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From Andean Fields to Prussian Farms: The Potato in Two Sources

Grade 7 geography: trace the potato from the Andes to Europe in the Columbian Exchange with adapted excerpts from Cieza de León (1553) and Frederick II (1756).

Grade 7Social StudiesInteractive · Printable

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12 questions
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Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 7
Subject: Social Studies
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students explain how plants, animals, people and diseases moved between the Andes and Europe after 1492.
Students source two adapted documents by their author, audience and purpose.
Students explain the gains and risks the potato brought to Europe.

How to use

Read the passage first and mark each thing that crossed the ocean, then read each excerpt with its sourcing note before students answer and write their claim.

Curriculum

C3 Framework standard covered

GEO.7.2

Explain the Columbian Exchange: how plants, animals, people and diseases moved between the hemispheres and what changed as a result.

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From Andean Fields to Prussian Farms: The Potato in Two Sources

Source a Spanish chronicle and a king's order to trace the potato across the Atlantic.

The potato's journey

Read the passage. Then answer the questions.

The Potato Leaves the Andes

1Long before 1492, peoples of the Andes Mountains, in what are now Peru and Bolivia, turned a wild plant into the potato. Over thousands of years, farmers there bred hundreds of kinds, each suited to a different height, soil or climate. Potatoes grew high on cold slopes where maize could not ripen. Andean farmers also made chuño: they left potatoes out to freeze on cold nights, pressed out the water and dried them in the sun. Chuño could be stored for years. Quechua and Aymara farmers in the Andes still grow many kinds of potatoes and make chuño today.

2The exchange that followed Columbus's voyages ran in both directions. In the Andes, Spanish colonists introduced wheat, barley, cattle, sheep and horses. Diseases came too. Smallpox spread through the Inca Empire in the 1520s, even before Spanish soldiers arrived, and killed many people, probably including the ruler Huayna Capac. After the Spanish conquered the Inca in the 1530s, they found a huge silver deposit at Potosí in 1545 and sent thousands of Indigenous men, many of them forced, to work in its mines.

3Potatoes crossed the Atlantic in the 1500s. By the 1570s, a hospital in Seville, Spain, was buying them for its patients. Many European farmers were slow to plant them. The plant looked strange, it grew from pieces of potato rather than from seed, and some people believed it caused illness. Over the next two centuries, however, potatoes spread across Europe.

4Potatoes grew well in cool, damp places and in poor soil, and a field of potatoes could feed more people than a field of the same size planted with wheat or rye. Populations in Europe, Asia and Africa grew quickly between 1700 and 1900, and one study estimated that the potato explains about a quarter of that growth. Yet depending on one crop was risky. In Ireland, many poor families ate little else. When a plant disease called blight, which had crossed the Atlantic from the Americas, destroyed the potato crops beginning in 1845, about one million people in Ireland died and more than a million left the country.

In about 1500, hail ruins the potato harvest of a village high in the Andes. Based on paragraph 1, what would most likely help the village through the year?

A. Planting maize on the cold slopes above the village
B. Buying wheat from Spanish farmers in the valley
C. Eating chuño stored from earlier harvests
D. Trading potatoes with farmers in Seville

Use paragraphs 2–4. Sort each effect of the Columbian Exchange by where it happened.

Colonists brought in cattle, sheep and horses.Smallpox spread before Spanish soldiers arrived.A hospital bought potatoes for its patients.Thousands of men were sent to dig silver.Blight destroyed the potato crop beginning in 1845.Many poor families came to eat little besides potatoes.

In the Andes	In Europe

A farm family in northern Europe has a small, damp field with poor soil. Based on paragraph 4, why might potatoes help them more than rye?

A. Rye fields needed more sunshine than northern Europe gets.
B. Potatoes could be sold to the hospital in Seville for silver.
C. The field could feed more people if planted with potatoes.
D. Potatoes were safe from any plant disease in Europe.

What does Ireland after 1845 best show about the Columbian Exchange?

