Aztecs
The Azetcs were a Native American Empire who lived in Mexico. Their capital was Tenochtitlan. They worshipped everything around them especially the sun. Cortes conquered them in 1521.

Pueblo Indians
The Pueblo Indians lived in the Southwestern United States. They built extensive irrigation systems to water their primary crop, which was corn. Their houses were multi-storied buildings made of adobe.

Joint Stock Companies
These were developed to gather the savings from the middle class to support finance colonies. Ex. London Company and Plymouth Company.

Spanish Armada
"Invincible" group of ships sent by King Philip II of Spain to invade England in 1588; Armada was defeated by smaller, more maneuverable English "sea dogs" in the Channel; marked the beginning of English naval dominance and fall of Spanish dominance.

black legend
The idea developed during North American colonial times that the Spanish utterly destroyed the Indians through slavery and disease while the English did not. It is a false assertion that the Spanish were more evil towards the Native Americans than the English were.

Conquistadores
Spanish explorers that invaded Central and South America for it's riches during the 1500's. In doing so they conquered the Incas, Aztecs, and other Native Americans of the area. Eventually they intermarried these tribes.

Renaissance
After the Middle Ages there was a rebirth of culture in Europe where art and science were developed. It was during this time of enrichment that America was discovered.

Canadian Shield
geological shape of North America; 10 million years ago; held the northeast corner of North America in place; the first part of North America to come above sea level.

Mound Builders
The mound builders of the Ohio River Valley and the Mississippian culture of the lower Midwest did sustain some large settlements after the incorporation of corn planting into their way of life during the first millennium AD. The Mississippian settlement at Cohokia, near present-day East St. Louis, Ill., was perhaps home to 40,000 people in about AD 1100. But mysteriously, around the year 1300, both the Mound Builder and the Mississippian cultures had fallen to decline.

Montezuma
Aztec chieftan; encountered Cortes and the Spanish and saw that they rode horses; Montezuma assumed that the Soanush were gods. He welcomed them hospitably, but the explorers soon turned on the natives and ruled them for three centuries.

Christopher Columbus
An Italian navigator who was funded by the Spanish Government to find a passage to the Far East. He is given credit for discovering the "New World," even though at his death he believed he had made it to India. He made four voyages to the "New World." The first sighting of land was on October 12, 1492, and three other journies until the time of his death in 1503.

Hernan Cortes
He was a Spanish explorer who conquered the Native American civilization of the Aztecs in 1519 in what is now Mexico.

Francisco Coronado
A Spanish soldier and commander; in 1540, he led an expedition north from Mexico into Arizona; he was searching for the legendary Seven Cities of Gold, but only found Adobe pueblos.

Treaty of Tordesillas
In 1494 Spain and Portugal were disputing the lands of the new world, so the Spanish went to the Pope, and he divided the land of South America for them. Spain got the vast majority, the west, and Portugal got the east.

Mestizos
The Mestizos were the race of people created when the Spanish intermarried with the surviving Indians in Mexico.

Marco Polo
Italian explorer; spent many years in China or near it; his return to Europe in 1295 sparked a European interest in finding a quicker route to Asia.

Francisco Pizarro
Francisco Pizarro -- New World conqueror; Spanish conqueror who crushed the Inca civilization in Peru; took gold, silver and enslaved the Incas in 1532.

Juan Ponce de Leon
Spanish Explorer; in 1513 and in 1521, he explored Florida, thinking it was an island. Looking for gold and the "fountain of youth", he failed in his search for the fountain of youth but established Florida as territory for the Spanish, before being killed by a Native American arrow.

Hernando de Soto
Spanish Conquistador; explored in 1540's from Florida west to the Mississippi with six hundred men in search of gold; discovered the Mississippi, a vital North American river.