1. A New World – Focus Questions
2. What were the major patterns of Native American life in North America before European arrived?

The people of the American continents previously unaware of each other existence, were thrown into continuous interaction. The inhabitants of North and South America had developed no immunity to the germs that also accompanied the colonizers. As a result, they suffered a series of devastating epidemics, the greatest population catastrophe in human history. The residents of the America were no more a single group, they spoke hundreds of different languages and lived in numerous kinds of societies. However, were descended from bands of hunters and fishers. The early inhabitants and their descendants spread across the two continents. As the climate warmed, they faced a food crisis as the immense animals they hunted, including woolly mammoths and giant bison, became extinct. North and South America were hardly an empty wilderness. (Foner, 1-3)

2. How did Indian and European ideas of freedom differ on the eve of contact?

Indian civilizations in North America had not developed the scale, grandeur, or centralized organization of the Aztec and Inca societies to their South. North American Indians lacked the technologies Europeans had mastered, such as metal tools and machines, gunpowder, and the scientific knowledge necessary for long distance navigation. They also lacked wheeled vehicles. Their “backwardness” became a central justification for European conquest. But, overtime, Indian societies had perfected techniques of farming, hunting, and fishing, developed structures of political power and religious belief, and engaged in far reaching networks of trade and communication. (Foner, 5)

3. What impelled European explorers to look west across the Atlantic?

4. What happened when the peoples of the Americas came in contact with Europeans?

The most striking feature of Native American society at the time Europeans arrived was its sheer diversity. Each group had its own political system and set of religious beliefs, and North America was home to literally hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages. Indian identity centered on the immediate social group, a tribe, village, chiefdom, or confederacy. When Europeans arrived, many Indians saw them as simply one group among many. The system of gender relations in most Indian societies also differed markedly from of that Europe. Europeans tended to view Indians in extreme terms. They were regarded either as “noble savages”, gentle, friendly, and superior in some ways to Europeans, or as uncivilized and brutal savages. Europeans insisted that by subduing the Indians, they were actually bringing them freedom. The freedom of true religion, private poverty, and the liberation of both men and women from uncivilized and unchristian gender roles. (Foner, 7-11)

5. What were the chief features of the Spanish empire in America?

Spain had established an immense empire that reached from Europe to the Americas and Asia. The Atlantic and Pacific oceans, once barriers separating different parts of the world, now became highways for the exchange goods and the movement of people. Spanish galleons carried gold and silver. The Spanish empire included the most populous parts of the New World and the regions richest in natural resources. Spain’s empire exceeded in size the Roman empire of the ancient world. Spanish America was essentially an urban civilization, an “empire of towns”. (Foner, 22-23)

6. What were the chief features of the French and Dutch empires in North America?

The French and Dutch were primarily commercial ventures that never attracted large numbers of colonists. The French prided themselves on adopting a more humane policy than their imperial rivals. They worked out a complex series of military, commercial, and diplomatic connections, the most enduring alliances between Indians and settlers in colonial North America. They brought striking changes, introducing new goods and transforming hunting from a search for food into a quest for