AP U.S. History 1.1 Period 1: 1491–1607

to develop which of the following economic models?

All right, these are the Iroquois, these guys. Buff, right here.

All right, and here are your potential answers.

[ whipping sound ]

All right, a mostly mobile lifestyle.

A mix of hu...

Total reliance on maize...

[ mumbles ]

All right, well, first things first...

What is an economic model?

Well, because we're picturing Heidi Klum

doing her taxes right now, uh...

That's probably wrong.

An economic model is really just

the system of production and payment used by a particular group of people.

In this case, the question wants us

to take a look at the life of the Iroquois, these folks,

and determine how they went about keeping their society, uh, afloat.

[ pop ]

Well, if we can take a quick skim over the answer choices,

we can see that they mostly refer to food.

Hunting-gathering, maize, fishing...

Well, yeah, that makes sense.

It's not like Native Americans were running down

to their local Piggly Wiggly to buy that week's groceries with Coupons.com.

They did their own thing.

The question is... what was that thing,

and how did they do it?

Well, answer A suggests they had a mostly mobile lifestyle.

Well, no, not really.

Now, in the Great Basin, where it was harder to forage and whatnot,

tribes would regularly move on once food became scarce.

But not the Iroquois; food was plentiful all around them.

[buzzer sounds ]

What about C, a reliance on maize production?

Uh, yeah, that looks fun, but we're actually referring to this type of maize...

[ clears throat ] Sorry, that was corny. [ titters ]

Okay, well yeah, certainly the Iroquois ate their fair share of maize,

but they didn't have a total reliance on it,

as choice C says.

[ buzzer sounds ]

Have you ever tried an all-corn diet?

Uh, we would not recommend it.

So, no, they must have needed something else to survive...

What about D, traditional fishing methods?

Well, no, most of them were inland, way too far from the coast.

And it's very tricky to talk a fish

into buying a train ticket to meet you in Schenectady...

Believe us, we've tried.

[ buzzer sounds ]

So, our answer has to be B -

hunting, gathering, and agriculture.

And, yeah, the big three for these guys

were squash, beans, and maize.

So, they did a lot of planting...

but they also did plenty of hunting on top of it.

[ ding ]

Which would have been much easier to do, uh,

if they could have found an open field...

Oh, well, sorry guys.