Key Terms and Events in Early American History and Colonial America

Anglo-Powhatan War

Three wars fought between the Powhatans and the Jamestown colonists in 1610-1614, 1622-1626, and 1644-1646.

Columbian Exchange

The transatlantic flow of goods and people that began with Columbus's voyages in 1492.

Great League of Peace

An alliance of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nations, originally formed at least 400 years ago.

Conquistadores

Spanish term for 'conquerors,' applied to Spanish and Portuguese soldiers who conquered lands held by Indigenous peoples in central and southern America.

Las Casas, Bartolomé de

A Catholic missionary who renounced the Spanish practice of coercively converting Indians and advocated their better treatment.

Tenochtitlán

The capital city of the Aztec empire; the city was built on marshy islands on the western side of Lake Tetzcoco.

Hacienda

Large-scale farm in the Spanish empire worked by Native American laborers.

King Philip's War (Metacom's War)

A multiyear conflict that began in 1675 between the English and a Native alliance led by Wampanoags Metacom (King Philip) and Weetamoo.

Black Legend

Idea that the Spanish empire was more oppressive toward Indians than other European empires; used as a justification for English imperial expansion.

Pueblo Revolt

Uprising in 1680 by allied Pueblo led by Popé that temporarily drove Spanish colonists out of New Mexico.

Borderland

A place between or near recognized borders where no group of people has complete political control or cultural dominance.

Virginia Company

A joint-stock enterprise that King James I chartered in 1606; the company was to spread Christianity in the Americas as well as find ways to make a profit in it.

Anglican Church

The established state church of England, formed by Henry VIII after the pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Enclosure Movement

A legal process that divided large farm fields in England that were previously collectively owned by groups of peasants into smaller, individually owned plots.

Headright System

A land-grant policy that promised fifty acres to any colonist who could afford passage to Virginia, as well as fifty more for any accompanying servants.

House of Burgesses

The first elected assembly in colonial America established in 1619 in Virginia.

Indentured Servants

Settlers who signed on for a temporary period of servitude to a master in exchange for passage to the New World.

Pilgrims

Puritan separatists who broke completely with the Church of England and sailed to the Americas aboard the Mayflower.

Puritans

English religious group that sought to purify the Church of England; founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony under John Winthrop in 1630.

John Winthrop

Puritan leader and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who resolved to use the colony as a refuge for persecuted Puritans and as an instrument of building a "wilderness Zion" in America.

Great Migration (1630s)

The migration of approximately 21,000 English Puritans to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Dissenters

Protestants who belonged to denominations outside of the established Anglican Church.

Half-Way Covenant

A 1662 religious compromise that allowed baptism and partial church membership to colonial New Englanders whose parents were not among the Puritan elect.

Navigation Act

Law passed by the English Parliament to control colonial trade and bolster the mercantile system, 1651-1775; enforcement of the act led to growing resentment by colonists.

Salem Witch Trials

A crisis of trials and executions in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 that resulted from anxiety over witchcraft.

Walking Purchase

An infamous 1737 purchase of Native American land in which Pennsylvanian colonists tricked the Delaware Indians, who had agreed to cede land equivalent to the distance a man could walk in thirty-six hours, but the colonists marked out an area using a team of runners.

Atlantic slave trade

The systematic importation of African people from their native continent across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, fueled largely by rising demand for sugar, rice, coffee, and tobacco.

Middle Passage

The hellish and often deadly middle leg of the transatlantic "triangular trade" in which European ships carried manufactured goods to Africa, then transported enslaved Africans to the Americas and the Caribbean, and finally conveyed American agricultural products back to Europe; from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, some 12 million Africans were transported via the Middle Passage, unknown millions more dying en route.

Plantation

An early word for a colony, a settlement "planted" from abroad among an alien population in Ireland or the Americas; later, a large agricultural enterprise that used unfree labor to produce a crop for the world market.

Salutary Neglect

Informal British policy during the first half of the eighteenth century that allowed the American colonies considerable freedom to pursue their economic and political interests in exchange for colonial obedience.

Great Awakening

Fervent religious revival movement in the 1720s through the 1740s that was spread in the colonies by ministers like New England Congregationalist Jonathan Edwards and English revivalist George Whitefield.

Pontiac's War

A war inspired by the Delaware prophet Neolin in which allied Native American fighters from the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes successfully attacked British forts and settlements after France ceded to the British its territory east of the Mississippi River as part of the Treaty of Paris in 1763. It helped lead to the Proclamation of 1763.

Repartimiento System

Spanish labor system under which Indians were legally free and able to earn wages but were also required to perform a fixed amount of labor yearly; replaced the encomienda system.

John Smith

An English soldier and explorer who became one of the leaders of the Jamestown colony and helped to establish relations with the Powhatans. His narratives describe the early history of Jamestown as well as his explorations of what became New England.

Colonial Charters

Three main types of colonial charters established three different forms of government for the colonies: royal colonies, proprietary colonies, and charter colonies.

Royal Colonies

Colonies directly controlled by the crown through a governor.

Proprietary Colonies

Colonies governed by an individual proprietor or family appointed by the king.

Charter Colonies

Colonies funded by investors who enjoyed a greater degree of self-government under a joint-stock company charter.

Mayflower Compact

Document signed in 1620 aboard the Mayflower committing the group to majority-rule government by its male colonists.

Pequot War

An armed conflict in 1637 fought between the Pequot Indians and an alliance of Narragansett, Mohegan, and English.

Act Concerning Religion

Law that granted free exercise of religion to all Christian denominations in colonial Maryland.

Mercantilism

Policy of regulating the economies of colonies to benefit the mother country.

Thirteen Original Colonies

The original English colonies: New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Delaware, South Carolina, and New Hampshire.

Jamestown

The first permanent English settlement in North America, founded in Virginia in 1607 by the Virginia Company of London.

Massachusetts Bay

English settlement founded by Puritans in 1630 who sought to create a model religious community.

The Chesapeake Colonies

Settlements of Virginia and Maryland characterized by tobacco cultivation and reliance on labor from indentured servants and enslaved people.

Middle Colonies

New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware; known for diverse populations and rich soil.

New England Colonies

Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island; established by religious dissenters seeking freedom.

Southern Colonies

Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina; characterized by large agricultural operations and extensive use of slavery.

Quakers

Religious group whose members believed all persons possessed the 'inner light' and were early proponents of abolition and equal rights for women.

Bacon's Rebellion

Unsuccessful 1676 revolt led by Nathaniel Bacon against the British Governor of Virginia.

Yeoman Farmers

Small landowners who farmed their own land and usually did not own slaves.

Stono Rebellion

An uprising by enslaved men in 1739 in South Carolina that led to a tightening of the slave code.

Enlightenment

Revolution in thought in the eighteenth century that emphasized reason and science over traditional religion.

French and Indian War

The last of four colonial wars fought between England and France for control of North America east of the Mississippi River.

Albany Plan of Union

A failed 1754 proposal urging the unification of the colonies under one crown-appointed president.

Anne Hutchinson

Prominent figure known for her theological dissent against Puritan leadership, excommunicated from Massachusetts.