The American Pageant Chapter 1 Summary

The American Pageant, 13th Edition Textbook Notes
Chapter 01 - New World Beginnings
I. The Shaping of North America
1. Recorded history began 6,000 years ago. It was 500 years ago that Europeans set foot on the Americas to begin colonization
2. The theory of Pangaea exists suggesting that the continents were once nestled together into one mega-continent. They then spread out as drifting islands.
3. Geologic forces of continental plates created the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains.
4. The Great Ice Age thrust down over North America & scoured the present day American Midwest.
II. Peopling the Americas
1. The Land Bridge theory. o As the Great Ice Age diminished, so did the glaciers over North America. o The theory holds that
a Land Bridge emerged linking Asia & North America across what is now known as the Bering
Sea. People were said to have walked across the "bridge" before the sea level rose and sealed it off; thus populating the Americas. o The Land Bridge is said to have occurred an estimated 35,000 years ago.
2. Many peoples o Those groups that traversed the bridge spread across North, Central, and South America. o Countless tribes emerged with an estimated 2,000 languages. Notably:
 Incas: Peru, with elaborate network of roads and bridges linking their empire.
 Mayas: Yucatan Peninsula, with their step pyramids.
 Aztecs: Mexico, with step pyramids and huge sacrifices of conquered peoples.
III. The Earliest Americans
1. Development of corn or maize around 5,000 B.C. in Mexico was revolutionary in that: o Then, people didn't have to be hunter-gatherers, they could settle down and be farmers. o This fact gave rise to towns and then cities. o Corn arrived in the present day U.S. around 1,200 B.C.
2. Pueblo Indians o The Pueblos were the 1st American corn growers. o They lived in adobe houses (dried mud) and pueblos ("villages" in
Spanish). Pueblos are villages of cubicle shaped adobe houses, stacked one on top the other and often beneath cliffs. o They had elaborate irrigation systems to draw water away from rivers to grown corn.
3. Mound Builders o These people built huge ceremonial and burial mounds and were located in the Ohio Valley. o Cahokia, near East St. Louis today, held 40,000 people.
4. Eastern Indians o Eastern Indians grew corn, beans, and squash in three sister farming:
 Corn grew in a stalk providing a trellis for beans, beans grew up the stalk, squash's broad leaves kept the sun off the ground and thus kept the moisture in the soil.
 This group likely had the best (most diverse) diet of all North American Indians and is typified by the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw (South) and Iroquois (North).
5. Iroquois Confederation o Hiawatha was the legendary leader of the group. o The Iroquois Confederation was a group of 5 tribes in New York state. o They were matrilineal as authority and possessions passed down through the female line. o Each tribe kept their independence, but met occasionally to discuss matters of common interest, like war/defense. o This was not the norm. Usually, Indians were scattered and separated (and thus weak).
6. Native Americans had a very different view of things as compared to Europeans. o Native Americans felt no man owned the land, the tribe did. (Europeans liked private property) o Indians felt nature was mixed with many spirits. (Europeans were Christian and monotheistic) o Indians felt nature was sacred. (Europeans felt nature and land was given to man by God in Genesis to be subdued and put to use). o Indians had little or no concept or interest in money. (Europeans loved money or gold)
IV. Indirect Discoverers of the New World
1. The 1st Europeans to come to America were the Norse (Vikings from Norway). o Around 1000 AD, the Vikings landed, led by Erik the Red and Leif Erikson. o They landed in Newfoundland or Vinland (because of all the vines). o However, these men left America and left no written record and therefore didn't get the credit. o The only record is found in Viking sagas or songs.
2. The Christian Crusaders of Middle Ages fought in Palestine to regain the Holy Land from Muslims. This mixing of East and West created a sweet-tooth where Europeans wanted the spices of the exotic East.
V. Europeans Enter Africa
1. Marco Polo traveled to China and stirred up a storm of European interest.
2. Mixed with desire for spices, an East to West (Asia to Europe) trade flourished but had to be overland, at least in part. This initiated new exploration down around Africa in hopes of an easier (all water) route.
3. Portugal literally started a sailing school to find better ways to get to the Spice Islands, eventually rounding Africa's southern Cape of Good Hope.
