Old History vs. New History

• Traditional history = White men, fleeing from rigid customs, social hierarchies, and the constrained resources of Europe to a land of opportunity

• New history = Many colonists failed to prosper due to disease, crop problems, predators, and hostile Native Americans; those who did do well did so at the expense of Indians, indentured servants, and slaves

Go West?

Not all of America was the English going west

Spanish were heading north from Mexico

Russians coming east from Siberia

French coming south through the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River

You cannot simply say there were Europeans, Africans, and Indians converging together because it was far more complex than that.

When thrown together in the New World, each had to find a new commonality to aid in their survival in the new world.

VIP = All three groups—Europeans, Africans, & Indians were in a flux when they encountered each other in the colonies.

•Pre-Columbian time period.

•First Americans came from

Asia

•Crossed the Bering Strait

during the Ice Age

•Following a food source

•Gradual migration

Settlement

Early Human MigrationsEarly Human Migrations

1st Migration, 38,000-1800 BCE

2nd Migration, c. 10,000-4,000 BCE

3rd Migration, c. 8,000-3,000 BCE

Paleo-Indians

Paleo-Indians

Archaic Indians

Horticulture Horticulture evolved over generations from the

practices of gathering wild plants

Indians developed hybrids of increasing reliability and productivity

They developed the three great crops of North Americans horticulture: maize, squash, and beans

As plants became more important in their diet, less time was devoted to hunting, gathering, and fishing.

Hohokam & Anasazi

Hohokam

Anasazi

Mound Builders

Indians in America

Beliefs

Indians had a more complex understanding of the interdependent relationship between the natural and the supernatural.

Indians believed that they lived within a contentious world of spiritual power that sometimes demanded human restraint and at other times offered opportunities for exploitation.

WHITE EUROPEANSWHITE EUROPEANS

•Used the land for economic needs

•Clearing the land, destroying hunting areas and fencing it off into private property

•Divided the land and selling it for monetary value.

  

NATIVE AMERICANSNATIVE AMERICANS

•Relationship with environment as part of their religion

•Need to hunt for survival

•Ownership meant access to the things the land produced, not ownership of the land itself.