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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

CHAPTER 3

Creating New Social Orders:

Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

Figure 3.1 John Smith’s famous map of Virginia (1622) illustrates many geopolitical

features of early colonization. In

the upper left, Powhatan, who governed a powerful local confederation of Algonquian

communities, sits above other

local chiefs, denoting his authority. Another native figure, Susquehannock, who

appears in the upper right, visually

reinforces the message that the English did not control the land beyond a few

outposts along the Chesapeake.

Chapter Outline

3.1 Spanish Exploration and Colonial Society

3.2 Colonial Rivalries: Dutch and French Colonial Ambitions

3.3 English Settlements in America

3.4 The Impact of Colonization

Introduction

By the mid-seventeenth century, the geopolitical map of North America had become a

patchwork of

imperial designs and ambitions as the Spanish, Dutch, French, and English

reinforced their claims to

parts of the land. Uneasiness, punctuated by violent clashes, prevailed in the

border zones between the

Europeans’ territorial claims. Meanwhile, still-powerful native peoples waged war

to drive the invaders

from the continent. In the Chesapeake Bay and New England colonies, conflicts

erupted as the English

pushed against their native neighbors (Figure 3.1).

The rise of colonial societies in the Americas brought Native Americans, Africans,

and Europeans together

for the first time, highlighting the radical social, cultural, and religious

differences that hampered their

ability to understand each other. European settlement affected every aspect of the

land and its people,

bringing goods, ideas, and diseases that transformed the Americas. Reciprocally,

Native American

practices, such as the use of tobacco, profoundly altered European habits and

tastes.

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

3.1 Spanish Exploration and Colonial Society

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify the main Spanish American colonial settlements of the 1500s and

1600s

• Discuss economic, political, and demographic similarities and

differences between the

Spanish colonies

During the 1500s, Spain expanded its colonial empire to the Philippines in the Far

East and to areas in

the Americas that later became the United States. The Spanish dreamed of mountains

of gold and silver

and imagined converting thousands of eager Indians to Catholicism. In their vision

of colonial society,

everyone would know his or her place. Patriarchy (the rule of men over family,

society, and government)

shaped the Spanish colonial world. Women occupied a lower status. In all matters,

the Spanish held

themselves to be atop the social pyramid, with native peoples and Africans beneath

them. Both Africans

and native peoples, however, contested Spanish claims to dominance. Everywhere the

Spanish settled,

they brought devastating diseases, such as smallpox, that led to a horrific loss of

life among native peoples.

European diseases killed far more native inhabitants than did Spanish swords.

The world native peoples had known before the coming of the Spanish was further

upset by Spanish

colonial practices. The Spanish imposed the encomienda system in the areas they

controlled. Under this

system, authorities assigned Indian workers to mine and plantation owners with the

understanding that

the recipients would defend the colony and teach the workers the tenets of

Christianity. In reality, the

encomienda system exploited native workers. It was eventually replaced by another

colonial labor system,

the repartimiento, which required Indian towns to supply a pool of labor for

Spanish overlords.

ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA

Spain gained a foothold in present-day Florida, viewing that area and the lands to

the north as a logical

extension of their Caribbean empire. In 1513, Juan Ponce de León had claimed the

area around today’s

St. Augustine for the Spanish crown, naming the land Pascua Florida (Feast of

Flowers, or Easter) for the

nearest feast day. Ponce de León was unable to establish a permanent settlement

there, but by 1565, Spain

was in need of an outpost to confront the French and English privateers using

Florida as a base from which

Figure 3.2

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

to attack treasure-laden Spanish ships heading from Cuba to Spain. The threat to

Spanish interests took

a new turn in 1562 when a group of French Protestants (Huguenots) established a

small settlement they

called Fort Caroline, north of St. Augustine. With the authorization of King Philip

II, Spanish nobleman

Pedro Menéndez led an attack on Fort Caroline, killing most of the colonists and

destroying the fort.

Eliminating Fort Caroline served dual purposes for the Spanish—it helped reduce the

danger from French

privateers and eradicated the French threat to Spain’s claim to the area. The

contest over Florida illustrates

how European rivalries spilled over into the Americas, especially religious

conflict between Catholics and

Protestants.

In 1565, the victorious Menéndez founded St. Augustine, now the oldest European

settlement in the

Americas. In the process, the Spanish displaced the local Timucua Indians from

their ancient town of

Seloy, which had stood for thousands of years (Figure 3.3). The Timucua suffered

greatly from diseases

introduced by the Spanish, shrinking from a population of around 200,000 pre-

contact to fifty thousand

in 1590. By 1700, only one thousand Timucua remained. As in other areas of Spanish

conquest, Catholic

priests worked to bring about a spiritual conquest by forcing the surviving

Timucua, demoralized and

reeling from catastrophic losses of family and community, to convert to

Catholicism.

Figure 3.3 In this drawing by French artist Jacques le Moyne de Morgues, Timucua

flee the Spanish settlers, who

arrive by ship. Le Moyne lived at Fort Caroline, the French outpost, before the

Spanish destroyed the colony in 1562.

Spanish Florida made an inviting target for Spain’s imperial rivals, especially the

English, who wanted to

gain access to the Caribbean. In 1586, Spanish settlers in St. Augustine discovered

their vulnerability to

attack when the English pirate Sir Francis Drake destroyed the town with a fleet of

twenty ships and one

hundred men. Over the next several decades, the Spanish built more wooden forts,

all of which were burnt

by raiding European rivals. Between 1672 and 1695, the Spanish constructed a stone

fort, Castillo de San

Marcos (Figure 3.4), to better defend St. Augustine against challengers.

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

Figure 3.4 The Spanish fort of Castillo de San Marcos helped Spanish colonists in

St. Augustine fend off marauding

privateers from rival European countries.

Click and Explore

Browse the National Park Service’s multimedia

resources on Castillo de San

Marcos (http://openstaxcollege.org/l/castillo) to

see how the fort and gates have

looked throughout history.

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO

Further west, the Spanish in Mexico, intent on expanding their empire, looked north

to the land of the

Pueblo Indians. Under orders from King Philip II, Juan de Oñate explored the

American southwest for

Spain in the late 1590s. The Spanish hoped that what we know as New Mexico would

yield gold and silver,

but the land produced little of value to them. In 1610, Spanish settlers

established themselves at Santa

Fe—originally named La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís, or

“Royal City of the Holy

Faith of St. Francis of Assisi”—where many Pueblo villages were located. Santa Fe

became the capital of

the Kingdom of New Mexico, an outpost of the larger Spanish Viceroyalty of New

Spain, which had its

headquarters in Mexico City.

As they had in other Spanish colonies, Franciscan missionaries labored to bring

about a spiritual conquest

by converting the Pueblo to Catholicism. At first, the Pueblo adopted the parts of

Catholicism that

dovetailed with their own long-standing view of the world. However, Spanish priests

insisted that natives

discard their old ways entirely and angered the Pueblo by focusing on the young,

drawing them away

from their parents. This deep insult, combined with an extended period of drought

and increased attacks

by local Apache and Navajo in the 1670s—troubles that the Pueblo came to believe

were linked to the

Spanish presence—moved the Pueblo to push the Spanish and their religion from the

area. Pueblo leader

Popé demanded a return to native ways so the hardships his people faced would end.

To him and

to thousands of others, it seemed obvious that “when Jesus came, the Corn Mothers

went away.” The

expulsion of the Spanish would bring a return to prosperity and a pure, native way

of life.

In 1680, the Pueblo launched a coordinated rebellion against the Spanish. The

Pueblo Revolt killed over

four hundred Spaniards and drove the rest of the settlers, perhaps as many as two

thousand, south toward

Mexico. However, as droughts and attacks by rival tribes continued, the Spanish

sensed an opportunity to

regain their foothold. In 1692, they returned and reasserted their control of the

area. Some of the Spanish

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

explained the Pueblo success in 1680 as the work of the Devil. Satan, they

believed, had stirred up the

Pueblo to take arms against God’s chosen people—the Spanish—but the Spanish, and

their God, had

prevailed in the end.

3.2 Colonial Rivalries: Dutch and French Colonial Ambitions

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Compare and contrast the development and character of the French and Dutch

colonies

in North America

• Discuss the economies of the French and Dutch colonies in North America

Seventeenth-century French and Dutch colonies in North America were modest in

comparison to Spain’s

colossal global empire. New France and New Netherland remained small commercial

operations focused

on the fur trade and did not attract an influx of migrants. The Dutch in New

Netherland confined their

operations to Manhattan Island, Long Island, the Hudson River Valley, and what

later became New Jersey.

