APUSH Period 1: Pre-Columbian to Early Contact

This is Cahokia, located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois, USA — built precisely where the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers meet in the broad, flat heartland of North America. At its peak…

This is Chaco Canyon, located in present-day New Mexico in the American Southwest — a high desert basin set within the Colorado Plateau, deep in the interior of North America far from any coast…

Cliff Palace sits inside Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, in the southwestern United States — exactly where the Rocky Mountains break into the high desert canyon country of the Colorado Plateau…

This founding took place in the Onondaga territory of what is now upstate New York, USA — in the forested hills and lake-studded lowlands south of the St. Lawrence River and east of the Great Lakes…

This is Machu Picchu, perched on a mountain ridge in present-day Peru, high in the Andes range that runs like a spine down the western side of South America. Around 1450 CE, Inca builders constructed…

On 12 October 1492, Christopher Columbus, sailing under the Spanish crown, made landfall on an island in the Bahamas archipelago — a chain of low coral islands in the western Atlantic Ocean, between…

In 1493 Christopher Columbus's second voyage founded La Isabela on the north coast of Hispaniola — the first planned European town in the Americas — and unloaded horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, wheat…

Tordesillas, a small town in central Spain on the Castilian plateau between the Tagus and Douro rivers, was where Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. The two Iberian powers…

Cape Bonavista on Newfoundland's eastern shore is the most widely accepted landfall for John Cabot's June 1497 voyage aboard the Matthew, sponsored by England's Henry VII. Cabot made the crossing in…

This is Cusco, Peru — a highland city sitting deep in the Andes mountain range, far inland from the Pacific coast on the western spine of South America. Around 1500, the Inca civilization used…

Ollantaytambo, in present-day Peru, sits high in the Andes of western South America — exactly where the mountain spine the title described runs through the heart of the continent, far from any coast…

This event is set in Tenochtitlan, the great island city built on a lake in the high Valley of Mexico, sitting atop the broad central plateau between the Sierra Madre Occidental and Sierra Madre…

This stone was carved in Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, located in the high Valley of Mexico on a plateau deep in the interior of North America, far south of the Rio Grande and…

Santo Domingo, on the south coast of Hispaniola — the large Caribbean island lying between Cuba and Puerto Rico — was the first permanent European city in the Americas and the seat of Spain's…

In April 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León made the first documented European landing on mainland North America north of Mexico, touching the Atlantic coast of what is now Florida near…

Darién, on the Caribbean coast of what is now Panama, was the staging point for Vasco Núñez de Balboa's September 1513 crossing of the isthmus. He led roughly 190 Spaniards and hundreds of indigenous…

This event unfolded in Tenochtitlan, the island capital of the Aztec Empire, built on a lake in the high Valley of Mexico — a volcanic plateau sitting at roughly 2,200 metres above sea level, almost…

This is Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital built on an island in Lake Texcoco, located in the high Valley of Mexico on the central plateau of present-day Mexico — roughly midway between the Pacific and…

This is Tenochtitlan — today's Mexico City — built on an island in Lake Texcoco on the high central plateau of Mexico, exactly where North America's mountain spine narrows before reaching the land…

New York Bay is a large sheltered harbour on the mid-Atlantic coast of North America, enclosed by Long Island to the north-east, Staten Island to the south-west, and the New Jersey shore, with a…

Hispaniola is a large Caribbean island shared today by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, lying between Cuba to the west and Puerto Rico to the east, in the Caribbean Sea. In 1525, the first ships…

This event unfolded in Cusco, Peru — a city perched high in the Andes mountains along South America's western backbone, exactly the highland core the title clue pointed toward. Around 1529, following…

The pin lands at Cajamarca, Peru — a highland city sitting in a narrow Andean valley at roughly 2,750 metres above sea level, on the Pacific side of the continent and just south of the equator…

This event unfolded at Cajamarca, a city in the Andean highlands of modern-day Peru — set in a mountain basin deep within the Andes range, hundreds of kilometres inland from the Pacific coast of…

In the summer of 1534, French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, planted a cross at Gaspé Peninsula on the south shore, and claimed the territory for France — the first…

This is Lima, the capital of modern-day Peru, sitting on a narrow desert strip between the Pacific Ocean and the towering Andes — exactly the geographic setting the clue described. In January 1535…

In September 1540, a scouting party from Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's expedition, led by García López de Cárdenas, became the first Europeans to reach and view the Grand Canyon of the Colorado…

In May 1541, Hernando de Soto and his expedition became the first Europeans to reach and cross the Mississippi River, near what is now Memphis, Tennessee. After wintering among the Chickasaw people…

In 1550–51, at the Colegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid — a city on the Pisuerga river in the Castilian heartland of Spain — the Crown convened the first formal European debate on the rights of…

On July 12, 1562, Friar Diego de Landa, the leading Catholic authority in Yucatán, presided over an auto-da-fé in the central plaza of Maní — a town in the central Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico…

St. Augustine, Florida, on the Atlantic coast of the southeastern United States, sits roughly 350 kilometres north of the Florida Straits — the narrow channel separating North America from Cuba…

In 1576, English navigator Martin Frobisher led the first English expedition into the Canadian Arctic, reaching the southern coast of Baffin Island and sailing into the bay now bearing his name…

In June 1579, English privateer Francis Drake anchored at a bay on the California coast — most likely present-day Drakes Bay at Point Reyes — during his circumnavigation of the globe. He spent five…

Roanoke Island sits off the coast of present-day North Carolina, United States — a small island sheltered behind the Outer Banks, the long ribbon of barrier islands that separates the Atlantic Ocean…

In 1598 Juan de Oñate led a Spanish expedition north from New Spain up the Rio Grande to colonise the province of New Mexico, founding the first European settlement in the Southwest at San Juan / San…