A long time ago, in regions far far away…and some regions pretty close by, three different groups of people lived with different cultures. Now don’t get me wrong, each of the three groups didn’t have a single culture. In fact, each of the different groups actually had several cultures made up of different religious beliefs, languages, governments, technologies, foods, and everything else. The only reason we

group them together for now is because they came from three main regions of the world…the Americas, Europe, and Africa. During the late 1400’s, 1500’s, and up into the mid-1700’s these groups all came together in the Americas. For our class purposes, we will focus on one small area of the Americas along the Atlantic coast of North America.

The first group in this region was the Indians…well, I always called them Indians growing up but apparently we now call them Native Americans. Most scientists today believe that these people came to North America around 15,000 years

ago by walking from modern day Russia into Alaska during the last ice age. Once they got here, the Native American Indians spread across North and South America and developed cultures that best worked for them. Their homes, foods, clothes, and everything else were determined by the climate, land, plants and animals near where they settled. In the Pacific Northwest (around modern day Seattle) they ate a lot of fish, lived in wooden houses, and wore animal skins for clothes. In the dry desert regions of modern day Arizona, New Mexico, and nearby they built homes out of dried mud bricks called adobe, many built homes into cliffs, they tried to farm by digging irrigation canals to water their crops but they weren’t very successful. Because water was so scarce, not many people lived in that region. In the Great Plains region, all life was based on the Buffalo. Without many trees for homes or much rain for farming, the Plains Indians spent year after year following the buffalo herds. When they killed the buffalo, they used it for food, canteens, tools, weapons, string, clothes, and even their portable homes known as teepees. East of the Mississippi the Natives usually lived in wooden homes, farmed, and ate deer and other animals that they hunted. Groups east of the Mississippi were generally larger than those in the Great Plains and Southwest because the land provided much more food and made large group living easier. While Plains and Southwest Indians generally stayed in small tribes, the Eastern groups formed large and powerful nations such as the Iroquois and Cherokee.

The second group to come to the Americas was the Europeans. After the decline of the Roman Empire somewhere around 500 AD, The Europeans had spent many years living in a feudal system in which most people swore their lives to lords and kings. They and their kids and all future generations remained on the land and worked for the lord or king year after year after year. But things began to change in the late 1300s with the beginning of the Renaissance and the coming of the Black Death. The Plague killed so many peasants that lots of lords didn’t have enough workers to do their jobs. In order to get things done they had to start paying their workers a salary. (most were really low salaries, but

they WERE salaries). Also many of the land owning lords and their families also died, so many peasants no longer had anyone to belong to. They were freed from their feudal obligations and able to work for themselves. Changes in science and art led the remaining kings and lords, and the workers who now had cash in their pockets to want more “stuff”. To get more “stuff”, they needed to trade…not only with other Europeans but with Africans and particularly Asians in China and India.

Originally they tried to use the trade routes on land but this wasn’t working. Europeans tried to use the old Silk Road paths they had learned about in the writings of Marco Polo. The overland routes had two main problems. First, they took FOOOOREEEEVEEEER. Second, and probably more important, the land routes passed through the Middle Eastern lands controlled by wealthy Muslim empires who were glad to allow the Europeans to travel through their lands…for a small fee of course. If the Europeans had to give money to the Muslims in the Middle East every time they passed

through, either they would lose their profits or the cost of goods would rise so high that they would have no customers.

Because of the troubles with transporting goods by land, the Europeans decided they should trade by ship. This sea travel opened up a whole new set of problems. The first was that travel by sea still took a long time. Nobody had ever sailed from Europe to Asia by going around Africa before. Actually very few had ever traveled out in the Atlantic so far that they couldn’t see land before, and many who did had never returned. While this made the especially ignorant believe the world was flat, most knew it was round but were afraid of sea monsters, storms, and other things that would destroy ships deep out in the ocean. In reality, many who got too far out into the ocean

simply got caught up into the Atlantic currents and were carried farther and farther away until they ran out of food and died.