Dutch trade goods circulated widely among the native peoples in these areas and

also traveled well into

the interior of the continent along preexisting native trade routes. French

habitants, or farmer-settlers, eked

out an existence along the St. Lawrence River. French fur traders and missionaries,

however, ranged far

into the interior of North America, exploring the Great Lakes region and the

Mississippi River. These

pioneers gave France somewhat inflated imperial claims to lands that nonetheless

remained firmly under

the dominion of native peoples.

FUR TRADING IN NEW NETHERLAND

The Dutch Republic emerged as a major commercial center in the 1600s. Its fleets

plied the waters of the

Atlantic, while other Dutch ships sailed to the Far East, returning with prized

spices like pepper to be

sold in the bustling ports at home, especially Amsterdam. In North America, Dutch

traders established

themselves first on Manhattan Island.

One of the Dutch directors-general of the North American settlement, Peter

Stuyvesant, served from 1647

to 1664 and expanded the fledgling outpost of New Netherland east to present-day

Long Island and for

many miles north along the Hudson River. The resulting elongated colony served

primarily as a fur-

trading post, with the powerful Dutch West India Company controlling all commerce.

Fort Amsterdam, on

the southern tip of Manhattan Island, defended the growing city of New Amsterdam.

In 1655, Stuyvesant

took over the small outpost of New Sweden along the banks of the Delaware River in

present-day New

Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. He also defended New Amsterdam from Indian

attacks by ordering

African slaves to build a protective wall on the city’s northeastern border, giving

present-day Wall Street

its name (Figure 3.5).

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

Figure 3.5 The Castello Plan is the only extant map of 1660 New Amsterdam (present-

day New York City). The line

with spikes on the right side of the colony is the northeastern wall for which Wall

Street was named.

New Netherland failed to attract many Dutch colonists; by 1664, only nine thousand

people were living

there. Conflict with native peoples, as well as dissatisfaction with the Dutch West

India Company’s

trading practices, made the Dutch outpost an undesirable place for many migrants.

The small size of

the population meant a severe labor shortage, and to complete the arduous tasks of

early settlement, the

Dutch West India Company imported some 450 African slaves between 1626 and 1664.

(The company

had involved itself heavily in the slave trade and in 1637 captured Elmina, the

slave-trading post on

the west coast of Africa, from the Portuguese.) The shortage of labor also meant

that New Netherland

welcomed non-Dutch immigrants, including Protestants from Germany, Sweden, Denmark,

and England,

and embraced a degree of religious tolerance, allowing Jewish immigrants to become

residents beginning

in the 1650s. Thus, a wide variety of people lived in New Netherland from the

start. Indeed, one observer

claimed eighteen different languages could be heard on the streets of New

Amsterdam. As new settlers

arrived, the colony of New Netherland stretched farther to the north and the west

(Figure 3.6).

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

Figure 3.6 This 1684 map of New Netherland shows the extent of Dutch settlement.

The Dutch West India Company found the business of colonization in New Netherland

to be expensive. To

share some of the costs, it granted Dutch merchants who invested heavily in it

patroonships, or large tracts

of land and the right to govern the tenants there. In return, the shareholder who

gained the patroonship

promised to pay for the passage of at least thirty Dutch farmers to populate the

colony. One of the

largest patroonships was granted to Kiliaen van Rensselaer, one of the directors of

the Dutch West India

Company; it covered most of present-day Albany and Rensselaer Counties. This

pattern of settlement

created a yawning gap in wealth and status between the tenants, who paid rent, and

the wealthy patroons.

During the summer trading season, Indians gathered at trading posts such as the

Dutch site at Beverwijck

(present-day Albany), where they exchanged furs for guns, blankets, and alcohol.

The furs, especially

beaver pelts destined for the lucrative European millinery market, would be sent

down the Hudson River

to New Amsterdam. There, slaves or workers would load them aboard ships bound for

Amsterdam.

Click and Explore

Explore an interactive map of New Amsterdam in

1660

(http://openstaxcollege.org/l/WNET) that shows the

city plan and the locations of

various structures, including houses, businesses,

and public buildings. Rolling over the

map reveals relevant historical details, such as

street names, the identities of certain

buildings and businesses, and the names of

residents of the houses (when known).

COMMERCE AND CONVERSION IN NEW FRANCE

After Jacques Cartier’s voyages of discovery in the 1530s, France showed little

interest in creating

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

permanent colonies in North America until the early 1600s, when Samuel de Champlain

established

Quebec as a French fur-trading outpost. Although the fur trade was lucrative, the

French saw Canada

as an inhospitable frozen wasteland, and by 1640, fewer than four hundred settlers

had made their

home there. The sparse French presence meant that colonists depended on the local

native Algonquian

people; without them, the French would have perished. French fishermen, explorers,

and fur traders made

extensive contact with the Algonquian. The Algonquian, in turn, tolerated the

French because the colonists

supplied them with firearms for their ongoing war with the Iroquois. Thus, the

French found themselves

escalating native wars and supporting the Algonquian against the Iroquois, who

received weapons from

their Dutch trading partners. These seventeenth-century conflicts centered on the

lucrative trade in beaver

pelts, earning them the name of the Beaver Wars. In these wars, fighting between

rival native peoples

spread throughout the Great Lakes region.

A handful of French Jesuit priests also made their way to Canada, intent on

converting the native

inhabitants to Catholicism. The Jesuits were members of the Society of Jesus, an

elite religious order

founded in the 1540s to spread Catholicism and combat the spread of Protestantism.

The first Jesuits

arrived in Quebec in the 1620s, and for the next century, their numbers did not

exceed forty priests. Like

the Spanish Franciscan missionaries, the Jesuits in the colony called New France

labored to convert the

native peoples to Catholicism. They wrote detailed annual reports about their

progress in bringing the

faith to the Algonquian and, beginning in the 1660s, to the Iroquois. These

documents are known as the

Jesuit Relations (Figure 3.7), and they provide a rich source for understanding

both the Jesuit view of the

Indians and the Indian response to the colonizers.

One native convert to Catholicism, a Mohawk woman named Katherine Tekakwitha, so

impressed the

priests with her piety that a Jesuit named Claude Chauchetière attempted to make

her a saint in the

Church. However, the effort to canonize Tekakwitha faltered when leaders of the

Church balked at

elevating a “savage” to such a high status; she was eventually canonized in 2012.

French colonizers

pressured the native inhabitants of New France to convert, but they virtually never

saw native peoples as

their equals.

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

DEFINING "AMERICAN"

A Jesuit Priest on Indian Healing Traditions

The Jesuit Relations (Figure 3.7) provide incredible detail about

Indian life. For example, the 1636

edition, written by the Catholic priest Jean de Brébeuf, addresses the

devastating effects of disease on

native peoples and the efforts made to combat it.

Figure 3.7 French Jesuit missionaries to New France kept detailed

records of their interactions

with—and observations of—the Algonquian and Iroquois that they

converted to Catholicism. (credit:

Project Gutenberg).

Let us return to the feasts. The Aoutaerohi is a remedy which is

only for one particular kind

of disease, which they call also Aoutaerohi, from the name of a

little Demon as large as the

fist, which they say is in the body of the sick man, especially

in the part which pains him. They

find out that they are sick of this disease, by means of a

dream, or by the intervention of some

Sorcerer. . . .

Of three kinds of games especially in use among these Peoples,—

namely, the games of

crosse [lacrosse], dish, and straw,—the first two are, they say,

most healing. Is not this worthy

of compassion? There is a poor sick man, fevered of body and

almost dying, and a miserable

Sorcerer will order for him, as a cooling remedy, a game of

crosse. Or the sick man himself,

sometimes, will have dreamed that he must die unless the whole

country shall play crosse for

his health; and, no matter how little may be his credit, you

will see then in a beautiful field,

Village contending against Village, as to who will play crosse

the better, and betting against

one another Beaver robes and Porcelain collars, so as to excite

greater interest.

According to this account, how did Indians attempt to cure disease? Why

did they prescribe a game of

lacrosse? What benefits might these games have for the sick?

