Great civilizations had risen and fallen in the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans. In North America, the complex Pueblo societies including the Mogollon, Hohokam, and Anasazi as well as the city at Cahokia had peaked and were largely memories.

The Eastern Woodland peoples were thriving, but they were soon overwhelmed as the number of English, French, and Dutch settlers increased Mesoamerica and South America had also witnessed the rise and fall of cultures.

chattel slavery — a system of servitude in which people are treated as personal property to be bought and sold. Black Death — two strains of the bubonic plague that simultaneously swept western Europe in the fourteenth century, causing the death of nearly half the population. chinampas — floating Aztec gardens consisting of a large barge woven from reeds, filled with dirt and floating on the water, allowing for irrigation. Crusades — a series of military expeditions made by Christian Europeans to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries.