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These were the earliest people in what is now Ohio. They arrived at the end of the Ice Age after the Wisconsin Glacier retreated north.
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The climate had warmed around 10,000 years ago after the Ice Age. Cuyahoga Valley began to resemble what you see today. The amount and variety of food increased dramatically but varied with the seasons.
Archaic people stayed in their seasonal base camps longer and lived in larger groups.
They used atlatls (spear-throwers) to hunt, stone axes to make canoes, and nets and bone hooks to fish. -
New belief systems became popular. Some Early Woodland people were part of the Adena culture. The Middle-Weblands period was the height of the Hopewell culture. People in Cuyahoga Valley did not leave behind the finely made objects found at southern sites.
The Woodland people are best known for building complex earthworks for ceremonies and as burial sites. Some of the most famous ones are in southern Ohio. In Cuyahoga Valley, these include unique hilltop enclosures that overlook the river. -
During the Late Prehistoric period, the Whittlesey people lived in Northeast Ohio. The Rocky River appears to be their territorial boundary to the west.
By 1650, the Whittlesey had abandoned their sites in the Cuyahoga Valley, about 100 years before the first Europeans arrived. They were likely displaced by warfare caused by the beaver fur trade. Their descendants are probably still alive, but call themselves by another name. -
The First Crusade was formed to recapture Jerusalem for Christendom. Two groups of Crusaders take up the mission. The first was an informal band of brothers called the “People’s Crusade,” made up of untrained peasantry from across Europe and led by Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless. The second force comprised official fighters, also known as the “Princes’ Crusade.” it was led by the nobility, such as Raymond of Toulouse and Bohemond of Taranto, with better money, training, and equipment.
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The Kingdom of Jerusalem is created.
The First Crusade goal is accomplished. -
The Crusaders, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, defeated the Fatimid army and its attempts to recapture Jerusalem. With the Muslim forces repelled the battle marks an end to the fighting and the conclusion of the First Crusade.
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Launch of the Reconquista in Spain.
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Launch of the Second Crusade in response to the fall of the County of Edessa which had been founded by King Baldwin I of Jerusalem in 1098.
Pope Eugenius III makes the announcement of the Second Crusade which was to be led, for the first time by European kings, Louis VII of France and Conrad of Germany. Islamic forces led by Zangi’s son, Nu red-Din. -
The Muslim Seljuk leader Nur al-Din captures Antioch which was previously held by the Crusaders.
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Jerusalem falls to Saladin, who now has a mighty combined fighting force. Pope Gregory VIII called for the Third Crusade to recapture Jerusalem. Three European monarchs, Richard I of England, Philip II of France, and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, led the charge to capture the Holy City; for this reason, the Third Crusade is also known as the Kings’ Crusade.
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In September 1192, Richard and Saladin signed a peace treaty that reestablished the Kingdom of Jerusalem (though without the city of Jerusalem) and ended the Third Crusade.
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Though Pope Innocent III called for a new Crusade in 1198, power struggles within and between Europe and Byzantium drove the Crusaders to divert their mission to topple the reigning Byzantine emperor, Alexius III, in favor of his nephew, who became Alexius IV in mid-1203.
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Zara laid siege by the Crusaders and taken from the Hungarians on the Dalmatian Coast. This was the first attack against a fellow Christian city by the Crusaders. Zara (Zadar) was a constant battleground between Venice on one side and Croatia and Hungary on the other, whose king, Emeric, pledged himself to join the Crusade. Pope Innocent III forbids such an action and threatens excommunication however the attack goes ahead anyway and Zara falls on 24 November.
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The Fourth Crusade ended with the devastating Fall of Constantinople, marked by a bloody conquest, looting, and near-destruction of the magnificent Byzantine capital later that year. Count Baldwin of Flanders, as a result, is made the first Latin Emperor of Constantinople and crowned in the Hagia Sophia.
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It was an unofficial Crusade(never received papal approval). Nicholas of Cologne and Stephen of Cloyes of Northern France led their peers to form a band of child crusaders. Some who marched across the Alps to arrive in Rome even had an audience with the Pope.
Sadly, many did not survive the journey. Some would decide to stay in Italy to make their fortunes, while many of the French children were exploited by William the Pig and Hugh the Iron, who sold them into slavery and sent them on to Tunis. -
Pope Innocent III called for the Fifth Crusade.
After the failure of the Fourth Crusade, Pope Innocent III began organizing armies led by Andrew II of Hungary and Leopold VI of Austria, soon to be joined by John of Brienne, titular King of Jerusalem.
The plan is to conquer Egypt, ruled by the powerful Ayyubid sultanate, led by al-Adil, Saladin’s brother. -
The Crusaders surrendered Damietta and agreed to an eight-year truce in exchange for allowing the Crusader army to pass and free the prisoners of war.
The war ends, and the Crusaders return to Europe, achieving nothing for their efforts. -
Under the ambitious leadership of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, who was keen to see his power restored.
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Emperor Frederick II returns to Europe demonstrating that success could be achieved without military intervention.
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The Seventh Crusade was formed to attack Muslim-held cities in North Africa and Egypt and led by Louis IX.
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Louis IX, leader of the Seventh Crusade, is released by his captors, the Ayyubid Dynasty.
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The Eighth Crusade was formed to attack Muslim-held cities in North Africa and led by Louis IX.
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Troops disbanding led by Charles of Anjou. Caught up in a storm with many lives lost.
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In 1291, one of the only remaining Crusader cities, Acre, fell to the Muslim Mamluks. Many historians believe this defeat marked the end of the Crusader States and the Crusades.
The Church organized minor Crusades with limited goals after 1291. Support for such efforts diminished in the 16th century with the rise of the Reformation and the corresponding decline of papal authority. -
Explorer Christopher Columbus, funded by Spain, landed in
Present-day Bahamas in North America. -
The first encounters between Europeans and Native Americans were dramatic events. In this account, we see the assumptions and intentions of Christopher Columbus as he immediately began assessing the potential of these people to serve European economic interests.
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He also predicted easy success for missionaries seeking to convert these people to Christianity.
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The following primary source is a letter written by Christopher Columbus to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, in which he advised that the Spanish Crown capitalize on the newfound lands by creating colonies and setting up structures for governance, focusing on the island of Hispaniola (Espanola), which is today Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
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Henry VII of England funded John Cabot’s voyage to find a northern route to Asia. Cabot reached what he called Newfoundland.
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Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés marched on
Tenochtitlán and encountered Aztec ruler Montezuma II. -
Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro arrived in South
America and encountered the Inca Empire. -
Jacques Cartier sails to the New World for France in hopes of finding the Northwest Passage. Instead, he reaches what is now known as Canada.
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Francisco Våzquez de Coronado explored the interior of the United States in what is now Kansas. Coronado was motivated by tales of seven fabulously wealthy cities with gold-paved streets. Coronado was one of a long list of conquistadors who set out to find Cibola. But gold was not their only motivation. It was also their intention to convert the indigenous people to Catholicism.
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Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Spanish Dominican priest, wrote directly to the King of Spain, hoping for new laws to prevent the brutal exploitation of Native Americans. Las Casas’s writings quickly spread around Europe and were used as humanitarian justification for other European nations to challenge Spain’s colonial empire with their schemes of conquest and colonization.
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Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, one of Spain's top naval officers in the 1500s, took up the challenge of finding gold in Florida. Four weeks later, he landed off Florida's east coast. Menéndez established a Spanish base. He named it Saint Augustine after the feast day Spanish Catholics observed on the day of the landing. A colony was built around this fort, becoming the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement anywhere in North America.
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Richard Hakluyt used this document to persuade Queen Elizabeth I to devote more money and energy into encouraging English colonization. In twenty-one chapters, summarized here, Hakluyt emphasized the many benefits that England would receive by creating colonies in the Americas.
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Samuel de Champlain made great strides in French exploration of the New World. He explored the Caribbean in 1601.
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Samuel de Champlain explored the coast of New England in 1603 before traveling farther north.
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The first permanent English colony in North America was
founded in Jamestown, Virginia. -
Samuel de Champlain founded the first French settlement in North America. It was called Quebec and is in modern-day Canada.
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Fort Nassau, a trading post near modern-day Albany, New York, was the first Dutch settlement in North America.
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One day that fall, four settlers were sent to hunt for food for a harvest celebration. The Wampanoag heard gunshots and alerted their leader, Massasoit, who thought the English might be preparing for war.
Soon after their visit, the Native Americans realized that the English were only hunting for the harvest celebration. The meal consisted of deer, corn, shellfish, and roasted meat, different from today's traditional Thanksgiving feast. -
Account of the first contact of the Ho-Chunk
(Winnebago) with explorer Jean Nicolet in
Green Bay in 1634, and the later marriage
of a French soldier to the daughter of a
Ho-Chunk chief, as related in the early
twentieth century to ethnologist Paul Radin. -
In the Northeast, colonists are aggressively encroaching on Wampanoag land and trying to establish settlements. Metacomet (also known as King Philip of Wampanoag) works with neighboring Wampanoags, Narragansetts, Nipmucks, Mohegans, and Podunks and leads a military action against the English. They respond violently, capturing and assassinating him. King Philip’s War begins.
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Historians often connect this event to the decline of indentured servitude and the corresponding rise of slavery within the British American colonies. The central figures in Bacon's Rebellion were opposites. Governor Sir William Berkeley, Berkeley's antagonist, young Nathaniel Bacon, Jr.egan with a local dispute with the Doeg Indians on the Potomac River. Chased north by Virginia militiamen, the Indians began raiding the Virginia frontier.
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Pueblo Indians mounted a massive resistance against the Spanish presence. The revolt is known as Pope's Revolt after Popé, the medicine man of the San Juan Pueblo, who led it. The Spanish were forced to flee, and for twelve years, the members of the pueblo resumed their lives without the cruel treatment of the Spanish.