4. New developments: o caravel: a ship with triangular sail that could better tack (zig-zag) ahead into the wind and thus return to Europe from Africa coast. o compass: to determine direction. o astrolabe: a sextant gizmo that could tell a ship's latitude.
5. Slave trade begins o The 1st slave trade was across the Sahara Desert. o Later, it was along the West African coast. Slave traders purposely busted up tribes and families in order to squelch any possible uprising. o Slaves wound up on sugar plantations the Portuguese had set up on the tropical islands off Africa's coast. o Spain watched Portugal's success with exploration and slaving and wanted a piece of the pie.
VI. Columbus Comes upon a New World
1. Christopher Columbus convinced Isabella and Ferdinand to fund his expedition.
2. His goal was to reach the East (East Indies) by sailing west, thus bypassing the around-Africa route that Portugal monopolized.
3. He misjudged the size of the Earth though, thinking it 1/3 the size of what it was.
4. So, after 30 days or so at sea, when he struck land, he assumed he'd made it to the East Indies and therefore mistook the people as "Indians."
5. This spawned the following system: o Europe would provide the market, capital, technology. o Africa would provide the labor. o The New World would provide the raw materials (gold, soil, lumber).
VII. When Worlds Collide
1. Of huge importance was the biological flip-flop of Old and New
Worlds. Simply put, we traded life such as plants, foods, animals, germs. 2. Columbian Exchange: o From the New World (America) to the Old
 corn, potatoes, tobacco, beans, peppers, manioc, pumpkin, squash, tomato, wild rice, etc.
 also, syphilis o From the Old World to the New
 cows, pigs, horses, wheat, sugar cane, apples, cabbage, citrus, carrots, Kentucky bluegrass, etc.
 devastating diseases (smallpox, yellow fever, malaria), as Indians had no immunities.
 The Indians had no immunities in their systems built up over generations.
 An estimated 90% of all pre-Columbus Indians died, mostly due to disease.
VIII. The Spanish Conquistadores
1. Treaty Line of Tordesillas 1494: Portugal and Spain feuded over who got what land. The Pope drew this line as he was respected by both. o The line ran North-South, and chopped off the Brazilian coast of South America o Portugal got everything east of the line (Brazil and land around/under Africa) o Spain got everything west of the line (which turned out to be much more, though they didn't know it at the time)
2. Conquistadores = "conquerors" o Vasco Balboa: "discovered" the Pacific Ocean across isthmus of Panama o Ferdinand Magellan: circumnavigates the globe (1st to do so) o Ponce de Leon: touches and names Florida looking for legendary Fountain of Youth o Hernando Cortes: enters Florida, travels up into present day Southeastern U.S., dies and is "buried" in Mississippi River o Francisco Pizarro: conquers Incan Empire of Peru and begins shipping tons of gold/silver back to Spain. This huge influx of precious metals made European prices skyrocket (inflation). o Francisco Coronado: ventured into current Southwest U.S. looking for legendary El Dorado, city of gold. He found the Pueblo Indians.
3. Encomienda system established o Indians were "commended" or given to Spanish landlords o The idea of the encomienda was that Indians would work and be converted to Christianity, but it was basically just slavery on a sugar plantation guised as missionary work.
IX. The Conquest of Mexico
1. Hernando Cortez conquered the Aztecs at Tenochtitlan.
2. Cortez went from Cuba to present day Vera Cruz, then marched over mountains to the Aztec capital.
3. Montezuma, Aztec king, thought Cortez might be the god Quetzalcoatl who was due to re-appear the very year. Montezuma welcomed Cortez into Tenochtitlan.
4. The Spanish lust for gold led Montezuma to attack on the noche triste, sad night. Cortez and men fought their way out, but it was smallpox that eventually beat the Indians.
5. The Spanish then destroyed Tenochtitlan, building the Spanish capital (Mexico City) exactly on top of the Aztec city.
6. A new race of people emerged, mestizos, a mix of Spanish and Indian blood.
X. The Spread of Spanish America
1. Spanish society quickly spread through Peru and Mexico
2. A threat came from neighbors: o English: John Cabot (an Italian who sailed for England) touched the coast of the current day U.S. o France: Giovanni de Verrazano also touched on the North American seaboard. o France: Jacques Cartier went into mouth of St. Lawrence River (Canada).
