The American Colonies Emerge
 Diverse groups from all regions of the U.S
 Nomadic v nonmigratory/farming
 Trade brought tribes in contact with one another
 Transcontinental trading networks enabled groups to
trade with one another without direct contact
 Sailing technology increased to help sailors stay on
course
 Compass and astrolabe
 Innovations in design allowed ships to sail against the
wind
 Portugese were the top country for exploration
 Around the tip of Africa, India, East Asia
 Increased profit by finding new trade routes
 English colonies not funded by kings but rather ‘joint-
stock companies’
 Investors pool wealth to support a colony that would
hopefully be profitable
 1606 King James 1 of England granted a charter to the
Virginia Company
 Lured supporters by asking for small investments in
return for any gold/silver found by colonists
 3 ships and 150 passengers reached Virginia in April
1607 and named their settlement Jamestown
 Many colonists were not used to a life of hard labor and
refused to work
 Diseases from contaminated river water & starvation
 By winter 1607 only 38 colonists survived
 In spring 1609, 600 new colonists arrived but Powhatan
Indians were concerned with growing number of colonists
and began killing livestock and destroying farms
 Following winter famine took hold again and only 60
survived
An aerial view of how
Jamestown might have
looked in the year 1614.
 1612 Jamestown colonists created a high-quality
tobacco strain that became very popular
 By 1620’s importing more that 1.5 million lbs a year
 To grow tobacco you needed laborers so Virginia
Company created the headright system
 Anyone who paid for their own or another’s passage to
Virginia received 50 acres land
 People with $ began coming over and creating
plantations- used indentures servants
 4-7 yrs of servitude in exchange for passage to N.
America, food and shelter
Seal of the Virginia
Company
Poster to Attract Settlers
to Virginia
 Africans first arrived in 1619 aboard a Dutch ship
 Continued to arrive in colony in small numbers as
indentured servants
 Africans not used as slaves because too expensive and
indentured servant cheaper
 BUT by late 1600’s a decline in indentured servants
and an increase in wealth lead colonist to begin
importing slaves in huge amounts
 By 1622 settlers and natives were battling one another-
kidnapping, attacking, killing, raiding
 Many attacks forced the Virginia Company to go
bankrupt b/c they spent $ on troops and supplies
 1624: James 1 was upset with the chaos in Virginia and
made it a royal colony
 Under direct control of the king
 Virginia’s poor settlers felt oppressed by high taxes
that went directly to the wealthy in government
 Wanted to know why $ was not being used to build forts
against the natives
 In June 1675 a dispute between Doeg tribe and poor
frontier settlers quickly turned into a full fight
 Settlers pleaded with governor for military support but
he refused to finance war that would benefit poor
settlers
 Planter Nathaniel Bacon
raises an army to fight
Native Americans on
Virginia’s frontier
 Governor declared army
illegal so Bacon headed
to Jamestown to confront
leaders about:
 Lack of representation
in VA gov’t
 Lack of support for
frontier poor
• Eventually turned violent and Bacon’s army set fire to
Jamestown
 Successes of the rebellion:
 Drew King Charles’ attention to Virginia’s gov’t and
policies
 Showed the growing power of colony’s poor
 Roger Williams was an extreme Separatist and had two
radical ideas:
 English settlers had no right to land unless they bought
it from the Native Americans
 Gov’t officials had no business punishing settlers for
their religious beliefs
 England was very upset and ordered Williams arrested
and returned to England
 He fled to present- day Providence, RI and negotiated
with the local tribe for land to set up a new colony:
Providence
 Puritans leaders soon had
another problem with
dissenter Anne Hutchinson
 Taught bible readings in her
home- stated that
worshippers don’t need
church to interpret Bible
 Puritan leaders banished
Hutchinson in 1638 and she
left with her family and
followers to Rhode Island
 First major conflict between colonists and natives was the Pequot War
 May 1637
 90 English colonists and hundreds of their Native America allies
surrounded a Pequot tribe fort and massacred men, women and
children
 King Phillip’s War
 Wampanoag chief Metacom aka King Phillip (English name)
 Natives used hit-and-run tactics to attack and burn English settlements
throughout NE
 After a year war ended when disease and heavy causalities wore down
the natives
 Natives lost power in NE but English lost one-tenth of colonial men
 Henry Hudson sails up the Hudson River
 1621 Dutch gov’t grants the Dutch West India Company
permission to colonize New Netherland
 1625 New Amsterdam (now NYC) became capital of the colony
 Profited from fur trade
 Slow to attract Dutch colonists so opened doors to variety of
people
 German, French, Scandinavians & Africans (free and slave)
 Enjoyed friendlier relations with Natives
 More focused on trading fur than land but some fights did occur
 English saw New Netherland as a “wedge” between its
northern and southern colonies
 1664 King Charles II allowed his brother James (Duke
of York) to drive out the Dutch
 Arrived in New Amsterdam’s harbor with fleet of ships
 Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant asked for people to
take arms against English but outnumbered they
surrendered without any violence
 Renamed New York and portion of land given to his
friend and named New Jersey
 Quakers believed God’s “inner light” burned inside everyone
 No formal ministers at services- anyone could speak
 Dressed plainly and opposed war – refused to serve in military
 William Penn realized that England was no place for Quakers
 Harassed for their views by Anglicans and Puritans
 Wanted to start “holy experiment”
 Place without upper class
 Every man got 50 acres of land & right to vote
 Freedom of religion and representative gov’t
 Wanted capital to be called “City of Brotherly Love”-
Philadelphia
 Penn believed that people
approached in friendship
would respond in friendship
 Penn arranged to have a
letter read to the Lenni
Lenape tribe
 Treated Natives fairly
 Provided a court with both
colonists and Native
Americans to settle
differences
 More than 50 years
Pennsylvania colony had no
conflicts with Natives
 Penn needed to attract settlers so put out advertisements
across Europe
 Settlers started coming including thousands of Germans who
brought craft and farming skills to help colony survive
 By Penn’s death in 1718 is vision of society began to fade
 Quakers became a minority
 Slavery introduced- against Quaker ideals
 But ideas of equality, cooperation and religious tolerance
remained and would become values of new American
nation