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

3.3 English Settlements in America

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify the first English settlements in America

• Describe the differences between the Chesapeake Bay colonies and the New

England

colonies

• Compare and contrast the wars between native inhabitants and English

colonists in

both the Chesapeake Bay and New England colonies

• Explain the role of Bacon’s Rebellion in the rise of chattel slavery in

Virginia

At the start of the seventeenth century, the English had not established a

permanent settlement in the

Americas. Over the next century, however, they outpaced their rivals. The English

encouraged emigration

far more than the Spanish, French, or Dutch. They established nearly a dozen

colonies, sending swarms of

immigrants to populate the land. England had experienced a dramatic rise in

population in the sixteenth

century, and the colonies appeared a welcoming place for those who faced

overcrowding and grinding

poverty at home. Thousands of English migrants arrived in the Chesapeake Bay

colonies of Virginia and

Maryland to work in the tobacco fields. Another stream, this one of pious Puritan

families, sought to

live as they believed scripture demanded and established the Plymouth,

Massachusetts Bay, New Haven,

Connecticut, and Rhode Island colonies of New England (Figure 3.8).

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

Figure 3.8 In the early seventeenth century, thousands of English settlers came to

what are now Virginia, Maryland,

and the New England states in search of opportunity and a better life.

THE DIVERGING CULTURES OF THE NEW ENGLAND AND CHESAPEAKE COLONIES

Promoters of English colonization in North America, many of whom never ventured

across the Atlantic,

wrote about the bounty the English would find there. These boosters of colonization

hoped to turn a

profit—whether by importing raw resources or providing new markets for English

goods—and spread

Protestantism. The English migrants who actually made the journey, however, had

different goals. In

Chesapeake Bay, English migrants established Virginia and Maryland with a decidedly

commercial

orientation. Though the early Virginians at Jamestown hoped to find gold, they and

the settlers in

Maryland quickly discovered that growing tobacco was the only sure means of making

money. Thousands

of unmarried, unemployed, and impatient young Englishmen, along with a few

Englishwomen, pinned

their hopes for a better life on the tobacco fields of these two colonies.

A very different group of English men and women flocked to the cold climate and

rocky soil of New

England, spurred by religious motives. Many of the Puritans crossing the Atlantic

were people who

brought families and children. Often they were following their ministers in a

migration “beyond the

seas,” envisioning a new English Israel where reformed Protestantism would grow and

thrive, providing a

model for the rest of the Christian world and a counter to what they saw as the

Catholic menace. While the

English in Virginia and Maryland worked on expanding their profitable tobacco

fields, the English in New

England built towns focused on the church, where each congregation decided what was

best for itself. The

Congregational Church is the result of the Puritan enterprise in America. Many

historians believe the fault

lines separating what later became the North and South in the United States

originated in the profound

differences between the Chesapeake and New England colonies.

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

The source of those differences lay in England’s domestic problems. Increasingly in

the early 1600s,

the English state church—the Church of England, established in the 1530s—demanded

conformity, or

compliance with its practices, but Puritans pushed for greater reforms. By the

1620s, the Church of England

began to see leading Puritan ministers and their followers as outlaws, a national

security threat because of

their opposition to its power. As the noose of conformity tightened around them,

many Puritans decided

to remove to New England. By 1640, New England had a population of twenty-five

thousand. Meanwhile,

many loyal members of the Church of England, who ridiculed and mocked Puritans both

at home and in

New England, flocked to Virginia for economic opportunity.

The troubles in England escalated in the 1640s when civil war broke out, pitting

Royalist supporters

of King Charles I and the Church of England against Parliamentarians, the Puritan

reformers and their

supporters in Parliament. In 1649, the Parliamentarians gained the upper hand and,

in an unprecedented

move, executed Charles I. In the 1650s, therefore, England became a republic, a

state without a king.

English colonists in America closely followed these events. Indeed, many Puritans

left New England and

returned home to take part in the struggle against the king and the national

church. Other English men

and women in the Chesapeake colonies and elsewhere in the English Atlantic World

looked on in horror

at the mayhem the Parliamentarians, led by the Puritan insurgents, appeared to

unleash in England. The

turmoil in England made the administration and imperial oversight of the Chesapeake

and New England

colonies difficult, and the two regions developed divergent cultures.

THE CHESAPEAKE COLONIES: VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND

The Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland served a vital purpose in the

developing seventeenth-

century English empire by providing tobacco, a cash crop. However, the early

history of Jamestown did

not suggest the English outpost would survive. From the outset, its settlers

struggled both with each

other and with the native inhabitants, the powerful Powhatan, who controlled the

area. Jealousies and

infighting among the English destabilized the colony. One member, John Smith, whose

famous map

begins this chapter, took control and exercised near-dictatorial powers, which

furthered aggravated the

squabbling. The settlers’ inability to grow their own food compounded this unstable

situation. They were

essentially employees of the Virginia Company of London, an English joint-stock

company, in which

investors provided the capital and assumed the risk in order to reap the profit,

and they had to make a

profit for their shareholders as well as for themselves. Most initially devoted

themselves to finding gold

and silver instead of finding ways to grow their own food.

Early Struggles and the Development of the Tobacco Economy

Poor health, lack of food, and fighting with native peoples took the lives of many

of the original Jamestown

settlers. The winter of 1609–1610, which became known as “the starving time,” came

close to annihilating

the colony. By June 1610, the few remaining settlers had decided to abandon the

area; only the last-

minute arrival of a supply ship from England prevented another failed colonization

effort. The supply ship

brought new settlers, but only twelve hundred of the seventy-five hundred who came

to Virginia between

1607 and 1624 survived.

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

MY STORY

George Percy on “The Starving Time”

George Percy, the youngest son of an English nobleman, was in the first

group of settlers at the

Jamestown Colony. He kept a journal describing their experiences; in

the excerpt below, he reports on

the privations of the colonists’ third winter.

Now all of us at James Town, beginning to feel that sharp prick

of hunger which no man truly

describe but he which has tasted the bitterness thereof, a world

of miseries ensued as the

sequel will express unto you, in so much that some to satisfy

their hunger have robbed the

store for the which I caused them to be executed. Then having

fed upon horses and other

beasts as long as they lasted, we were glad to make shift with

vermin as dogs, cats, rats, and

mice. All was fish that came to net to satisfy cruel hunger as

to eat boots, shoes, or any other

leather some could come by, and, those being spent and devoured,

some were enforced to

search the woods and to feed upon serpents and snakes and to dig

the earth for wild and

unknown roots, where many of our men were cut off of and slain

by the savages. And now

famine beginning to look ghastly and pale in every face that

nothing was spared to maintain

life and to do those things which seem incredible as to dig up

dead corpses out of graves and

to eat them, and some have licked up the blood which has fallen

from their weak fellows.

—George Percy, “A True Relation of the Proceedings and

Occurances of Moment which have

happened in Virginia from the Time Sir Thomas Gates shipwrecked

upon the Bermudes anno

1609 until my departure out of the Country which was in anno

Domini 1612,” London 1624

What is your reaction to George Percy’s story? How do you think

Jamestown managed to survive after

such an experience? What do you think the Jamestown colonists learned?

By the 1620s, Virginia had weathered the worst and gained a degree of permanence.

Political stability came

slowly, but by 1619, the fledgling colony was operating under the leadership of a

governor, a council,

and a House of Burgesses. Economic stability came from the lucrative cultivation of

tobacco. Smoking

tobacco was a long-standing practice among native peoples, and English and other

European consumers

soon adopted it. In 1614, the Virginia colony began exporting tobacco back to

England, which earned it a

sizable profit and saved the colony from ruin. A second tobacco colony, Maryland,

was formed in 1634,

when King Charles I granted its charter to the Calvert family for their loyal

service to England. Cecilius

Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, conceived of Maryland as a refuge for English

Catholics.

Growing tobacco proved very labor-intensive (Figure 3.9), and the Chesapeake

colonists needed a steady

workforce to do the hard work of clearing the land and caring for the tender young

plants. The mature leaf

of the plant then had to be cured (dried), which necessitated the construction of

drying barns. Once cured,

the tobacco had to be packaged in hogsheads (large wooden barrels) and loaded

aboard ship, which also

required considerable labor.

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

Figure 3.9 In this 1670 painting by an unknown artist, slaves work in tobacco-

drying sheds.