Early traders attempted to get to Asia by hugging the coast of Africa all the way around. This led to many pirates living along the African coast to pop out and attack the ships, stealing all of the wealth the ships carried. Eventually Prince Henry of Portugal (later called Prince Henry the Navigator) opened up a school for sailors. In the school, sailors learned how to use new technologies such as the compass and astrolabe; better ships; and a better understanding of ocean and wind currents to sail farther out into the open sea and avoid the pirates. The Portuguese sailor Bartholomew Dias became the first man to sail around the southern tip of Africa in 1488, and Vasco de Gama made it all the way to India in 1498. The Portuguese were dominating the sea.

The Spanish didn’t like that the Portuguese were so much more successful at sea travel because it also made the Portuguese much wealthier. In 1492 Christopher

Columbus agreed to sail to Asia for the Spanish royal couple of Ferdinand and Isabella. He wasn’t going to sail around Africa, he was going to do the unthinkable and sail west to get east across the vast and unknown Atlantic. He took three ships and 90 men and in 33 days sailed across the Atlantic to what is today known as the Bahamas. He continued to sail around the area finding the island of Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and others. While Columbus believed he had found islands off the coast of Asia it soon became evident to others that this was not Asia, but an entirely different continent and the world was a whole lot bigger than everybody thought it was.

After Columbus came, several other Spaniards (known as conquistadors) travelled to America to conquer the lands. Cortez, Pizarro, Ponce de Leon, Desoto, Coronado and others conquered the natives that they came in contact with and took the lands and all of the wealth they contained for Spain. While the Spanish controlled most of South America, the Caribbean Islands, Mexico, and what would later become Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Florida they didn’t claim much of the land in North America as theirs. But the Spanish DID get rich…filthy rich! The movement of

resources such as gold, silver, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, peanuts, and beans from the Americas to Europe and cattle, horses, pigs, wheat, and other grains from Europe to America was known as the Columbian Exchange. The trade of resources made lots and lots of money for the Spanish. This led other Europeans to want to get in on the action themselves. Soon the Dutch, French, and English would want colonies of their own. A new policy of mercantilism developed in the European countries. According to mercantilism, the best way to get power was to have more money. With more money, a country could build its military and gain more power. The easiest way to get more money was to colonize new lands and take their resources. Therefore, mercantilism led to colonizing to get more money. With more money a country had the power to colonize even more land and gain more money. With more money they could now…you guessed it, gain more colonies and even more money that they could use to colonize more and….hopefully you get the point.

The French didn’t really want to take over the land in North America. They just wanted to set up military and trading bases in the region so they could have stopovers on their way to Asia…where they believed the real wealth was located. They spent years looking for something that they called the Northwest Passage. This Passage was a waterway that they believed would allow ships to pass completely through this new continent and on to Asia. Unfortunately for the French, the Northwest Passage does not exist. While looking for the Passage the French travelled down several rivers and set up forts along the way. Jacques Cartier sailed down the St. Lawrence River. Samuel de Champlain established the settlement of Quebec on the St. Lawrence. Other French forts were set up along the rivers of Canada and the Northeast and along the Great Lakes. While the Spanish had conquered the natives they encountered, the French usually got along with the natives. There were very few French settlers and they took up very little land so they didn’t really interfere with the lives of

the Natives. Not only that, the two groups had supplies that each other needed or could use. Although the French claimed ownership of a huge region of land expanding through most of modern Canada, all of the area around the Great Lakes, and surrounding the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, they didn’t have many people living on that land so the natives didn’t really care.

The next most important European group in the Americas was the British or English. The English had spent the early portions of the Renaissance period as a relatively unimportant country compared to Spain, Portugal, and France. When Elizabeth I became Queen in 1558, she wanted to create a much wealthier and more powerful country. How best to do it? Steal from those that were wealthier and more powerful than you. Elizabeth hired Sir Francis Drake and other privateers to steal from the Spanish as their ships carried wealth across the Ocean. A privateer is simply a pirate who works for one country. The county supplies the ships and weapons and the privateer sails around stealing from other countries’ ships, giving a cut of the profits to the country they work for. The British privateers robbed the Spanish blind. The privateers began to establish small bases of operation in North America that they could go to for supplies, protection, and simply as a hiding place from the Spanish navy.

