Europeans and American Indians
fought for dominance, control, and
security in North America, and
distinctive colonial and native
societies developed.
oDifferences
in imperial goals, cultures, and
the North American environments that
different empires confronted led Europeans
to develop diverse patterns of colonization.
 Spain
• tight control over process of colonization
• convert or exploit the native population
 French
& Dutch
• utilized trade alliances & intermarriage with
natives
• acquire furs & other products to export to
Europe
 British
• establish colonies based on agriculture
• utilized large numbers of men & women
 acquire land, populate settlements
 importation of indentured servants
• hostile relationships with American Indians
 due to expansion of settlements
 King Philips War
 miscegenation
• sexual relations or marriage between people of
two different races
• allowed in Spanish, French, and Dutch colonies
 with native people and,
 in Spain’s case, with enslaved Africans!
• in English colonies,
 males & females rarely intermarried
 with natives or Africans
 resulted in rigid racial hierarchy!
 Atlantic
slave trade (causes)
• abundance of land
• shortage of indentured servants
• difficulty of enslaving native peoples
• demand for colonial goods
 Triangular trade
 Middle Passage
 Barbados Slave Code
Middle Passage
 Barbados
Slave Code
• a law passed by England to provide a legal base
for slavery in the Caribbean island of Barbados
• the code's preamble, which stated that the law's
purpose was to "protect them [slaves] as we do
men's other goods and Chattels,“
 any article of tangible property other than land,
buildings, and other things annexed to land
 Barbados
Slave Code
• law required masters to provide each slave with
one set of clothing per year
 no standards for slaves' diet, housing, or working
conditions
 denied slaves even basic rights guaranteed under
English common law, such as the right to life
 allowed the slaves' owners to do entirely as they
wished to their slaves, including mutilating them and
burning them alive, without fear of reprisal
 Bacon’s Rebellion
• Nathaniel Bacon
 led frontier farmers against government of Virginia
 former indentured servants denied land
• William Berkeley
 Governor, refused protection against western Indians
• Effects:
 decrease import of indentured servants
 turn to African slavery for labor supply
 laws make slaves, and their progeny, slaves for life!
 Overt/covert
slavery
•
•
•
•
forms of resistance to
slow pace of work
sabotage equipment
run away
revolt
 New York – 1712
 Stono Rebellion - 1739
 Denmark Vesey – 1822 (planned)
 Nat Turner - 1831
 New
England Colonies
• environmental & geographic conditions:
 rocky soil
 non-navigable rivers
 short growing season
 harsh winters
• fish, fur, lumber enterprises develop
 waterfalls provide source of power
 leads to manufacturing & industry to develop
• major commercial center
 New
England Colonies
 Plymouth/Massachusetts Bay Colonies
• Puritanism
 group of Protestants in 16th century within the Church of
England (Anglican)
 demanded simplification of doctrine and worship
 advocated greater strictness in religious discipline
• puritan (lowercase)
 a person who is strict in moral or religious matters, often
excessively so!
• Puritan (Protestant) Work Ethic
 “idle hands are the devil’s workshop”
 Middle
Colonies
• environmental & geographic conditions:
 rich soil – export wheat, grains (Bread Basket Colonies)
 forests – lumber, ship building
 textile & iron industries develop
• ethnically & religiously diverse
 English, Swedes, Dutch, Germans, Scots-Irish and French
 Dutch Mennonites, French Huguenots, German Baptists,
Portuguese Jews, English Anglicans, Lutherans, Quakers,
Moravians, Amish, Dunkers, Presbyterians, and Catholics
 Pennsylvania
• William Penn
 The Quaker “Holy Experiment”





“inner light” in each person
services without formal ministers
dressed plainly
no deference to persons of rank
embraced pacifism
 no military service
 no land-owning aristocracy
 adult male settlers receive 50 acres of land & right to vote
 Pennsylvania
• Government
 a representative assembly
 freedom of religion
• Native-American Relations
 “people approached in friendship respond in friendship”
 letter to the Delaware
 paid the Delaware for their land
 regulated trade between tribes and colonists
 set up a court for adjudication of disputes
 no disputes for over 50 years!
