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The Planting
of English America
!"!
1500–1733
25
26 CHAPTER 2 The Planting of English America, 1500–1733
Encouraged by the ambitious Queen Elizabeth, Virginia—a vaguely defined region named in honor
hardy English buccaneers now swarmed out upon of Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen.” After several false
the shipping lanes. They sought to promote the twin starts, the hapless Roanoke colony mysteriously
goals of Protestantism and plunder by seizing Span- vanished, swallowed up by the wilderness.
ish treasure ships and raiding Spanish settlements, These pathetic English failures at colonization
even though England and Spain were technically at contrasted embarrassingly with the glories of the
peace. The most famous of these semipiratical “sea Spanish Empire, whose profits were fabulously
dogs” was the courtly Francis Drake. He plundered enriching Spain. Philip II of Spain, self-anointed foe
his way around the planet, returning in 1580 with of the Protestant Reformation, used part of his
his ship heavily ballasted with Spanish booty. The imperial gains to amass an “Invincible Armada” of
venture netted profits of about 4,600 percent to his ships for an invasion of England. The showdown
financial backers, among whom, in secret, was came in 1588, when the lumbering Spanish flotilla,
Queen Elizabeth. Defying Spanish protest, she 130 strong, hove into the English Channel. The
brazenly knighted Drake on the deck of his barna- English sea dogs fought back. Using craft that were
cled ship. swifter, more maneuverable, and more ably
The bleak coast of Newfoundland was the scene manned, they inflicted heavy damage on the cum-
of the first English attempt at colonization. This bersome, overladen Spanish ships. Then a devastat-
effort collapsed when its promoter, Sir Humphrey ing storm arose (the “Protestant wind”), scattering
Gilbert, lost his life at sea in 1583. Gilbert’s ill-starred the crippled Spanish fleet.
dream inspired his gallant half-brother Sir Walter The rout of the Spanish Armada marked the
Raleigh to try again in warmer climes. Raleigh beginning of the end of Spanish imperial dreams,
organized an expedition that first landed in 1585 on though Spain’s New World empire would not fully
North Carolina’s Roanoke Island, off the coast of collapse for three more centuries. Within a few
England Prepares for Colonization 27
Su
sq
teenth century that black slaves began to be
ue
.
eR
ha
ar
nn
la w imported in large numbers.
a
De
R.
MARYLAND Lord Baltimore, a canny soul, permitted unusual
freedom of worship at the outset. He hoped that he
Po
om
Delaware would thus purchase toleration for his own fellow
Bay
t
ac
R. worshipers. But the heavy tide of Protestants threat-
ened to submerge the Catholics and place severe
C he sa
restrictions on them, as in England. Faced with
St. Marys peak disaster, the Catholics of Maryland threw their sup-
e Ba
(1634)
port behind the famed Act of Toleration, which was
y
VIRGINIA Yo
rk
R.
passed in 1649 by the local representative assembly.
Ja
m es R
Maryland’s new religious statute guaranteed
.
posts. Many original Carolina settlers in fact had England. One Rhode Island town in 1730 counted
emigrated from Barbados, bringing that island’s more than two hundred Indian slaves from Carolina
slave system with them. They also established a vig- in its midst.
orous slave trade in Carolina itself. Enlisting the aid In 1707 the Savannah Indians decided to end
of the coastal Savannah Indians, they forayed into their alliance with the Carolinians and to migrate to
the interior in search of captives. The Lords Propri- the backcountry of Maryland and Pennsylvania,
etors in London protested against Indian slave trad- where a new colony founded by Quakers under
ing in their colony, but to no avail. Manacled William Penn promised better relations between
Indians soon were among the young colony’s major whites and Indians. But the Carolinians determined
exports. As many as ten thousand Indians were dis- to “thin” the Savannahs before they could depart. A
patched to lifelong labor in the West Indian cane- series of bloody raids all but annihilated the Indian
fields and sugar mills. Others were sent to New tribes of coastal Carolina by 1710.
