Unit 1 · Early Encounters

Long ago, during the last Ice Age, huge sheets of ice covered much of the north. So much water was frozen that the oceans were lower than they are today. A wide strip of land called Beringia connected Asia and Alaska. Grasslands covered it, and animals such as mammoths and bison roamed there.

Most scientists think the first people came to the Americas from Asia, across Beringia or by boat along the Pacific coast. This migration, or movement of people from one place to another, happened at least 15,000 years ago. It did not happen in one trip. Small groups moved a little at a time over many generations. At a site called Monte Verde in Chile, far to the south, people were living about 14,500 years ago.

An archaeologist studies objects people left behind, such as tools, bones and campfires. These clues show how the first Americans hunted big animals and gathered plants. Many Native nations also have their own origin stories, passed down for generations, that say their people have always lived in their homelands. Both kinds of knowledge help us understand the deep past.

Over thousands of years, people spread from the Arctic to the tip of South America. They learned to live in cold forests, hot deserts, high mountains and rainy coasts. By the time Europeans arrived, millions of people lived in the Americas, speaking hundreds of languages.

For thousands of years, the first Americans lived by hunting animals and gathering wild plants. They moved with the seasons to follow their food. Then, in what is now southern Mexico, people began to domesticate a wild grass called teosinte. To domesticate a plant means to raise it and change it over time to make it more useful to people.

Teosinte had tiny ears with only a few hard seeds. Farmers saved seeds from the best plants and planted them again, year after year. Slowly, over thousands of years, the plant became maize, or corn, with big ears full of kernels. Scientists think this process began about 9,000 years ago. Corn spread north and south until it fed people across much of the Americas.

Many farmers planted corn, beans and squash together. Native people call these crops the Three Sisters. The corn stalk gave beans something to climb. The beans added nutrients to the soil. The wide squash leaves shaded the ground and kept weeds down. In the Andes Mountains of South America, farmers grew potatoes, which could survive the cold.

Agriculture, or farming, changed everything. Farmers could stay in one place and build lasting villages. When they grew a surplus, or more food than they needed, not everyone had to farm. Some people became potters, builders, traders, priests or leaders. Villages grew into towns, and some towns grew into cities.

A civilization is a society with cities, a government, different kinds of jobs, and often a system of writing. One of the earliest in the Americas was the Olmec. Starting around 1200 BCE, the Olmec lived on the hot, rainy Gulf Coast of Mexico. They carved giant heads out of stone. Some are taller than a grown man and weigh many tons. Later peoples in Mexico borrowed Olmec ideas about religion, art and trade.

The Maya built their civilization in southern Mexico and Central America, in what is now Guatemala, Belize and nearby lands. Their greatest period lasted from about 250 to 900 CE. The Maya never had one single ruler. Instead, they lived in many city-states, each with its own king. Cities like Tikal had tall stone pyramids, palaces, plazas and ball courts.

Maya scholars made remarkable discoveries. They created a system of writing with hundreds of picture-like signs called glyphs. They studied the sky and built a calendar that tracked the sun, the moon and the planet Venus. They also used the idea of zero in their number system, which was rare in the world at that time.

Around 900 CE, many Maya cities in the southern lowlands were abandoned. Scientists think drought, war and overuse of the land may have played a part. But the Maya did not disappear. Millions of Maya people still live in Mexico and Central America today, and many speak Maya languages.

The people we call the Aztec called themselves the Mexica. According to their story, their god told them to settle where they saw an eagle sitting on a cactus. They found that sign on an island in Lake Texcoco, in the Valley of Mexico. In 1325 they began building their city there. They named it Tenochtitlan. Today the eagle and cactus appear on the flag of Mexico.

Tenochtitlan grew into a huge, beautiful city. Long raised roads called causeways connected the island to the shore. Canoes moved along canals like streets. To grow more food, farmers built chinampas, small floating-looking gardens made of mud and plants piled up in the shallow lake. By 1500, Tenochtitlan was one of the largest cities in the world, with perhaps 200,000 people.

The Mexica were skilled warriors. They joined with two other cities and conquered much of central Mexico. Conquered peoples had to pay tribute, which means regular payments of goods such as corn, cloth, cacao beans, feathers and gold. A giant market sold goods from across the empire.

