European Colonization of North America

  • Module 2-1: European Challengers to Spanish North America

    • Learning Targets:
    • Understand the European and North American context shaping colonization (1607-1754).
    • Explain the diverse development of European colonies (1607-1754).
    • Explain the changing relations between Europeans and American Indians (1607-1754).
    • Thematic Focus:
    • Migration and Settlement, America in the World
    • Historical Reasoning Focus:
    • Comparison and Causation
    • Historians compare historical events, individuals, groups, regions, developments, or concepts to understand similarities and differences.
    • Historians examine the causes of historical developments to strengthen comparative understanding.
    • Task:
    • Identify similarities and differences in European colonizers' interactions with American Indians before 1754.
    • Explain the factors that create these similarities and differences.
    • French, Dutch, and English investors became interested in establishing colonies in North America in the late sixteenth century.
    • The defeat of the Spanish Armada by English naval forces in 1588 weakened Spain and allowed other European nations access to North America.

  • The French Expand into North America

    • Although French rulers shared Spain's Catholic faith, the two nations were rivals.
    • The French were more interested in trade than conquest.
    • The French had fished the North Atlantic since the mid-sixteenth century, and in the 1580s they built stations along the Newfoundland coast for drying codfish.
    • French traders established relations with local American Indians, exchanging iron kettles and other European goods for valuable beaver skins.
    • In 1608, Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec, the first permanent French settlement in North America.
    • Champlain joined a Huron raid on the Iroquois, making the Huron people a powerful ally but fueling lasting bitterness among the Iroquois.
    • Fur traders were critical to sustaining the French presence due to relatively few French men and even fewer French women settling in North America.
    • French government policies discouraged mass migration to the New World.
    • Protestants, known as Huguenots, were barred from migrating to the New World by government policies.
    • French settlements in North America into the 1630s mostly consisted of fishermen, fur traders, and Catholic missionaries.
    • In 1643, the French established a fortified trading post at Montreal, and over the next three decades they continued to push farther west into the Great Lakes.
    • The French carried European diseases into new areas and ignited warfare among more native groups, stretching their always small population of settlers ever thinner.
    • Some Frenchmen took American Indian wives, provided them with both domestic labor and kinship ties to powerful trading partners as they enhanced the French traders' success and fostered alliances among the Ojibwe and Dakota nations to the west.
    • In 1682, French adventurers and their American Indian allies, led by René-Robert Cavelier, explored the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, claiming all the land drained by the river's tributaries for France and naming it Louisiana in honor of King Louis XIV.
    • French settlers recruited from Canada and France solidified their grasp along Louisiana's Gulf coast by establishing forts at Biloxi and Mobile bays, where they traded with local Choctaw Indians.
    • The French built a string of missions and forts along the upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers during the early eighteenth century and established multicultural communities of diverse American Indian groups, French fur traders, and Catholic Jesuit missionaries.
    • Extensive trade with a range of American Indian nations ensured that French power was far greater than the small number of French settlers suggests.
    • Samuel de Champlain, Voyages of Samuel de Champlain: 1567-1635:
    • French motives included establishing trade and obtaining furs.

