Who were the Pueblo people?

Answer 7

Native Americans living in the desert southwest with their multistory stone houses with hundreds of rooms

Question 8

Who were the Chinook people?

Answer 8

The people of the Pacific Northwest who subsisted on hunting and foraging

Question 9

Who were the Plains Indians?

Answer 9

Nomadic people in the plains of the US

Question 10

Maize

Answer 10

Also corn
It was a staple crop for the indigenous people in Mexico and it spread to much of North America. The domestication and cultivation of maize allowed for stable economies and organized societies.

Question 11

Columbian Exchange

Answer 11

the exchange of plants, animals, foods, communicable diseases, and ideas between the New World and the Old World

Question 12

Colonies

Answer 12

A territory settled and controlled by a foreign power.
Europeans started to form colonies in the Americas after Columbus arrived in the New World

Question 13

Conquistadors

Answer 13

Europeans that collected and exported as much of the Americas wealth as they could

Question 14

Encomienda system

Answer 14

A labor system enforced on the Native Americans by the Spanish

Question 15

Mestizos

Answer 15

Those of mixed European and Native blood

Question 16

Zambos

Answer 16

Those of mixed African and Native American heritage

Question 17

Spanish Armada

Answer 17

Spain’s navy

Question 18

Smallpox

Answer 18

An epidemic from Europeans that killed a majority of the Native American population

Question 19

Sextant

Answer 19

A navigation instrument that made sailing across the Atlantic safer and more efficient

Question 20

Joint-stock companies

Answer 20

Corporate businesses with shareholders whose mission was to settle and develop lands in North America
Famous ones:
British East India Company, Dutch East India Company, Virginia Company (settled in Jamestown)

Question 21

Juan de Sepulveda and Bartolome de Las Casas

Answer 21

Spanish and Portuguese thinkers who proposed different approaches to the treatment of Native populations

Question 22

Spanish mission system

Answer 22

Converted Mesoamerica to Catholicism

Question 23

Juan de Onate

Answer 23

Explorer who swept through the American Southwest to create Christian converts by any means necessary - including violence

Question 24

Voodoo

Answer 24

A religion that is a blend of Christianity and tribal animism (Africans in the Americas)

Question 25

Maroon people

Answer 25

Escaped slavery and formed cultural enclaves

Question 26

Sir Walter Raleigh

Answer 26

English, in 1587 sponsored a settlement on Roanoke Island (now part of North Carolina).

Question 27

Lost Colony

Answer 27

The colony on Roanoke Island disappeared by 1590

Question 28

Jamestown and Virginia Company

Answer 28

The English settled Jamestown in 1607 and it was funded by a joint-stock company called the Virginia Company

Question 29

Captain John Smith

Answer 29

he decreed that “he who will not work shall not eat” to help with settlers dying of starvation or disease. After he was injured in a gunpowder explosion and went back to England, the Indians of the Powhatan Confederacy stopped supplying Jamestown with food

Question 30

Powhatan Confederacy

Answer 30

Indians of this group stopped supplying Jamestown with food

Question 31

the starving time

Answer 31

During the winter of 1609-1610 starvation was really bad in Jamestown. Nearly 90 percent of its 500 residents perished, with some resorting to cannibalism.

Question 32

John Rolfe

Answer 32

A survivor of Jamestown. He married Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas which eased the tension between the natives and English settlers. He pioneered the growing of tobacco as a cash crop to be exported back to England.

Question 33

Tobacco

Answer 33

Was exported back to England which brightened the prospects for English settlement in Virginia. The crop requires vast acreage and depltes the soil so it caused rapid expansion. It also led to the development of plantation slavery.

Question 34

Chesapeake

Answer 34

All the settlements around Jamestown which today comprises Virginia and Maryland

Question 35

Indentured servitude

Answer 35

Many people came to the Chesapeake for financial reasons and overpopulation in England. Indentured servitude promised seven years of labor and then freedom. They also got a small piece of property with their freedom which allowed them to survive and vote. Although, nearly half of indentured servants did not survive their term of service.

Question 36

Headright system

Answer 36

In 1618, the Virginia Company introduced the headright system as a means of attracting new settlers to the region and addressing the labor shortage created by tobacco farming. A “head right” was a tract of land, usually about 50 acres, that was granted to colonists and potential settlers.

Question 37

House of Burgesses

Answer 37

Established by Virginia in 1619 in which any property-holding, white male could vote. All decisions made by this had to be approved by the Virginia Company.

Question 38

Slavery

Answer 38

1619 was the introduction of slavery to the English colonies.