{
1606 Royal (under the crown)
1. Virginia London Co. 1607 1609 1624
1612
2. New Hampshire John Mason 1623 1679 1679 Royal (absorbed by Mass.,
and others 1641–1679)
3. Massachusetts Puritans c. 1628 1629 1691 Royal
Plymouth Separatists 1620 None (Merged with Mass., 1691)
Maine F. Gorges 1623 1639 (Bought by Mass., 1677)
4. Maryland Lord Baltimore 1634 1632 ——— Proprietary (controlled by
proprietor)
5. Connecticut Mass. emigrants 1635 1662 ——— Self-governing (under
local control)
New Haven Mass. emigrants 1638 None (Merged with Conn.,
1662)
6. Rhode Island R. Williams 1636 {
1644
1663
——— Self-governing
7. Delaware Swedes 1638 None ——— Proprietary (merged with
Pa., 1682; same governor,
but separate assembly,
granted 1703)
8. N. Carolina Virginians 1653 1663 1729 Royal (separated informally
from S.C., 1691)
9. New York Dutch c. 1613
Duke of York 1664 1664 1685 Royal
10. New Jersey Berkeley and 1664 None 1702 Royal
Carteret
11. Carolina Eight nobles 1670 1663 1729 Royal (separated formally
from N.C., 1712)
12. Pennsylvania William Penn 1681 1681 ——— Proprietary
13. Georgia Oglethorpe and 1733 1732 1752 Royal
others
38 CHAPTER 2 The Planting of English America, 1500–1733
SOUTH
Carolinians, aided by their heavily armed brothers
CAROLINA from the south, retaliated by crushing the Tuscaro-
1670
ras in battle, selling hundreds of them into slavery
GEORGIA Charleston
1733 1670 and leaving the survivors to wander northward to
Savannah seek the protection of the Iroquois. The Tuscaroras
1733 eventually became the Sixth Nation of the Iroquois
Confederacy. In another ferocious encounter four
SPANISH Added to Georgia 1763 years later, the South Carolinians defeated and dis-
FLORIDA
persed the Yamasee Indians.
The Colonial South 39
With the conquest of the Yamasees, virtually all The hamlet of Savannah, like Charleston, was a
the coastal Indian tribes in the southern colonies melting-pot community. German Lutherans and
had been utterly devastated by about 1720. Yet kilted Scots Highlanders, among others, added color
in the interior, in the hills and valleys of the to the pattern. All Christian worshipers except
Appalachian Mountains, the powerful Cherokees, Catholics enjoyed religious toleration. Many mis-
Creeks, and Iroquois (see “Makers of America: The sionaries armed with Bibles and hope arrived in
Iroquois,” pp. 40–41) remained. Stronger and more Savannah to work among debtors and Indians.
numerous than their coastal cousins, they managed Prominent among them was young John Wesley,
for half a century more to contain British settlement who later returned to England and founded the
to the coastal plain east of the mountains. Methodist Church.
Georgia grew with painful slowness and at the
end of the colonial era was perhaps the least popu-
Late-Coming Georgia: lous of the colonies. The development of a planta-
The Buffer Colony tion economy was thwarted by an unhealthful
climate, by early restrictions on black slavery, and
by demoralizing Spanish attacks.
Pine-forested Georgia, with the harbor of Savannah
nourishing its chief settlement, was formally
founded in 1733. It proved to be the last of the thir- The Plantation Colonies
teen colonies to be planted—126 years after the
first, Virginia, and 52 years after the twelfth, Penn-
sylvania. Chronologically Georgia belongs else- Certain distinctive features were shared by Eng-
where, but geographically it may be grouped with its land’s southern mainland colonies: Maryland, Vir-
southern neighbors. ginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
The English crown intended Georgia to serve Broad-acred, these outposts of empire were all in
chiefly as a buffer. It would protect the more valu- some degree devoted to exporting commercial
able Carolinas against vengeful Spaniards from agricultural products. Profitable staple crops were
Florida and against the hostile French from the rule, notably tobacco and rice, though to a
Louisiana. Georgia indeed suffered much buffeting, lesser extent in small-farm North Carolina. Slavery
especially when wars broke out between Spain and was found in all the plantation colonies, though
England in the European arena. As a vital link in only after 1750 in reform-minded Georgia. Im-
imperial defense, the exposed colony received mon- mense acreage in the hands of a favored few fos-
etary subsidies from the British government at the tered a strong aristocratic atmosphere, except in
outset—the only one of the “original thirteen” to North Carolina and to some extent in debtor-tinged
enjoy this benefit in its founding stage. Georgia. The wide scattering of plantations and
Named in honor of King George II of England, farms, often along stately rivers, retarded the
Georgia was launched by a high-minded group of growth of cities and made the establishment of
philanthropists. In addition to protecting their churches and schools both difficult and expensive.
neighboring northern colonies and producing silk In 1671 the governor of Virginia thanked God that
and wine, they were determined to carve out a haven no free schools or printing presses existed in his
for wretched souls imprisoned for debt. They were colony.
also determined, at least at first, to keep slavery out All the plantation colonies permitted some reli-
of Georgia. The ablest of the founders was the gious toleration. The tax-supported Church of Eng-
dynamic soldier-statesman James Oglethorpe, who land became the dominant faith, though weakest of
became keenly interested in prison reform after one all in nonconformist North Carolina.
of his friends died in a debtors’ jail. As an able mili- These colonies were in some degree expansion-
tary leader, Oglethorpe repelled Spanish attacks. As ary. “Soil butchery” by excessive tobacco growing
an imperialist and a philanthropist, he saved “the drove settlers westward, and the long, lazy rivers
Charity Colony” by his energetic leadership and by invited penetration of the continent—and continu-
heavily mortgaging his own personal fortune. ing confrontation with Native Americans.
