Name ________________________________________________________ AP United States History Summer Assignment Director of Secondary Humanities Mrs. G. Sesso AP U.S. History Teachers Mr. S. Alfano Mrs. L. Klein Mrs. L. Matheson Instructions: Please have this entire assignment prepared and ready to be discussed on the first day of classes. Resources: • #1. American Pageant p. 4-11 (p. 7 intentionally omitted) • #2. A Cultivated World, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, By Charles Mann. Reviewed by Alan Taylor. New York Times, Sunday August 7, 2005. • #3. Crosby, Alfred. The Columbian Exchange. History Now: The Journal of the Gilder Lehrman Institute. The Age of Exploration. www.gilderlehrman.org. • #4. Richter, Daniel. Native American Discoveries of Europe. Perceptions of Native Americans. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. www.gilderlerman.org. • #5. Bartolome De Las Casas, "Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies." • #6 Juan Gines De Sepulveda, "Concerning the Just Causes of the War Against the Indians." Read Resource #1 and answer the following 3 prompts in the space provided: Summarize the human migration and agricultural development of North America prior to the arrival of Europeans in 1492. Summarize the impact Native Americans had on the environment before the Europeans arrived in 1492. List the characteristics of pre-Columbian societies as presented by the text. Read Resource #2 and answer the following in the space provided: How does the book review of 1491 add to or differ from the textbook? Explain. Read Resource #3 and answer the following: Does Crosby's essay surprise you? Why or why not? What is Crosby's point of view on the Columbian Exchange? Cite at least one piece of evidence that confirms your answer. (Point of view: an opinion or attitude that is backed by evidence) Read Resource #4 and answer the following: What is Richter's point of view? Cite at least one piece of evidence that confirms your answer. How it is similar to Crosby's point of view? Explain. Read Resources #5 & #6 and answer the following: How does Las Casas view Native American culture? Cite at least one piece of evidence that confirms your answer. How does Las Casas view the Spanish? Cite at least one piece of evidence that confirms your answer. How does Sepulveda view Native American culture? Cite at least one piece of evidence that confirms your answer. How does Sepulveda view the Spanish? Cite at least one piece of evidence that confirms your answer. Describe at least two similarities between the views expressed by Las Casas and Sepulveda. Describe at least two differences between the views expressed by Las Casas and Sepulveda. everal billion years ago, ~at whirling speck of dust world began. Certain peoples of the Middle East, Sknown as the earth, fifth in size among the planets, developing a written. culture, gradually emerged from came into being. the haze ofthe past. About 'six thousand years ago-only a minute Five hundred y~ars · ago-only a few seconds in geological time-recorded history of the Western figuratively speaking-European explorers stumbled .• 4 The Effects ofthe Great Ice Age 5 on the Americas. This dramatic accident forever Nature laid a chill hand over much of thjs terrain in altered the future of both the Old World and the New, the Great Ice Age, beginning abo ut 2 million years ago. and ofAfrica and Asia as well. Two-mile-thick ice sheets crept from the polar regions to blanket parts of Europe, Asia, and the Americas. In North America the great glaciers carpeted most of present-day Canada and the United States as far south­ The Shaping of North America ward as a line stretching from Pennsylvania through the Ohio Country and the Dakotas to the Pacific Northwest. Planet earth took on its present form slowly. Some 225 When the glaciers finally retreated about 10,000 million years ago, a single supercontinent contained all years ago, they left the North American landscape trans­ the world's dry land. Then enormous chunJcs of terrain formed, and much as we know it today. 11le weight of began to drift away from this colossal continent, open­ the gargantuan ice mantle had depressed the level of ing the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, narrowing the the Canadian Shield. The grinding and flu shing action Pacific Ocean, and forming the great landmasses of of the moving and melting ice had scoured away the Eurasia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, and the Americas. shield's topsoil, pitting its rocky surface with thousands The existence of a single original continent has been of shallow depressions into which the melting glaciers proved in part by the discovery of nearly identical flowed to forrn lakes. The same glacial action scooped species of fish that swim tod ay in the long-separated out and filled the Great Lakes. They originally drained freshwater