By the 1580’s the British decided to set up their own colony in North America. They believed they could now stop stealing from the Spanish and could develop their own trading network. The first attempt was Roanoke, an island off the coast of what is now North Carolina. The colony was a failure. Actually the settlers of the colony disappeared when its founder Sir Walter Raleigh returned to England to get more supplies. When he returned everyone was gone.

The next attempt at British Colonization was made by a group called the Virginia Company. This was a joint-stock company. What that means is that several people pooled their money together by buying stock in a company. The Virginia Company bought supplies, ships, and paid employees to go to America and set up a colony. If the colony made money, the stock holders would split the profits among themselves. Originally, the Virginia Company planned on finding lots of gold as the Spanish had found in South America. They settled in a place that they named Jamestown in 1607 in what is now Virginia (hopefully that was pretty obvious). While the area was good for farming, it did have a few problems. 1) lots of mosquitoes were in the area carrying the disease malaria, 2)there was a large, powerful Native group in the area led by Powhatan who did not want to give up their land, and 3) there was no gold anywhere near Jamestown. Over a 15 year period 10,000 settlers came to Jamestown but 8000 of them died from malaria, starvation, war or other reasons.

Eventually Jamestown became successful. The colonists and the Natives both tired of fighting each other so they made agreements to stop fighting. The most important factor helping Jamestown survive was the introduction of tobacco to the colony. With no gold in the area, the colony was making no money for its investors and was going broke. Farmers came up with the idea to grow tobacco and sell it back in Europe. Europeans had never had tobacco before and they quickly began to love the new product and bought it like mad. (THEY WERE STUPID…DON’T SMOKE!) This new money making device made the Virginia Company wealthy and caused many more Europeans to want to come to America...the Virginia region in particular.

The Virginia Company began something known as the Headright System. In this system, anyone who came to Virginia received 50 acres of land FOR FREE. If you paid for others to come and work, you also received 50 more acres for each person you brought. Since land was hard to come by in England, this free land was unheard of. Wealthy or middle class men saw this as an opportunity to get extremely rich. Also, the poor of England saw this as an opportunity at a new life themselves. If they agreed to be an indentured servant and basically be a slave for five years, they would be brought to America and when their term was up, they would be free to settle land of their own. Many people paid for indentured servants to come to America and took control of very large farms 50 acres at a time. If you paid for12 servants to come to America, you would have 650 acres of land, which is equal to a square mile. The problems would arise after 5 years when all of those indentured servants would be free to leave and you would still have a 650 acre farm to work. This system would eventually lead to the third group of people to come to America who we will talk about shortly, the Africans.

As more and more people came to settle in Virginia, they needed to set up a form of government to keep the peace and stability. In all actuality, the government in England didn’t really care what went on in the American colonies as long as they made money. For that reason, England allowed Virginia and other colonies to create their own government and make their own laws and rules to live by. This policy of England’s was called salutary neglect and it allowed the colonies to grow stronger by doing things for themselves while also being able to turn to England for help if a crisis arose. In Virginia they set up a government organization called the House of Burgesses which made rules and laws for the people of the colony. This was the first example of self-rule in the British colonies.

The second major settlement region of the British was in the New England territory, which now includes Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. The original colony and settlements in New England were Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, which were settled by a group of people known as the Puritans. The Puritans were very religious and believed that it was very likely that everybody was going to Hell, but just in case you weren’t, you should act as good as possible. Unfortunately, according to the Puritans NOBODY acted as good as they should have so they went around telling people how bad they were basically annoyed everybody who wasn’t a Puritan so much that people wanted the Puritans either dead or gone. The Puritans chose the latter and sailed across the Atlantic to start a new life. The first group of Puritans in America were also known as the Pilgrims. In addition to being religious, they were also very orderly. First before they ever set foot on land they go together and created the Mayflower Compact, a document that stated the rules and laws that they would live by. This was an early example of self-rule in America. Their sense of order also determined how their towns would be set up…with straight grid-like roads, a park, a town meeting hall, a school for learning to read the Bible, and a church of course. Pretty much every Puritan town that was formed looked the same.

