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Gregory Bodenhamer Columbus referred to the lands he discovered as “the Indies” and the people he encountered as “Indians” ( Indios, in Spanish). He never wavered from the belief that he had reached the outlying islands off the Asian mainland. Amerigo Vespucci, another Italian navigator, sailed extensively along the coast of South America as a member of both Spanish and Portuguese expeditions and is considered to be the first to realize that the Indies were in fact a “New World” and not part of Asia. The first map that identified known parts of the Western Hemisphere as “America,” after Vespucci, was published in 1507.

Columbus referred to the lands he discovered as “the Indies” and the people he encountered as “Indians” ( Indios, in Spanish). He never wavered from the belief that he had reached the outlying islands off the Asian mainland. Amerigo Vespucci, another Italian navigator, sailed extensively along the coast of South America as a member of both Spanish and Portuguese expeditions and is considered to be the first to realize that the Indies were in fact a “New World” and not part of Asia. The first map that identified known parts of the Western Hemisphere as “America,” after Vespucci, was published in 1507.

The Spanish conquests of Central and South America. In the half century after Columbus's death, Spain established an extensive empire in the Western Hemisphere that stretched from the region of Mexico to the tip of South America and out into the Pacific Ocean. Ferdinand Magellan's voyage around the world (1519–22), in addition to demonstrating the true circumference of the earth, was the basis for a Spanish colony in the Philippines. In the same year Magellan set sail, Hernan Cortés and about six hundred men landed on the Gulf Coast of Mexico and marched inland to Tenochtitlán (modern Mexico City), the capital of the Aztec empire. He was able to take advantage of the Aztec belief that the Europeans might be returning gods, make strategic alliances with disaffected local tribes, and use his horses and superior firepower to capture the city in 1521. The Spaniards conquered the other native cultures in Central and South America in quick succession. The Toltec-Mayans of the Yucatan Peninsula and Guatemala fell between 1522 and 1528. Francisco Pizarro, benefiting from internal strife in the Inca empire, took Peru (1531–33) with an army that numbered less than two hundred. From there, Spanish forces moved south down the west side of the continent and east into what would become Columbia.

The early Spanish explorer-adventurers, the conquistadors, were more interested in finding gold and silver than in colonization, and they relied on the native peoples to work the sugarcane fields of the Caribbean and the mines of Mexico and Peru. While the exploitation of the native peoples had its critics, most notably in the Catholic priest Bartolomé de Las Casas, it was disease rather than harsh treatment at the hands of the Spaniards that devastated the indigenous population. First on Hispaniola and then on the mainland, millions died from smallpox, measles, and other infections. African slaves were brought to the West Indies as early as 1503 because of a critical labor shortage.

Spain in North America. Stories and legends about incredible wealth stimulated the Spanish exploration of North America. The earliest expedition brought Juan Ponce de León to the Florida peninsula in search of the mythical “Fountain of Youth” (1513). In 1528, Panfilo de Narváez sailed along the Gulf Coast of the United States, but was shipwrecked off what is now Texas. A small group of survivors under Álvaro Núñez Cabeza de Vaca made its way across Texas and the Southwest region to Mexico. Between 1539 and 1543, Hernando de Soto led a large force from western Florida to the Appalachian Mountains and then west across the Mississippi River with the major consequence of spreading smallpox throughout the lower Mississippi Valley. The search for the fabled riches of the “Seven Golden Cities of Cibola,” which de Vaca had mentioned in his account, took Francisco Vasquez de Coronado from northern Mexico as far northeast as present-day Kansas between 1541 and 1543; smaller groups from the main expedition discovered the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. Meanwhile, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed up the west coast and claimed the California area for Spain. The founding of the two oldest cities in the United States—St. Augustine, Florida, (1565) and Santa Fe, New Mexico (1609)—was the chief result of almost a century of Spanish exploration.

French and Dutch Explorations

Although French fishermen had caught cod off Newfoundland as early as 1504, fish were not what motivated the voyages sponsored by King Francis I in the sixteenth century. In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazano sailed up the east coast from present-day North Carolina to Nova Scotia looking for a northwesterly passage to Asia. The same objective was behind Jacques Cartier's three voyages (1534–42) that were the basis for future French claims to Canada. He explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence and discovered the St. Lawrence River, on which members of his expedition founded a short-lived settlement near Quebec. Abortive colonies were also established by French Huguenots (Protestants) within the modern-day boundaries of South Carolina (1562–64) and Florida (1564–65).