3. To oppose this, Spain set up forts (presidios) all over the California coast. Also cities, like St. Augustine in Florida.
4. Don Juan de Onate followed Coronado's old path into present day New Mexico. He conquered the Indians ruthlessly, maiming them by cutting off one foot of survivors just so they'd remember. 5. Despite mission efforts, the Pueblo Indians revolted in Pope's Rebellion.
6. Robert de LaSalle sailed down the Mississippi
River for France claiming the whole region for their King Louis and naming the area "Louisiana" after his king. This started a slew of place-names for that area, from LaSalle, Illinois to "Louisville" and then on down to New Orleans (the American counter of Joan of Arc's famous victory at Orleans).
7. Black Legend: The Black Legend was the notion that
Spaniards only brought bad things (murder, disease, slavery); though true, they also brought good things such as law systems, architecture,
Christianity, language, civilization, so that the Black Legend is partly, but not entirely, accurate.
Chapter 02 - The Planting of English America
I. England’s Imperial Stirrings
1. North America in 1600 was largely unclaimed, though the Spanish had much control in Central and South America.
2. Spain had only set up Santa Fe, while France had founded Quebec and Britain had founded Jamestown.
3. In the 1500s, Britain failed to effectively colonize due to internal conflicts. o King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s and launched the English Protestant Reformation. o After Elizabeth I became queen, Britain became basically Protestant, and a rivalry with Catholic Spain intensified.
o In Ireland, the Catholics sought Spain’s help in revolting against
England, but the English crushed the uprising with brutal atrocity, and developed an attitude of sneering contempt for natives.
II. Elizabeth Energizes England
1. After Francis Drake pirated Spanish ships for gold then circumnavigated the globe, Elizabeth I knighted him on his ship. Obviously, this reward angered the Spanish who sought revenge.
2. Meanwhile, English attempts at colonization in the New World failed embarrassingly. Notable of these failures was Sir Walter Raleigh and the Roanoke Island Colony, better known as “The Lost Colony.”
3. Seeking to get their revenge, Spain attacked Britain but lost in the Spanish Armada’s defeat of 1588. This opened the door for Britain to cross the Atlantic.
They swarmed to America and took over the lead in colonization and power. o Victory also fueled England to new heights due to…
 Strong government/popular monarch, more religious unity, a sense of nationalism
 Golden age of literature (Shakespeare)
 Beginning of British dominance at sea (which lasts until U.S. tops them, around
1900) o Britain and Spain finally signed a peace treaty in 1604.
III. England on the Eve of the Empire
1. In the 1500s, Britain’s population was mushrooming.
2. New policy of enclosure (fencing in land) for farming. This meant there was less or no land for the poor.
3. The woolen districts fell upon hard times economically. This meant the workers lost jobs.
4. Tradition of primogeniture = 1st born son inherits
ALL father’s land. Therefore, younger sons of rich folk (who couldn’t inherit money) tried their luck with fortunes elsewhere, like America.
5. By the 1600s, the joint-stock company was perfected (investors put money into the company with hopes for a good return), being a forerunner of today’s corporations.
IV. England Plants the **Jamestown Seedling**
1. In 1606, the Virginia Company received a charter from King James I to make a settlement in the New World. o Such joint-stock companies usually did not exist long, as stockholders invested hopes to form the company, turn a profit, and then quickly sell for profit a few years later.
2. The charter of the Virginia Company guaranteed settlers the same rights as Englishmen in Britain.
3. On May 24, 1607, about 100 English settlers disembarked from their ship and founded Jamestown. o Forty colonists had perished during the voyage. o Problems emerged including (a) the swampy site of Jamestown meant poor drinking water and mosquitoes causing malaria and yellow fever.
(b) men wasted time looking for gold rather than doing useful tasks
(digging wells, building shelter, planting crops), (c) there were zero women on the initial ship. o It didn’t help that a supply ship shipwrecked in the Bahamas in 1609 either.
4. Luckily, in 1608, a Captain John Smith took over control and whipped the colonists into shape. o At one point, he was kidnapped by local Indians and forced into a mock execution by the chief Powhatan and had been “saved” by Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas. o The act was meant to show that Powhatan wanted peaceful relations with the colonists. o John Smith’s main contribution was that he gave order and discipline, highlighted by his “no work, no food” policy.
