| A | B |
|---|
| Hiawatha | Founder of the Iroquois Confederation |
| Marco Polo | Italian explorer/trade whose experiences and goods obtained in China increase Europeans' desire to find a cheaper way to the Orient |
| Ferdinand and Isabella | Married and unified Spain- expelled the Moors (the Reconquista)- and financed Columbus' expedition |
| Christopher Columbus | Explorer who believed the best way to get to the Spice Islands and Orient was to sail west across the Atlantic instead of around the Cape of Good Hope- "discovered America" in 1492 |
| Bartholomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama | Portuguese explorers/mariners who rounded the tip of Cape Horn and reached India to bring back incalculable riches respectively |
| Ferdinand Magellan | Spanish explorer whose expedition sailed around the world (1519-1522) but he himself was killed along the way |
| Amerigo Vespucci | Italian geographer who determined the discoveries of Columbus were a separate continent/landmass- America was named in his honor |
| Hernán Cortés | Spanish conquistador who conquered the Aztecs and Tenochtitlan in 1519- inspired future conquistadores with his great success |
| Francisco Pizarro | Spanish conquistador who conquered the Incas in the 1530s |
| Vasco Núnez da Balboa | Spanish conquistador who crossed Panama and first sighted the Pacific Ocean in 1513- his finding convinced Europeans for a few centuries that there was a Northwest Passage (waterway) through the Americas |
| Ponce de León | Spanish conquistador who explored Florida searching for the Fountain of Youth |
| Cabeza de Vaca | Spanish conquistador who was shipwrecked off the coast of Texas, enslaved by local Indians, and after almost a decade returned to Mexico City- told of cities made of gold to the North |
| Hernando de Soto | Spanish conquistador who explored the present-day Southeast of the United States- first white man to cross the Mississippi River |
| Francisco Coronado | Spanish conquistador who was inspired by Cabeza de Vaca's tales and marched north from Mexico City searching for the Seven Cities of Gold- explored Texas, the American Southwest, and all the way to Kansas |
| Juan de Oñate | Spanish conquistador who explored the Southwest establishing settlements in New Mexico |
| El Popé | Native American leader who led the Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish in the 1680s- drove the Spanish away for a few years |
| Bartolomé de Las Casas | Spanish priest who became critical of the encomienda system and the brutal treatment of the Native Americans |
| John Cabot | English explorer who explored the coast of New England in 1497 |
| Elizabeth I | English monarch (1558-1603) who led England to greatness, during her reign England challenged Spain (ex: Sea Dogs and defeat of Spanish Armada) and a renaissance in England (ex: Shakespeare) |
| Henry VIII | English monarch whose annulment of his wives was refused by the Catholic Church- led the English Reformation which broke away from the Catholic Church and established the Church of England |
| Sir Francis Drake | English Sea Dog that was basically a pirate preying on Spanish ships, knighted by Elizabeth I for his actions |
| Richard Hakluyt | Proponent of English colonization: need for markets, need for raw materials, need a place for surplus peoples, etc. |
| Sir Walter Raleigh | One of the founders of the Roanoke colony |
| John Smith | A leader of the Jamestown colony who saved the colony from extinction by forcing settlers to work or not eat- tyrannical ways led him to being kicked out of Jamestown and Jamestown returned to its problems |
| Lord Baltimore | Founder of Maryland as a refuge for English Catholics |
| James Oglethorpe | Founder of Georgia as a refuge for nonviolent prisoners and to establish a buffer between Spanish Florida and South Carolina |
| Martin Luther | German monk who led the Protestant Reformation in the early 1500s- the 95 Theses critical of the Catholic Church |
| John Calvin | Swiss religious leader to established the doctrine of predestination that God has already determined who is saved and who is damned- very much influenced the Puritans |
| William Bradford | Leader of the Pilgrims to Plymouth- wrote On Plymouth Plantation |
| Anne Hutchinson | Strong-willed and outspoken women who was banished by Puritan authorities in the mid-1630s to Rhode Island for her beliefs in antinomianism and claims she had special revelations from God |
| Roger Williams | Dissenter who was banished to Rhode Island by Puritan authorities because of his belief the land should be fairly purchased from the Indians and calls for separation of church and state |
| Metacom (King Philip) | Native American leader in New England who called for tribes in the area to set aside differences and fight the whites- led the bloodiest colonial Indian war in the mid-1670s |
| Edmund Andros | Appointed by the King to head the Dominion of New England- hated by colonists- recalled to England after the Glorious Revolution (1688) |
| Henry Hudson | Dutch explorer who establish Dutch claims to New York and explored the Hudson River |
| Peter Stuyvesant | Dutch leader of New Amsterdam, unsuccessfully resisted English conquest of the colony in the 1660s |
| William Penn | Founder of Pennsylvania to establish a "Holy Experiment" and a refuge for English Quakers- had the best relations with the Indians and advertised his colony to non-English settlers (ex: Germans) |
| Nathaniel Bacon | Leader of Bacon's Rebellion (1676) of disgruntled freed indentured servants on the frontier- the rebellion fizzled out with his death from dysentery |
| Olaudah Equiano | One of the 11 million Africans who made the Middle Passage- wrote the best account of the conditions of the Middle Passage |
| J. Hector Crèvecoeur | European observer who commented on the diversity of the colonies and the melting pot that was occurring |
| Jonathan Edwards | New Light minister during the Great Awakening- most known for his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" |
| George Whitefield | New Light minister from England who travelled throughout the 13 colonies preaching during the Great Awakening (1730s-1740s) |
| Benjamin Franklin | American inventor (ex: bifocals and a more efficient stove), diplomat, scientist, and author of Poor Richard's Almanack |
| John Peter Zenger | Colonial newspaper editor whose trial established the precedent for the freedom of the press because the charges of libel against him were dropped because his criticism of the governor had been true |
| John Trumbull, Benjamin West, John Singleton Copely | Colonial painters |
| Phyliss Wheatley | African-American poet during the Colonial Era |