To meet these labor demands, early Virginians relied on indentured servants. An

indenture is a labor

contract that young, impoverished, and often illiterate Englishmen and occasionally

Englishwomen signed

in England, pledging to work for a number of years (usually between five and seven)

growing tobacco

in the Chesapeake colonies. In return, indentured servants received paid passage to

America and food,

clothing, and lodging. At the end of their indenture servants received “freedom

dues,” usually food and

other provisions, including, in some cases, land provided by the colony. The

promise of a new life in

America was a strong attraction for members of England’s underclass, who had few if

any options at home.

In the 1600s, some 100,000 indentured servants traveled to the Chesapeake Bay. Most

were poor young

men in their early twenties.

Life in the colonies proved harsh, however. Indentured servants could not marry,

and they were subject to

the will of the tobacco planters who bought their labor contracts. If they

committed a crime or disobeyed

their masters, they found their terms of service lengthened, often by several

years. Female indentured

servants faced special dangers in what was essentially a bachelor colony. Many were

exploited by

unscrupulous tobacco planters who seduced them with promises of marriage. These

planters would then

sell their pregnant servants to other tobacco planters to avoid the costs of

raising a child.

Nonetheless, those indentured servants who completed their term of service often

began new lives

as tobacco planters. To entice even more migrants to the New World, the Virginia

Company also

implemented the headright system, in which those who paid their own passage to

Virginia received fifty

acres plus an additional fifty for each servant or family member they brought with

them. The headright

system and the promise of a new life for servants acted as powerful incentives for

English migrants to

hazard the journey to the New World.

Click and Explore

Visit Virtual Jamestown

(http://openstaxcollege.org/l/jamestown1) to access a

database of contracts of indentured servants.

Search it by name to find an ancestor or

browse by occupation, destination, or county of

origin.

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

The Anglo-Powhatan Wars

By choosing to settle along the rivers on the banks of the Chesapeake, the English

unknowingly placed

themselves at the center of the Powhatan Empire, a powerful Algonquian confederacy

of thirty native

groups with perhaps as many as twenty-two thousand people. The territory of the

equally impressive

Susquehannock people also bordered English settlements at the north end of the

Chesapeake Bay.

Tensions ran high between the English and the Powhatan, and near-constant war

prevailed. The First

Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614) resulted not only from the English colonists’

intrusion onto Powhatan

land, but also from their refusal to follow native protocol by giving gifts.

English actions infuriated and

insulted the Powhatan. In 1613, the settlers captured Pocahontas (also called

Matoaka), the daughter of a

Powhatan headman named Wahunsonacook, and gave her in marriage to Englishman John

Rolfe. Their

union, and her choice to remain with the English, helped quell the war in 1614.

Pocahontas converted to

Christianity, changing her name to Rebecca, and sailed with her husband and several

other Powhatan to

England where she was introduced to King James I (Figure 3.10). Promoters of

colonization publicized

Pocahontas as an example of the good work of converting the Powhatan to

Christianity.

Figure 3.10 This 1616 engraving by Simon van de Passe, completed when Pocahontas

and John Rolfe were

presented at court in England, is the only known contemporary image of Pocahontas.

Note her European garb and

pose. What message did the painter likely intend to convey with this portrait of

Pocahontas, the daughter of a

powerful Indian chief?

Click and Explore

Explore the interactive exhibit Changing Images of

Pocahontas

(http://openstaxcollege.org/l/pocahontas) on PBS’s

website to see the many ways

artists have portrayed Pocahontas over the

centuries.

Peace in Virginia did not last long. The Second Anglo-Powhatan War (1620s) broke

out because of

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

the expansion of the English settlement nearly one hundred miles into the interior,

and because of the

continued insults and friction caused by English activities. The Powhatan attacked

in 1622 and succeeded

in killing almost 350 English, about a third of the settlers. The English responded

by annihilating every

Powhatan village around Jamestown and from then on became even more intolerant. The

Third Anglo-

Powhatan War (1644–1646) began with a surprise attack in which the Powhatan killed

around five

hundred English colonists. However, their ultimate defeat in this conflict forced

the Powhatan to

acknowledge King Charles I as their sovereign. The Anglo-Powhatan Wars, spanning

nearly forty years,

illustrate the degree of native resistance that resulted from English intrusion

into the Powhatan

confederacy.

The Rise of Slavery in the Chesapeake Bay Colonies

The transition from indentured servitude to slavery as the main labor source for

some English colonies

happened first in the West Indies. On the small island of Barbados, colonized in

the 1620s, English planters

first grew tobacco as their main export crop, but in the 1640s, they converted to

sugarcane and began

increasingly to rely on African slaves. In 1655, England wrestled control of

Jamaica from the Spanish

and quickly turned it into a lucrative sugar island, run on slave labor, for its

expanding empire. While

slavery was slower to take hold in the Chesapeake colonies, by the end of the

seventeenth century, both

Virginia and Maryland had also adopted chattel slavery—which legally defined

Africans as property and

not people—as the dominant form of labor to grow tobacco. Chesapeake colonists also

enslaved native

people.

When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, slavery—which did not exist in

England—had not

yet become an institution in colonial America. Many Africans worked as servants

and, like their white

counterparts, could acquire land of their own. Some Africans who converted to

Christianity became free

landowners with white servants. The change in the status of Africans in the

Chesapeake to that of slaves

occurred in the last decades of the seventeenth century.

Bacon’s Rebellion, an uprising of both whites and blacks who believed that the

Virginia government was

impeding their access to land and wealth and seemed to do little to clear the land

of Indians, hastened

the transition to African slavery in the Chesapeake colonies. The rebellion takes

its name from Nathaniel

Bacon, a wealthy young Englishman who arrived in Virginia in 1674. Despite an early

friendship with

Virginia’s royal governor, William Berkeley, Bacon found himself excluded from the

governor’s circle

of influential friends and councilors. He wanted land on the Virginia frontier, but

the governor, fearing

war with neighboring Indian tribes, forbade further expansion. Bacon marshaled

others, especially former

indentured servants who believed the governor was limiting their economic

opportunities and denying

them the right to own tobacco farms. Bacon’s followers believed Berkeley’s frontier

policy didn’t protect

English settlers enough. Worse still in their eyes, Governor Berkeley tried to keep

peace in Virginia by

signing treaties with various local native peoples. Bacon and his followers, who

saw all Indians as an

obstacle to their access to land, pursued a policy of extermination.

Tensions between the English and the native peoples in the Chesapeake colonies led

to open conflict.

In 1675, war broke out when Susquehannock warriors attacked settlements on

Virginia’s frontier, killing

English planters and destroying English plantations, including one owned by Bacon.

In 1676, Bacon and

other Virginians attacked the Susquehannock without the governor’s approval. When

Berkeley ordered

Bacon’s arrest, Bacon led his followers to Jamestown, forced the governor to flee

to the safety of Virginia’s

eastern shore, and then burned the city. The civil war known as Bacon’s Rebellion,

a vicious struggle

between supporters of the governor and those who supported Bacon, ensued. Reports

of the rebellion

traveled back to England, leading Charles II to dispatch both royal troops and

English commissioners

to restore order in the tobacco colonies. By the end of 1676, Virginians loyal to

the governor gained

the upper hand, executing several leaders of the rebellion. Bacon escaped the

hangman’s noose, instead

dying of dysentery. The rebellion fizzled in 1676, but Virginians remained divided

as supporters of Bacon

continued to harbor grievances over access to Indian land.

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

Bacon’s Rebellion helped to catalyze the creation of a system of racial slavery in

the Chesapeake colonies.

At the time of the rebellion, indentured servants made up the majority of laborers

in the region. Wealthy

whites worried over the presence of this large class of laborers and the relative

freedom they enjoyed,

as well as the alliance that black and white servants had forged in the course of

the rebellion. Replacing

indentured servitude with black slavery diminished these risks, alleviating the

reliance on white

indentured servants, who were often dissatisfied and troublesome, and creating a

caste of racially defined

laborers whose movements were strictly controlled. It also lessened the possibility

of further alliances

between black and white workers. Racial slavery even served to heal some of the

divisions between

wealthy and poor whites, who could now unite as members of a “superior” racial

group.