Religion shaped Aztec life. The Mexica believed the gods needed offerings, including human sacrifice, to keep the sun moving across the sky. Many captives from war were sacrificed. The heavy tribute and the taking of captives made many conquered peoples angry. That anger would matter a great deal when Spanish soldiers arrived in 1519.

High in the Andes Mountains of South America, the Inca built the largest empire in the Americas. Their capital was Cusco, in what is now Peru. Starting in 1438, a ruler named Pachacuti began to conquer neighboring peoples. Within about 100 years, the Inca empire stretched roughly 2,500 miles along the western side of South America. Millions of people lived under Inca rule.

To connect this long, rugged land, the Inca built a network of stone roads that covered thousands of miles. Rope bridges crossed deep canyons. Relay runners carried messages from station to station, so news could travel very fast. Storehouses along the roads held food, cloth and weapons for soldiers and for times of hunger.

The Inca did not use a written alphabet. Instead, officials kept records with a quipu, a set of colored, knotted cords. The kind of knot and its place on the cord stood for numbers. With quipus, officials counted people, crops and goods across the empire.

Farming in the mountains was hard, so the Inca built terraces, flat steps cut into the hillsides. Terraces kept soil from washing away. Instead of paying taxes in money, people paid with labor, working for a set time on roads, farms or buildings. The mountain city of Machu Picchu shows their skill with stone. Today millions of people in the Andes still speak Quechua, the Inca language.

The Southwest, where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah meet today, is dry country. Rain is rare, and summers are hot. Still, a people called the Ancestral Puebloans farmed here for hundreds of years. They grew corn, beans and squash. They built small dams and ditches to catch rain and guide it to their fields.

The Ancestral Puebloans built large apartment-like buildings of stone and adobe, a sun-dried brick made of mud and straw. The Spanish later called these towns pueblos, the Spanish word for towns. In Chaco Canyon, in New Mexico, they built great houses with hundreds of rooms between about 850 and 1150. Straight roads ran out from Chaco to other communities.

Later, at Mesa Verde in Colorado, families built homes tucked into cliffs. These cliff dwellings were hard to reach, which may have made them safer. Many pueblos had a kiva, a round room, often partly underground, used for ceremonies and meetings.

In the late 1200s, a long drought struck the region. With little rain, crops failed. By about 1300, people had left Mesa Verde and many other sites. They moved south and east, closer to rivers. Their descendants include the Hopi, the Zuni and the Pueblo peoples of the Rio Grande, who still live in the Southwest today.

Across the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys, Native peoples built large hills of earth called mounds. Some of the earliest mound builders are known today as the Adena and the Hopewell. They lived more than 1,500 years ago. They built mounds to bury important people. Some mounds were shaped like circles, squares or even animals.

Later, from about 800 CE, a culture called the Mississippians spread along the Mississippi River and across the Southeast. They were skilled corn farmers. Their towns often had flat-topped mounds around a central plaza. Temples and the homes of leaders stood on top of the mounds, raised above everyone else.

Many Mississippian towns were led by a chiefdom, a society ruled by a powerful chief whose family held special rank. Cahokia, in what is now Illinois, was the largest Mississippian city. Other important centers included Moundville in Alabama and Etowah in Georgia.

The Mississippians were linked by a wide trade network. Copper from the Great Lakes, shells from the Gulf of Mexico, and stone from far away have all been found at their sites. Mississippian towns were still standing in parts of the Southeast when Spanish explorers marched through in the 1540s.

East of the Mississippi River, thick forests once covered much of the land. The peoples of this region are called the Eastern Woodlands peoples. They used the forest for almost everything. Men often hunted deer and fished. Women usually farmed the Three Sisters and gathered nuts and berries. Trees gave wood for homes, canoes and tools.

Many peoples near the Atlantic coast spoke related languages, called Algonquian languages. They included the Lenape, the Wampanoag and the Powhatan. Farther inland, in what is now New York, lived five nations: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca. They lived in villages of longhouses, long wooden buildings covered with bark. Several related families shared each longhouse.

Long ago, these five nations often fought one another. According to their tradition, a leader called the Peacemaker, with the help of a man named Hiawatha, convinced them to make peace. They formed a confederacy, a union of nations that agree to work together. They call themselves the Haudenosaunee, meaning People of the Longhouse. The French later called them the Iroquois.

The Haudenosaunee lived by the Great Law of Peace. Leaders from each nation met in a Grand Council to settle problems by talking. Women held real power. Each clan, a group of families related through their mothers, was led by a clan mother, and clan mothers chose the men who served as leaders. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy still exists today.