 Southern
Colonies
• environmental & geographic conditions:
 warm climate – long growing season
 swampy land - perfect for crops such as tobacco, rice,
indigo, and sugar
 staple crop economy
 cash crops – sold for profit, not consumption
 tobacco, rice, sugar cane, cotton
 slave labor utilized
 in places, slaves constitute majority of population
 Jamestown
- 1607
• joint-stock company
 Virginia Company
• tobacco cultivation
 John Rolfe
• indentured servants
 leads to Bacon’s Rebellion and slavery
• Native-American Relations
 colonial desire for land & crop space leads to warfare
 Anglo-Powhatan Wars I & II
oEuropean
colonization efforts stimulated
intercultural contact and intensified conflict
between various groups of colonizers and
native peoples.
 European/American
Conflicts
• Anglo-Powhatan Wars – 1610 – 1646
 3 wars
 resulted in a boundary being defined between the
Indians and English lands
• King Philips War – 1675 - 1678
 New England Wampanoag natives defeated
 colonial expansion ensured
 European/American Conflicts
• Beaver Wars – 1630’s – 1640’s
 encouraged and armed by their Dutch and English
trading partners,
 the Iroquois expanded their territory and sought to
monopolize the fur trade
 realigned the tribal geography of North America
 destroyed several large tribal confederacies
• Chickasaw War – 1736
 Chickasaw vs. the French
 Chickasaw maintained themselves albeit with great loss to
both population and way of life
 resulted in enmity between the Illini and the Chickasaw
 New sources of labor
• Native Indian Slavery
 easy to escape, blend into other tribal societies
• Indentured servitude
 period of indenture – 4 – 7 years
 freedom dues
• African slavery
 slaves for life
 introduces institutional racism!
 Acquire
commodities valued in Europe
• fur
• lumber
• fish
• naval stores
 pitch
• tobacco
• rice
• indigo
 Mistrust
over conflicting interests of
European leaders and colonial citizens
• Woolen Act - 1699
 prohibited American colonists from exporting wool
 restricted the import of woolens and linens created in
other areas of the British Empire
 Mistrust
over conflicting interests of
European leaders and colonial citizens
• Mercantilism
 Navigation Acts
 Salutary Neglect
• Molasses Act – 1733
 tax on molasses
 not to raise money
 but to regulate trade
 Mistrust
over conflicting interests of
European leaders and colonial citizens
• Smuggling
 reaction to the heavy taxes and regulations imposed
by mercantilist trade policies
 widespread in Spanish & English colonies
 Trade
goods & disease cause cultural &
demographic change
• Catawba Nation
 South Carolina
 decimated by smallpox epidemics, tribal warfare and
social disruption
 declined markedly in number in the late eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries
 Trade
goods & disease cause cultural &
demographic change
• Huron Confederacy
 “As the European demand for furs increased during
the seventeenth century, both the Iroquois and the
Huron began to expand westward in search of new
furs and new Indian trading partners. This expansion
brought about some violent conflicts between the
Huron and the western Indian nations such as the
Winnebago (Ho Chunk) and Ottawa. In addition,
conflict between the Huron and the Iroquois also
increased.”
“In 1648, the Seneca and the Mohawk, both members of the
Iroquois League of Five Nations, set out to destroy the
Huron trading network. The Seneca, armed with firearms
obtained from the Dutch, attacked the Huron town of
Teanaostaiaé. Three hundred of the 2,000 inhabitants of
the town were killed and 700 were taken captive. The
following year, the Iroquois, supplied with 400 guns and
unlimited ammunition on credit by the Dutch, attacked
and destroyed the Huron. This marked the end of the
Huron confederacy. Many of the Huron people took
refuge with other Indian nations in the Great Lakes area. A
new nation, however, the Wyandot, composed of Huron
refugees as well as other Indian refugees, soon emerged,
but did not challenge the Iroquois supremacy.”
Native American Netroots
 Trade
goods & disease cause cultural &
demographic change
• Wampanoag
 About 1614, a series of three epidemics, inadvertently
introduced through contact with Europeans, began to
sweep through the Indian villages in Massachusetts.
At least ten Wampanoag villages were abandoned
because there were no survivors. The Wampanoag
population decreased from 12,000 to 5,000.
 Trade
goods & disease cause cultural &
demographic change
• Wampanoag
 In 1675, pushed by the Puritans who demanded that
the Indians obey Puritan law and who severely
punished the Indians who did not
 Metacom asserted the sovereignty of his people by
going to war
 As a result of this war – commonly called King Philip’s
War – many of the smaller Indian nations were
destroyed or scattered

Trade goods & disease cause cultural &
demographic change
• Metacom stumbled into an ambush in which he was shot
and killed. The English drew and quartered his body and
took his head to Plymouth where it was displayed to the
public for 20 years
• “Head was carried in triumph to Plymouth, where it
arrived on the very Day that the Church there was
keeping a Solemn Thanksgiving to God. God sent ‘em in
the Head of a Leviathan for a Thanksgiving-Feast.”