While colonial laws in the tobacco colonies had made slavery a legal institution

before Bacon’s Rebellion,

new laws passed in the wake of the rebellion severely curtailed black freedom and

laid the foundation for

racial slavery. Virginia passed a law in 1680 prohibiting free blacks and slaves

from bearing arms, banning

blacks from congregating in large numbers, and establishing harsh punishments for

slaves who assaulted

Christians or attempted escape. Two years later, another Virginia law stipulated

that all Africans brought

to the colony would be slaves for life. Thus, the increasing reliance on slaves in

the tobacco colonies—and

the draconian laws instituted to control them—not only helped planters meet labor

demands, but also

served to assuage English fears of further uprisings and alleviate class tensions

between rich and poor

whites.

DEFINING "AMERICAN"

Robert Beverley on Servants and Slaves

Robert Beverley was a wealthy Jamestown planter and slaveholder. This

excerpt from his History and

Present State of Virginia, published in 1705, clearly illustrates the

contrast between white servants and

black slaves.

Their Servants, they distinguish by the Names of Slaves for

Life, and Servants for a time.

Slaves are the Negroes, and their Posterity, following the

condition of the Mother, according

to the Maxim, partus sequitur ventrem [status follows the womb].

They are call’d Slaves, in

respect of the time of their Servitude, because it is for Life.

Servants, are those which serve only for a few years, according

to the time of their Indenture,

or the Custom of the Country. The Custom of the Country takes

place upon such as have no

Indentures. The Law in this case is, that if such Servants be

under Nineteen years of Age,

they must be brought into Court, to have their Age adjudged; and

from the Age they are judg’d

to be of, they must serve until they reach four and twenty: But

if they be adjudged upwards of

Nineteen, they are then only to be Servants for the term of five

Years.

The Male-Servants, and Slaves of both Sexes, are employed

together in Tilling and Manuring

the Ground, in Sowing and Planting Tobacco, Corn, &c. Some

Distinction indeed is made

between them in their Cloaths, and Food; but the Work of both,

is no other than what the

Overseers, the Freemen, and the Planters themselves do.

Sufficient Distinction is also made between the Female-Servants,

and Slaves; for a White

Woman is rarely or never put to work in the Ground, if she be

good for any thing else: And

to Discourage all Planters from using any Women so, their Law

imposes the heaviest Taxes

upon Female Servants working in the Ground, while it suffers all

other white Women to be

absolutely exempted: Whereas on the other hand, it is a common

thing to work a Woman

Slave out of Doors; nor does the Law make any Distinction in her

Taxes, whether her Work

be Abroad, or at Home.

According to Robert Beverley, what are the differences between servants

and slaves? What protections

did servants have that slaves did not?

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

PURITAN NEW ENGLAND

The second major area to be colonized by the English in the first half of the

seventeenth century, New

England, differed markedly in its founding principles from the commercially

oriented Chesapeake tobacco

colonies. Settled largely by waves of Puritan families in the 1630s, New England

had a religious orientation

from the start. In England, reform-minded men and women had been calling for

greater changes to the

English national church since the 1580s. These reformers, who followed the

teachings of John Calvin and

other Protestant reformers, were called Puritans because of their insistence on

“purifying” the Church

of England of what they believed to be un-scriptural, especially Catholic elements

that lingered in its

institutions and practices.

Many who provided leadership in early New England were learned ministers who had

studied at

Cambridge or Oxford but who, because they had questioned the practices of the

Church of England, had

been deprived of careers by the king and his officials in an effort to silence all

dissenting voices. Other

Puritan leaders, such as the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John

Winthrop, came from the

privileged class of English gentry. These well-to-do Puritans and many thousands

more left their English

homes not to establish a land of religious freedom, but to practice their own

religion without persecution.

Puritan New England offered them the opportunity to live as they believed the Bible

demanded. In their

“New” England, they set out to create a model of reformed Protestantism, a new

English Israel.

The conflict generated by Puritanism had divided English society, because the

Puritans demanded reforms

that undermined the traditional festive culture. For example, they denounced

popular pastimes like bear-

baiting—letting dogs attack a chained bear—which were often conducted on Sundays

when people had

a few leisure hours. In the culture where William Shakespeare had produced his

masterpieces, Puritans

called for an end to the theater, censuring playhouses as places of decadence.

Indeed, the Bible itself

became part of the struggle between Puritans and James I, who headed the Church of

England. Soon after

ascending the throne, James commissioned a new version of the Bible in an effort to

stifle Puritan reliance

on the Geneva Bible, which followed the teachings of John Calvin and placed God’s

authority above the

monarch’s. The King James Version, published in 1611, instead emphasized the

majesty of kings.

During the 1620s and 1630s, the conflict escalated to the point where the state

church prohibited Puritan

ministers from preaching. In the Church’s view, Puritans represented a national

security threat, because

their demands for cultural, social, and religious reforms undermined the king’s

authority. Unwilling

to conform to the Church of England, many Puritans found refuge in the New World.

Yet those who

emigrated to the Americas were not united. Some called for a complete break with

the Church of England,

while others remained committed to reforming the national church.

Plymouth: The First Puritan Colony

The first group of Puritans to make their way across the Atlantic was a small

contingent known as the

Pilgrims. Unlike other Puritans, they insisted on a complete separation from the

Church of England and

had first migrated to the Dutch Republic seeking religious freedom. Although they

found they could

worship without hindrance there, they grew concerned that they were losing their

Englishness as they saw

their children begin to learn the Dutch language and adopt Dutch ways. In addition,

the English Pilgrims

(and others in Europe) feared another attack on the Dutch Republic by Catholic

Spain. Therefore, in 1620,

they moved on to found the Plymouth Colony in present-day Massachusetts. The

governor of Plymouth,

William Bradford, was a Separatist, a proponent of complete separation from the

English state church.

Bradford and the other Pilgrim Separatists represented a major challenge to the

prevailing vision of a

unified English national church and empire. On board the Mayflower, which was bound

for Virginia but

landed on the tip of Cape Cod, Bradford and forty other adult men signed the

Mayflower Compact (Figure

3.11), which presented a religious (rather than an economic) rationale for

colonization. The compact

expressed a community ideal of working together. When a larger exodus of Puritans

established the

Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s, the Pilgrims at Plymouth welcomed them and

the two colonies

cooperated with each other.

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

AMERICANA

The Mayflower Compact and Its Religious Rationale

The Mayflower Compact, which forty-one Pilgrim men signed on board the

Mayflower in Plymouth

Harbor, has been called the first American governing document,

predating the U.S. Constitution by over

150 years. But was the Mayflower Compact a constitution? How much

authority did it convey, and to

whom?

Figure 3.11 The original Mayflower Compact is no longer extant; only

copies, such as this ca.1645

transcription by William Bradford, remain.

In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the

loyal subjects of our

dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great

Britain, France, and Ireland,

King, defender of the Faith, etc.

Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the

Christian faith and honor

of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in

the Northern parts of Virginia,

do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of

God, and one another,

covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body

politic; for our better ordering, and

preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by

virtue hereof to enact, constitute,

and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts,

constitutions, and offices, from time to

time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the

general good of the colony; unto

which we promise all due submission and obedience.

In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape

Cod the 11th of

November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King

James, of England, France,

and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth,

1620

Different labor systems also distinguished early Puritan New England from the

Chesapeake colonies.

Puritans expected young people to work diligently at their calling, and all members

of their large families,

including children, did the bulk of the work necessary to run homes, farms, and

businesses. Very few

migrants came to New England as laborers; in fact, New England towns protected

their disciplined

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

homegrown workforce by refusing to allow outsiders in, assuring their sons and

daughters of steady

employment. New England’s labor system produced remarkable results, notably a

powerful maritime-

based economy with scores of oceangoing ships and the crews necessary to sail them.

New England

mariners sailing New England–made ships transported Virginian tobacco and West

Indian sugar

throughout the Atlantic World.

“A City upon a Hill”

A much larger group of English Puritans left England in the 1630s, establishing the

Massachusetts Bay

Colony, the New Haven Colony, the Connecticut Colony, and Rhode Island. Unlike the

exodus of young

males to the Chesapeake colonies, these migrants were families with young children

and their university-

trained ministers. Their aim, according to John Winthrop (Figure 3.12), the first

governor of Massachusetts

Bay, was to create a model of reformed Protestantism—a “city upon a hill,” a new

English Israel. The

idea of a “city upon a hill” made clear the religious orientation of the New

England settlement, and the

charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony stated as a goal that the colony’s people

“may be soe religiously,

peaceablie, and civilly governed, as their good Life and orderlie Conversacon, maie

wynn and incite the

Natives of Country, to the Knowledg and Obedience of the onlie true God and Saulor

of Mankinde, and

the Christian Fayth.” To illustrate this, the seal of the Massachusetts Bay Company

(Figure 3.12) shows a

half-naked Indian who entreats more of the English to “come over and help us.”