The Wars of Religion, which pitted Catholic against Protestant, delayed further French exploration until the seventeenth century. Under the leadership of Samuel de Champlain, who made numerous voyages to the eastern Canada region beginning in 1603, the city of Quebec was founded (1608) and alliances were made with the Hurons to develop the fur trade. Indeed, furs rather than settlements were more important to France at the time. The Dutch became one of the great seafaring and commercial nations of Europe in the seventeenth century and were rivals of the Portuguese in the East Indies. The Dutch East India Company financed English sailor Henry Hudson in 1609 for another search for the elusive Northwest Passage. He discovered Delaware Bay and sailed up the river later named for him, establishing Dutch claims for the territory known as New Netherland. Like the French, the Dutch were fur traders, and they established lucrative ties with the local tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy.

English Exploration, Early Settlements

With the exception of John Cabot's voyage to Newfoundland in 1497, the English showed little interest in the New World until the reign of Elizabeth I. Wary of confronting powerful Spain directly, Elizabeth secretly supported English seamen who raided Spanish settlements in the Western Hemisphere and captured their treasure ships. Men such as John Hawkins and Francis Drake, popularly known as “sea dogs,” received titles from the queen, who shared in their booty. More than fifty years after Magellan circumnavigated the globe, Drake duplicated the feat following attacks against Spanish ports on the west coast of South America (1577–80).

The lost colony of Roanoke. While English explorers, most notably Martin Frobisher, continued to look for the Northwest Passage, there was interest in colonizing North America. In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh scouted possible sites for a colony farther to the south. Naming the land Virginia after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, he chose Roanoke Island off the coast of present-day North Carolina. The first attempt to settle there (1585–86) was quickly abandoned. A group of 110 men, women, and children sailed for Roanoke in the following year. The colony's leader, John White, returned to England for additional supplies but did not return until 1590 because of the war between England and Spain. He found no trace of the colonists, and the only message left was the cryptic word “Croatoan” carved on a wooden post. It is most likely that the small settlement was overrun by local tribes, but to this day, no one has explained the meaning of “Croatoan” or found definitive evidence of the fate of the Roanoke colony.

The failure of Roanoke was expensive, and, with the war against Spain still raging, Elizabeth made it clear that there was no money for colonization ventures. When peace came in 1604, private funds rather than the royal treasury financed English settlement in North America.

The joint-stock company and the founding of Jamestown. In 1606, Elizabeth's successor, James I, issued charters to the Virginia Company of Plymouth and the Virginia Company of London to establish colonies along the Atlantic coast from modern-day North Carolina to Maine. These were joint-stock companies, the forerunner of the modern corporation. Individuals bought stock in the companies, which paid for ships and supplies, hoping to realize a profit from their investment.

The Virginia Company of Plymouth founded a colony at Sagadahoc in Maine in 1607, which quickly failed due to hostility from the local tribes, conflicts among the settlers, and inadequate supplies. The same fate almost befell the London Company's effort at Jamestown near Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. Most of the colonists were gentry unaccustomed to manual labor who wanted to spend their time looking for gold and hunting. Only the leadership of John Smith, who forced everyone to work and who negotiated with the Indians, guaranteed Jamestown's initial survival.

Conditions deteriorated after Smith left in 1609, but there were important developments over the next decade. John Rolfe introduced tobacco as a cash crop, and even though James I was an ardent antismoking advocate, it quickly became a valuable export for the colony. To attract labor and new capital, the London Company instituted the headright system in 1618. Anyone who paid his or her own passage to Jamestown received fifty acres of land plus another fifty acres for each additional individual they might bring. The latter were indentured servants, who agreed to work for their sponsor for a fixed term (usually four to seven years) in return for their passage. There were also newcomers to the colony that came in chains. The first ship to bring African slaves to North America landed at Jamestown in 1619.

Even with the headright system and the influx of indentured servants, Jamestown grew slowly. There were only about twelve hundred settlers by 1622. Death from disease and malnutrition took its toll, the company was in debt to its shareholders, and conflicts with the Indians became more common as the colony expanded. These problems led the king to revoke the charter of the London Company; Virginia became a royal colony under the direct control of the crown in 1624.

Settling the Colonies

The English colonies along the east coast of North America in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries can be categorized in several ways. Religion was the factor behind the founding of Maryland and the New England colonies, particularly Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Rhode Island, while the settlers in Virginia and the other southern colonies were more concerned with growing tobacco. Although all eventually came under direct control of the English kings, Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Virginia began as corporate colonies financed by joint-stock companies. Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas were proprietary colonies, based on grants of land to individuals or a small group of men by the king. Moreover, colonial boundaries changed; New Hampshire was carved out of land claimed by Massachusetts Bay. New York was originally New Netherland before the English took it over in 1664 and renamed it. Delaware was founded by the Swedes (New Sweden), became a Dutch colony in 1655, and then came under English control in 1664. The English colonies were not confined to the Atlantic coast of North America but were also established in the Caribbean—in the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Barbados—competing there with the Spanish, French, and Dutch.

