American History: A Survey (Brinkley), 13th Edition

Atlantic World | Growth of Colonies | Early Native Peoples | Salem Witchcraft | Settlement of Colonial America

Atlantic World


In the 14th century, the Atlantic Ocean emerged as the stage for one of the most dramatic series of cross-cultural encounters in human history. This interactive map portrays the dramatic movement of peoples across the ocean as slaves, indentured servants, religious refugees, and adventurers.

1			Examine the patterns of slave trade. What trends can you discern from the map?
2			Examine the movement of free, indentured, convicted, and enslaved migrants. What trends are evident?
3			Examine the trade routes of the various nations. Then examine the Prevailing Winds and Pirate activity. What do these layers reveal about trade in the age of sail when juxtaposed?
4			Examine the paths of various explorers. Which countries dominated exploration early on? Where did they focus their attention and why?

Growth of Colonies


In 1606, the English king, James I, issued charters to the London and Plymouth Companies. The London Company launched its first colonization effort only a few months later, eager to begin profiting from its New World lands. Their first settlement, Jamestown, proved a costly failure both in treasure and human lives. It survived, however, and eventually other English settlements took root throughout the Chesapeake region. To the north, economic ambition and religious dissent help shape the population growth and geographic expansion of European settlement in New England. In the 1630s, colonists settled in the fertile Connecticut River valley, extending English settlement to the west and south of Massachusetts Bay. Some Puritans, distressed by what they saw as religious laxity in Boston, established a more orthodox community in New Haven, while Roger Williams' movement for the separation of church and state led to the founding of Rhode Island. This map illustrates the settlement of the Chesapeake and Massachusetts Bay regions during the seventeenth century by European nations.

5			Why did the Virginia colony claim land on both sides of the Chesapeake Bay? What consequences did their claim have for the territories further inland such as Maryland and Pennsylvania?
6			Profit was an overwhelming motivation for Virginia's overseers and colonists. Explain how the search for profit affected the development of the colony. Why was tobacco such an important crop to the emerging market society and mercantile state in England? Who supplied tobacco to the English before Virginia? Why would they prefer to buy it from their own colonies? How did participation in the global market affect Virginia's landscape and society?
7			What was different about the coming of Africans to the New World, as compared to other ethnic groups - reasons for coming to the area? What regions were Africans concentrated in? Briefly, how would this pattern of migration affect later Southern and American history?
8			Examine the spread of settlement in the Chesapeake and New England. How did Chesapeake settlement differ from that of New England? Why did Europeans press westward during this period, instead of concentrating in the more easily defended coastal towns? How did the Native Americans respond to the expansion of English settlement in each area?
9			Compare and contrast Native American agricultural practices with those of the early English settlers. What innovations allowed the Europeans to sustain much greater population densities on the land? How did European farming practices change the landscape of the Chesapeake and New England?

Early Native Peoples

The Americas were filled with advanced civilizations well before Europeans had knowledge of their existence. Indeed, North America alone contained highly advanced peoples such as the Anasazi, who lived in the southwest and built cities and dwellings in the cliffs of the region. The Mississippians of the Mississippi Valley region built ceremonial mounds and developed advanced agricultural techniques. In the late 1400s, Europeans launched a series of explorations that brought dramatic change to these societies and the ecology of the Western Hemisphere. This era of exploration was one of great daring and perhaps greater tragedy because it facilitated the rapid depopulation of many Native American groups in the Americas. This map illustrates the expanding knowledge of Europeans about North America, as well as the extent of Native American civilization and, in particular, the three most powerful Indian empires in Central and South America and the cultural areas, languages, and principle subsistence patterns for Native Americans throughout North America.

10			Was the majority of exploration during this period done by one nation in particular? Why might that be?
11			Given what you know about the climate regions of America, is there any correlation between them and the subsistence of Native American peoples?
12			As you browse through the timeline, take note of the explorers who sailed around the Caribbean and Central America. Why might exploration of that region continue, while trips to the Canadian coast and New England seem to have stalled?

Salem Witchcraft

In 1692, the peaceful village of Salem was torn apart by one of the most curious events in American history. A group of young girls managed to create widespread hysteria with their accusations that took the lives of 25 people and imprisoned countless others. Known as the Salem Witch Trials, this outburst of accusations remains unmatched in American history; yet, in Europe, wide-scale accusations of Christian witchcraft and their resulting executions reached a crescendo in the 17th century. Although several incidents of accusations of witchcraft are on record for17th century New England, it was not until the Salem Witch Trials that a high concentration of executions and accusations surfaced. As this map demonstrates, accusations tended to ally with factions between Salem Village and Salem Town. Also, some historians point to ongoing Indian-colonists violence just north of Salem in Maine as adding to the tension in the town. Regardless, the Witch Trials were run with disregard to traditional court-room rules and many of the accused had little chance in a fair trial. Five years later, many of the participants in the trials admitted that the proceedings had been unfair.

13			Examine the map closely. Which areas of Salem were near trade roads? Which were more remote?
14			Examine just the accusers. Where were most of them located? Why might that have been so?
15			Examine just the witches and their defenders. Where were they clustered? Why?

Settlement of Colonial America

The European population of the North American colonies increased more than six fold between 1700 and 1760. In this period, settlement expanded from a narrow band along the Atlantic seacoast to the very edge of the Appalachian Mountains to the west and up against Spanish and French possessions to the south and north. While dominated and generally administered by the English, colonial America was ethnically and racially diverse. In the middle colonies, for instance, Dutch colonists remained prominent in New York City and the Hudson River valley through the eighteenth-century, and German immigrants settled large regions of Pennsylvania and Maryland. African slaves were heavily concentrated in the tobacco, rice, and long-staple cotton producing regions of the Southern coast, and large numbers of Scotch-Irish settlers moved into the backcountry Virginia and the Carolinas. The economy was also becoming more complex, with new industries dotting the landscape and intensive farming spreading to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Such rapid development had an equally profound effect on the original occupants of the coastline; many of these Native American tribes would play a central role in the European wars for domination of North America.

16			Within the colonies, which areas were most ethnically diverse? In which regions (New England, Mid-Atlantic, Chesapeake, South) did three or more ethnic groups coexist? What areas had the least diversity?
17			Why did English settlers in the Mid-Atlantic and Chesapeake regions settle along the ocean, while the Dutch, Scotch Irish and Germans settled further inland? Describe the patterns that you see in this immigration. What would this pattern lead you to predict about where subsequent immigrants would settle?
18			What was different about the coming of Africans to the New World, as compared to other ethnic groups - reasons for coming to the area? What regions were Africans concentrated in? Briefly, how would this pattern of migration affect later Southern and American history?
19			What did the spread of settlement into the American interior mean for the native populations? Were relations with Native Americans different in the northern and southern colonies? Where were the more powerful Native American civilizations located? Did their presence shape the pattern of European settlement in those areas?
20			You are a settler writing back to your homeland about the colony you are living in. Tell the residents of your former city or village the name and location of your settlement, how your settlement is growing, what types of people are arriving in the colonies, and how people are getting along with groups they had never encountered before in the Old World.