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Category: US History
Date Submitted: 09/29/2011 06:38 AM
Kristopher Geordan Brown
History 1050
Section 4
Chapter 1 Ancient America and Africa (Contact)
Chapter One starts off talking about how the first societies of peoples starting meeting one another. There were also three main women of that time period that had tremendous impacts the world today. These women were from Europe, Africa, and America.
Isabella of Castile was the first major influence. She married the King of Aragon which brought Spain together. After the unity, Isabella found a young explorer and funded his voyages to try and expand Spain’s power across the Atlantic Ocean. Isabella also wanted to convert as many people to Christianity as possible.
Another important female figure was Tecuichpotzin. She also went by Isabella for short. She was an Aztec woman and her main influence was that she mixed her people with the Spanish. When she was eleven she first saw the Spanish conquistadors under Cortes. Isabella’s sick father offered his daughter to the conquistadors as a type of bargain to keep the Spanish content for a while. Soon after Isabella was reclaimed by her people and eventually married her Uncle. Her new husband became leader of the Aztecs when his brother died. In 1521 the Spanish conquered the Aztec island capital and introduced Isabella to the Spanish life. Five years later she was informed about her husband being tortured and hanged for planning an uprising against Cortez. Isabella became one of Cortes’s mistresses and for a while until she became pregnant. She then was married to a Spanish Officer and had a few more children with him. She remarried once more and had seven children all together throughout her life. All of her children became successful people with wealth and land. They all made a name for themselves.
An important African woman by the name of Njinga was born around 1582. Her name means “to twist or turn” because she was born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. To the African people this was a sign of noble...