Figure 3.12 In the 1629 seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (a), an Indian is

shown asking colonists to “Come

over and help us.” This seal indicates the religious ambitions of John Winthrop

(b), the colony’s first governor, for his

“city upon a hill.”

Puritan New England differed in many ways from both England and the rest of Europe.

Protestants

emphasized literacy so that everyone could read the Bible. This attitude was in

stark contrast to that

of Catholics, who refused to tolerate private ownership of Bibles in the

vernacular. The Puritans, for

their part, placed a special emphasis on reading scripture, and their commitment to

literacy led to the

establishment of the first printing press in English America in 1636. Four years

later, in 1640, they

published the first book in North America, the Bay Psalm Book. As Calvinists,

Puritans adhered to the

doctrine of predestination, whereby a few “elect” would be saved and all others

damned. No one could be

sure whether they were predestined for salvation, but through introspection, guided

by scripture, Puritans

hoped to find a glimmer of redemptive grace. Church membership was restricted to

those Puritans who

were willing to provide a conversion narrative telling how they came to understand

their spiritual estate

by hearing sermons and studying the Bible.

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

Although many people assume Puritans escaped England to establish religious

freedom, they proved

to be just as intolerant as the English state church. When dissenters, including

Puritan minister Roger

Williams and Anne Hutchinson, challenged Governor Winthrop in Massachusetts Bay in

the 1630s, they

were banished. Roger Williams questioned the Puritans’ taking of Indian land.

Williams also argued for

a complete separation from the Church of England, a position other Puritans in

Massachusetts rejected,

as well as the idea that the state could not punish individuals for their beliefs.

Although he did accept

that nonbelievers were destined for eternal damnation, Williams did not think the

state could compel

true orthodoxy. Puritan authorities found him guilty of spreading dangerous ideas,

but he went on to

found Rhode Island as a colony that sheltered dissenting Puritans from their

brethren in Massachusetts. In

Rhode Island, Williams wrote favorably about native peoples, contrasting their

virtues with Puritan New

England’s intolerance.

Anne Hutchinson also ran afoul of Puritan authorities for her criticism of the

evolving religious practices

in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In particular, she held that Puritan ministers in

New England taught

a shallow version of Protestantism emphasizing hierarchy and actions—a “covenant of

works” rather

than a “covenant of grace.” Literate Puritan women like Hutchinson presented a

challenge to the male

ministers’ authority. Indeed, her major offense was her claim of direct religious

revelation, a type of

spiritual experience that negated the role of ministers. Because of Hutchinson’s

beliefs and her defiance

of authority in the colony, especially that of Governor Winthrop, Puritan

authorities tried and convicted

her of holding false beliefs. In 1638, she was excommunicated and banished from the

colony. She went to

Rhode Island and later, in 1642, sought safety among the Dutch in New Netherland.

The following year,

Algonquian warriors killed Hutchinson and her family. In Massachusetts, Governor

Winthrop noted her

death as the righteous judgment of God against a heretic.

Like many other Europeans, the Puritans believed in the supernatural. Every event

appeared to be a

sign of God’s mercy or judgment, and people believed that witches allied themselves

with the Devil to

carry out evil deeds and deliberate harm such as the sickness or death of children,

the loss of cattle, and

other catastrophes. Hundreds were accused of witchcraft in Puritan New England,

including townspeople

whose habits or appearance bothered their neighbors or who appeared threatening for

any reason.

Women, seen as more susceptible to the Devil because of their supposedly weaker

constitutions, made up

the vast majority of suspects and those who were executed. The most notorious cases

occurred in Salem

Village in 1692. Many of the accusers who prosecuted the suspected witches had been

traumatized by the

Indian wars on the frontier and by unprecedented political and cultural changes in

New England. Relying

on their belief in witchcraft to help make sense of their changing world, Puritan

authorities executed

nineteen people and caused the deaths of several others.

Click and Explore

Explore the Salem Witchcraft Trials

(http://openstaxcollege.org/l/salemwitch) to

learn more about the prosecution of witchcraft in

seventeenth-century New England.

Puritan Relationships with Native Peoples

Like their Spanish and French Catholic rivals, English Puritans in America took

steps to convert native

peoples to their version of Christianity. John Eliot, the leading Puritan

missionary in New England, urged

natives in Massachusetts to live in “praying towns” established by English

authorities for converted

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

Indians, and to adopt the Puritan emphasis on the centrality of the Bible. In

keeping with the Protestant

emphasis on reading scripture, he translated the Bible into the local Algonquian

language and published

his work in 1663. Eliot hoped that as a result of his efforts, some of New

England’s native inhabitants

would become preachers.

Tensions had existed from the beginning between the Puritans and the native people

who controlled

southern New England (Figure 3.13). Relationships deteriorated as the Puritans

continued to expand their

settlements aggressively and as European ways increasingly disrupted native life.

These strains led to King

Philip’s War (1675–1676), a massive regional conflict that was nearly successful in

pushing the English out

of New England.

Figure 3.13 This map indicates the domains of New England’s native inhabitants in

1670, a few years before King

Philip’s War.

When the Puritans began to arrive in the 1620s and 1630s, local Algonquian peoples

had viewed them as

potential allies in the conflicts already simmering between rival native groups. In

1621, the Wampanoag,

led by Massasoit, concluded a peace treaty with the Pilgrims at Plymouth. In the

1630s, the Puritans in

Massachusetts and Plymouth allied themselves with the Narragansett and Mohegan

people against the

Pequot, who had recently expanded their claims into southern New England. In May

1637, the Puritans

attacked a large group of several hundred Pequot along the Mystic River in

Connecticut. To the horror of

their native allies, the Puritans massacred all but a handful of the men, women,

and children they found.

By the mid-seventeenth century, the Puritans had pushed their way further into the

interior of New

England, establishing outposts along the Connecticut River Valley. There seemed no

end to their

expansion. Wampanoag leader Metacom or Metacomet, also known as King Philip among

the English,

was determined to stop the encroachment. The Wampanoag, along with the Nipmuck,

Pocumtuck, and

Narragansett, took up the hatchet to drive the English from the land. In the

ensuing conflict, called King

Philip’s War, native forces succeeded in destroying half of the frontier Puritan

towns; however, in the end,

the English (aided by Mohegans and Christian Indians) prevailed and sold many

captives into slavery

in the West Indies. (The severed head of King Philip was publicly displayed in

Plymouth.) The war also

forever changed the English perception of native peoples; from then on, Puritan

writers took great pains to

vilify the natives as bloodthirsty savages. A new type of racial hatred became a

defining feature of Indian-

English relationships in the Northeast.

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

MY STORY

Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity Narrative

Mary Rowlandson was a Puritan woman whom Indian tribes captured and

imprisoned for several weeks

during King Philip’s War. After her release, she wrote The Narrative of

the Captivity and the Restoration

of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, which was published in 1682 (Figure 3.14). The

book was an immediate

sensation that was reissued in multiple editions for over a century.

Figure 3.14 Puritan woman Mary Rowlandson wrote her captivity

narrative, the front cover of which is

shown here (a), after her imprisonment during King Philip’s War. In her

narrative, she tells of her

treatment by the Indians holding her as well as of her meetings with

the Wampanoag leader Metacom

(b), shown in a contemporary portrait.

But now, the next morning, I must turn my back upon the town,

and travel with them into the

vast and desolate wilderness, I knew not whither. It is not my

tongue, or pen, can express

the sorrows of my heart, and bitterness of my spirit that I had

at this departure: but God was

with me in a wonderful manner, carrying me along, and bearing up

my spirit, that it did not

quite fail. One of the Indians carried my poor wounded babe upon

a horse; it went moaning

all along, “I shall die, I shall die.” I went on foot after it,

with sorrow that cannot be expressed.