The Puritans believed that by doing good and being orderly they should be an example of how everyone should live. This included being a positive influence on other colonists and the natives that already lived in America. Minister John Winthrop went so far as to call them “a shining city on a hill”. Unfortunately, this orderly life meant that anyone who went against the norm was bad, evil, destined for eternal damnation in hell, and needed to be removed from society before they corrupted everyone else. For this reason, Roger Williams was exiled for supporting the Indians and Anne Hutchison was booted for

giving her opinion…while being a woman. They both moved south to Rhode Island, a new colony set up by Williams to provide for religious freedom. Another group that didn’t really like the idea of being told they were wrong and going to hell was the Pequot Indian tribe. When the Puritans tried to change them, the Pequot refused and therefore the Puritans had to fight them and kill many in order to purify them and save their souls. Eventually a massive fight called King Philip’s War broke out between the Puritans and many Indian groups. Another major problem in New England occurred in the town of Salem, Massachusetts when a group of girls began to accuse townspeople of being witches. In just over a year 25 people either died in prison or were executed after being found guilty of witchcraft. In the end, the New England colonies, which had been founded for religious freedom, proved to only give religious freedom to fine upstanding Puritans.

Between the New England colonies and the large Southern farming colonies led by Virginia, a group of colonies formed known as the Middle Colonies. These were created by the Dutch, the Swedish, and the British and would eventually all be taken over by the British. In these colonies of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware the main concern was making money. Some people farmed. Some people opened stores for trading. Some people manufactured small goods. The Middle Colonies were the most diverse with multiple religions, multiple occupations, and people of multiple nationalities. They were also the most populated colonies.

Following in Virginia’s footsteps, the Southern Colonies of Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were set up between 1633 and 1732 as large farming colonies. Some small farms were set up, but also massive plantations of up to 20,000 acres were created. These colonies were large and some of the farms on them were enormous. In order to have workers slaves were needed.

In 1664 the first actual slaves from Africa came to the British Colonies in America. Previously some Africans had come to the British Colonies as indentured servants, but in 1664 the first Africans came that would be slaves for life…and their children’s lives as well. These Africans generally came from the regions of Western Africa. Historically most of western Africa had been divided up into smaller villages, tribes, or groups of people. They usually didn’t gather into very large empires or civilizations because the geography and climate of the land didn’t allow it. Obviously the Sahara region was not made for large groups of people, but instead was sparsely populated by nomadic trading caravans who crisscrossed the desert carrying trade goods from one place to another. Also, groups formed around the rare oasis in the desert. Farther south in Africa the climate turned to a rainforest, which was also not good for large groups of people because farming was almost impossible and hunting did not supply enough food.

One exception to this was the Ghana Empire. This was a great trading empire that had power from around 800-1200 AD. They made money by trading and transporting goods from Central Africa to the Mediterranean. Trading posts became large cities.

Through their extensive travel around Northern Africa, the people of Ghana were exposed to the religion of Islam and most began to worship. Ghana was overtaken by the kingdom of Mali around 1200. Mali was a powerful force until the mid-1400s. While Mali was very powerful in its day it weakened rather quickly when its leader Mansa Musa died. Another major empire of Africa was the Songhai which had a strong army and also controlled large regions of western Africa. The main products that were traded by these major African empires as well as smaller empires were salt, gold, ivory, and slaves. Most slaves were originally carried across the Sahara to the Middle East, but as the need for workers increased in the Americas, thousands of slaves were sold to Portuguese or Dutch traders who carried most of the slaves to South America and the Caribbean and eventually to the British colonies in North America.