Lecture 1.6: The English, Liberty, and American Indians

Key Concepts & Terms

  • Key Concept 2.1: Europeans developed various colonization and migration patterns influenced by different goals, cultures, and varied North American environments. They competed with each other and American Indians for resources.

Early English Colonization

  • Explanation of the characteristics of early English colonization of the Americas.
  • Explanation of the impact of European colonization on Indigenous societies.

English Immigrants

  • Why Emigrate? Economic conditions in England were poor.
  • Migration Stats: Between 1607-1700, over half a million people left England, but the majority did not go to the Americas.
  • Cause & Effect: Demand for labor in the Americas led to large migration.

Indentured Servants

  • If you could pay your own way to America, you arrived as a free person.
  • Nearly 3/4 of emigrants from England came as indentured servants.
  • Definition: Voluntarily surrender freedom for 5-7 years in exchange for passage.

The Life of an Indentured Servant

  • Not Chattel: Although similar to enslaved people, indentured servants were not chattel (personal property).
  • Similarities to Enslaved People: Could be bought and sold, could not marry without permission, subject to harsh punishment.
  • Pregnancy: Women who became pregnant had their service extended.
  • Rights: Unlike enslaved Africans, they retained some rights of Englishmen and their service ended.
  • Freedom Dues: Upon surviving their service, they were given "freedom dues," which were often too small to acquire land.
  • High Death Rate: Indentured servants often did not survive their term of service.

The English and American Indians

  • Land vs. Dominion: Unlike the Spanish, the English wanted land, not control of Native people.
  • No Conquest: The English did not consider themselves to be conquerors.
  • Removal, Not Conversion: Interested in moving Native people off their land, not converting, intermarrying, enslaving, or making them subjects of the King.
    • Example: In Virginia, marriage between Indians and whites was outlawed in 1691.
  • Failed Treaties: Attempts at treaties often failed and were ignored.
  • Open Warfare: Resulted in open warfare with Indigenous societies, reinforcing a sense of superiority for the English.

The Effect on American Native Americans

  • Metal Goods: European metal goods changed Native American farming and culture.
  • Fur Trade: Native men devoted more time to hunting for the fur trade.
  • Alcohol: European alcohol deteriorated old skills and disrupted Native life.
  • Tribal Conflict: Tribes began to have more conflict as they competed for goods and less land.
  • Disease: Disease destroyed Native people's communities.

English Changes to the Environment

  • Deforestation and Agriculture: mix of Eulame.
  • Fencing: Settlers fenced in more and more land.
  • Livestock: Introduced new livestock that destroyed the environment.
  • Destruction of Crops: Pigs and cattle trampled Native people's cornfields and gardens.
  • Deforestation: The need for wood to heat homes depleted forests, which Native Americans relied upon for hunting.
  • Fur Trade: The fur trade destroyed native animal populations.

Learning Target(s) & Key Terms

  • Key Concept 2.1: Europeans developed a variety of colonization and migration patterns, influenced by different goals, cultures, and the varied North American environments where they settled, and they competed with each other and American Indians for resources.

Puritan Religious Beliefs and the Massachusetts Bay Colony

  • Explain the effect of Puritan religious beliefs upon the founding and development of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
  • New England Colony: Puritans wanted homogenous society

What is Puritanism

  • The first settlers in what would be the Northern Colonies- initially known as New England were Puritans
  • Puritans (also known as non-separating congregations)- thought the Church of England (Protestant) was corrupt and needed to be purified
  • Wanted to get rid of what they saw as Catholic elements in the church
Characteristics:
  • Encouraged reading of Bible and education
  • Idleness and immoral behavior were sins
  • Local congregations choose leaders (congregationalism)

Why Leave England?

  • Saw England as "lost" and a place filled with sin
  • Hoped to create "A City Upon a Hill" in America that the rest of the world would look to for guidance
  • Most hoped this would purify the Church of England from within
  • Hoped to worship freely in the English Colonies BUT would not tolerate religions of others
  • For Puritans, freedom came from subjugation to the church and church leaders (not individualism)

After Jamestown, The Pilgrims

  • In 1620 a group of separatists, unlike Puritans who wished to reform or "purify", they wished to separate from the Church of England
  • Drafted the Mayflower Compact (1620), which was the first written form of government in what would become the U.S.
  • and was held in common and all men could vote (regardless of whether they were church members).

