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Puebloan population is at 60,000
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England stands ready to assert dominance on North America
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French traders establish Port Royal in Nova Scotia and start trade expeditions as far down as Cape Cod.
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There is no permanent English colony in North America at the time Queen Elizabeth dies
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King James makes peace with Spain in 1604, privateering no longer held out the promise of cheap wealth
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James I approves the formation of the Virginia Company.
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The Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery sail forty miles up the James River (named it for the English king) in present-day Virginia (named it for Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen) and settle on just such a place.
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Samuel de Champlain founds Quebec, which later becomes New France.
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The Dutch commission Englishman Henry Hudson to find the mythical Northwest passage. Hudson fails, but found the Hudson River and claims modern-day New York for the Dutch.
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Four hundred settlers arrive at Jamestown
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The overwhelmed colony enteres a desperate “starving time”
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Santa Fe, the first permanent European settlement, was founded by the Spanish.
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Only 60 settlers survive at Jamestown
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Pocahontas marries John Rolfe
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80 percent of all English immigrants who have arrived in Jamestown have perished
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John Rolfe crosses tobacco strains from Trinidad and Guiana and plants Virginia’s first tobacco crop
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The colony sends its first cargo of tobacco back to England
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Any person who migrated to Virginia would automatically receive fifty acres of land and any immigrant whose passage they paid would entitle them to fifty acres more
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The Virginia Company establishes the House of Burgesses and a Dutch slave ship sells twenty Africans to the Virginia colonists
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The Netherlands charters the Dutch West India Company and establishes colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and North America.
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Peter Minuit "buys" Manhattan from the Munsee Indians.
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The Dutch colony imports eleven company owned slaves amid labor shortages. Slaves are tasked with building New Amsterdam.
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The Spanish mission system spreads to the Apalachee territory in Florida's panhandle.
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The Dutch colony's first African marriage occurs
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There are now about 500 African slaves in the Dutch colony
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The Dutch colony has the largest slave population on the continent
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Puebloan population is at 18,000
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Spanish New Mexico population is at 3,000
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France criminalizes Protestantism and Huguenots (French Protestants) try to emigrate to New France. Non-Catholics are forbidden in New France.