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Juan de Onate leads Spanish into New Mexico
The Pueblos had a lot of interest as places that would have Christian converts for the Spanish, who had lost interest in the area earlier. Rumors came up about a city of gold and the Spanish became obsessed with finding another Aztec Empire in Mexico. Onate traveled up the Rio Grande Valley and was met with resistance from natives of the area. He lost interest after not finding any gold, but helped set up the colony of Sante Fe for the church -
English found Jamestown
The Virginia Co got a royal charter to settle the land that the English called Virginia and sent over hundreds of men to the Chesapeake Bay where they built a fort called Jamestown (after King James I who gave them their charter). A large amount of Algonquians lived in the area and where confused by these new settlers who underestimated their powers as members of the Powhatan Confederacy. Many years of conflict and struggle followed, ending with Powhatans death after his daughter died. -
French found Quebec
The French controlled the fur trade in the north which relied heavily on the St. Lawrence river to help bring things in and send furs to Europe. So Samuel de Champlain, acting for the French royalty, founded Quebec on the mouth of the St. Lawrence to ensure the French controlled the entire monopoly of the fur trade. Champlain joined forces with the Huron Indians and helped them win a war against their enemies, the Five Nation Iroquois Confederacy, to win total control of the area. -
Spanish found Santa Fe
After Onate failed at finding another Aztec Empire and the promised city of gold, the Spanish seemed to lose interest in the Southwest again. The Spanish relied heavily on imported Indian labor from the New Mexico area and the support of the Church who demanded to see payback from their funding of expeditions to the New World. So the Spanish founded Santa Fe in New Mexico as a trading post and missionary, somewhere for the Franciscan missions to get to all the Pueblos (a home base). -
Pilgrim emigration
Seeking religious freedom and to have a place of their own, the Pilgrims sailed on the Mayflower to reach the New World and settled at Plymouth in Massachusetts. Before they even got off the ship, men started to complain (not surprising) about a lack of government or rules for this new colony. William Bradford drafted and had all heads of the houses sign the Mayflower Compact, the first document of self-government in North America. -
Indian uprising in Virginia
A native American shaman was killed by Puritans living in Virginia after he told them to reject the English way of thinking and way of life. On Good Friday 347 colonists (a third of Virginia's colonial population), but they managed to hold on to a 10 year war of attrition. In 1632 the Powhatans sued for peace, but the Virginia Company went bankrupt and Virginia was then changed to a royal colony. Post becoming a royal colony the population doubled every five years from 1625-40. -
Jesuit missionaries arrive in New France
French missionaries moved along the rivers with the fur traders and moved on to convert lots of natives and spread their religion as far as they could. The French missionaries differed from the Spanish in the fact that they learned the natives languages in order to persuade them in their own ways and not do it forcefully. -
Puritans begin settlement of Massachusetts Bay
The Massachusetts Bay Company was founded after the Puritans landed at Plymouth in 1620 -
Pequot War
After tensions rose between the colonists of New England and the Pequot tribe, native to New England, both sides began to feel a strong distrust towards the other side. The Pequots were allies with the Dutch, who the English did not like at all. So the English allied with the Narragansett tribe, the Pequot's enemies, to attack a village. The English killed most of the village, those who were not killed were sold into slavery. -
Charles I executed
The Puritans in Parliament were often in conflict with King Charles I. It became armed conflict in 1642 and in 1649 the Puritans beheaded Charles I and declared England to be a Commonwealth led by Oliver Cromwell. Puritans were on the winning side of the English Civil War, so they didn't want to leave England for the New World. Many New Englanders even went back to England. -
Stuart monarchy restored, Charles II becomes king
Charles II was the son of the beheaded Charles I, who had gone into hiding after Oliver Cromwell cut off his dads head. Oliver Cromwell died in 1658 and in 1660, after 2 years of craving stability, Charles II was named the King of England by Parliament. -
King Phillips War
King Phillip was a nickname for a Native chief who grew up around the English and knew their way of life. The Indian peoples of the southern New England colonies and Puritan colonies fight over land. -
Bacons Rebellion
Nathaniel Bacon was a former indentured servant who got territory on the frontier land and began to harass the local natives to his stretch of land. The governor of Virginia, William Berkeley, tried to calm Bacon down by telling him to leave the natives alone. This only infuriated Bacon and his followers because they wanted to get rid of all of the natives on the land. In 1676 Bacon and his followers marched on Jamestown, the colonial capital, and burnt some of it down. He then got sick and died -
Pueblo Revolt
The people of Pueblos in Santa Fe, New Mexico went against the Spanish way of life and decided to fight them and their customs. It killed 400 people and drove 2,000 Spanish settlers from the area. -
The Glorious Revolution
Lots of turmoil in the English monarchy lead to many switches of power. In the end, a new family began their rule of England. After throwing out James II, Parliament knew they needed a good Protestant ruling family. Enter William & Mary who decided to sign a Bill of Rights to make everyone happy.