Week 1 · Chapter

Chapter 1 — Doing History & Worlds Before 1607

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~50–60 minutes · Objectives 1 and 2 · Read it first this week, before the lecture and the slide deck.

In plain language

This week is about how we know anything about the past, and about the first meetings between the peoples of the Americas and the peoples of Europe. History is the work of building a claim about the past from evidence, the way a detective builds a case from clues. You will learn to tell a primary source — something made at the time — from a secondary source — a later account that explains it. You will practice four habits for reading any source, then use them on three real documents from 1492 to 1494. The week ends with the Columbian Exchange — the great swap of plants, animals, people, and diseases that began after 1492.

Why you already care about this

Picture a recipe card in a drawer at a relative's house. The ink is faded. Someone wrote "2 cups flour" in careful script and then crossed it out and wrote "2 and a half". Nobody alive remembers who made the change, or why. Yet that card tells you something real about your family's past: what they cooked, what they could afford, and that somebody once tested this recipe and fixed it.

Now picture a label beside a fishing boat in a harbor museum. It says the boat was built for a family business and explains how such boats were used. The label is useful, but it is not from the boat's own time. A museum staff member wrote it much later, from records and objects they studied.

That difference, between the card and the label, is the first idea of this course. Historians work like the person holding both. They ask who made each thing, when, and why, and then they decide what the evidence lets them say. This week you use that habit on the biggest meeting in the history of the Americas: what happened when ships from Europe reached the Caribbean in 1492, and what came after.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to: sort a source as primary or secondary for a given question; name and use the four moves of historical thinking in order; describe Cahokia and Tenochtitlán as large, complex societies before contact; source the royal grant to Columbus, his account of the 1492 voyage, and the Treaty of Tordesillas by origin, date, type, and host; tell contact from conquest; and explain the Columbian Exchange as a transfer that ran in both directions.

Hook to keep: every source was made by someone, at some time, for some reason.

Where we are

This week: what history is, primary and secondary sources, the four moves of historical thinking, the Indigenous Americas before contact, Columbus's voyage of 1492, the Treaty of Tordesillas, contact and conquest, St. Augustine, and the Columbian Exchange.
How they connect: this chapter is the foundation; every later week reads a dated document with the four moves you learn here.
Where we're going next: Week 2, Colonization & Empire, compares how Spain, France, the Dutch Republic, and England built colonies, and opens with Jamestown in 1607.

Week 1 has no earlier weeks behind it, so nothing here assumes you have taken a history course. If old documents feel hard to read, that is normal. Long sentences, old spellings, and translated words slow everyone down, including historians. The course is built to be supportive of that: you will read short pinned passages, one move at a time.

1. Define history: primary and secondary sources

Think about how you would prove where you were last weekend. You might show a bus pass with a date stamp, a photo on your phone, or a text you sent a friend. Each one was made at the time. Later, a friend might describe the weekend in a story. That story is useful too, but it is a retelling.

Historians sort evidence the same way. Here are the definitions this course uses:

History is interpretation from evidence: a historian reasons from sources to a claim about the past and says how sure the evidence lets anyone be.
A primary source was made during the period you are studying, such as a letter, a law, a treaty, a ship's log, or a ledger.
A secondary source is a later account that interprets primary evidence, such as a historian's article, a museum label, or a map drawn long afterward.

The recipe card is a primary source for your family's past. The museum label is a secondary source for the boat's working life. Notice that the kind of source depends on the question you ask. The museum label is a primary source if your question is "how did museums explain boats in the year the label was written?"

Worked example — sorting six sources. The course uses a source-sorting set. It is illustrative: written for this course, it describes no real document. Here are its first six items, each sorted for a question about the period it comes from.