Every Native people built a way of life that fit its environment, the land, water, plants, animals and weather around it. Two very different regions show this well: the Great Plains in the middle of North America, and the rainy Northwest Coast along the Pacific Ocean.

The Great Plains are a huge sea of grass. Millions of bison, often called buffalo, grazed there. Some Plains peoples lived in farming villages along rivers, growing corn and living in earth lodges. Others followed the bison herds. Before 1500, there were no horses on the Plains. Hunters worked on foot, sometimes driving bison over cliffs. Dogs pulled their belongings on wooden frames. People used nearly every part of the bison for food, clothing, shelter and tools.

The Northwest Coast, from what is now Oregon to Alaska, has mild weather, lots of rain and tall cedar forests. Rivers filled with salmon every year. Food was so plentiful that people could live in large, permanent villages without farming. They built big houses of cedar planks and carved canoes from whole tree trunks. They carved tall totem poles that told the history of their families.

Wealth mattered on the Northwest Coast. Families showed their status by holding a potlatch, a great feast where the hosts gave away gifts to their guests. The more a family gave, the more respect it earned. Peoples such as the Tlingit, Haida and Kwakwaka’wakw still hold potlatches today.

Between about 500 and 1500, Europe went through a time called the Middle Ages. Most people were poor farmers. Under feudalism, kings gave land to nobles, and nobles gave protection to the farmers who worked the land. The Catholic Church was the center of life for most Europeans. Few people could read.

Starting in 1096, European Christians fought a series of wars called the Crusades to take control of Jerusalem and nearby lands, which they considered holy. The Crusades failed in the end, but they brought Europeans into contact with the Middle East. Europeans came home with a taste for spices, silk and other goods from Asia. Later, the Italian traveler Marco Polo wrote about the riches of China, and many Europeans read his stories.

Then disaster struck. From 1347 to 1351, a disease called the Black Death swept across Europe. It killed about one out of every three people. With fewer workers, survivors could often demand better pay. The old feudal system began to weaken.

In the 1300s, a new age began in Italy. It is called the Renaissance, which means rebirth. Artists, writers and scientists studied the learning of ancient Greece and Rome and asked new questions. Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg built a printing press in Germany. Books could now be made quickly and cheaply, and new ideas spread faster than ever.

By the 1400s, Europeans wanted spices, silk and other Asian goods. But these goods passed through many traders before reaching Europe, and each one added to the price. Merchants in Italian cities such as Venice controlled much of the trade. Other Europeans began to wonder if they could reach Asia by sea and buy goods directly.

New tools made ocean travel possible. The magnetic compass, first developed in China, showed which way was north. The astrolabe, improved by Muslim scholars, helped sailors figure out how far north or south they were by measuring the sun and stars. Portuguese shipbuilders designed the caravel, a small, fast ship. Its triangular sails let it sail against the wind.

At the same time, strong kings and queens were taking control in Portugal, Spain, France and England. They had the money to pay for expensive voyages. In Spain, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella united their kingdoms and, in 1492, defeated the last Muslim kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula.

In 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther challenged the Catholic Church. He objected to the selling of pardons for sins and other practices. The printing press spread his ideas fast. His protest began the Reformation, a movement that split Western Christianity. Those who left the Catholic Church became known as Protestants. Catholic and Protestant nations would soon compete for land and power, including in the Americas.

The Sahara, the world’s largest hot desert, stretches across northern Africa. South of it lies the grassland of West Africa. For centuries, traders crossed the Sahara in caravans, long lines of camels carrying goods. From the north they brought salt, which people needed to stay healthy and to preserve food. From West Africa they carried gold. Gold and salt were sometimes traded almost pound for pound.

The kingdom of Ghana grew rich by taxing this trade. (It was in a different place from the modern country of Ghana.) Arab writers called it a land of gold. Later, the empire of Mali grew even larger. Its founder, Sundiata, is remembered in songs and stories that West African storytellers still perform. Traders also brought the religion of Islam, and many West African rulers became Muslims.

Mali’s most famous ruler was Mansa Musa. In 1324, he made a pilgrimage, a religious journey, to the holy city of Mecca in Arabia. He traveled with thousands of people and camels loaded with gold. News of his wealth spread to Europe, where mapmakers drew him holding a gold nugget. Mansa Musa brought scholars and builders home with him.