The Iroquois Montagnais Quebec
N EW FRAN C E
aki
Montreal en
in the Mohawk Valley of what is now New York State. .
Ab
eRc
The Iroquois Confederacy, dubbed by whites the ren
aw Lake
.t L Champlain
“League of the Iroquois,” bound together five Indian S
ND
Huron era
f ed ENGLAND
gas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas. According to Iro-
ERLA
o n Mohawk
n tario
Connecticut R.
Lake O
sC
quois legend, it was founded in the late 1500s by two
Mahican
i
uo M oh
Iroq
NETH
awk
leaders, Deganawidah and Hiawatha. This proud
Ono
R.
On e
Seneca
Cayuga
and potent league vied initially with neighboring ie
ndag
Er
ida
.
aR
Fort Orange
Indians for territorial supremacy, then with the L.
nn
a
R.
Hudson R.
ha
NEW
e
French, English, and Dutch for control of the fur y S usqu
en
gh
by his muskets, the Iroquois struggled for their very 0 5 0 1 0 0 Kilometers New Amsterdam
survival as a people.
The building block of Iroquois society was the Iroquois Lands and European Trade Centers,
longhouse (see photo p. 41). This wooden structure c. 1590–1650
deserved its descriptive name. Only twenty-five feet
in breadth, the longhouse stretched from eight to
two hundred feet in length. Each building contained their connections of blood running exclusively
three to five fireplaces around which gathered two through the maternal line. A single longhouse might
nuclear families, consisting of parents and children. shelter a woman’s family and those of her mother,
All families residing in the longhouse were related, sisters, and daughters—with the oldest woman
40
being the honored matriarch. When a man married, out the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they
he left his childhood hearth in the home allied alternately with the English against the
of his mother to join the longhouse of his wife. French and vice versa, for a time successfully work-
Men dominated in Iroquois society, but they owed ing this perpetual rivalry to their own advantage.
their positions of prominence to their mothers’ But when the American Revolution broke out, the
families. confederacy could reach no consensus on which
As if sharing one great longhouse, the five side to support. Each tribe was left to decide inde-
nations joined in the Iroquois Confederacy but kept pendently; most, though not all, sided with the
their own separate fires. Although they celebrated British. The ultimate British defeat left the confed-
together and shared a common policy toward out- eracy in tatters. Many Iroquois, especially the
siders, they remained essentially independent of Mohawks, moved to new lands in British Canada;
one another. On the eastern flank of the league, the others were relegated to reservations in western
Mohawks, known as the Keepers of the Eastern Fire, New York.
specialized as middlemen with European traders, Reservation life proved unbearable for a proud
whereas the outlying Senecas, the Keepers of the people accustomed to domination over a vast terri-
Western Fire, became fur suppliers. tory. Morale sank; brawling, feuding, and alco-
After banding together to end generations of holism became rampant. Out of this morass arose a
violent warfare among themselves, the Five Nations prophet, an Iroquois called Handsome Lake. In 1799
vanquished their rivals, the neighboring Hurons, angelic figures clothed in traditional Iroquois garb
Eries, and Petuns. Some other tribes, such as the appeared to Handsome Lake in a vision and warned
Tuscaroras from the Carolina region, sought peace- him that the moral decline of his people must end if
ful absorption into the Iroquois Confederacy. The they were to endure. He awoke from his vision to
Iroquois further expanded their numbers by means warn his tribespeople to mend their ways. His
of periodic “mourning wars,” whose objective was socially oriented gospel inspired many Iroquois to
the large-scale adoption of captives and refugees. forsake alcohol, to affirm family values, and to
But the arrival of gun-toting Europeans threatened revive old Iroquois customs. Handsome Lake died
Iroquois supremacy and enmeshed the confederacy in 1815, but his teachings, in the form of the Long-
in a tangled web of diplomatic intrigues. Through- house religion, survive to this day.
41
42 CHAPTER 2 The Planting of English America, 1500–1733
1588 England defeats Spanish Armada 1660 Charles II restored to English throne
1603 James I becomes king of England 1661 Barbados slave code adopted
1604 Spain and England sign peace treaty 1670 Carolina colony created