At length I took it off the horse, and carried it in my arms

till my strength failed, and I fell down

with it. Then they set me upon a horse with my wounded child in

my lap, and there being

no furniture upon the horse’s back, as we were going down a

steep hill we both fell over the

horse’s head, at which they, like inhumane creatures, laughed,

and rejoiced to see it, though

I thought we should there have ended our days, as overcome with

so many difficulties. But

the Lord renewed my strength still, and carried me along, that I

might see more of His power;

yea, so much that I could never have thought of, had I not

experienced it.

What sustains Rowlandson her during her ordeal? How does she

characterize her captors? What do you

think made her narrative so compelling to readers?

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

Click and Explore

Access the entire text of Mary Rowlandson’s

captivity narrative

(http://openstaxcollege.org/l/captivenarr) at the

Gutenberg Project.

3.4 The Impact of Colonization

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain the reasons for the rise of slavery in the American colonies

• Describe changes to Indian life, including warfare and hunting

• Contrast European and Indian views on property

• Assess the impact of European settlement on the environment

As Europeans moved beyond exploration and into colonization of the Americas, they

brought changes to

virtually every aspect of the land and its people, from trade and hunting to

warfare and personal property.

European goods, ideas, and diseases shaped the changing continent.

As Europeans established their colonies, their societies also became segmented and

divided along religious

and racial lines. Most people in these societies were not free; they labored as

servants or slaves, doing the

work required to produce wealth for others. By 1700, the American continent had

become a place of stark

contrasts between slavery and freedom, between the haves and the have-nots.

THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY

Everywhere in the American colonies, a crushing demand for labor existed to grow

New World cash

crops, especially sugar and tobacco. This need led Europeans to rely increasingly

on Africans, and after

1600, the movement of Africans across the Atlantic accelerated. The English crown

chartered the Royal

African Company in 1672, giving the company a monopoly over the transport of

African slaves to the

English colonies. Over the next four decades, the company transported around

350,000 Africans from their

homelands. By 1700, the tiny English sugar island of Barbados had a population of

fifty thousand slaves,

and the English had encoded the institution of chattel slavery into colonial law.

This new system of African slavery came slowly to the English colonists, who did

not have slavery at

home and preferred to use servant labor. Nevertheless, by the end of the

seventeenth century, the English

everywhere in America—and particularly in the Chesapeake Bay colonies—had come to

rely on African

slaves. While Africans had long practiced slavery among their own people, it had

not been based on race.

Africans enslaved other Africans as war captives, for crimes, and to settle debts;

they generally used their

slaves for domestic and small-scale agricultural work, not for growing cash crops

on large plantations.

Additionally, African slavery was often a temporary condition rather than a

lifelong sentence, and, unlike

New World slavery, it was typically not heritable (passed from a slave mother to

her children).

The growing slave trade with Europeans had a profound impact on the people of West

Africa, giving

prominence to local chieftains and merchants who traded slaves for European

textiles, alcohol, guns,

tobacco, and food. Africans also charged Europeans for the right to trade in slaves

and imposed taxes on

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

slave purchases. Different African groups and kingdoms even staged large-scale

raids on each other to

meet the demand for slaves.

Once sold to traders, all slaves sent to America endured the hellish Middle

Passage, the transatlantic

crossing, which took one to two months. By 1625, more than 325,800 Africans had

been shipped to the

New World, though many thousands perished during the voyage. An astonishing number,

some four

million, were transported to the Caribbean between 1501 and 1830. When they reached

their destination

in America, Africans found themselves trapped in shockingly brutal slave societies.

In the Chesapeake

colonies, they faced a lifetime of harvesting and processing tobacco.

Everywhere, Africans resisted slavery, and running away was common. In Jamaica and

elsewhere,

runaway slaves created maroon communities, groups that resisted recapture and eked

a living from the

land, rebuilding their communities as best they could. When possible, they adhered

to traditional ways,

following spiritual leaders such as Vodun priests.

CHANGES TO INDIAN LIFE

While the Americas remained firmly under the control of native peoples in the first

decades of European

settlement, conflict increased as colonization spread and Europeans placed greater

demands upon the

native populations, including expecting them to convert to Christianity (either

Catholicism or

Protestantism). Throughout the seventeenth century, the still-powerful native

peoples and confederacies

that retained control of the land waged war against the invading Europeans,

achieving a degree of success

in their effort to drive the newcomers from the continent.

At the same time, European goods had begun to change Indian life radically. In the

1500s, some of the

earliest objects Europeans introduced to Indians were glass beads, copper kettles,

and metal utensils.

Native people often adapted these items for their own use. For example, some cut up

copper kettles and

refashioned the metal for other uses, including jewelry that conferred status on

the wearer, who was seen

as connected to the new European source of raw materials.

As European settlements grew throughout the 1600s, European goods flooded native

communities. Soon

native people were using these items for the same purposes as the Europeans. For

example, many native

inhabitants abandoned their animal-skin clothing in favor of European textiles.

Similarly, clay cookware

gave way to metal cooking implements, and Indians found that European flint and

steel made starting

fires much easier (Figure 3.15).

Figure 3.15 In this 1681 portrait, the Niantic-Narragansett chief Ninigret wears a

combination of European and

Indian goods. Which elements of each culture are evident in this portrait?

The abundance of European goods gave rise to new artistic objects. For example,

iron awls made the

creation of shell beads among the native people of the Eastern Woodlands much

easier, and the result

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

was an astonishing increase in the production of wampum, shell beads used in

ceremonies and as jewelry

and currency. Native peoples had always placed goods in the graves of their

departed, and this practice

escalated with the arrival of European goods. Archaeologists have found enormous

caches of European

trade goods in the graves of Indians on the East Coast.

Native weapons changed dramatically as well, creating an arms race among the

peoples living in

European colonization zones. Indians refashioned European brassware into arrow

points and turned axes

used for chopping wood into weapons. The most prized piece of European weaponry to

obtain was a

musket, or light, long-barreled European gun. In order to trade with Europeans for

these, native peoples

intensified their harvesting of beaver, commercializing their traditional practice.

The influx of European materials made warfare more lethal and changed traditional

patterns of authority

among tribes. Formerly weaker groups, if they had access to European metal and

weapons, suddenly

gained the upper hand against once-dominant groups. The Algonquian, for instance,

traded with the

French for muskets and gained power against their enemies, the Iroquois.

Eventually, native peoples also

used their new weapons against the European colonizers who had provided them.

Click and Explore

Explore the complexity of Indian-European

relationships

(http://openstaxcollege.org/l/NHC) in the series

of primary source documents on the

National Humanities Center site.

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES

The European presence in America spurred countless changes in the environment,

setting into motion

chains of events that affected native animals as well as people. The popularity of

beaver-trimmed hats

in Europe, coupled with Indians’ desire for European weapons, led to the

overhunting of beaver in the

Northeast. Soon, beavers were extinct in New England, New York, and other areas.

With their loss came

the loss of beaver ponds, which had served as habitats for fish as well as water

sources for deer, moose, and

other animals. Furthermore, Europeans introduced pigs, which they allowed to forage

in forests and other

wildlands. Pigs consumed the foods on which deer and other indigenous species

depended, resulting in

scarcity of the game native peoples had traditionally hunted.

European ideas about owning land as private property clashed with natives’

understanding of land use.

Native peoples did not believe in private ownership of land; instead, they viewed

land as a resource to be

held in common for the benefit of the group. The European idea of usufruct—the

right to common land use

and enjoyment—comes close to the native understanding, but colonists did not

practice usufruct widely in

America. Colonizers established fields, fences, and other means of demarcating

private property. Native

peoples who moved seasonally to take advantage of natural resources now found areas

off limits, claimed

by colonizers because of their insistence on private-property rights.

The Introduction of Disease

Perhaps European colonization’s single greatest impact on the North American

environment was the

introduction of disease. Microbes to which native inhabitants had no immunity led

to death everywhere

Europeans settled. Along the New England coast between 1616 and 1618, epidemics

claimed the lives of

75 percent of the native people. In the 1630s, half the Huron and Iroquois around

the Great Lakes died

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

of smallpox. As is often the case with disease, the very young and the very old

were the most vulnerable

and had the highest mortality rates. The loss of the older generation meant the

loss of knowledge and

tradition, while the death of children only compounded the trauma, creating

devastating implications for

future generations.

Some native peoples perceived disease as a weapon used by hostile spiritual forces,

and they went to war

to exorcise the disease from their midst. These “mourning wars” in eastern North

America were designed

to gain captives who would either be adopted (“requickened” as a replacement for a

deceased loved one)

or ritually tortured and executed to assuage the anger and grief caused by loss.

