Untitled Flashcard Set

Glossary

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. Its end result was broadened freedoms for white New Englanders and the dispossession of the Wampanoags and other Indians.

Metacom

Wampanoag leader whom the colonists called King Philip; he led a war against the English colonists, one in which he was killed.

mercantilism

Policy of Great Britain and other imperial powers of regulating the economies of colonies to benefit the mother country.

Navigation Acts

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.

Covenant Chain

Alliance formed in the 1670s between the English colony of New York and the Haudenosaunee League and eventually other colonies and Native nations.

Yamasee War

War between South Carolina and Yamasee and Muscogee Indians, aggravated by rising debts and slave traders’ raids; although the Yamasee lost, the war resulted in the end of South Carolina’s Indian slave trade.

Society of Friends (Quakers)

Religious group in England and America whose members believed all persons possessed the “inner light” or spirit of God; they were early proponents of abolition of slavery and equal rights for women.

Bacon’s Rebellion

Unsuccessful 1676 revolt led by planter Nathaniel Bacon against British Governor of Virginia William Berkeley’s administration.

Glorious Revolution

A coup in 1688 engineered by a small group of aristocrats that led to William of Orange taking the British throne in place of James II.

English Bill of Rights

A series of laws enacted in 1689 that inscribed the rights of English men into law and enumerated parliamentary powers such as taxation.

Lords of Trade

An English regulatory board established to oversee colonial affairs in 1675.

Dominion of New England

Consolidation into a single colony of the New England colonies—and later New York and New Jersey—by royal governor Edmund Andros in 1686; dominion reverted to individual colonial governments three years later.

English Toleration Act

A 1690 act of Parliament that allowed all English Protestants to worship freely.

Salem witch trials

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

redemptioners

Indentured families or persons who received passage to the New World in exchange for a promise to work off their debt in America.

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.

backcountry

In colonial America, the area stretching from central Pennsylvania southward through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and into upland North and South Carolina.

staple crops

Important cash crops; for example, cotton or tobacco.

Natchez War

War begun in 1729 by the Natchez Indians against the French who were building plantations on Natchez land. With help from Native allies, the French won the war and drove the Natchez from their homeland.