New England Colonies

It has long been understood that the prime motive for the founding of the New England colonies was religious freedom. Certainly what those early colonists wanted was the freedom to worship God as they deemed proper, but they did not extend that freedom to everyone. Those who expressed a different approach to religious worship were not welcome. Puritans especially were intolerant toward those who held views other than their own.

Much of the religious disaffection that found its way across the Atlantic Ocean stemmed from disagreements within the Anglican Church, as the Church of England was called. Those who sought to reform Anglican religious practices—to “purify” the church—became known as Puritans. They argued that the Church of England was following religious practices that too closely resembled Catholicism both in structure and ceremony. The Anglican clergy was organized along episcopalian lines, with a hierarchy of bishops and archbishops. Puritans called for a congregationalist structure in which each individual church would be largely self-governing.

The Plymouth colony. A more extreme view was held by the Separatists, a small group mainly from the English town of Scrooby, who opposed any accommodation with the Anglican Church. Unlike the Puritans, who were also referred to as Non-Separatists, the Separatists advocated a complete break with the Church of England. At first, the Separatists left England for the more tolerant atmosphere of the Netherlands, but after a while, their leaders found the Dutch a little too tolerant; their children were adopting Dutch habits and culture. When the opportunity arose to settle on land granted by the Virginia Company of London, the Separatists accepted the offer. In 1620, they set sail for America on the Mayflower. As a result of their migrations, the Separatists became known as the Pilgrims, people who undertake a religious journey.

Instead of landing on Virginia Company land, however, the Pilgrims found themselves in what is now southern Massachusetts. Because they were outside the jurisdiction of the company and concerned that new Pilgrims among them might cause problems, the leaders signed the Mayflower Compact, an agreement establishing a civil government under the sovereignty of King James I and creating the Plymouth Plantation colony.

The Pilgrims endured terrible hardships in their first years at Plymouth, with disease and starvation taking a toll. Relations with the Indians in the area were mixed; despite the charming folktale of the peaceful “first Thanksgiving,” the reality is that the Pilgrims used force to control the local tribes. The infant colony grew slowly, raising maize and trading furs with the nearby Dutch as well as with the Indians. Plymouth Plantation was the first permanent settlement in New England, but beyond that distinction, its place in American history is somewhat exaggerated. Before long, the Pilgrims were eclipsed by the far larger and more important immigration of Non-Separatist Puritans, who started the Massachusetts Bay colony.

The Massachusetts Bay colony. Harassment by the Church of England, a hostile Charles I, and an economic recession led the Non-Separatist Puritans to decide to settle in North America. Puritan merchants bought the defunct Virginia Company of Plymouth's charter in 1628 and received royal permission to found a colony in the Massachusetts area north of Plymouth Plantation. Between 1630 and 1640, more than twenty thousand Puritan men, women, and children took part in the “Great Migration” to their new home.

The Puritans brought a high level of religious idealism to their first colony, which their leader John Winthrop described as “a city upon a hill”—a model of piety for all. Almost overnight, they founded a half dozen towns, setting up churches on the congregationalist pattern under the Reverend John Cotton. These churches ran their own affairs, taxed the community to finance operations, and hired and fired ministers. Although church attendance was compulsory, not everyone was deemed worthy of membership. The New England Way was a rigorous examination of a person's spiritual beliefs to identify “saints,” or those qualified to be a church member. This intimidating test ultimately served to limit church membership and forced the next generation to modify procedures. Education was a high priority in Puritan society because literacy was essential to Bible study. Laws were passed calling for the creation of grammar schools to teach reading and writing, and Harvard College was founded in 1636 to train the clergy.

The narrow views of the Puritan leaders regarding religious conformity provoked opposition. Roger Williams argued for the separation of church and state, and the right of privacy in religious belief, and against compulsory church service. Banished from Massachusetts Bay in 1635, he went south to Narragansett Bay and founded the Providence settlement. In 1644, Williams received royal permission to start the colony of Rhode Island, a haven for other religious dissenters.

Anne Hutchinson was another critic of clerical authority. Puritan leaders called her and her supporters Antinomians—individuals opposed to the rule of law. As a woman, she was also seen as a challenger to the traditionally male-dominated society. Tried for sedition, Hutchinson was also exiled as a danger to the colony. She lived in Rhode Island for a time and then moved to New Netherland, where she was killed in 1643 during a conflict between settlers and Indians.