lakes ofthe various continents. southward through the Mississippi River system to the Continued shifting and folding of the earth's crust Gulf of Mexico. When the melting ice unblocked the thrust up mountain ranges. The Appalachians were Gulf of St. Lawrence, the lake water sought the St. probably formed even before continentai separation, Lawrence River outlet to the Atlantic Ocean, lowering the perhaps 350 million years ago. The majestic ranges of Great Lakes' level and leaving the Missouri-Mississippi­ western North America- the Rockies, the Sierra Ohio system to drain the enormous midcontinental Nevada, the Cascades, and the Coast Ranges- arose basin between the Appalachians and the Rockies. Simi­ much more recently, geologically speaking, some 135 larly, in the West, water from the melting glaciers filled million to 25 million years ago. They are truly "Ameri­ sprawling Lake Bonneville, covering much of present­ can" mountains, born after the continent took on its day Utah, Nevada, and Id aho. It drained to the Pacific own separate geological identity. Ocean through the Snake and Columbia River systems By about 10 million years ago, nature had sculpted until diminishing rainfall from the ebbing ice cap low­ the basic geological shape of North America. The conti­ ered tl1e water level, cutting off access to the Snake River nent was anchored in its northeastern comer by the outlet Deprived of both inflow and drainage, the giant massive Canadian Shield-a zone undergirded by lake became a gradually shrinking inland sea. It grew ancient rock, probably the firs t part ofwhat became the increasingly saline, slowly evaporated, and left an arid, North American landmass to have emerged above sea mineral-rich desert. Only Great Salt Lake remained as level. A narrow eastern coastal plain, or "tidewater" a relic of Bonneville's forrner vastness. Today Lake region, creased by many river valleys, sloped gently Bonneville's ancient beaches are visible on mountain· upward to the timeworn ridges of the Appalachians. sides up to 1,000 feet ~bove the dry floor of the Great Those ancient mountains slanted away on their western Basin. side into the huge rnidcontinental basin that rolled downward to the Mississippi Valley bottom and then rose relentlessly to the towering peaks of the Rockies. ( From the Rocky Mountaiil crest-the "roof of Amer­ Peopling the Americas ica"-the land fell off jaggedly into the intermountain Great Basin, bounded by the Rockies on the east and the The Great Jce Age shaped more than the geological his­ Sierra and Cascade ranges on the west. The valleys of tory of North America. It also contributed to the origins the Sacramento and . San Joaquin Rivers and the of the continent's human history. Though recent (and Wtllamette-Puget Sot1d trough seamed the interiors of still highly co ntroversi al) evidence suggests that some present-day Califomi~, Oregon, and Washington. The early peoples may have reached the Americas in crude land at last met the f~aming Pacific, where the Coast boats, most probably came by land. Some 35,000 years Ranges rose steeply fro~ the sea. ago, the lee Age congealed much of the world oceans 6 OiAPrER 1 NewWorld Beginnings, 33,000 B.C.-A.D. 1769 The f"'ll'Bt Discoverers of America The origins of the first Americans remo:in something of a mystery. According to the most plausible theory of how the Americas were populated, for some 25.000 years. people crossed the Bering land bridge from Eurasia to North America. Gradually they dis­ persed southward down ice-free val­ leys, populating both the American continents. · 0 500 M~es ~ 0 500 KilometErs D Area of land bridge, c.35,000-10,000 years f::J MaxiiTUII extent of glaciers IDcan Culture This mortar and ... Possible migratory paltls corncob-shaped pestle from the · A. Earfiest discovered Indian sites lncan stronghold in present-day Peru 'vividly illustrate the importance of com in Incan life. into massive ice-pack glacie·rs, lowering the level of the valleys through which vanguard bands groped theirway Sea. As .the sea levef dropped,.it exposed a land bridge southward and eastwald aqo5s the Americas. Roaming connecting Eurasia with Nonh America in the area of . slowly through this awesome wilderness, they eventu­ the present-day Bering Sea between Siberia and Alaska. ally reached the.far.tip ofSouth America, some 15,000 Across that bridge, probably following migratory herds miles from Siberia: By the time Europeans arrived in of game, veo~ small bands of nomadic Asian America in 1492, .pe.rhaps 54 million people inhabited hunters-the "i.riunigrant" ancestors of the Native the two American continen~* Over the centu.iies they Ainericans. They continued·to· trek across .the B~ring split into countless tribes, evolved more than 2,000 . isthmus for . some 250 centuries, slowly . 'peopling the separate languages; and developed many diverse reli­ American continents.