Building Our Country: Chapter 2: The Age of Exploration, Lessons 1–3

European merchants, or people who buy and sell goods, bought goods from Asia, such as silk and spices.

At Henry's school, sailors, scholars, mapmakers, and shipbuilders examined information and worked together to improve sea travel and invent new tools.

They also took part in the slave trade. Slave traders bought and sold humans as property.

Navigation is the process sailors use to plan their course and find their location far from land.

The astrolabe was a tool from North Africa. It measured the height of the sun or a star above the horizon.

Mapmakers learned to chart the locations of places such as harbors, mouths of rivers, and coastlines more accurately.

A patron gives money to support another person or cause.

I the early 1500s, a group of Spanish soldiers, later called conquistadors, or Spanish conquerors of the Americas, arrived.

Hernán Cortés was a conquistador who led an expedition, or organized journey, into Mexico in 1519.

Hernán Cortés was a conquistador who led an expedition, or organized journey, into Mexico in 1519.

An empire is a group of nations or peoples ruled by a single group or leader.

In 1521, in a brutal struggle, Cortés and his Indian allies captured and demolished Tenochtitlán.

A colony is a settlement or area far from the country that rules it.

An epidemic is an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly and affects many people.

At first, the Spanish forced American Indians to work the plantations under the most brutal conditions.

The arrival of the horse had an enormous impact on some American Indian cultures.

Each culture had its own distinct styles of music, dance, and celebrations.