The Puritans brought disease as well as their religion to the New World, and the impact on the native population was the same as it had been in the Caribbean, Mexico, and South America a century earlier. As settlements expanded beyond the coastal region, conflicts with the local tribes became common, with equally devastating results. Notably, for the colonists in Massachusetts Bay and New England, disease was less of a problem than it was in the southern colonies. The cold winters limited travel, and the comparatively small farming communities that were established limited the spread of infection. Death rates dwindled, and life expectancy rose. Improved survival combined with the immigration of entire families contributed to the rapid growth of the population.

Massachusetts Bay was a theocratic society, or a society in which the lines between church and state were blurred. Church membership, for example, was required for men to vote for elected local officials. The intent of many of the colony's laws was regulation of personal behavior based on Puritan values. Single men and women could not live on their own. Disrespectful servants, errant husbands, and disobedient wives were subject to civil penalties, and rebellious children could even be put to death. The laws also provided a degree of protection for women by punishing abusive men and compelling fathers to support their children.

Puritan efforts to maintain an intensely ideal religious community did not endure past the first generation. Their restrictive membership requirements in place made it difficult for the Puritan churches to maintain themselves. In 1662, the Half-Way Covenant was adopted to address the problem. It allowed the church members' baptized children who would not give testimony to achieve sainthood (and thereby church membership) a “half-way” membership in the congregation. This change in the rules meant that the children's children could receive baptism after all. Without sainthood, however, they could neither vote on church matters nor take communion. Change was also imposed from outside. Massachusetts's 1691 royal charter made property ownership rather than church membership the qualification for voting and provided for the toleration of religious dissenters. The New England Way was breaking down, and a consequence was the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 and 1693.

Belief in witches and demonic possession was common in the seventeenth century, and many people, mainly middle-aged women, were accused of witchcraft throughout New England. What made the events in Salem Village unique was the extent of the hysteria, which led to the imprisonment of more than one hundred men and women and the execution of twenty. Historians attribute the outbreak to several factors—rivalries between families, a clash of values between a small farming community like Salem Village and the more cosmopolitan commercial center of Salem, and the ties between many of the accused with Anglicans, Quakers, and Baptists, whom the Puritans considered heretics.

Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Maine. Connecticut was settled by colonists from Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay in the 1630s. Thomas Hooker, a minister from Cambridge who advocated less stringent views on religious conformity than other Puritan clergy, brought part of his congregation to the territory in 1636. New Haven, on the other hand, was founded two years later by Puritans who found even Massachusetts Bay too liberal. Self-rule was established in 1639 through the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the first written constitution to create a government, which followed Hooker's approach and gave the right to vote to all freemen and not just church members. Relations with the Indians were important in Connecticut's early history. The Pequot War (1636–37) largely wiped out the Pequot tribe and cleared away the last obstacle to the expansion of settlements in the Connecticut River Valley. Despite the Fundamental Orders, Connecticut was really without legal status until 1662, when it was chartered as a royal colony.

New Hampshire and Maine were originally proprietorships granted not by the king but the Council of New England. Both colonies strove to maintain their independence but were only partly successful. Massachusetts effectively controlled New Hampshire until 1679, when it became a separate colony under a royal charter; Maine remained part of Massachusetts until 1820.

Chesapeake Colonies: Virginia, Maryland

By 1700, the Virginia colonists had made their fortunes through the cultivation of tobacco, setting a pattern that was followed in Maryland and the Carolinas. In political and religious matters, Virginia differed considerably from the New England colonies. The Church of England was the established church in Virginia, which meant taxpayers paid for the support of the church whether or not they were Anglicans. But church membership ultimately mattered little, since a lack of clergymen and few churches kept many Virginians from attending church. Religion thus was of secondary importance in the Virginia colony.

Virginia's colonial government structure resembled that of England's county courts and contrasted with the theocratic government of Massachusetts Bay. A royal governor appointed justices of the peace, who set tax rates and saw to the building and maintenance of public works, such as bridges and roads. In the 1650s, the colonial assembly adopted a bicameral pattern: the House of Burgesses (the elected lower house) and an appointed Governor's Council. The assembly met regularly, not so much for representative government as for the opportunity to raise taxes.

Gregory Bodenhamer In telling the history of the United States and also of the nations of the Western Hemisphere in general, historians have wrestled with the problem of what to call the hemisphere's first inhabitants. Under the mistaken impression he had reached the “Indies,” explorer Christopher Columbus called the people he met “Indians.” This was an error in identification that has persisted for more than five hundred years, for the inhabitants of North and South America had no collective name by which they called themselves.

In telling the history of the United States and also of the nations of the Western Hemisphere in general, historians have wrestled with the problem of what to call the hemisphere's first inhabitants. Under the mistaken impression he had reached the “Indies,” explorer Christopher Columbus called the people he met “Indians.” This was an error in identification that has persisted for more than five hundred years, for the inhabitants of North and South America had no collective name by which they called themselves.

Historians, anthropologists, and political activists have offered various names, none fully satisfactory. Anthropologists have used “aborigine,” but the term suggests a primitive level of existence inconsistent with the cultural level of many tribes. Another term, “Amerindian,” which combines Columbus's error with the name of another Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci (whose name was the source of “America”), lacks any historical context. Since the 1960s, “Native American” has come into popular favor, though some activists prefer “American Indian.” In the absence of a truly representative term, descriptive references such as “native peoples” or “indigenous peoples,” though vague, avoid European influence. In recent years, some argument has developed over whether to refer to tribes in the singular or plural—Apache or Apaches—with supporters on both sides demanding political correctness.

Arrival of the first inhabitants. Apart from the brief visit of the Scandinavians in the early eleventh century, the Western Hemisphere remained unknown to Europe until Columbus's voyage in 1492. However, the native peoples of North and South America arrived from Asia long before, in a series of migrations that began perhaps as early as forty thousand years ago across the land bridge that connected Siberia and Alaska.

The first Americans found a hunter's paradise. Mammoths and mastodons, ancestors of the elephant, and elk, moose, and caribou abounded on the North American continent. Millions of bison lived on the Great Plains, as did antelope, deer, and other game animals, providing the earliest inhabitants of the Americas, the Paleo-Indians, with a land rich in food sources. Because food was abundant, the population grew, and human settlement spread throughout the Western Hemisphere rather quickly.

The Paleo-Indians were hunter-gatherers who lived in small groups of not more than fifty people. They were constantly on the move, following the herds of big game, apparently recognizing the rights of other bands to hunting grounds. These early native people developed a fluted stone point for spears that made their hunting more efficient. Evidence of such fluted points has surfaced throughout the Americas.

Life on the North American continent. Anthropologists have found an astonishing variety of culture and language groups among the native peoples of North America. Tribes living in close proximity might have spoken totally unrelated languages, while tribes living hundreds of miles from each other might have shared similar languages. Regions in which a population shares a similar lifestyle based on environmental conditions are known as culture areas. Although North America can be divided into many such regions, the most significant are the Southwest, Great Plains, and Eastern Woodlands.

The Southwest. Following the climate changes after the end of the last ice age (about ten thousand years ago), agriculture gradually developed in North America. The native peoples of central Mexico began planting maize, beans, and squash around 5000 B.C., and the cultivation of these crops slowly spread northward. In the desert Southwest, the Hohokam culture (southern Arizona) constructed an elaborate network of irrigation canals to water their fields. Farming meant a settled life, and the Hohokam lived in permanent villages with as many as several hundred residents. The villages served as economic, religious, and political centers.

East of the Hohokam, the Anasazi lived where the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah meet at the Four Corners. The Anasazi built permanent homes and developed villages with as many as fifteen hundred people. At the high point of Anasazi culture, Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico had twelve villages sustaining some fifteen thousand people, with straight roads connecting outlying settlements. Both the Hohokam and Anasazi established trade connections with tribes in what would become Mexico and California.

A major and dramatic change affected the Hohokam and Anasazi societies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however. At that time, a prolonged drought drastically reduced the water supply in the region. The area could no longer provide for a large population, and the villages were abandoned as the people left in search of more hospitable areas, many settling along the upper Rio Grande and establishing the pueblos that continue to this day.

The Great Plains. In contrast to the Southwest tribes, early native peoples of the Great Plains were hunters, relying on bison and other Plains animals to provide food, clothing, and shelter. Tribes followed the large bison herds and claimed extensive areas as their hunting grounds. Conflicts over territory led to a perpetual rivalry among the tribes that bordered on warfare.

With their dependence on hunting, Plains tribes had difficulty maintaining their standard of living. Of necessity nomadic, they were compelled to keep material possessions to a minimum. Their only domesticated animal was the dog. Limited to what they could carry with them, Plains peoples lived a harsh existence. The horse, introduced with the arrival of the Europeans in the sixteenth century, transformed the culture of the Great Plains.