Under Mali and later the Songhai empire, the city of Timbuktu became a great center of trade and learning. Scholars taught at its mosques, and people bought and copied books. Thousands of old manuscripts from Timbuktu survive today. Songhai grew into one of the largest empires in African history, until an army from Morocco, armed with guns, defeated it in 1591.

Portugal is a small country on the Atlantic edge of Europe. In the early 1400s, a Portuguese prince named Henry sent ship after ship down the west coast of Africa. He is remembered as Henry the Navigator, even though he did not sail on these voyages himself. He paid for mapmakers, shipbuilders and sailors, and his captains pushed farther south each year.

Portuguese sailors set up trading posts, small forts where they traded for gold, ivory and pepper with African rulers. They also began to buy and capture African people to sell as slaves. By the 1440s, enslaved Africans were being shipped to Portugal. This was the start of a terrible trade that would grow much larger.

In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the southern tip of Africa, later named the Cape of Good Hope. The way to the Indian Ocean was open. Ten years later, in 1498, Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa all the way to India. He returned with spices worth far more than the cost of the trip.

Portugal now had a sea route to Asia. It built a trading empire of ports along the coasts of Africa and Asia. In 1500, a Portuguese fleet heading for India swung far west and reached the coast of Brazil. Portugal claimed Brazil, which is why Brazilians speak Portuguese today.

Christopher Columbus was a sailor from Genoa, in Italy. He believed he could reach Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic. Most educated people already knew the Earth was round, but Columbus badly underestimated its size. He did not know two continents stood in the way. After years of asking, he won support from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain.

In August 1492, Columbus set sail with three ships, the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María. On October 12, the crew sighted an island in what is now the Bahamas. The people there were the Taino, who lived on many Caribbean islands. They farmed, fished and traded by canoe. Columbus thought he had reached the Indies, islands near Asia, so he called the people Indians.

Columbus made four voyages between 1492 and 1504. On the island of Hispaniola he set up a Spanish colony, a settlement ruled by a faraway country. He and the colonists demanded gold. Taino people were forced to work, and those who resisted were punished harshly. Many were enslaved.

Forced labor, violence and new diseases from Europe devastated the Taino. Within a few decades, their population had collapsed. Yet Taino words live on in English, such as hammock, canoe and hurricane. Columbus died in 1506, still believing he had reached Asia. Another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, argued that these lands were a New World, and a mapmaker named the continents America after him.

After Columbus returned, Spain and Portugal argued over who owned the lands being found. In 1494, they signed the Treaty of Tordesillas. A treaty is a formal agreement between nations. It drew an imaginary line from north to south through the Atlantic. Spain could claim lands west of the line. Portugal could claim lands east of it, including Africa and, as it turned out, Brazil.

No one asked the millions of people who already lived in these lands. To Spain and Portugal, the treaty gave them the right to rule. To Native peoples, it meant nothing, until soldiers and settlers arrived to enforce it.

Europeans still wanted a western route to Asia. In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese captain sailing for Spain, set out with five ships. He found a narrow, stormy passage at the southern tip of South America, now called the Strait of Magellan. Then he crossed the Pacific Ocean, which was far wider than anyone in Europe had guessed. His crew nearly starved.

Magellan was killed in a fight in the Philippines in 1521. But in 1522, one ship and fewer than 20 of the roughly 260 men who had set out finally reached Spain. They had made the first circumnavigation, or trip all the way around the world. Their voyage showed that the Americas were a huge obstacle between Europe and Asia.

Spanish explorers and soldiers who came to the Americas seeking gold and glory are called conquistadors, which means conquerors. In 1519, Hernán Cortés landed on the coast of Mexico with about 500 soldiers. A Native woman named Malintzin, whom the Spanish called Doña Marina, became his interpreter and advisor. She spoke Nahuatl, the Aztec language, and Maya, and she soon learned Spanish.

Cortés learned that many peoples hated Aztec rule. The Tlaxcalans and others joined him as allies, partners who fight on the same side. Thousands of Native warriors marched with the Spanish. When they reached Tenochtitlan, the emperor Moctezuma welcomed them into the city. Cortés soon took Moctezuma prisoner.