  • The Dutch Expand into North America

    • Spain's shipbuilding center, the Netherlands, benefited from the wealth pouring in from Spain's American empire, and an affluent merchant class emerged.
    • The Dutch embraced Calvinism and sought to separate themselves from Catholic Spain.
    • In 1581 the Netherlands declared its independence from King Philip II, and their ships aided England in defeating the Armada in 1588.
    • By 1600, the Netherlands was the trading hub of Europe, controlling trade routes to much of Asia and parts of Africa.
    • In 1609, the Dutch established a fur-trading center on the Hudson River in present-day New York, primarily for economic reasons.
    • The Protestant Dutch made no pretense of bringing religion to American Indians in the region.
    • Dutch traders in New Amsterdam, centerpiece of the larger New Netherland colony, developed especially friendly relations with the powerful Mohawk nation, and in 1614 their trading post was relocated to Fort Orange, near present-day Albany.
    • In 1624, the Dutch established New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, which they purchased from the Lenape tribe, to fend off French and English raids on ships sent downriver from Fort Orange.
    • New Netherland attracted a diverse community of traders, fishermen, and farmers and developed a representative government and became known for its religious toleration.
    • Wealthy Dutch settlers secured land in New Netherland in exchange for the import of approximately fifty families who were expected to work for the landowner.
    • The Dutch demanded an annual tribute in wampum beads or grain from local Algonquians beginning in 1639; conflict escalated, and Dutch launched a surprise attack on an American Indian encampment on Manhattan Island in 1643, and began sporadic warfare that continued for two decades, but eventually Algonquians were defeated.
    • The Mohawks and Iroquois allies aided the Dutch by continuing to provide beaver skins to Dutch traders long after beavers had been over-hunted in the Hudson valley and hoped to secure guns and captives.
    • A series of wars between 1652 and 1674 with their former ally England further weakened Dutch power in America, resulting in it being overtaken by the English in 1664.
    • The Dutch were more focused on the profitable Asian trade and colonial projects in Southeast Asia, leading to Dutch traders being more focused primarily on establishing trade networks with American Indians for goods such as furs.
    • Mohawk treaty proposition, 1659:
    • The Dutch prioritize economic gain over brotherhood with American Indians.

  • Thinking Historically: Using Comparison and Causation in Historical Arguments

    • Step 1: List and categorize relevant historical knowledge, considering politics, economy, society/culture, interactions with the environment, and technology.
    • Step 2: Summarize thoughts in a short paragraph, comparing and contrasting colonies and explaining the causes of similarities or differences.
    • Spanish monarchs used forced American Indian labor for mining and agriculture, while the French and the Dutch concentrated primarily on establishing trade networks with American Indians for goods such as furs.

  • Spain's Fragile North American Empire

    • In the early decades of the sixteenth century, Spain continued to push north from Mexico in an attempt to expand its empire.
    • As the French, Dutch, and English challenged Spain for North American colonies throughout the seventeenth century, the Spanish were spread dangerously thin on the northern reaches of their American holdings.
    • Following Pueblo resistance, which led to both the Acoma massacre and the flight of Spanish settlers, the Spanish crown developed a new plan for the region.
    • As the Spanish renewed their efforts to colonize Nuevo México, the Pueblo people largely accepted the situation, hoping to gain protection by Spanish soldiers and priests.
    • Throughout the mid-seventeenth century, Spanish forces failed to protect the Pueblo Indians against new and devastating raids by Apache and Navajo warriors, and Catholic prayers proved unable to stop Pueblo deaths in a 1671 epidemic.
    • Relations worsened when another drought in the 1670s led to famine among many Pueblo Indians.
    • On August 10, 1680, seventeen thousand Pueblo Indians initiated a coordinated assault on numerous Spanish missions and forts in what came to be known as the Pueblo revolt, leading to the Spaniards' temporary retreat from the area.
    • In part, they feared military reprisals if they challenged Spanish authorities and, moreover, had been weakened by disease and untimely drought and were struggling to fend off raids by hostile Apache and Navajo tribes.
    • In 1696, the Pueblo resistance was finally crushed, and new lands were opened for Spanish settlement.
    • In response to early eighteenth-century French settlements in the lower Mississippi valley, Spain sought to reinforce its claims to Texas.
    • King Philip IV of Spain, Letter to Don Luis Valdés, 1647:
      • Spanish administrators sold American Indian children into slavery.
      • The King desires peace with indigenous populations.

  • Thinking Historically: Crafting a Thesis Statement Based on Comparison

    • Step 1: Break down the prompt.
    • Step 2: List and categorize relevant historical knowledge.
    • Step 3: Write a thesis statement.
    • Weak Thesis: While both the Spanish and the French colonized North America and the American Indians there, the Spanish were cruel to the American Indians, whereas the French were generally more accepting of their cultural practices.
    • Strong Thesis: Spanish and French colonies showed similarity in their interactions with American Indians in that both formed mutually beneficial alliances with some local tribes during the early periods of con- quest; however, the French, who depended primarily on trade with native peoples, employed forced labor far less than the Spanish, who sought precious metals and agricultural products in the regions they colonized, and therefore forced native peoples to produce these goods.