The Eastern Woodlands. The “Eastern Woodlands” refers to the large, heavily forested area extending from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic seacoast, where several important cultures flourished. The Adena of the Ohio River Valley (fifth century B.C.), who left hundreds of burial mounds, developed into a larger cultural group known as the Hopewell, which continued to build elaborate earthen works. Although the Adena-Hopewell peoples remained primarily hunter-gatherers, archeological evidence indicates that they had an extensive trading network stretching to the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.

The first true farmers of the Eastern Woodlands were the Mississippians of the central Mississippi River Valley. The most important Mississippian center was Cahokia, which was located near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers (St. Louis, Missouri). Cahokia had as many as forty thousand residents in a six-square-mile area, and by the thirteenth century its large population was straining to grow enough food to sustain itself. Aggressive neighbors also contributed to the instability of Cahokia, and the people finally scattered to form smaller villages.

Early North American society and culture. Estimates of the population of North America at the time of European contact have been revised upward by modern scholarship to as many as ten million. Although the native peoples varied widely, they did share some important social and cultural traits.

In modern America, society is chiefly based on the nuclear family (mother, father, and children), but kinship groups—the extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins—were key to the social relations among the native peoples. Among tribes as different as the Pueblo of the Southwest and the Iroquois of the Northeast, kinship was determined by the female line. The clan was composed of several kinship groups that claimed descent from a common ancestor, often a woman. The roles assigned to men and women were clearly defined. The men hunted, engaged in trade, made war, and were the tribal leaders, while the women cared for the children, gathered food, and cultivated crops. The exception to this pattern was in the Southwest where men also worked the fields. In societies where matrilineal descent was important, women had more responsibilities. They controlled property, distributed food, and either advised or were the real power in tribal councils.

Native peoples believed that nature was sacred. The sun, moon, stars, mountains, rivers, trees, and animals had spiritual power and were either the gods themselves or the abode of gods. Tribal creation myths were most often based on the interplay of these natural forces. While some tribes accepted the idea of a supreme being, polytheism was the rule. The shaman was considered the intermediary between the people and the gods in the spirit world. He or she also interpreted the visions and dreams that were an important part of religious practice. To induce dreams, an individual might fast for several days, use drugs, or go through a physical ordeal. In addition to rituals to bring rain or ensure a good harvest or hunt, ceremonies marking life-cycle events—birth, puberty, marriage, and death—were common.

There is a tendency to view North American society at the end of the fifteenth century as a pre-Columbian Garden of Eden corrupted by the arrival of the Europeans. This notion of an idyllic place where everyone was one with the environment and each other denies native peoples their own history. The Mississippians, for example, practiced torture and human sacrifice as part of their death cult. Tribes in the Pacific Northwest had a very rigid class structure based on private property and made slaves out of war captives and debtors. Among the Natchez in the Southeast, the hereditary nobles under the chief, or “Great Sun,” oppressed the majority of the tribe.

European Contact

For the native peoples of North America, contact with Europeans was less dramatic than that experienced by the Aztec and Inca empires upon the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. Nonetheless, Spanish explorers attempting to penetrate into what would become the United States left three major legacies for the tribes: disease, horses and other domesticated animals, and metal tools and firearms.

Disease. The most serious threat the native peoples faced was not the superior arms of the Europeans but the diseases they brought with them to the New World. With the possible exception of syphilis, the Western Hemisphere was effectively free of infectious disease prior to European contact. The indigenous population, with no reservoir of natural immunity or built-up resistance, succumbed quickly to diphtheria, mumps, measles, and smallpox. Smallpox, the main killer, spread rapidly beyond the initial European carriers. Tribes that met and traded over long distances infected one another and carried the disease back to their villages. There is evidence that smallpox had already surfaced in Peru sometime before the arrival of Francisco Pizarro in 1532.

Estimates of the depopulation of the native peoples of North America as a result of disease run as high as ninety percent in many regions, and, in some instances, even the knowledge of the existence of certain tribes was obliterated. Infection carried by Spanish explorers traveling along the Gulf Coast annihilated the tribes of the lower Mississippi River so that their cultural presence, visible in the form of their burial mounds, was largely unrecognized until the twentieth century. The devastating impact of disease was not limited to just the years of initial contact. In 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, leaders of the Corps of Discovery, were given hospitality by the Mandans during their winter stay at Fort Mandan on the Missouri River. The tribe, which numbered about 2000, dwindled to 150 after an epidemic of smallpox brought by fur traders in 1837.

Horses and other domesticated animals. Although disease proved a curse to the native peoples, the introduction of European livestock improved the quality of life for many tribes. The best known and most dramatic change came with the horse, but other domesticated animals were important as well. Cattle, sheep, goats, and hogs were raised for food, and their hides were used for clothing, blankets, and shelter coverings.

