The American Yawp Ch1 Indigenous America

Prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus, the entire native population of North America consisted of isolated bands of hunter-gatherer clans, with a cumulative native population of less than 100,000.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

There was as millions of Native Americans in the North America's prior to European involvement

The Spanish were the first Europeans to reach North America

• True

• False

Answer explanation

The first Europeans to reach North America were Vikings/Norwegian

The first enduring Spanish settlements were located on Caribbean Islands prior to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

Columbus landed in the Bahamas October 12, 1492, making the first Spanish colonies brought up there.

Two thousand years ago, some of the largest culture groups in North America were the Puebloan groups, centered in the current-day Greater Southwest (the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico), the Mississippian groups located along the Great River and its tributaries, and the Mesoamerican groups of the areas now known as central Mexico and the Yucatán. Previous developments in agricultural technology enabled the explosive growth of the large early societies, such as that at Tenochtitlán in the Valley of Mexico, Cahokia along the Mississippi River, and in the desert oasis areas of the Greater Southwest

• True

• False

In order to conquer Mexico in 1519, Hernán Cortés was forced to rely on an overwhelming Spanish invasion force, numbering in the tens of thousands, due to the loyalty of subject peoples to the Aztec Empire.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

Hernan Cortes sailed with only six hundred men, horses, and cannon. He relied on a Native translator called Doña Marina, and whom Mexican folklore denounces as La Malinche, Cortés gathered information and allies in preparation for conquest. He enlisted the aid of thousands of Native allies, defeated Spanish rivals, and marched on Tenochtitlán.

Christopher Columbus, an explorer/seafarer employed by the Spanish Monarchy to establish a Western trade route to Asia, made landfall in the vicinity of Hispaniola on _______________,  believing he had reached the East Indies, having underestimated the circumference of Planet Earth by a factor of three.

• an Undetermined date in late 1491

• 11 March 1519

• 17 September 1522

• 12 October 1492

Answer explanation

On October 12, 1492, after two months at sea, the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María and their ninety men landed in the modern-day Bahamas.

The two most urbanized and cohesive native empires at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Americas were  ____________________ and the _____________________.

• The Arawaks and the Lenape-Delaware

• The Maya and the Algonquin

• Caribe and the Calusa

• the Inca and Aztec.

Despite being just 34 years old, Hernán Cortés was entrusted with the subjugation of the Aztec Empire of Mexico due to his previously successful conquest of the island of_________________

• Hispaniola

• Puerto Rico

• Jamaica

• Cuba

Answer explanation

Hernán Cortés, an ambitious, thirty-four-year-old Spaniard who had won riches in the conquest of Cuba, organized an invasion of Mexico in 1519.

Following the Spanish arrival in the “New World”, the leading cause of death among native populations was:

• Disease

• Combat Deaths and Warfare Casualties

• Massacre, Torture and Execution.

• Overwork due to the Spanish Colonial encomienda policy

Answer explanation

"...Native Americans were wholly unprepared for the arrival of Europeans. Cut off from the Old World...Native Americans lived free from the terrible diseases that ravaged populations in Asia, Europe and Africa. Native Americans lacked the immunities that Europeans and Africans had developed over centuries of deadly epidemics, and so when Europeans arrived, carrying smallpox, typhus, influenza, diphtheria, measles, and hepatitis, plagues decimated Native communities."

One of the primary areas of technological innovation that enabled the Spanish discovery and conquest of the Americas was:

• Euclidean Mathematics

• The development of artillery and naval cannon

• The astrolabe, which allowed for precise navigation, & the caravel, a rugged ship with a deep draft capable of making lengthy voyages

• The invention of the movable-type printing press

Answer explanation

The astrolabe and the caravel were important to navigation, which aided discovery and conquest.