5. Colonists had to eat cats, dogs, rats, even other people. One fellow wrote of eating “powdered wife.”
6. Finally, in 1610, a relief party headed by Lord De La Warr arrived to alleviate the suffering.
7. By 1625, out of an original overall total of 8,000 would-be settlers, only 1,200 had survived.
V. Cultural Clash in the Chesapeake
1. At first, Powhatan possibly considered the new colonists potential allies and tried to be friendly with them, but as time passed and colonists raided Indian food supplies, relations deteriorated and eventually, war occurred.
2. The First Anglo-Powhatan War ended in 1614 with a peace settlement sealed by the marriage of Pocahontas to colonist John Rolfe. Rolfe & Pocahontas nurtured a favorable flavor of sweet tobacco.
3. Eight years later, in 1622, the Indians struck again with a series of attacks that left 347 settlers, including John Rolfe, dead.
4. The Second Anglo-Powhatan War began in 1644, ended in 1646, and effectively banished the Chesapeake Indians from their ancestral lands.
5. After the settlers began to grow their own food, the Indians were useless, and were therefore banished.
VI. Virginia: Child of Tobacco
1. Jamestown’s gold is found and it is tobacco. o Rolfe’s sweet tobacco was sought as a cash crop by Europe. Jamestown had found its gold. o Tobacco created a greed for land, since it heavily depleted the soil and ruined the land.
2. Representative self-government was born in Virginia, when in 1619, settlers created the House of Burgesses, a committee to work out local issues. This set America on a self-rule pathway.
3. The first African Americans to arrive in America also came in 1619. It’s unclear if they were slaves or indentured servants.
VII. Maryland: Catholic Haven
1. Religious Diversity o Founded in 1634 by Lord Baltimore, Maryland was the second plantation colony and the fourth overall colony to be formed. o It was founded to be a place for persecuted Catholics to find refuge, a safe haven. o Lord Baltimore gave huge estates to his Catholic relatives, but the poorer people who settled there where mostly Protestant, creating friction. 2. However, Maryland prospered with tobacco.
3. It had a lot of indentured servants. o Only in the later years of the 1600s (in Maryland and Virginia) did Black slavery begin to become popular.
4. Maryland’s statute, the Act of Toleration, guaranteed religious toleration to all Christians, but decreed the death penalty to Jews and atheists and others who didn’t believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ.
VIII. The West Indies: Way Station to Mainland America
1. As the British were colonizing Virginia, they were also settling into the West Indies (Spain’s declining power opened the door).
2. By mid-1600s, England had secured claim to several West Indies islands, including Jamaica in 1655.
3. They grew lots of sugar on brutal plantations there.
4. Thousands of African slaves were needed to operate sugar plantations. At first, Indians were intended to be used, but disease killed an estimated 90% of all Native Americans. So, Africans were brought in.
5. To control so many slaves, “codes” were set up that defined the legal status of slaves and the rights of the masters. They were typically strict and exacted severe punishments for offenders.
IX. Colonizing the Carolinas
1. In England, King Charles I had been beheaded. Oliver Cromwell had ruled for ten very strict years before tired Englishmen restored Charles II to the throne in “The Restoration.” (After all the turmoil Civil War, they just went back to a king.)
2. The bloody period had interrupted colonization.
3. Carolina was named after Charles II, and was formally created in 1670.
4. Carolina flourished by developing close economic ties with the West Indies, due to the port of Charleston.
5. Many original Carolina settlers had come from Barbados and brought in the strict “Slave Codes” for ruling slaves.
6. Interestingly, Indians as slaves in Carolina was protested, but to no avail. Slaves were sent to the West Indies to work, as well as New
England.
7. Rice emerged as the principle crop in Carolina. o African slaves were hired to work on rice plantations, due to (a) their resistance to malaria and just as importantly, (b) their familiarity with rice.