A ship's log kept on a 1620 crossing: made on the voyage, so it is primary.
A 1999 museum exhibit label explaining that crossing: written much later, so it is secondary.
A 1765 newspaper notice announcing a boycott of British cloth: printed at the time, so it is primary.
A historian's 2010 article on colonial boycotts: a later interpretation, so it is secondary.
A merchant's account book from a Charleston shop, 1774 to 1776: kept at the time, so it is primary.
A modern map drawn to show the 1803 purchase: drawn long after, so it is secondary.

Count them up: 3 primary sources (items 1, 3, and 5) and 3 secondary sources (items 2, 4, and 6), so 3 + 3 = 6. In one plain sentence: each item was sorted by asking whether it was made during the period in question or later.

Misconception check. Students often think a primary source is any old source, or any source that sounds official. That is tempting, because many primary sources are old and many look formal. But the test is timing, not age or tone. A 1999 museum label is old to you and still secondary for a 1620 voyage. Ask one question: was this made during the period I am studying?

Carry-line: primary means made then; secondary means explained later.

2. Read like a historian: the four moves

Imagine a friend forwards you a screenshot of a message that says your favorite store is closing. Before you believe it, you probably ask some questions. Who sent the original message? When? Was there a sale or a rumor going around? Does the store's own page say the same thing? You already have the instincts of a historian.

Historical thinking is the historian's way of reading evidence. This course practices it as four moves, in this order:

Sourcing: who made it, when, and why, and for whom.
Contextualization: what was happening around it when it was made.
Close reading: what the text says, line by line, and what it leaves out.
Corroboration: what other sources confirm or complicate it.

The order is this course's own teaching choice. A 1991 study by the education researcher Samuel Wineburg watched expert readers and described sourcing, contextualization, and corroboration as their habits. Close reading is the common classroom addition.

The moves serve bigger habits of mind that run through the whole term:

Causation asks why something happened.
Change and continuity asks what shifted and what stayed the same.
Periodization asks how we divide the past into named periods, such as "before 1607", and where the edges belong.
Contingency asks how events depended on choices that could have gone another way.
Significance asks why something matters, and to whom.

One rule keeps contextualization honest. Contextualization explains a source; it never excuses what the source describes. Placing a cruel law in its time helps you understand why it was written. It does not make the law less cruel.

Every reading in this course ends in one plain sentence that names what the source shows and what it does not. A reading without that sentence is unfinished.

Misconception check. Students often think that if a source is from the time, it must be true. That is tempting, because a primary source feels close to the action. But a person at the time can be mistaken, can see only part of what happened, or can have a reason to tell it one way. Sourcing and corroboration exist for exactly this reason. A primary source is evidence of what its maker saw, believed, or claimed.

Pause and choose one: (a) Think of a message, post, or rumor you believed and later found out was wrong. Which of the four moves would have caught it? (b) Think of a family story that different relatives tell differently. Which of the four moves would help you decide which version the evidence supports?

3. Meet the Americas before 1492: Cahokia and Tenochtitlán

Picture a city with a broad central plaza, a great earthen mound rising above it, and neighborhoods of homes around it. Now place it in the Mississippi River valley, centuries before any European ship crossed the Atlantic. That city was real.

Long before 1492, the Americas held large, varied, and complex societies. Here is how this course says it:

Cahokia, near present-day St. Louis, is the site UNESCO calls the largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico and the pre-eminent center of the Mississippian culture. That culture flourished from about 800 to the 1300s.
Tenochtitlán was the capital of the Mexica, the people now commonly known as the Aztecs.

A caveat on dates. UNESCO's own page dates the Mississippian period two ways, so this course says "about 800 to the 1300s" in words and never asks you to memorize either range. That is sourcing at work: when a record gives two figures, you say so.

The words matter too. Cahokia and Tenochtitlán were not the only societies. The Americas held farming towns, trading networks, and nations with their own governments, languages, and histories. Many Native nations of North America exist today, govern themselves, and keep their own histories. This course writes about them in the present tense.