The arrival of the horse in North America, which probably occurred with the 1540 expedition of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado into the Southwest, transformed Plains Indian culture. By the end of the sixteenth century, horses were being traded, stolen, or left to stray, and their numbers multiplied. The Sioux, Cheyenne, and Kiowa soon found the horse indispensable, and its use spread to other tribes. A simple tied arrangement of poles made from young trees enabled horses to pull large loads. The poles doubled as a tipi framework and enabled the dwellings of these nomadic peoples to be larger and more comfortable. Mounted on horseback, the Indians became dramatically more efficient hunters of bison. Within a generation, the Plains Indians made the horse an integral part of their culture. Frontiersmen crossing the Mississippi and encountering Indians on horseback in the eighteenth century had no idea that the horse culture was less than two hundred years old.

The introduction of a variety of domesticated animals came with a price tag apparent to neither the native peoples nor the Europeans for some time. European settlers fed livestock with European grains. These grains, including wheat, oats, rye, and a wide range of other grasses, took to North American soil in much the same way that crab-grass and weeds attack a carefully tended lawn. Slowly, the landscape of North America changed as native grasses gave way to foreign varieties. Not until late in the twentieth century would the environmental changes be fully noticed or even start to be assessed.

Metal tools and firearms. Technologically, native peoples were in the Stone Age. As finely wrought and useful as their basketry, pottery, and obsidian blades may have been, Native Americans lacked the knowledge to make metal tools. The knives, needles, fishhooks, hatchets, and pots offered by the Europeans were immediately recognized as more efficient than their stone, bone, or clay implements.

Early firearms—muskets and pistols—did not present a clear advantage for the Europeans over the Indians. The guns were not especially accurate over more than a short distance, took time to reload, and were difficult to repair; Native Americans initially found their own bows and arrows still quite effective against them. Even the Puritans recognized the limitations of their firearms when they passed a law in 1645 calling for militia training in pikes and bows and arrows as well as muskets.

The balance of firepower changed though by the late eighteenth century as muskets evolved into rifles with much greater accuracy. By the end of the Civil War, repeating rifles and six-shot revolvers put the bow and arrow at a severe disadvantage. Native Americans did not reject the rifle, and many learned to pour lead into molds for bullets. Improvements in weapons technology, however, left them dependent on whites for firearms and ammunition as well as most metal goods. The Native Americans could not replicate the complex mechanisms of a Winchester or Colt, and cartridges requiring a molded bullet, shell casing, and gunpowder were beyond their ability to duplicate. By the end of the nineteenth century, Euroamerican technology had overwhelmed the Native Americans.

The great biological exchange. European contact did not affect only the native peoples; there was a genuine, if perhaps unequal, exchange. Many new crop and food plants, such as maize, beans, potatoes, peanuts, pumpkins, and avocados, were first introduced to Europe from the Western Hemisphere. Maize, or Indian corn, was perhaps the most important of them. Capable of growing in almost any climate or soil, it soon became a staple around the world.

The old view that Columbus “discovered” America has been replaced by the idea that he “encountered” America. The rephrasing recognizes that there were already millions of people in the Western Hemisphere in 1492 with their distinct and developed cultures who merit being acknowledged as the first Americans. There is no doubt that contact with Europeans was devastating to the native population both then and later. While the conquest was certainly inevitable, oversimplification should be avoided. It did not take place all at once in all places. Confrontation was sudden and subjugation immediate in some locales, while in others the native peoples remained unaware of the Europeans' presence for centuries. California Indians knew almost nothing of the Europeans until 1769, and the Shawnee still looked to a British alliance to keep American settlers south of the Ohio River as late as 1812.

Expanding Outward

At the end of the fifteenth century, the confluence of a number of long-developing factors and several major events launched the European exploration and colonization of the Western Hemisphere. In 1096, European Christians had embarked on a succession of military expeditions to free Palestine from Muslim rule. Although ultimately unsuccessful, these Crusades fostered economic ties between Europe and the Middle and Far East. Trade in spices (which were needed to preserve food) and silks attracted the new merchant class that was emerging in the growing medieval cities. The Italian Marco Polo's account of his travels to and extended stay in China at the end of the thirteenth century further stimulated interest in Asia, and the city-states of Genoa and Venice became the centers of international trade.

As Europe slowly recovered from the devastating effects of the Black Death (1347–51), the epidemic of bubonic plague that killed a third of its population, political developments disrupted economic ties with Asia. In 1453, the Muslim Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople, strategically located on the eastern Mediterranean. As Ottoman power spread throughout the Middle East, Europeans found their traditional overland trade routes effectively blocked. The prohibitively high tribute charged by the Turks led to dramatic price increases for luxury products from the Far East. Searching for a solution to this dilemma, European merchants reasoned that if land routes were problematical, perhaps trade could continue by sea.