The Founding of the Massachusetts Bay Company

  • The Puritans came in what would be called The Great Migration
  • Funded by The Massachusetts Bay Company (London merchants)
  • Most Puritans arrived as families (more equal gender)
  • Effect: population outnumbers The Southern Colonies by 1700
  • They were older than those in Virginia and Maryland, and more prosperous when they came

The Puritan Family

  • Family was the center of Puritan life- and the Father was the head of the Puritan family
  • Expected fathers "corrected" behavior of children and their wife
  • Women gained freedom from following their "roles"
  • Women's responsibilities as mothers defined their lives
  • Women spent a lot of time raising children
  • NE healthier environment led to more children surviving which meant in the church
  • A belief in spiritual equality did lead to women have some leadership
  • Male authority- women's rights (like VA) were limited

Puritans and Government

  • Puritans believed excess individualism would hurt society
  • "Holy watching" spying on your neighbors was encouraged
Defining characteristics:
  • Local Control
  • Communal ownership of much of the land
  • Public Education (literacy emphasized because need to read Bible)
  • Church members could vote- consent was important
  • 1634 the General Court created (more democratic than House of Burgesses)
  • Elected their governor, male church members vote

Puritans and The Economy

  • While New England was founded on religious principles it struggled (as later immigrants arrived) to keep these principles aligned with their economy
  • capitalist economy took hold
  • Initially communal ownership was encouraged but eventually more
  • Profit was okay as long as it supported the community
  • Lacking cash crops- NE moved towards fish and timber exports
  • Economy centered on small family farms
  • Effect: indentured servitude less in NE- family was the main form of labor

Key Guiding Questions

  • Explain the causes for Jamestown's development into a plantation society.
  • Explain the effect of interaction of the English and Americans upon American Indian society and culture.

The Jamestown Colony

  • The early history of Jamestown was, to say the least, not promising.
  • The colony's leadership changed repeatedly, its inhabitants suffered an extraordinarily high death rate, and with the company seeking a quick profit, supplies from England proved inadequate. The hopes of locating riches such as the Spanish had found in Mexico were quickly dashed
  • Silver and gold they have none, one Spanish observer commented, their local resources were not much to be regarded, and they had no commerce with any nation.
  • The first settlers were a quarrelsome band of gentlemen and servants.
  • They included few farmers and laborers and numerous sons of English gentry and high-status craftsmen (jewelers, stonecutters, and the like), who preferred to prospect for gold rather than farm. They would rather starve than work, declared John Smith, one of the colony's first leaders.

English Settlement in the Chesapeake ca 1650

  • Jamestown lay beside a swamp containing malaria-carrying mosquitoes, and the garbage settlers dumped into the local river bred germs that caused dysentery and typhoid fever. Disease and lack of food took a heavy toll.
  • By the end of the first year, the original population of 104 had fallen by half. New arrivals (including the first two women, who landed in 1608) brought the numbers up to 400 in 1609, but by 1610, after a winter long remembered as the "starving time," only 65 settlers remained alive. At one point, the survivors abandoned Jamestown and sailed for England, only to be intercepted and persuaded to return to Virginia by ships carrying a new governor, 250 colonists, and supplies. By 1616, about 80 percent of the immigrants who had arrived in the first decade were dead.
  • Only rigorous military discipline held the colony together. John Smith was a forceful man whose career before coming to America included a period fighting the Turks in Hungary, where he was captured and for a time enslaved. He imposed a regime of forced labor on company lands. "He that will not work, shall not eat," Smith declared. Smith's autocratic mode of governing alienated many of the colonists. After being injured in an accidental gunpowder explosion in 1609, he was forced to return to England. But his immediate successors continued his iron rule.

From Colony to Society

  • The Virginia Company slowly realized that for the colony to survive it would have to abandon the search for gold, grow its own food, and find a marketable commodity. It would also have to attract more settlers.
  • With this end in view, it announced new policies in 1618 that powerfully shaped Virginia's development as a functioning society rather than an outpost of London-based investors. Instead of retaining all the land for itself, the company introduced the headright system awarding fifty acres of land to any colonist who paid for his own or another's passage.