8. Despite violence with Spanish and Indians, Carolina proved to be too strong to be wiped out.
X. The Emergence of North Carolina
1. Many newcomers to Carolina were “squatters,” people who owned no land, usually down from Virginia.
2. North Carolinians developed a strong resistance to authority, due to geographic isolation from neighbors.
3. Two “flavors” of Carolinians developed: (a) aristocratic and wealthier down south around Charleston and rice & indigo plantations, and (b) strong-willed and independent-minded up north on small tobacco farms
4. In 1712, North and South Carolina were officially separated.
5. In 1711, when Tuscarora Indians attacked North Carolina, the
Carolinians responded by crushing the opposition, selling hundreds to slavery and leaving the rest to wander north, eventually becoming the
Sixth Nation of the Iroquois.
XI. Late-Coming Georgia: The Buffer Colony
1. Georgia was intended to be a buffer between the British colonies and the hostile Spanish settlements in Florida (Spanish, Indians, runaway slaves) and the enemy French in Louisiana.
2. It was founded last, in 1733, by a high-minded group of philanthropists, mainly James Oglethorpe.
3. Named after King George II, it was also meant to be a second chance site for wretched souls in debt. iv. James Oglethorpe, the ablest of the founders and a dynamic soldier-statesman, repelled Spanish attacks.
* He saved “the Charity Colony” by his energetic leadership and by using his own fortune to help with the colony.
1. All Christians, except Catholics, enjoyed religious toleration, and many missionaries came to try to convert the Indians. o John Wesley was one of them, and he later returned to England and founded Methodism.
2. Georgia grew very slowly.
XII. The Plantation Colonies
1. Slavery was found in all the plantation colonies.
2. The growth of cities was often stunted by forests.
3. The establishment of schools and churches was difficult due to people being spread out.
4. In the South, the crops were tobacco and rice, and some indigo in the tidewater region of SC.
5. All the plantation colonies permitted some religious toleration.
6. Confrontations with Native Americans were often.
XIII. Makers of America: The Iroquois
1. In what is now New York State, the Iroquois League (AKA the Iroquois Confederation) was once a great power.
2. They were made up of the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas.
3. They vied with neighboring Indians and later French, English, and Dutch for supremacy.
4. The longhouse was the building block of Iroquois society. o Only 25 feet wide, but over 200 feet long, longhouses were typically occupied by a few blood-related families (on the mother’s side). 5. The Mohawks were middlemen with European traders.
6. The Senecas were fur suppliers.
7. The Five Nations of the Iroquois’ rivals, the neighboring Hurons, Eries, and Petuns, were vanquished.
8. Throughout the 1600s and 1700s, the Iroquois allied with the British and French (whichever was more beneficial).
9. When the American Revolution broke out, the question of with whom to side was split. Most sided with the British, but not all.
10. Afterwards, the Iroquois were forced to reservations, which proved to be unbearable to these proud people.
11. An Iroquois named Handsome Lake arose to warn his tribe’s people to mend their ways.
12. His teachings live today in the form of the longhouse religion.
Chapter 03 - Settling in the Northern Colonies
I. The Protestant Reformation Produces Puritanism
1. 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. Luther had several explosive ideas including… o The Bible alone was the source of God’s word (not the Bible and the church or pope). o People are saved simply by faith in Christ alone (not by faith and good works). o His actions ignited the Protestant Reformation.
2. John Calvin preached Calvinism which stressed “predestination” (those going to Heaven or hell has already been determined by God). o Basic doctrines were stated in the 1536 document entitled Institutes of the Christian Religion. o Stated that all humans were weak and wicked. o Only the predestined could go to heaven, no matter what. o Calvinists were expected to seek “conversions,” signs that they were one of the predestined, and afterwards, lead “sanctified lives.” o Calvinists are famous for working hard, dusk to dawn, to “prove” their worthiness. o The impact of Calvinism has been vividly stamped on the psyche of Americans, and been called the “Protestant Work Ethic”
3. In England, King Henry VIII was breaking his ties with the Holy Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s.
4. Some people, called Puritans, were influenced to totally reform (“purify”) the Church of England.
5. The Puritans o Believed that only “visible saints” should be admitted to church membership. o Separatists vowed to break away from the Church of England (AKA, the Anglican Church) because the “saints” would have to sit with the “damned.” These folks became the Pilgrims. o King James I, father of the beheaded Charles I, harassed the Separatists out of England because he thought that if people could defy him as their spiritual leader, they might defy him as their political ruler.