Misconception check. Students often think the Americas were nearly empty before 1492, a "wilderness" waiting to be found. That picture is tempting, because many older stories began with European arrival. But it is wrong. Cahokia was the largest settlement north of Mexico, and Tenochtitlán was the capital of a powerful people. The cure is to start the story before 1492, with the people who were already there.

4. Read the royal grant: Europe's motives

Think of a contract for a big job, such as building a store. Before any digging starts, someone writes down who pays, who gets what, and who will be in charge. The contract tells you what the people who signed it wanted before the work began.

European voyages had contracts too. Crowns and merchants in Europe wanted a sea route to Asian trade, wealth, the spread of Christianity, and an edge over rival kingdoms. Those are the usual motives historians name, taught here in words.

The first document of the course shows those motives in writing. It is a royal grant, a document in which rulers give someone rights and duties.

Worked example — sourcing the royal grant. Walk the first move, sourcing, one question at a time.

Who made it: Ferdinand and Isabella, the rulers of Castile and Aragon.
What it is: a royal grant to Christopher Columbus, known as the Privileges and Prerogatives Granted by Their Catholic Majesties to Christopher Columbus.
When: given at Granada and dated 30 April 1492, months before the voyage.
Where you read it: the Avalon Project keeps the text, and it is an English translation, so you call it a translation.
What it says, in one pinned phrase: the grant sends Columbus "to discover and subdue some Islands and Continent in the ocean".

Look at the verb "subdue". It means to bring under control. The grant was not only about trade. Before a single ship sailed, the crowns wrote rule over distant lands into the plan.

The reading in one plain sentence: the royal grant shows that Ferdinand and Isabella authorized Columbus to discover and subdue lands across the ocean; it is evidence of the crowns' intentions, not of what the people living in those lands thought or did.

Misconception check. Students often think the voyage of 1492 was only a trip to find a trade route. That is tempting, because Columbus did seek Asia. But the grant's own words, "discover and subdue", show that ruling lands was part of the plan from the start. The cure is close reading: let the document's verbs tell you what its makers intended.

5. Read Columbus's own account: the 1492 voyage

Think about the first review someone posts after a long trip. It is written fast, by one person, often to impress the people back home. It is real evidence of the trip, and it is also one person's sales pitch.

In 1492 Columbus sailed west to reach Asia. He reached the Caribbean instead. The Library of Congress names the island where he arrived as Guanahani, in the Bahamas. It was home to the Taíno, the Indigenous people of those islands. The Library also notes that Columbus believed to the end that the Caribbean was part of Asia.

He wrote an account of the voyage, and it was printed in 1493. The Library of Congress holds a Latin printing made at Rome in 1493. Its exhibit page quotes an English rendering of the letter, and it does not name the translator. This letter is the week's Primary Source Workshop document, so read it carefully here:

"There I found very many islands, filled with innumerable people, and I have taken possession of them all for their Highnesses, done by proclamation and with the royal standard unfurled, and no opposition was offered to me."

Worked example — the four moves on the letter. Take the moves in order.

Sourcing: Columbus wrote it, about his own voyage, for the rulers who paid for it; you read an English rendering of a Latin printing from 1493, kept by the Library of Congress.
Contextualization: the royal grant had asked him to discover and subdue lands, so he had a reason to report success.
Close reading: he says the islands were "filled with innumerable people", so they were not empty. He claims possession "by proclamation", a ceremony the Taíno had no part in shaping. He says "no opposition was offered", which is his claim about the Taíno, not their account.
Corroboration: the royal grant confirms what he was sent to do; it cannot tell you what the Taíno thought, and no Taíno account is in this letter.

The reading in one plain sentence: the letter shows how Columbus wanted his voyage understood by the crowns; it is evidence of his claims, not of the Taíno's view of what happened.

Misconception check. Students often think Columbus landed in North America, somewhere in today's United States. That is tempting, because his voyage is often told as the start of "American" history. But he reached the Caribbean, at Guanahani in the Bahamas, and never the North American mainland on that voyage. The cure is the map: put Guanahani in the Caribbean, far from the lands that later became the United States.

