Week 1 — Quiz (auto-graded) · Doing History & Worlds Before 1607

Course: U.S. History to 1877 (HIST 1301) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Hartwell
Objectives tested: Objective 1 — historical thinking & source analysis (primary vs. secondary; the four moves) · Objective 2 — Indigenous North America, contact, and the Columbian Exchange.
Points: 10 (1 each) · Assignment group: Quizzes (10% of grade) · Due: end of Module 1.

This is the human-readable quiz with its vetted answer key and feedback. The import-ready Classic QTI is in F-quiz-week-01-qti.xml (generated by the shared validated script — parses with 10 items, every single-answer item exactly one correct). Historical-accuracy gate: every date, name, and term below was checked against the historical record (PASS). The Canvas placement block is at the bottom of this file.

Blueprint

No trick questions; distractors target the Week 1 misconceptions named in the lecture outline (empty-wilderness myth, Exchange direction, "discovery" framing, primary-source bias).

Questions, key, and feedback

Q1 (MC). Which of these is a primary source for studying Columbus's first voyage?
- A. A 2019 college textbook chapter about Columbus
- B. Columbus's own 1493 letter describing the voyage ✅
- C. A documentary film about Columbus made in 2010
- D. An encyclopedia article summarizing the voyage
Feedback: A primary source is made at the time by someone connected to the event. Columbus's 1493 letter is primary; a textbook, documentary, or encyclopedia article is a later secondary interpretation.

Q2 (MC). A historian's first question about a document is: who wrote this, when, and why? Which of the four moves is that?
- A. Sourcing ✅
- B. Close reading
- C. Corroboration
- D. Contextualization
Feedback: Sourcing asks who/when/why — the author's identity and purpose — before you read. (Close reading = the exact words; contextualization = the world around it; corroboration = checking against other sources.)

Q3 (Multiple answer — select all that apply). Which of the following accurately describe North America before 1607?
- A. It was home to millions of people in hundreds of distinct societies ✅
- B. Large settlements existed, such as the Mississippian city of Cahokia ✅
- C. It was an empty, unpeopled wilderness before Europeans arrived
- D. Native peoples had a wide diversity of languages and forms of government ✅
- E. There was a single, uniform Native American culture across the continent
Feedback: North America was homeland, not wilderness — millions of people, cities like Cahokia, and great diversity (A, B, D). The "empty wilderness" (C) and "single uniform culture" (E) are myths.

Q4 (MC). In the Columbian Exchange, which of these traveled from the Americas to Europe, Africa, and Asia?
- A. Horses and cattle
- B. Wheat and rice
- C. Maize (corn) and potatoes ✅
- D. Smallpox and measles
Feedback: American crops — maize, potatoes, tomatoes, cacao, tobacco — went east and reshaped world diets. Horses, wheat, and diseases came the other way (the classic direction trap).

Q5 (MC). What was the deadliest part of the Columbian Exchange for Native peoples?
- A. New crops such as wheat and sugarcane
- B. Old World diseases such as smallpox, to which they had no immunity ✅
- C. The arrival of horses on the Plains
- D. New long-distance trade routes
Feedback: With no prior exposure, Native peoples suffered epidemics (smallpox, measles, influenza) that killed — by many estimates up to 90% in hard-hit regions. Disease was the deadliest cargo.

Q6 (Matching). Put these four developments in chronological order, earliest to latest.
| Position | Correct event |
|---|---|
| 1 — Earliest | The Mississippian city of Cahokia flourishes (around 1100 CE) |
| 2 | Columbus's first transatlantic voyage (1492) |
| 3 | Columbus's letter announcing the voyage is printed and spreads (1493) |
| 4 — Latest | The founding of Jamestown, the first permanent English colony (1607) |
Feedback: Cahokia's height (~1100 CE) came centuries before contact; the voyage (1492) preceded the printed letter (1493); Jamestown (1607) is the doorway into the English-colonial story this course follows.

Q7 (MC). Why do most historians say "Columbus discovered America" is misleading?
- A. Because Columbus never actually crossed the Atlantic
- B. Because millions of people already lived in the Americas; Columbus opened sustained contact between hemispheres rather than finding an empty land ✅
- C. Because Columbus landed in Florida, not the Caribbean
- D. Because the continents were not yet named "America"
Feedback: "Discovery" implies an empty, unknown place. The accurate, significant claim is that 1492 opened sustained contact between two already-inhabited worlds.

Q8 (True / False). "Because a primary source is an eyewitness account, it is automatically unbiased and gives the complete truth."
- True
- False ✅
Feedback: False. Primary sources are close to the event, but every one has a point of view — an eyewitness can be one-sided, mistaken, or have a purpose. That's why historians corroborate.

Q9 (MC). Columbus's 1492 voyage was funded by the crown of which country?
- A. Spain (Ferdinand and Isabella) ✅
- B. Portugal
- C. England
- D. The Dutch Republic
Feedback: Spain — the monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella — financed the voyage. (Portugal had focused on the route around Africa; England and the Dutch came later.)

Q10 (MC). The large two-way transfer of plants, animals, people, and diseases between the Americas and the rest of the world after 1492 is known as —
- A. the Middle Passage
- B. the Columbian Exchange ✅
- C. the Reconquista
- D. Manifest Destiny
Feedback: The Columbian Exchange. (The Middle Passage = the forced voyage of enslaved Africans; the Reconquista = the Christian reconquest of Iberia, completed 1492; Manifest Destiny = a 19th-century expansion idea — all real terms from other contexts.)

Answer key (quick reference)

Quality gate (self-checked): each single-answer item has exactly one correct option; the multiple-answer item lists the three accurate statements (A, B, D) and requires C and E to be left unselected; the matching item orders four dated developments correctly. Historical-accuracy gate — PASS: the 1492 voyage and its Spanish (Ferdinand & Isabella) funding, the 1493 letter, Cahokia's ~1100 CE peak, and Jamestown's 1607 founding were each verified against the historical record; the Columbian-Exchange directions (maize/potatoes out of the Americas; horses/wheat/disease in) are correct. No quotation is asserted in this quiz, so there is none to mis-key.

Item-bank entries (for variants + the midterm/final)

All ten items are tagged course=HIST1301 · week=1 · objective=1,2 · topic=doing-history-and-contact and deposited in Item Bank: Week 1 — Doing History & Worlds Before 1607. The midterm (Week 8) and the per-term variant updates draw fresh items from this bank. (Tags: q1 primary-vs-secondary, q2 sourcing, q3 indigenous-diversity, q4 exchange-direction, q5 disease, q6 chronology, q7 discovery-framing, q8 source-bias, q9 columbus-funding, q10 columbian-exchange-term.)

Canvas placement block

canvas_object    = Quizzes::Quiz
title            = "Week 1 Quiz — Doing History & Worlds Before 1607"
assignment_group = "Quizzes"
points_possible  = 10
grading_type     = points
due_offset_days  = 6        # 6 days after module start
published        = true
shuffle_answers  = true
provenance       = "~ Prof. Hartwell's edition · Fall 2026 · built with thecoursemaker.com"