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Englishmen of the Virginia Company sail up the James River and plant a settlement there. The location had been ignored by the indigenous people as the water was brackish and the soil quality was poor. -
Quebec was founded by Samuel de Champlain and provided a foothold for the New France. -
Henry Hudson, in an effort to find the Northwest passage, finds and claims the Hudson River and modern-day New York for the Dutch. -
Santa Fe was the first permanent European settlement in the Southwest of North America. -
John Rolfe crossed tobacco strains to plant the first tobacco plant in Virginia. This plant would later become an important part of the U.S. southern economy. -
One of the first forms of self-appointed government in the New World. It was a limited representative body composed of solely white landowners. -
A Dutch slave ship sold 20 Africans to the Virginia colonists and slavery would continue in America for almost 250 years. -
After Powhatan's death earlier in the year, his brother sought to remove the colonists from their homeland. This allowed for the colonists to retaliate and begin to push the Natives out of the land. -
Virginia passed a law that said an enslaved woman's children inherited their mother's condition. This soon passed in other colonies. -
In the winter of 1675, John Sassamon was found dead under ice. It was blamed upon 3 Natives. They were then tried and killed which then lead to escalating deaths.
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Bacon's Rebellion started over a pig, coincidentally. Conflict between a group of rebels and the governor began and continued until the death of the rebels' leader Nathan Bacon. This was the first of many rebellions of discontented frontiersmen.
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A relatively peaceful coup that overthrew the King Charles II. The throne was given to Puritans which directly influenced Britain and later the Americas.
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Colonial Massachusetts becomes the first place in the Americas to issue paper bills as currency.