6. Read the Treaty of Tordesillas: a line from pole to pole

Imagine two neighbors who agree, over coffee, to split a park down the middle between them. Neither one owns the park. The families who already live along it were never asked. The deal says a lot about the two neighbors and nothing about the people it affects.

In 1494 two European crowns made a deal like that for much of the world. The Treaty of Tordesillas was concluded in 1494 between the crowns of Castile and Aragon and of Portugal. It set a line "drawn north and south, from pole to pole", three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, to divide newly encountered lands between them.

Worked example — sourcing and close reading the treaty. Ask the sourcing questions first, then read for what is missing.

Who made it: the crowns of Castile and Aragon and of Portugal.
What it is: a treaty, an agreement between governments.
When: concluded in 1494, two years after the first voyage.
Where you read it: the Avalon Project, whose page is headed TRANSLATION, because the text is an English translation.
What it leaves out: no Indigenous nation took part, though the line divided their lands.

The reading in one plain sentence: the treaty shows how two crowns divided lands between themselves after 1492; it is evidence of their claims, not of who lived on those lands or what those people agreed to.

Misconception check. Students often think a treaty is an agreement among everyone it affects. That is tempting, because treaties sound fair and formal. But the Treaty of Tordesillas had two parties, both European crowns. The cure is to ask, every time, who signed and who did not.

7. Tell contact from conquest: Tenochtitlán and St. Augustine

Think of a new student joining your class. On the first day, people meet, trade names, maybe argue about a seat. That is a meeting. It would be something else entirely if the new student took over the room and made the rules by force.

Historians keep two words apart in the same way:

Contact is the meeting of peoples who had not met before, with the trade, exchange, and conflict that follow.
Conquest is one people taking control of another's land and government by force.

The years make the difference visible. In 1519 Hernán Cortés led an expedition of eleven ships and five hundred men to Mexico. By 1521, war and diseases new to the Americas had destroyed Tenochtitlán, the Mexica capital. That was a conquest, and it cost many lives. It came two years after Cortés's expedition landed: 1521 − 1519 = 2 years.

Farther north, Spain founded a settlement too. In 1565 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés established St. Augustine, in Florida, on Timucua land. The National Park Service calls it the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the continental United States. It was founded forty-two years before the English founded Jamestown in 1607, England's first permanent colony in North America.

Worked example — St. Augustine before Jamestown. Subtract the earlier year from the later one: 1607 − 1565 = 42 years. That matches the "forty-two years" the National Park Service gives. In words: St. Augustine is the older settlement by forty-two years. This course stops its first week at 1607, so Jamestown marks the edge of the "before 1607" frame.

Misconception check. Students often treat contact and conquest as the same thing, as if every meeting ended in takeover right away. That is tempting, because the two often came close together. But contact is a meeting, and conquest is control by force. In Mexico two years passed between Cortés's landing and the fall of Tenochtitlán. A second trap: many people think Jamestown is the oldest European settlement in the United States. St. Augustine came first, in 1565.

8. Trace the Columbian Exchange both ways

Look at a plate of fries with ketchup, or a cup of hot chocolate. Potatoes, tomatoes, and cacao all came from the Americas. Before 1492, no one in Europe had tasted them. Now look at a hamburger bun and a glass of milk: wheat and cattle came from the other direction.

The Columbian Exchange is the transfer of crops, animals, people, and diseases between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres that began after 1492. Alfred W. Crosby named it in his 1972 book. The Old World means Europe, Africa, and Asia, the Eastern Hemisphere side of the exchange.

The Columbian Exchange set: twelve items and the direction each one crossed
From the Old World to the Americas	From the Americas to the Old World
horses	maize
cattle	potatoes
pigs	tomatoes
wheat	cacao
sugarcane	tobacco
smallpox
measles

Worked example — counting the directions. Count each column. The Old World sent 7 items in this set, and the Americas sent 5. Together, 7 + 5 = 12 items, and every one moved in one direction. In words: the exchange ran both ways.