The Cultivation of Plants

European expansion in the Americas led to an unprecedented movement of plants

across the Atlantic. A

prime example is tobacco, which became a valuable export as the habit of smoking,

previously unknown in

Europe, took hold (Figure 3.16). Another example is sugar. Columbus brought

sugarcane to the Caribbean

on his second voyage in 1494, and thereafter a wide variety of other herbs,

flowers, seeds, and roots made

the transatlantic voyage.

Figure 3.16 Adriaen van Ostade, a Dutch artist, painted An Apothecary Smoking in an

Interior in 1646. The large

European market for American tobacco strongly influenced the development of some of

the American colonies.

Just as pharmaceutical companies today scour the natural world for new drugs,

Europeans traveled to

America to discover new medicines. The task of cataloging the new plants found

there helped give birth

to the science of botany. Early botanists included the English naturalist Sir Hans

Sloane, who traveled to

Jamaica in 1687 and there recorded hundreds of new plants (Figure 3.17). Sloane

also helped popularize

the drinking of chocolate, made from the cacao bean, in England.

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

Figure 3.17 English naturalist Sir Hans Sloane traveled to Jamaica and other

Caribbean islands to catalog the flora

of the new world.

Indians, who possessed a vast understanding of local New World plants and their

properties, would have

been a rich source of information for those European botanists seeking to find and

catalog potentially

useful plants. Enslaved Africans, who had a tradition of the use of medicinal

plants in their native land,

adapted to their new surroundings by learning the use of New World plants through

experimentation

or from the native inhabitants. Native peoples and Africans employed their

knowledge effectively within

their own communities. One notable example was the use of the peacock flower to

induce abortions:

Indian and enslaved African women living in oppressive colonial regimes are said to

have used this herb

to prevent the birth of children into slavery. Europeans distrusted medical

knowledge that came from

African or native sources, however, and thus lost the benefit of this source of

information.

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

Key Terms

headright system a system in which parcels of land were granted to settlers who

could pay their own

way to Virginia

indenture a labor contract that promised young men, and sometimes women, money and

land after they

worked for a set period of years

Jesuits members of the Society of Jesus, an elite Catholic religious order founded

in the 1540s to spread

Catholicism and to combat the spread of Protestantism

maroon communities groups of runaway slaves who resisted recapture and eked a

living from the land

Middle Passage the perilous, often deadly transatlantic crossing of slave ships

from the African coast to

the New World

musket a light, long-barreled European gun

patroonships large tracts of land and governing rights granted to merchants by the

Dutch West India

Company in order to encourage colonization

repartimiento a Spanish colonial system requiring Indian towns to supply workers

for the colonizers

Timucua the native people of Florida, whom the Spanish displaced with the founding

of St. Augustine,

the first Spanish settlement in North America

wampum shell beads used in ceremonies and as jewelry and currency

Summary

3.1 Spanish Exploration and Colonial Society

In their outposts at St. Augustine and Santa Fe, the Spanish never found the fabled

mountains of gold they

sought. They did find many native people to convert to Catholicism, but their zeal

nearly cost them the

colony of Santa Fe, which they lost for twelve years after the Pueblo Revolt. In

truth, the grand dreams of

wealth, conversion, and a social order based on Spanish control never came to pass

as Spain envisioned

them.

3.2 Colonial Rivalries: Dutch and French Colonial Ambitions

The French and Dutch established colonies in the northeastern part of North

America: the Dutch in

present-day New York, and the French in present-day Canada. Both colonies were

primarily trading posts

for furs. While they failed to attract many colonists from their respective home

countries, these outposts

nonetheless intensified imperial rivalries in North America. Both the Dutch and the

French relied on native

peoples to harvest the pelts that proved profitable in Europe.

3.3 English Settlements in America

The English came late to colonization of the Americas, establishing stable

settlements in the 1600s after

several unsuccessful attempts in the 1500s. After Roanoke Colony failed in 1587,

the English found more

success with the founding of Jamestown in 1607 and Plymouth in 1620. The two

colonies were very

different in origin. The Virginia Company of London founded Jamestown with the

express purpose

of making money for its investors, while Puritans founded Plymouth to practice

their own brand of

Protestantism without interference.

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

Both colonies battled difficult circumstances, including poor relationships with

neighboring Indian tribes.

Conflicts flared repeatedly in the Chesapeake Bay tobacco colonies and in New

England, where a massive

uprising against the English in 1675 to 1676—King Philip’s War—nearly succeeded in

driving the intruders

back to the sea.

3.4 The Impact of Colonization

The development of the Atlantic slave trade forever changed the course of European

settlement in the

Americas. Other transatlantic travelers, including diseases, goods, plants,

animals, and even ideas like the

concept of private land ownership, further influenced life in America during the

sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries. The exchange of pelts for European goods including copper kettles,

knives, and guns played a

significant role in changing the material cultures of native peoples. During the

seventeenth century, native

peoples grew increasingly dependent on European trade items. At the same time, many

native inhabitants

died of European diseases, while survivors adopted new ways of living with their

new neighbors.

Review Questions

1. Which of the following was a goal of the 5.

Which religious order joined the French

Spanish in their destruction of Fort Caroline?

settlement in Canada and tried to convert the

A. establishing a foothold from which to battle

natives to Christianity?

the Timucua

A. Franciscans

B. claiming a safe place to house the New

B. Calvinists

World treasures that would be shipped

C. Anglicans

back to Spain

D. Jesuits

C. reducing the threat of French privateers

D. locating a site for the establishment of Santa 6.

How did the French and Dutch colonists differ

Fe in

their religious expectations? How did both

compare to Spanish colonists?

2. Why did the Spanish build Castillo de San

Marcos? 7.

What was the most lucrative product of the

A. to protect the local Timucua

Chesapeake colonies?

B. to defend against imperial challengers

A. corn

C. as a seat for visiting Spanish royalty

B. tobacco

D. to house visiting delegates from rival

C. gold and silver

imperial powers

D. slaves

3. How did the Pueblo attempt to maintain their 8.

What was the primary cause of Bacon’s

autonomy in the face of Spanish settlement?

Rebellion?

A. former indentured servants wanted more

4. What was patroonship?

opportunities to expand their territory

A. a Dutch ship used for transporting beaver

B. African slaves wanted better treatment

furs

C. Susquahannock Indians wanted the

B. a Dutch system of patronage that

Jamestown settlers to pay a fair price for

encouraged the arts

their land

C. a Dutch system of granting tracts of land in

D. Jamestown politicians were jockeying for

New Netherland to encourage colonization

power

D. a Dutch style of hat trimmed with beaver

fur from New Netherland

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Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

9. The founders of the Plymouth colony were: 12. What

was the Middle Passage?

A. Puritans A. the

fabled sea route from Europe to the Far

B. Catholics East

C. Anglicans B. the

land route from Europe to Africa

D. Jesuits C. the

transatlantic journey that African slaves

made

to America

10. Which of the following is not true of the D. the

line between the northern and southern

Puritan religion?

colonies

A. It required close reading of scripture.

B. Church membership required a conversion 13. Which

of the following is not an item

narrative. Europeans

introduced to Indians?

C. Literacy was crucial. A.

wampum

D. Only men could participate. B. glass

beads

copper kettles

11. How did the Chesapeake colonists solve their D. metal

tools

labor problems?

14. How did

European muskets change life for

native

peoples in the Americas?

15. Compare

and contrast European and Indian

views on

property.

Critical Thinking Questions

16. Compare and contrast life in the Spanish, French, Dutch, and English colonies,

differentiating between

the Chesapeake Bay and New England colonies. Who were the colonizers? What were

their purposes in

being there? How did they interact with their environments and the native

inhabitants of the lands on

which they settled?

17. Describe the attempts of the various European colonists to convert native

peoples to their belief

systems. How did these attempts compare to one another? What were the results of

each effort?

18. How did chattel slavery differ from indentured servitude? How did the former

system come to replace

the latter? What were the results of this shift?

19. What impact did Europeans have on their New World environments—native peoples

and their

communities as well as land, plants, and animals? Conversely, what impact did the

New World’s native

inhabitants, land, plants, and animals have on Europeans? How did the interaction

of European and

Indian societies, together, shape a world that was truly “new”?

Chapter 3 | Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700

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