II. The Pilgrims End Their Pilgrimage at Plymouth
1. The Pilgrims or Separatists, came from Holland, where they had fled to after they had left England. o They were concerned that their children were getting too “Dutchified.” o They wanted a place where they were free to worship their own religion and could live and die as good Pilgrims.
2. After negotiating with the Virginia Company, the Separatists left
Holland and sailed for 65 days at sea on the Mayflower until they arrived off the rocky coast of New England in 1620, a trip in which only one person died and one person was born. o Less than half of the pilgrims on the Mayflower were actually Separatists. o Contrary to myth, the Pilgrims undertook a few surveys before deciding to settle at Plymouth, an area far from Virginia. o The Pilgrims became squatters, people without legal right to land and without specific authority to establish government.
3. Captain Myles Standish (AKA, “Captain Shrimp”) proved to be a great Indian fighter and negotiator.
4. Before leaving the ship, the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact, a set of rules by which to obey. o Though it wasn’t a constitution, it did set the standard for later constitutions. It also set the first step toward self-rule in the
Northern colonies.
5. In the winter of 1620-21, only 44 of the 102 survived.
6. 1621 brought bountiful harvests, though, and the first Thanksgiving was celebrated that year.
7. William Bradford, chosen governor of Plymouth 30 times in the annual elections, was a great leader, and helped Plymouth to survive and trade fur, fish, and lumber.
8. In 1691, Plymouth finally merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
III. The Bay Colony Bible Commonwealth
1. In 1629, some non-Separatist Puritans got a royal charter from
England to settle in the New World. Secretly, they took the charter with them and later used it as a type of constitution.
2.
It was a well-equipped group of 11 ships that carried about 1,000 people to Massachusetts.
3. John Winthrop was elected governor or deputy governor for 19 years, helping Massachusetts prosper in fur trading, fishing, and shipbuilding.
IV. Building the Bay Colony
1. Soon after the establishment of the colony, the franchise (right to vote) was extended to all “freemen,” adult males who belonged to the Puritan congregations (later called the Congregational Church), making people who could enjoy the franchise about two fifths of the male population. o Un-churched men and women weren’t allowed into matters of government.
2. The provincial government was not a democracy. o Governor Winthrop feared and distrusted the common people, calling democracy the “meanest and worst” of all forms of government.
3. Religious leaders wielded powerful influence over the admission to church membership.
4. John Cotton, a prominent clergy member, was educated at Cambridge and had immigrated to Massachusetts to avoid persecution for his criticism of the Church of England.
5. However, congregations could hire and fire their ministers at will.
6. Still, there were laws to limit Earthly pleasures, such as a fine of twenty shillings for couples caught kissing in
public.
7. The Puritan concept of Hell was very serious, frightening, and very real. o Michael Wigglesworth’s “Day of Doom,” written in 1662, sold one copy for every twenty people.
V. Trouble in the Bible Commonwealth
1. Tensions arose in Massachusetts.
2. Quakers were fined, flogged, and/or banished.
3. Anne Hutchinson was a very intelligent, strong-willed, talkative woman who claimed that a holy life was no sure sign of salvation and that the truly saved need not bother to obey the law of either God or man. A notion known as “antinomianism”. o Brought to trial in 1638, Anne boasted that her beliefs were directly from God. o She was banished from the colony and eventually made her way to Rhode Island. o She died in New York after an attack by Indians.
4. Roger Williams was a radical idealist hounded his fellow clergymen to make a clean and complete break with the Church of England. o He went on to deny that civil government could and should govern religious behavior. o He was banished in 1635, and led the way for the Rhode Island colony.
VI. The Rhode Island “Sewer”
1. People who went to Rhode Island weren’t necessarily similar; they were just unwanted everywhere else.
2. They were against special privilege.
3. “Little Rhody” was later known as “the traditional home of the otherwise minded.”
4. It finally secured a charter in 1644.
VII. New England Spreads Out
1. In 1635, Hartford, Connecticut was founded.
2. Reverend Thomas Hooker led an energetic group of Puritans west into Connecticut.
3. In 1639, settlers of the new Connecticut River colony drafted in open meeting a trailblazing document called the Fundamental Orders. o It was basically a modern constitution.