Portuguese Explorations and West Africa

Motivated by the desire for new markets and an ongoing opposition to the Muslims, Portuguese sailors had begun to explore the West African coast in the first half of the fifteenth century. The expeditions were sponsored by Prince Henry of Portugal, who founded a center for seamanship around 1420 and earned himself the title of the Navigator. At the center, information about tides and currents was collected, more accurate charts and maps were drawn, techniques for determining longitude were improved, and new ship designs (such as the caravel) were developed. With these innovations, the Portuguese reached the westernmost point of the continent at Cape Verde in 1448, setting up a lucrative network of trading posts along the way. The most significant voyages, however, came forty years later. Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa in 1488. A decade later, Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa and reached the Malabar Coast of India, establishing an all-water route to Asia. Over the next twenty years, Portugal made Goa its major trading center in India, established outposts in Malaysia, and set up direct contact with China. The Muslim monopoly on the spice trade in Asia was broken.

The West African kingdoms. One consequence of the Portuguese expeditions was contact with West Africa. The sub-Saharan kingdoms—Ghana, Mali, Benin, Songhai, and Kongo—were well-organized societies with a long history, but they were almost unknown to Europeans. Until the Muslim invasions of the eleventh century, the Ghana empire had extensive commercial ties with North Africa, Egypt, and the Middle East. Mali, an Islamic state whose capital Timbuktu was a major economic and cultural center, controlled the gold trade. The arrival of the Portuguese brought about a dramatic shift in the flow of African gold. Rather than going overland by caravan to North Africa and then into the coffers of the commercially powerful Italian city-states, the precious metal was shipped by sea directly to Lisbon and western Europe.

The Portuguese were interested in slaves as well as gold. Arab merchants had bought slaves in West Africa as early as the eighth century, and they continued to act as middlemen when the Europeans arrived. Portugal used African slaves as early as 1497 in the sugarcane fields on the islands it took over off the African coast. Millions of blacks were shipped from West African ports to work plantations in North and South America over the next three hundred years. Slavery in the New World, justified on economic and racial grounds, was quite different from that in Africa. Although slavery was an accepted social institution throughout the continent, the slaves were typically prisoners of war, debtors, or criminals, and their condition was neither permanent nor hereditary.

Columbus and the Spanish Explorations

Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sailor, believed that sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean was the shortest sea route to Asia. Ignorant of the fact that the Western Hemisphere lay between Europe and Asia and assuming the earth's circumference to be a third less than it actually is, he was convinced that Japan would appear on the horizon just three thousand miles to the west. Like other seafarers of his day, Columbus was untroubled by political allegiances; he was ready to sail for whatever country would pay for his voyage. Either because of his arrogance (he wanted ships and crews to be provided at no expense to himself) or ambition (he insisted on governing the lands he discovered), he found it difficult to find a patron. The Portuguese rejected his plan twice, and the rulers of England and France were not interested. With influential supporters at court, Columbus convinced King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to partially underwrite his expedition. In 1492, Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, had fallen to the forces of the Spanish monarchs. With the Reconquista complete and Spain a unified country, Ferdinand and Isabella could turn their attention to overseas exploration.

The voyages of Columbus. Columbus set sail with three small ships and a crew of eighty-seven men on August 2, 1492, and made landfall on October 12 on an island in the Bahamas that he called San Salvador. Over the next several months, he explored the island that is now Cuba and another island he named Hispaniola (Santo Domingo), where he came across the first significant amount of gold. Ferdinand and Isabella financed a much larger expedition with seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men soon after his return to Spain. During his second voyage, Columbus explored the islands that are now called Puerto Rico and Jamaica and established the first permanent Spanish settlement on Hispaniola. He made two additional voyages: between 1498 and 1500 to the Caribbean and the northern coast of South America, and between 1502 and 1504 to the coast of Central America.

Columbus's success created the potential for conflict between Spain and Portugal. Ferdinand and Isabella were anxious to protect their claims to the new lands. In May 1493, very soon after Columbus returned from his first voyage, they persuaded Pope Alexander VI to issue an edict giving Spain all lands west of an imaginary line through the Atlantic. Portugal was not satisfied. Through the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), the two countries agreed to move the line further west and give Portugal exclusive right to the territory to the east. Although the result of the shift was unknown at the time, the change put the eastern quarter of South America (Brazil) in the Portuguese sphere; Pedro Cabral reached the Brazilian coast in 1500.