One part of the exchange was devastating. Diseases carried from Europe and Africa, smallpox above all, struck Indigenous American populations that had no prior exposure to them. Very large numbers of people died. Historians still revise their estimates of how many, so this course says it in words and asks you to memorize no death figure.

Worked example — ordering the contact era. The course keys six years for this period. Put them in order and measure the gaps.

Order, earliest to latest: 1492 (Columbus's first voyage), 1494 (the Treaty of Tordesillas), 1519 (Cortés's landing in Mexico), 1521 (the fall of Tenochtitlán), 1565 (the founding of St. Augustine), and 1607 (the founding of Jamestown).
Span: the latest year minus the earliest year is 1607 − 1492 = 115 years.
Gaps: 1494 − 1492 = 2 years; 1519 − 1494 = 25 years; 1521 − 1519 = 2 years; 1565 − 1521 = 44 years; 1607 − 1565 = 42 years.
Check: the five gaps add back to the span, 2 + 25 + 2 + 44 + 42 = 115 years.

In words: the contact era, as this course frames it, runs 115 years from the first voyage to Jamestown. That is periodization: someone chose those edges, and you can ask why.

Misconception check. Students often think the Columbian Exchange ran one way, from Europe to the Americas. That is tempting, because ships, horses, and settlers sailed west. But maize, potatoes, tomatoes, cacao, and tobacco sailed east and changed diets across the Old World. The cure is the table: every item has a direction, and both columns are full.

Honesty note: this week names only a few of the many societies in the Americas before 1492, and only three documents, all written by Europeans. The Readings & Resources page points you to more.

Key terms

History — interpretation from evidence: a historian reasons from sources to a claim about the past and says how sure the evidence lets anyone be. (first used: 1. Define history: primary and secondary sources)
Primary source — a source made during the period being studied, such as a letter, law, treaty, ship's log, or ledger. (first used: 1. Define history: primary and secondary sources)
Secondary source — a later account that interprets primary evidence, such as a historian's article, a museum label, or a map drawn long afterward. (first used: 1. Define history: primary and secondary sources)
Illustrative — written for this course to teach a point, describing no real document, person, or place. (first used: 1. Define history: primary and secondary sources)
Historical thinking — the historian's way of reading evidence, practiced as four moves: sourcing, contextualization, close reading, and corroboration. (first used: 2. Read like a historian: the four moves)
Sourcing — asking who made a source, when, why, and for whom, and naming its type and the host that keeps it. (first used: 2. Read like a historian: the four moves)
Contextualization — placing a source in what was happening around it; it explains a source but never excuses what the source describes. (first used: 2. Read like a historian: the four moves)
Close reading — reading a source line by line for what it says and what it leaves out. (first used: 2. Read like a historian: the four moves)
Corroboration — checking a source against other sources to see what they confirm or complicate. (first used: 2. Read like a historian: the four moves)
Causation — reasoning about why something happened. (first used: 2. Read like a historian: the four moves)
Change and continuity — tracing what shifted over time and what stayed the same. (first used: 2. Read like a historian: the four moves)
Periodization — dividing the past into named periods and asking where their edges belong. (first used: 2. Read like a historian: the four moves)
Contingency — the idea that events depended on choices and circumstances that could have gone another way. (first used: 2. Read like a historian: the four moves)
Significance — judging why an event, person, or source matters, and to whom. (first used: 2. Read like a historian: the four moves)
Cahokia — the Mississippian city near present-day St. Louis that UNESCO calls the largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico. (first used: 3. Meet the Americas before 1492: Cahokia and Tenochtitlán)
Tenochtitlán — the capital of the Mexica, destroyed by war and new diseases in 1521. (first used: 3. Meet the Americas before 1492: Cahokia and Tenochtitlán)
Mexica — the Indigenous people whose capital was Tenochtitlán, now commonly known as the Aztecs. (first used: 3. Meet the Americas before 1492: Cahokia and Tenochtitlán)
Taíno — the Indigenous people of the Caribbean islands Columbus reached in 1492, Guanahani among them. (first used: 5. Read Columbus's own account: the 1492 voyage)
Treaty of Tordesillas — the 1494 agreement between the crowns of Castile and Aragon and of Portugal that set a line from pole to pole to divide newly encountered lands between them. (first used: 6. Read the Treaty of Tordesillas: a line from pole to pole)
Contact — the meeting of peoples who had not met before, with the trade, exchange, and conflict that follow. (first used: 7. Tell contact from conquest: Tenochtitlán and St. Augustine)
Conquest — one people taking control of another's land and government by force. (first used: 7. Tell contact from conquest: Tenochtitlán and St. Augustine)
St. Augustine — the settlement founded in Florida in 1565 on Timucua land, the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the continental United States. (first used: 7. Tell contact from conquest: Tenochtitlán and St. Augustine)
Jamestown — England's first permanent colony in North America, founded in 1607. (first used: 7. Tell contact from conquest: Tenochtitlán and St. Augustine)
Columbian Exchange — the transfer of crops, animals, people, and diseases between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres that began after 1492, running in both directions. (first used: 8. Trace the Columbian Exchange both ways)
Old World — Europe, Africa, and Asia, the Eastern Hemisphere side of the Columbian Exchange. (first used: 8. Trace the Columbian Exchange both ways)