4. In 1638, New Haven was founded and eventually merged into Connecticut.
5. In 1623, Maine was absorbed by Massachusetts and remained so for nearly a century and a half.
6. In 1641, the granite-ribbed New Hampshire was absorbed into Massachusetts. o In 1679, the king separated the two and made New Hampshire a royal colony.
VIII. Puritans Versus Indians
1. Before the Puritans had arrived in 1620, an epidemic had swept through the Indians, killing over three quarters of them.
2. At first, Indians tried to befriend the Whites. o Squanto, a Wampanoag, helped keep relative peace.
3. In 1637, though, after mounting tensions exploded, English settlers and the powerful Pequot tribe fought in the Pequot War, in which the English set fire to a Pequot village on Connecticut’s
Mystic River, annihilating the Indians and bringing about forty years of tentative peace. o In an attempt to save face, the Puritans did try to convert some of the Indians, though with less zeal than that of the Spanish and French.
4. In 1675, Metacom (called King Philip by the English) united neighboring Indians in a last-ditched attack that failed. o The King Philip’s War slowed the colonial western march, but Metacom was beheaded and quartered and his head was stuck on a sharp pike for all to see, his wife and son sold to slavery.
IX. Seeds of Colonial Unity and Independence
1. In 1643, four colonies banded together to form the New England Confederation. o It was almost all Puritan. o It was weak, but still a notable milestone toward American unity.
2. The colonies were basically allowed to be semiautonomous commonwealths.
3. After Charles II was restored to the British throne, he hoped to control his colonies more firmly, but was shocked to find how much his orders were ignored by Massachusetts. o As punishment, a sea-to-sea charter was given to rival Connecticut (1662), and a charter was given to Rhode Island (1663). o Finally, in 1684, Massachusetts’ charter was revoked.
X. Andros Promotes the First American Revolution
1. In 1686, the Dominion of New England was created to bolster the colonial defense against Indians and tying the colonies closer to Britain by enforcing the hated Navigation Acts. o The acts forbade American trade with countries other than Britain. o As a result, smuggling became common. o Head of the Dominion was Sir Edmund Andros.
 Establishing headquarters in Boston, he openly showed his association with the locally hated Church of England.
 His soldiers were vile-mouthed and despised by Americans.
2. Andros responded to opposition by curbing town meetings, restricting the courts and the press, and revoking all land titles.
3. He taxed the people without their consent.
4. At the same time, the people of England staged the Glorious Revolution, instating William and Mary to the crown. o Resultant, the Dominion of New England collapsed. o Massachusetts got a new charter in 1691, but this charter allowed all landowners to vote, as opposed to the previous law of voting belonging only to the church members.
XI. Old Netherlanders at New Netherland
1. In the 17th Century, the Netherlands revolted against Spain, and with the help of Britain, gained their independence.
2. The Dutch East India Company was established, with an army of 10,000 men and a fleet of 190 ships (including 40 men-of-war).
3. The Dutch West India Company often raided rather than traded.
4. In 1609, Henry Hudson ventured into Delaware and New York Bay and claimed the area for the Netherlands.
5. It was the Dutch West India Company that bought Manhattan Island for some worthless trinkets (22,000 acres of the most valuable land in the world today).
6. New Amsterdam was a company town, run by and for the Dutch company and in the interests of stockholders.
7. The Dutch gave patroonships (large areas of land) to promoters who agreed to settle at least 50 people on them.
8. New Amsterdam attracted people of all types and races. o One French Jesuit missionary counted 18 different languages being spoken on the street.
XII. Friction with English and Swedish Neighbors
1. Indian’s attacked the Dutch for their cruelties.
2. New England was hostile against Dutch growth.
3. The Swedes trespassed Dutch reserves from 1638 to 1655 by planting the anemic colony of New Sweden on the Delaware River.
4. Things got so bad that the Dutch erected a wall in New Amsterdam, for which Wall Street is named today.
5. In 1655, the Dutch sent one-legged Peter Stuyvesant to besiege the main Swedish fort, and he won, ending Swedish colonial rule and leaving only Swedish log cabins and place names as evidence that the Swedes were ever in Delaware.
