| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Christopher Columbus | (bt. August and October 1451 – May 20, 1506) was a navigator, colonizer, and explorer who was instrumental in Spanish colonization of the Americas. Though not the first to reach the Americas from Europe (the Vikings had reached Canada many years earlier, led by Leif Ericsson), Columbus' voyages led to general European awareness of the hemisphere and the successful establishment of European cultures in the New World. |
| Conquistadors | a Spanish soldier, explorer, and adventurer who took part in the gradual invasion and conquest of much of the Americas and Asia Pacific, bringing them under Spanish colonial rule between the 15th and 19th centuries. Notice that the term is not used for the Portuguese explorers and conquerors of Brazil, such as the Bandeirantes. |
| Jacque Cartier | (1491–September 1, 1557) was a French navigator and explorer who first described and mapped[1] the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, which he named Canada. |
| Samuel de Champlain | (c. 1580 - 1635) the "father of New France," was born into a Protestant family around 1580[1] in the Province of Saintonge, lived when young in the town of Brouage, a seaport on France's west coast and made a journey through Canada before, he died in 1635 in Québec. A sailor, he also came to be respected as a talented navigator, a cartographer, and the founder of Quebec City. He was also integral in opening North America to French trade, especially the fur trade. |
| Hernan Cortes | (1485–December 2, 1547) was a Spanish conquistador who initiated the conquest of the Aztec Empire on behalf of Charles V, king of Castile and Holy Roman Emperor, in the early 16th century. Cortés was part of the generation of Spanish colonizers that began the first phase of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.[1] |
| Encomienda | a trusteeship labor system employed by the Spanish crown during the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the Philippines in order to consolidate their conquests. Conquistadores were granted trusteeship over the indigenous people they conquered, in an expansion of familiar medieval feudal institutions |
| Treaty of Tordesillas | June 7, 1494, divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe into an exclusive duopoly between the Spanish and the Portuguese along a north-south meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands (off the west coast of Africa). |
| Mayas | a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as its spectacular art, monumental architecture, and sophisticated mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Preclassic period, many of these reached their apogee of development during the Classic period (c. 250 to 900), and continued throughout the Postclassic period until the arrival of the Spanish. At its peak, it was one of the most densely populated and culturally dynamic societies in the world. |
| Incas | a tribe in the Cusco area, where the legendary first Sapa Inca Manco Capac founded the Kingdom of Cusco around 1200.[1] Under the leadership of the descendants of Manco Capac, the state grew as it absorbed other Andean communities at that time. It was in 1442, when the Incas began a far reaching expansion under the command of Pachacutec, whose name literally meant earth-shaker. He formed the Inca empire (Tawantinsuyu), that would become the largest empire in pre-Columbian America.[2] |
| Aztecs | a term used to refer to certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who achieved political and military dominance over large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries |
| Marco Polo | (September 15, 1254[1] – January 9, 1324 ]) was a Venetian trader and explorer who gained fame for his worldwide travels.Polo, together with his father Niccolò and his uncle Maffeo, was one of the first Westerners to travel the Silk Road to China |
| Balboa | (1475–January 15, 1519) was a Spanish explorer, governor, and conquistador. He is best known for having crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean in 1513, becoming the first European to lead an expedition to have seen or reached the Pacific from the New World. |
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