Indigenous America & European Colonization

Before 1607–1754

Columbus reaches the Caribbean

1492. Beginning of sustained European colonization and the Columbian Exchange.

Juan Ponce de León reaches Florida

1513. Early Spanish exploration and colonization of what becomes the United States.

Jamestown founded

1607. First permanent English settlement in what becomes the United States.

First recorded Africans arrive in Virginia

1619. A crucial moment in the development of racial slavery in English North America. The precise legal status of these individuals was more complicated than the later institution of hereditary chattel slavery.

Plymouth founded

1620. Pilgrims establish a colony; later becomes central to American national mythology.

Massachusetts Bay Colony founded

1630. Puritan settlement and an important example of religion's role in colonial society.

Pequot War

1636. Illustrates the violent struggle over Indigenous sovereignty and English expansion in New England.

King Philip's War

1675–1676. One of the most devastating conflicts between Indigenous peoples and English colonists in colonial North America.

Bacon's Rebellion

1676. Reveals class tensions, frontier conflict, and changing racial politics in Virginia.

Pennsylvania founded

1681. William Penn's colony becomes an important example of religious pluralism.

Germantown Quaker antislavery petition

1688. One of the earliest formal antislavery statements in English North America.

First Great Awakening

1730s–1740s. Religious revival that crosses colonial boundaries and contributes to a shared Protestant culture.

French and Indian War

1754–1763. The North American theater of the Seven Years' War. Its consequences—especially British debt and imperial reform—help produce the Revolutionary crisis.