In 1520, fighting broke out. Moctezuma was killed, and the Spanish fled the city at night, losing many men. Then an epidemic, a disease that spreads quickly to many people, swept through Tenochtitlan. It was smallpox, brought from Europe. The Aztec had never faced it, and thousands died, including the new emperor.

In 1521, Cortés and his Native allies returned. They surrounded the island city, cut off its food and water, and attacked for months. The Aztec fought hard, but in August 1521 Tenochtitlan fell. The Spanish built Mexico City on top of its ruins. It became the capital of New Spain.

News of Aztec gold drew more conquistadors to the Americas. Francisco Pizarro heard stories of a rich empire in the mountains of South America. In 1532, he led fewer than 200 soldiers into the land of the Inca.

Pizarro arrived at a lucky moment for him. Smallpox had spread south ahead of the Spanish and killed the Inca emperor. Two of his sons, Atahualpa and Huascar, then fought a civil war, a war between groups within the same country. Atahualpa had just won when the Spanish arrived.

Atahualpa agreed to meet Pizarro at the town of Cajamarca. The Spanish set a trap. They attacked the emperor’s unarmed attendants and took Atahualpa prisoner. To win his freedom, Atahualpa promised to fill a large room with gold and a smaller room twice with silver. His people delivered the treasure. Pizarro had him killed anyway, in 1533.

The Spanish captured Cusco, but the Inca did not simply give up. Inca leaders kept up the resistance, fighting from the mountains for nearly 40 more years. The last Inca stronghold fell in 1572. Spain then ruled the Andes and began mining huge amounts of silver there.

When Columbus crossed the Atlantic, he connected two halves of the world that had been apart for thousands of years. Plants, animals, people and germs began to move back and forth. Historians call this the Columbian Exchange. It changed life on every continent.

Many foods we eat today first came from the Americas: corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts, chili peppers, squash, beans and chocolate. Potatoes and corn grew well in Europe, Africa and Asia. They fed many people and helped populations grow. Tobacco also came from the Americas.

Europeans brought horses, cattle, pigs, sheep and chickens to the Americas. They also brought wheat, rice and sugarcane. Horses changed life for many Native nations. Within about 200 years, peoples of the Great Plains had become expert riders and bison hunters on horseback. Sugarcane, on the other hand, led to huge plantations, large farms worked by enslaved people.

The deadliest part of the exchange was invisible. Europeans carried germs for smallpox, measles and influenza. Native Americans had never been exposed to these diseases, so they had no immunity, or natural protection. Epidemics swept through Native communities, often ahead of the Europeans themselves. In many places, as many as nine out of ten people died.

Spain called its colony in Mexico and nearby lands New Spain. A viceroy, who ruled in the name of the king, governed from Mexico City. Spanish settlers built churches, towns and ranches. Silver mines in Mexico and in the Andes poured wealth into Spain for centuries.

The Spanish crown rewarded conquistadors with the encomienda. This gave a colonist the right to demand labor and tribute from the Native people in an area. In return, he was supposed to protect them and teach them Christianity. In practice, many Native people were worked nearly to death in fields and mines.

A priest named Bartolomé de las Casas had once held an encomienda himself. He came to see it as deeply wrong. He gave up his workers and spent the rest of his life speaking out against the abuse of Native people. His protests helped lead to new laws in 1542 that limited the encomienda, though many colonists ignored them.

Society in New Spain was ranked by birth. People born in Spain held the top jobs. Below them came Spaniards born in the Americas, then people of mixed Spanish and Native ancestry, called mestizos. Native people and enslaved Africans were at the bottom. On the northern frontier, priests built missions, religious settlements, in places like Florida and New Mexico. St. Augustine, Florida, founded in 1565, is the oldest city built by Europeans in what is now the United States.

Spain and Portugal controlled the southern routes to Asia. Other European nations hoped to find a shortcut through or around North America. They called this imagined waterway the Northwest Passage. The search sent explorers along the coasts and up the rivers of North America for more than a century.

In 1497, John Cabot, an Italian sailing for England, reached the coast of Newfoundland in Canada. He found waters full of fish, but no passage. In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano, sailing for France, explored the Atlantic coast and entered what is now New York Harbor.

Jacques Cartier made voyages for France in the 1530s. He sailed up the wide St. Lawrence River, hoping it led to Asia. He met the St. Lawrence Iroquoians and visited their town where Montreal stands today. Rapids blocked his way west.

