ADVANCED PLACEMENT UNITED STATES HISTORY
Homework Assignment
Henretta: Chapter One
Worlds Collide: Europe, Africa and America

 Directions: Read Chapter One, and answer the following questions in complete sentences.  Your responses must be either typewritten or hand-written in black or blue ink.

1. According to our best knowledge, how did Native Americans first come into the Americas, and where did they settle?

2.    How did changes in environmental conditions affect complex Native American civilizations such as the Mayans and Pueblos?

3.    Why did Native American women among eastern woodland tribes such as the Iroquois possess such high status?

4.    What changes occurred in Europe during the Renaissance, from the 1400s into the 1500s, to help prepare European states for the age of exploration and discovery?

5.    Why did the Spanish find it so easy to conquer the native groups of the Americas in the early 1500s?

 6.    How did contact with Europeans change the practice of African slavery?

7.    Read:  Voices from Abroad, Father le Petite: The Customs of the Natchez in Chapter 1 of the text. After reading the document, write a brief paragraph-length response to each of the following questions. A single paragraph combining all three questions will suffice.

Most of what we know today about tribal culture in the Americas during the pre-colonial period comes from European sources, especially clerics such as Father le Petite. In reading this document, it is important to keep in mind the preconceptions that Father le Petite, a Jesuit priest from France, might have had and how they might have affected his perceptions. Le Petite clearly wanted to understand the ways of the Natchez, but he also perceived them through the lens of his own culture.

a.    Which practices of the Natchez were adopted from their ancestors who came from cultures south of the Rio Grande?

b.   Father le Petite refers to the Natchez as a "Nation of Savages," which is meant to distance them from the "civilized" Europeans. However, what parallels are there between the religious practices and beliefs of the Natchez and those common in Europe at the time?

c.   Why might Father le Petite have misinterpreted the matrilineal descent of the Natchez kings, which was a standard practice among tribes in the region?