Summary

History is interpretation from evidence, not a list of facts.
A primary source was made during the period studied; a secondary source explains it later.
Read every source with four moves, in order: sourcing, contextualization, close reading, corroboration.
End every reading in one plain sentence on what the source shows and what it does not.
The Americas before 1492 held large, complex societies, Cahokia and Tenochtitlán among them.
Columbus reached Guanahani in the Caribbean in 1492, not the Asian mainland he sought.
Contact is a meeting; conquest is control by force.
St. Augustine (1565) is older than Jamestown (1607).
The Columbian Exchange ran both ways, and Old World diseases devastated Indigenous populations.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

You want to know how a neighborhood celebrated a street festival in the 1980s. Sort each source as primary or secondary for that question: (a) a flyer printed to advertise the festival; (b) a blog post written last year by someone who never attended; (c) a diary entry a festival-goer wrote that night.
An illustrative family keeps three letters, written in 1948, 1953, and 1979. Find the span from the first letter to the last, and the gap between each pair of letters in order.
A classmate says, "The Americas were mostly empty before 1492, so Columbus found open land." Use two pieces of evidence from this chapter to correct both parts of the claim.
A family website posts an English version of a letter that a great-grandparent wrote in Portuguese in the 1920s. Name three sourcing questions you would ask before quoting it.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

The flyer (a) was printed for the festival, so it is primary. The blog post (b) was written long after by someone who was not there, so it is secondary. The diary entry (c) was written that night by a person who attended, so it is primary. The test each time is whether the source was made during the festival period.
The span is 1979 − 1948 = 31 years. The gaps are 1953 − 1948 = 5 years and 1979 − 1953 = 26 years. Check: 5 + 26 = 31, so the gaps add back to the span.
First, the Americas were not empty: Cahokia was the largest settlement north of Mexico, and Tenochtitlán was the Mexica capital. Second, Columbus's own letter says the islands were "filled with innumerable people", so the land he reached was already home to the Taíno. The claim fails on its own evidence.
Who translated the letter, and is the English a translation of the whole letter or a part? When exactly was it written, and by whom in the family? Who posted it, and is the original Portuguese letter kept anywhere so the translation can be checked? Each question is sourcing, and the translation question is the one people most often skip.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz — and next week Colonization & Empire uses the same four moves to compare how four European powers built colonies, starting with the First Charter of Virginia.

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