• Cotton Mather
• By the end of the war, the Wampanoag were nearly
exterminated: only 400 survived
 Spanish
worldview
• seek accommodation with Native culture
 after Pueblo Revolt – 1680,
 the Pueblo Indians gain a measure of freedom from future
Spanish efforts to eradicate their culture and religion
 Spanish issued substantial land grants
 appointed a public defender to protect the rights of the
Indians
 did not again attempt to impose a theocracy on the Pueblo
who continued to practice their traditional religion
 English
worldview
• land ownership
 private vs. tribal/communal
• gender roles
 matrilineal v. patrilineal
 matriarchal v. patriarchal
• reinforced through contact/conflict
 “praying towns”
 seek religious conversion, abandonment of native ways
 gatherer-hunter lifestyle, clothing, rituals, etc…
 American
Indian warfare increases in
intensity & destructiveness
• deadlier weapons
 long rifle
 musket
• alcohol
 great disrupter of Indian life
 greater susceptibility to effects
oThe
increasing political, economic, and
cultural exchanges within the “Atlantic
World” had a profound impact on the
development of colonial societies in North
America.
 Atlantic
economy
• shared labor market
 servants, slaves, free blacks
• wide exchange of goods
 African slave trade
 products of Americas
 fur, lumber, fish, naval stores, pitch, tobacco, rice, indigo,
sugar cane, etc …
 Anglicization (convert
• Political communities
 Pennsylvania
to English norms)
 William Penn
 The Quaker “Holy Experiment”





“inner light” in each person
services without formal ministers
dressed plainly
no deference to persons of rank
embraced pacifism
 no military service
 no land-owning aristocracy
 adult male settlers receive 50 acres of land & right to vote
 Pennsylvania
• Government
 a representative assembly
 freedom of religion
• Native-American Relations
 “people approached in friendship respond in
friendship”
 paid the Delaware for their land
 regulated trade between tribes and colonists
 set up a court for adjudication of disputes
 no disputes for over 50 years!
 Anglicization
(convert to English norms)
• Commercial ties
 Joint-stock companies
 Virginia Company
 London Company
 Anglicization
(convert to English norms)
• Legal structures
 Anglicization
(convert to English norms)
• Protestant evangelism
 Anglicization (convert
• Religious toleration
to English norms)
 Maryland Act of Toleration
• freedom of worship for all Christians in
Maryland
• sentenced to death anyone who denied the
divinity of Jesus
 Atheists, Jews
 Anglicization
(convert to English norms)
• Enlightenment Ideas
 John Locke – 1632 - 1704
 English philosopher
 ideas concerning the natural rights of man and the social
contract
 theories concerning the separation of Church and State,
religious freedom, and liberty
 influenced European Enlightenment writer, Voltaire
 shaped the thinking of America's founders, from Alexander
Hamilton to Thomas Jefferson
 Slavery
on race
& colonial wars impacted ideas
• Casta System
 determined a persons social importance in old
Mexico
 one-hundred different terms to describe different
racial categories




Españoles - persons of pure Spanish ancestry
Indios/Indias - persons of pure Indian Ancestry
Mestizos/Mestizas - one Spanish and one Indian parent
Mulattos/Mulattas - one Spanish and one Black parent
 Slavery
& colonial wars impacted growth
of ideas on race
• Metis
 are one of the recognized Aboriginal peoples of
Canada
 descendents of mixed First Nations & Europeans
 essentially, Native American’s of Canada
• often associated with lower social class
distinction
 British
colonies develop similar patterns
• Culture
• Laws
• Institutions
• Government
 Britain’s
efforts to integrate colonies into
imperial structure and pursue
mercantilist economic gains …
• meets with scant success
 colonial resistance
 smuggling
 conflicts with Native Americans
 British indifference to colonial governance
 Navigation Acts
 salutary neglect
 Resistance
to imperial control
• Experiences of self-government
 House of Burgesses
 direct representation
 vs. virtual representation
• Evolving local ideas of liberty
 Resistance
to imperial control
• Political thought of Enlightenment
 republicanism
 civic virtue
 sacrifice one’s own personal/individual interest
 in favor of the community interest
• Greater religious independence & diversity
 Great Awakening
 Resistance
to imperial control
• Ideology of corruption in imperial system