Pre-Columbian era

1. Pre-Columbian era

2. Name for the period of History in the New World before Christopher Columbus became the first European to arrive (except for the Vikings’ limited exploration) in 1492

3. Mercantilism

4. Economic system that promoted the establishment of colonies around the world for the enrichment of European powers during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries • Under this system, colonies exported raw materials to the powerful European “motherland” and then purchased the finished products produced from these raw materials • System explains why nations were so eager to find, populate, and maintain colonies

5. Christopher Columbus

6. Italian-born explorer who sailed on behalf of Spain • First European (except for the Vikings) to land in the Americas (the New World) in 1492

7. New World

8. Popular name for the Americas in the century or so after Christopher Columbus became the first European to “discover” the area

9. Conquistadors

10. Name for Spanish explorers who flocked to the New World in the sixteenth century • They were seeking gold and other treasures, and they treated the Native Americans brutally • They were often accompanied by the Catholic missionaries

11. Industrial Revolution

12. Term for the conversion of society from an agrarian one (centered on farming and other agricultural pursuits) to an industrial one (centered on manufacturing and other mechanized pursuits). • Took place in the mid eighteenth century • Took place in America in the nineteenth century • Initially focused in the American northeast

13. Jamestown

14. First successful colony in Virginia • Founded in 1607 • More than two-thirds of the original settlers died during the “starving time” of the first winter • Site of John Rolf’s first experiment plating tobacco for export to Britain • Served as the capital of Virginia for many years

15. Joint-stock company

16. A company funded by selling stock to investors to fund exploration and colonization in the 16th and 17th centuries. • Virginia was founded by a joint stock company that earned great dividends for its stockholders from the sale of tobacco exported to Britain from Virginia

17. John Smith

18. First governor of the Jamestown colony

19. Powhatan

20. The name of the group of Native American peoples that lived in eastern Virginia at the time of the first English settlements.

21. Tobacco

22. The English colonists discovered that they could sell this crop in Europe for a great profitJohn Rolfe grew it and sold it back to England, this saved the Jamestown colony.

23. Headright system

24. The name of the system, in which each new person who came to the colony received 50 acres of land and another 50 acres for each family member who came.

25. Cash Crop

26. A crop grown for sale rather than the farmers personal use

27. Indentured Servant

28. A person who could not afford passage to the American colonies from Britain and promised his or her servitude (usually for a period of seven years) to someone who was then willing to pay his or her passage across the Atlantic Ocean. • Became less popular as slavery became more widespread.

29. House of Burgesses

30. Legislature of colonial Virginia • First legislature body in colonial America

31. slavery

32. Practice of buying and selling people from Africa and of African descent as household servants and/or farm workers • First practiced in the New World in Virginia in 1619 • Slaves were imported from Africa, where they were brought or kidnapped and transported to the Americas by a sea voyage known as the Middle Passage • In the American colonies it was more prevalent in the South than in the North • Created political problems, beginning with the drafting of the Constitution and lasting through the Civil War • Ended by the 13th Amendment (one of the Civil War Amendments)

33. The Ring Shout

34. This dance paid tribute to the ancestors and gods of the slaves.

35. Triangular Trade

36. In this process merchants carried rum and other goods from New England to Africa. In Africa merchants traded merchandise for enslaved people. They transported these people to the West Indies and sold them for Sugar and molasses. These goods were then shipped to New England to be distilled into rum.

37. Middle Passage

38. Middle leg of the journey from Europe to Africa to America, then back to Europe in which slaves, spices, furs, gold, and other goods were transported • Name by which the brutal experience of crossing the Indian and Atlantic Oceans after being sold or kidnapped into slavery in Africa was known • Almost 15 percent of slaves did not survive the trip

39. Pilgrims

40. Religious dissidents who left England for freedom in the American colonies. • Settled first in Plymouth, Massachusetts • Came over on the Mayflower, from which their agreement on how to govern the Colony, the Mayflower Compact, took its name. • Pioneered the concept of the separation of the church and state. • Separate from the puritans, who maintained membership in the Church of England Pilgrims had abandoned.

41. Mayflower Compact

42. The first “constitution” in North America • Signed by 41 Pilgrim men who came to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620 • Established the rule of law and the separation of church and state

43. Separation of Church and State

44. Notion that government and religion should function separately • Established in the Constitution by the First Amendment (in the Bill of Rights) • Pioneered by the Pilgrims in the Mayflower Compact and first entered into American law by Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom

45. Plymouth

46. Massachusetts settlement founded by the Pilgrims in 1621 • Governed by the Mayflower Compact

47. New Netherland

48. Colony founded by the Dutch in 1621

49. New Amsterdam

50. Capital of the Dutch colony New Netherland