XIII. Dutch Residues in New York
1. In 1664, Charles II granted the area of modern-day New York to his brother, the Duke of York, and that year, British troops landed and defeated the Dutch, kicking them out, without much violence.
2. New Amsterdam was renamed New York.
3. The Dutch Legacy o The people of New York retained their autocratic spirit. o Dutch names of cities remained, like Harlem, Brooklyn, and Hell Gate. o Even their architecture left its mark on buildings. o The Dutch also gave us Easter eggs, Santa Claus, waffles, sauerkraut, bowling, sleighing, skating, and golf.
XIV. Penn’s Holy Experiment in Pennsylvania
1. The Quakers (characteristics) o They “quaked” under deep religious emotion. o They were offensive to religious and civil rule. o They addressed everyone with simple “thee”s and “thou”s and didn’t swear oaths because Jesus had said “Swear not at all,” this last part creating a problem, since you had to swear a test oath to prove that you weren’t Roman Catholic. o Though stubborn and unreasonable, they were simple, devoted, democratic people against war and violence.
2. William Penn, a well-born Englishman, embraced the Quaker faith.
3. In 1681, he managed to secure an immense grant of fertile land from the king. o It was called Pennsylvania, in honor of Penn, who, being the modest person that he was, had insisted that it be called Sylvania. o It was the best advertised of all the colonies.
XV. Quaker Pennsylvania and Its Neighbors
1. Thousands of squatters already lived in Pennsylvania.
2. Philadelphia was more carefully planned than most cities, with beautiful, wide streets.
3. Penn bought land from the Indians, like Chief Tammany, later patron saint of New York’s political Tammany Hall.
4. His treatment of the Indians was so gentle that Quakers could walk through Indian territory unarmed without fear of being hurt.
5. However, as more and more non-Quakers came to Pennsylvania, they mistreated the Indians more and more.
6. Freedom of worship was available to everyone except for Jews and
Catholics (only because of pressure from London), and the death penalty was only for murder and treason.
7. No restrictions were placed on immigration, and naturalization was made easy.
8. The Quakers also developed a dislike toward slavery.
9. Pennsylvania attracted a great variety of people from all races, class, and religion.
10. By 1700, only Virginia was more populous and richer.
11. Penn, unfortunately, was not well-liked because of his friendliness towards James II, the deposed Catholic king, and he was jailed at times, and also suffered a paralytic stroke, dying full of sorrows. xii. New Jersey and Delaware prospered as well.
XVI. The Middle Way in the Middle Colonies
1. New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania o All had fertile soil and broad expanse of land. o All except for Delaware exported lots of grain. o The Susquehanna River tapped the fur trade of the interior, and the rivers were gentle, with little cascading waterfalls. o The middle colonies were the middle way between New England and the southern plantation states. o Landholdings were generally intermediate in size. o The middle colonies were more ethnically mixed than other colonies. o A considerable amount of economic and social democracy prevailed. o Benjamin Franklin, born in Boston, entered
Philadelphia as a seventeen-year-old in 1720 with a loaf of bread under each arm and immediately found a congenial home in the urbane, open atmosphere of the city. o Americans began to realize that not only were they surviving, but that they were also thriving.
XVII. Makers of America: The English
1. In the 1600s, England was undergoing a massive population boom.
2. About 75% of English immigrants were indentured servants.
3. Most of them were young men from the “middling classes.”
4. Some had fled during the cloth trade slump in the early 1600s while others had been forced off their land due to enclosure.
5. Some 40% of indentured servants died before their seven years were over.
6. Late in the 17th century, as the supply of indentured servants slowly ran out, the southerners resolved to employ black slaves.
7. From 1629 to 1642, 11,000 Puritans swarmed to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
8. In contrast to the indentured servants, Puritans migrated in family groups, not alone.
9. Puritans brought the way of life from England with them to America. o i.e. Marblehead, Mass. had mostly fishermen because most of the immigrants had been fisherman in England. o i.e. Rowley, Mass. brought from Yorkshire, England their distinctive way of life. o In Ipswich, Massachusetts, settled by East Anglican Puritans, the rulers had long terms and ruled with an iron hand. o However, in Newbury, people rarely won reelection.
Chapter 04 - American Life in the Seventeenth Century
I. The Unhealthy Chesapeake