A. A new crop that fed many could leave them at risk.
B. Crops from the Americas grew poorly in Europe's climate.
C. Diseases moved from Europe to the Americas but not back.
D. Irish farmers had refused to plant potatoes at first.

Two sources, two centuries apart

Read each sourcing note and excerpt. Then answer the questions.

Excerpt A. Sourcing note: Pedro de Cieza de León was a Spanish soldier who traveled through the Andes in the 1540s, after the conquest. His book, the Chronicle of Peru, was printed in Seville in 1553 for readers in Spain. The Collao is a high, cold region around Lake Titicaca.
Adapted from a translation of Cieza de León, Chronicle of Peru, 1553
"Besides maize, the native people have another food that is a main support of their lives, called papas. It is a kind of root. After it is boiled, it is as tender as a cooked chestnut. It has no more skin than a truffle, and it grows under the earth in the same way. In the cold lands of the Collao, the people dry these papas in the sun and keep them from one harvest to the next. Once dried, they call them chuño, and they value them highly. Many Spaniards grew rich by carrying this chuño to sell at the mines of Potosí."

Excerpt B. Sourcing note: Frederick II was king of Prussia, a German state. In March 1756 he sent this order to his officials in Silesia, one of his provinces. A popular story says he later had soldiers guard royal potato fields so that peasants would think potatoes were valuable and steal them. Historians have not found good evidence from his time for that story.
Adapted from a translation of Frederick II's order on potatoes, 1756
"In our other provinces we have ordered the planting of the earth fruit called potatoes, which is useful in many ways for both people and animals. You are to make the lords and the people of Silesia understand how useful this plant is, and advise them to plant it this spring. Wherever an empty place can be found, potatoes should be planted there, for this fruit is not only good to eat but also gives a large harvest. You shall also see that the people are taught how to plant it."

Why does Cieza compare papas to a cooked chestnut and a truffle?

A. To describe a new food using foods his readers knew
B. To warn his readers that papas could make them ill
C. To show that papas came from Spain to the Andes
D. To prove that Andean farmers also grew chestnuts

Circle the sentence in Excerpt A that links an Andean food to the Spanish silver mines.

Besides maize, the native people have another food that is a main support of their lives, called papas.In the cold lands of the Collao, the people dry these papas in the sun and keep them from one harvest to the next.Once dried, they call them chuño, and they value them highly.Many Spaniards grew rich by carrying this chuño to sell at the mines of Potosí.

Cieza was a Spanish soldier writing for readers in Spain. What is one limit of Excerpt A as evidence?

A. Its writer learned about the Andes from books in Spain.
B. It shows little of how Andean farmers saw these changes.
C. It describes potatoes in Prussia instead of Peru.
D. It was written centuries after potatoes reached Europe.

What was the main purpose of Frederick's order?

A. To stop peasants from stealing from royal potato fields
B. To set a tax on the potatoes grown in Silesia
C. To have officials persuade people to grow potatoes
D. To bring new kinds of potatoes to Prussia from the Andes

The order tells officials to "make the lords and the people understand" the potato's value and to teach planting. What does this suggest about Silesia in 1756?

A. Potatoes were already the main crop on most of its farms.
B. Its people had brought the potato there from Peru.
C. Its officials had planted potatoes since the 1570s.
D. Many of its farmers had not yet taken up the potato.

10.

Use the sourcing note for Excerpt B. How should a historian treat the story of the guarded potato fields?

A. As proof that Silesian peasants were dishonest
B. As a legend, unless evidence from the time supports it
C. As a fact, since it is told about a real king
D. As a fact, since the order mentions soldiers and fields

11.

Cieza's book was printed in 1553. Frederick sent his order in 1756. Subtract the years.

Frederick's order came years after Cieza's book was printed.

12.

Claim: The potato did not change Europe as soon as it arrived; it took Europeans a long time to accept it. Do you agree? Use evidence from both excerpts and the passage, and explain your reasoning.