Guess the Year
Look closely at the two maps below. Both show the same world — just about 100 years apart. You don't need to know any history to do this: just observe.
Map A
Map B
Think about it: just from looking — what happened between Map A and Map B? Be ready to describe what you notice, not what you already know.
Setting Up Period 1
The Dates
AP US History's Period 1 runs from 1491 (the last year before sustained contact) to 1607 (the founding of Jamestown, England's first lasting North American colony).
The World Before Contact
North America was never one culture. Three quick snapshots:
Northeast Woodlands: agricultural and hunting societies, often organized into confederacies like the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois)
Southwest: Pueblo peoples building permanent multi-story adobe communities with irrigation farming
Mesoamerica & the Andes: large, complex empires (Aztec, Inca) with cities, road networks, and social hierarchies rivaling anything in Europe
The Columbian Exchange
Contact set off a transfer of crops, animals, disease, and people across the Atlantic in both directions — some of it voluntary trade, much of it forced. This exchange is the engine driving nearly everything else in Period 1.
What's Coming Next
Three competing colonization models will structure the rest of this unit: Spanish (encomienda system, conquest), French (fur trade, alliances), and English (permanent settlement).
Themes to Watch For All Year
Keep an eye out for these four lenses, which will come back in every period:
Document Analysis: First Contact
Read the document below carefully, then move to the next screen to complete your multiple choice questions and short-answer response.
"They... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things... They willingly traded everything they owned... They were well-built, with handsome bodies and good faces... They do not carry arms or know them, for I showed them a sword, and out of ignorance they grabbed it by the blade and cut themselves. They should be good servants... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."
Multiple Choice & Short Answer
Refer back to Document A on the previous screen if you need to re-read it.
Multiple Choice
1. Which of the following best describes Columbus's primary purpose in this journal entry?
2. The tone and content of this excerpt is most directly a reflection of which broader development in the period 1491–1607?
3. A historian evaluating this document for reliability would most likely note that
Short Answer Question (SAQ)
(a) Using the document, identify ONE way Columbus characterizes the Taíno people.
(b) Explain ONE specific piece of evidence from the document that reveals Columbus's intentions toward the Taíno.
(c) Explain ONE way that a development in the period 1491–1607 was a direct continuation of the perspective Columbus expresses in this document.
✓ Selected:Your Proof of Work
Your teacher will let you know how to submit this final screen as your evidence for today.
Looking Ahead
You just did real historian's work: reading a firsthand account critically instead of taking it at face value. Every document you'll encounter this year — on multiple choice, on the DBQ, on the SAQ — deserves this same treatment: who wrote it, why, and for whom. Next class, we'll look at how three different European powers turned intentions like Columbus's into three very different colonization systems.