Henry Hudson searched for the passage for two nations. In 1609, sailing for the Dutch, he explored the river in New York that now bears his name. In 1610, sailing for England, he entered a huge bay in northern Canada, now Hudson Bay. After a hard winter trapped in ice, his crew mutinied, or rebelled. They set Hudson adrift in a small boat, and he was never seen again. The explorers did not find a passage, but their voyages gave their countries claims to land.

Europeans in the 1600s loved hats made from beaver fur. Beavers were rare in Europe but common in North America. This made the fur trade very profitable. Native hunters trapped the beavers. They traded the furs to Europeans for metal pots, knives, cloth, guns and other goods.

In 1608, Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec on the St. Lawrence River. It became the heart of New France. Few French settlers came. Most French colonists were fur traders or Catholic priests called Jesuits, who lived among Native peoples and tried to convert them. The French formed close alliances with Native nations such as the Wendat, also called the Huron, and the Algonquin.

In 1673, a French trader, Louis Jolliet, and a priest, Jacques Marquette, paddled down the Mississippi River. On the way back north, they traveled up the Illinois River and met the Illinois people. Their trip helped France claim the huge Mississippi Valley, including what is now Illinois.

The Dutch also wanted furs. They founded the colony of New Netherland along the Hudson River. In the 1620s, they built the town of New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan. It became a busy port where people of many backgrounds lived and traded. Competition for furs also caused wars among Native nations, as they fought to control hunting lands and trade with Europeans.

In the 1500s, Spain was the richest and most powerful nation in Europe. Ships loaded with silver from the Americas sailed to Spain every year. England was smaller and poorer, and it had become a Protestant country. Spain’s King Philip II was a strong Catholic. Religion and money made the two nations bitter rivals.

England’s Queen Elizabeth I encouraged daring sea captains to attack Spanish treasure ships. These captains were called sea dogs. The most famous was Francis Drake. Between 1577 and 1580, he sailed around the world, raiding Spanish ports and ships along the way. Spain saw him as a pirate. Elizabeth made him a knight.

In 1588, Philip sent a huge fleet called the Armada to invade England. It had about 130 ships. The English ships were smaller and faster. At night, the English sent burning ships drifting toward the Spanish fleet, scattering it. Then fierce storms wrecked many Spanish ships as they tried to sail home around Scotland and Ireland.

The defeat of the Armada did not end Spain’s power, but it was a major blow. England gained confidence on the seas. Within about 20 years, England would found its first lasting colony in North America, at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.

As Native populations fell, European colonists wanted new workers for their mines and for plantations growing sugar, and later tobacco, rice and cotton. They turned to Africa. Starting in the early 1500s, ships carried enslaved Africans to Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. Portuguese Brazil soon became the largest destination of all.

Slavery had existed in many societies, including in parts of Africa. But the Atlantic slave trade was different. It was huge in size. It was hereditary, meaning children of enslaved mothers were born enslaved. And over time, Europeans used race to justify it, falsely claiming that Africans were meant to be enslaved.

Most captives were taken from West and Central Africa. Many were captured in wars or raids. Some African rulers and traders sold captives to Europeans in exchange for guns, cloth, metal and other goods. European traders built forts along the coast where captives were held until ships arrived.

The trade grew into a system that historians sometimes call the triangular trade. Ships carried goods from Europe to Africa, enslaved people from Africa to the Americas, and sugar, tobacco and other products back to Europe. From the 1500s to the 1860s, about 12.5 million Africans were forced onto ships bound for the Americas.

The voyage from Africa to the Americas was called the Middle Passage, because it was the middle leg of the triangular trade. The trip often took one to two months. For the captives, it was a nightmare. Most had never seen the ocean. They did not know where they were going or what would happen to them.

Enslaved people were chained together and packed below deck. There was little room to sit up and almost no fresh air. Food and water were scarce. Diseases spread quickly. Historians estimate that nearly 2 million people died during these voyages.

Captives resisted in many ways. Some refused to eat. Some fought back and tried to take over ships. Historians have found records of hundreds of revolts at sea. Captives from different places, who often spoke different languages, found ways to comfort each other and form bonds.

Those who survived were sold in the Americas, often separated from anyone they knew. Yet they carried their cultures with them. African music, foods, words, stories and beliefs took root in the Americas. The African diaspora, the scattering of African peoples around the world, shaped the history and culture of the Americas, including the United States.