Early English Colonies Vocabulary

The Protestant Reformation + Jamestown to Plimouth

Protestant Reformation

A major religious movement in Europe that began in 1517 when reformers protested corruption and abuses of power in the Catholic Church and wanted ordinary people to have direct access to the Bible. This movement led many Christians to break away and form new churches.

Martin Luther

German monk who in 1517 posted his 95 Theses in Germany, protesting corruption in the Catholic Church, especially the sale of indulgences (paying to erase sins).German monk who in 1517 posted his 95 Theses in Germany.

King Henry VIII

English king who in 1534 broke from the Catholic Church and created the Church of England after the Pope refused to annul his marriage.

Separatists

English Protestants who wanted to separate completely from the Church of England and later founded Plimoth in 1620.

Puritans

English Protestants who wanted to reform (purify) the Church of England and founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630.

Jamestown

Founded in 1607 in what is now Virginia, Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in North America.

Virginia Company

A group of English investors who funded and controlled Jamestown in hopes of making a profit from the colony.

Powhatan

A powerful Native American group in present-day Virginia whose lands the English built on; they traded food and formed a temporary peace alliance with the English after the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe

Starving Time

The winter of 1609–1610 when the colonists ran out of food during a drought. Their relationship with the Powhatan had worsened because the settlers demanded too much food, and the colonists were afraid to leave the fort. Most settlers died from starvation and disease.

Settlement

A new community started by people who move to a different place.

Colony/colonists

A colony is land ruled and controlled by a distant country. Colonists are the people sent to live that still follow the laws and authority of their home country.

John Rolfe

An English colonist who smuggled a type of tobacco from the Caribbean and married Pocahontas, leading to temporary peace between the Powhatan and English settlers.

Famine

A severe lack of food that leads to starvation and death.

Cash crop

A crop grown mainly to sell for money, not just for food. (Tobacco became Jamestown’s cash crop.)

Peace of Pocahontas

Pocahontas, the married daughter of Chief Powhatan, was kidnapped by the English in 1613 during an attack in which her Powhatan husband was killed. The English held her to pressure her father into negotiations. While captive, she converted to Christianity, and in 1614, she married John Rolfe, which created a temporary peace between the Powhatan and the English.

Representative Government

A system where people elect others to make laws; it began in Virginia in 1619 with the House of Burgesses.

Tobacco Brides

Women that were sent from England to Jamestown in 1619 to marry settlers and help stabilize and increase the population of the colony.

Enslaved Africans

The first documented Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619 and were forced to work mainly on tobacco farms.

Patuxet

A Wampanoag village in present-day Massachusetts that was wiped out by disease before the English arrived in 1620. When English settlers (including Tisquantum) later came to the area

Alliance

An agreement between groups to help and protect each other; the Wampanoag formed an alliance with the English for survival.

Harvest Home

A European harvest celebration with feasting, games, and firing muskets. In 1621, the English colonists held a similar fall feast in Wampanoag territory after their first harvest. Edward Winslow wrote that the sound of their muskets led Massasoit and about 90 Wampanoag to join and bring five deer to share.

This celebration was a harvest feast, not a religious day of thanksgiving, which for the colonists meant prayer and fasting.

Tisquantum

A Wampanoag man who once lived in the village of Patuxet. He had been captured and taken by Europeans and spent years away before returning home, only to find that his entire village had died from disease and he was the last surviving member of Patuxet.  He had learned English, so Massasoit sent him to help the colonists survive and communicate as part of their new alliance.

Thanksgiving

In 1621, the English colonists and the Wampanoag shared a three-day harvest feast in Wampanoag territory, but it was not called Thanksgiving. At the time, a Thanksgiving for the colonists meant fasting and prayer, not feasting.

In the 1800s, Sarah Josepha Hale promoted a national family feast inspired by the 1621 celebration. In 1863, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday, and Congress set the date in 1941.

Wampanoag

A Native American people who have lived for thousands of years in what is now Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They taught the English colonists how to survive in their homeland and formed an alliance for protection against other Native rivals. As more English settlements spread and land was taken

King Philip’s War

Metacomet, called King Philip by the English, was the Wampanoag leader who became frustrated by land loss, broken agreements, and colonial control. His leadership helped spark King Philip’s War in 1675–1676, a full-scale conflict between Native peoples in New England and English colonists. Of the 5,000 people who died, three-quarters were Native Americans. The Wampanoag survived despite defeat.