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COLONIAL DEVELOPMENTS STUDY GUIDE
Vocabulary
colony turning point circumnavigation conquistador pueblo presidio mission peninsulare
creole mestizo encomiendas plantation alliance charter burgess republic persecution
precedent caravel astrolabe magnetic compass pilgrim petition patroon slave
Things to Know
Doctrine of Discovery Northwest Passage Roanoke Jamestown Columbian Exchange
indentured servant Columbian Exchange Mayflower Compact Middle Passage
Mercator projection.
People to Know
Christopher Columbus Amerigo Vespucci Ferdinand Magellan Hernando Cortez
Francisco Pizarro Samuel de Champlain Henry Hudson Roger Williams Pocahontas
Squanto
John Smith Thomas Hooker
Anne Hutchinson
Metacomet
Age of Exploration
Nations like Spain, Portugal, France, and England had once been ruled by warring nobles. Now they had
become countries ruled by a monarch. Most monarchs were strong leaders who kept close watch over
their land. Monarchs wanted their countries to be powerful.
Between 1400 and 1600 was a period of time in Europe called the Renaissance. During the
Renaissance there were major advances in science and technology and trade with Asia was very
important part of the economy.
Portugal took the lead in the search to find the first all-water route to Asia. Being able to control
trade with the Asia was very important to European nations.
During the Renaissance, faster ships called Caravels were invented. The new ships had a new
type of sail called a lateen (triangular) sail. The lateen sail allowed ships to sail into the wind.
Along with the magnetic compass and the astrolabe these new ships allowed sailors to explore
longer routes around the globe.
In 1488, Bartholomeu Dias was the first to sail around the southern tip of Africa.
Ten years later, Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to India
1492 Christopher Columbus managed to bring word of the “New World” back to Europe. By
bringing the Americas to the forefront of European attention, Columbus initiated the enduring
relationship between the Earth's two major landmasses and their inhabitants known as the
Columbian Exchange.
Other European explorers were looking for a Northwest Passage through North America to Asia. A
Northwest Passage, would have been a shorter route than traveling from Europe to Asia by going around
Africa. No such passage exists but the attempts by the French, English and Dutch resulted in new
colonies in North America.
Spanish Conquest
In 1493 the Doctrine of Discovery issued by Pope Alexander VI stated that any land not inhabited by
Christians was available to be “discovered,” claimed, and exploited by Christian rulers and declared that
“the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the
health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.
In 1519, the Spanish explorer, Hernando Cortes arrived on the east coast of Mexico. To make sure his
men cooperated with marching across the jungle, Cortes burned his ships. He defeated the local tribe of
Indians, and then set out for the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan. Cortes arrived in Tenochtitlan with
more than 500 soldiers, 14 cannons, 16 horses, and a large number of the Aztec's Indian enemies gathered
along the way.
By 1521, the Spaniards had conquered the Aztec army. Cortes captured the Aztec gold and silver and sent
it to Spain. Within two years the Spanish weapons and European diseases had destroyed the Aztec
civilization.
Francisco Pizarro was another Spanish conquistador. He had heard stories of an Indian empire richer than
the Aztecs. In 1531, Pizarro and a group of 180 Spanish and African soldiers came across a large Inca
camp. The Inca Empire covered 3,000 miles of the western coast of South America.
When Francisco Pizarro arrived, the Inca Empire was just ending a civil war. The Inca civil war had
been fought between two brothers, Atahuallpa and Huascar. Each brother thought he had the right to
rule. The war ended when Atahuallpa killed his brother and became emperor.
Atahuallpa was carried to Pizarro on a golden throne lined with parakeet feathers. Around his neck
he wore a necklace of giant green emeralds. Gold ornaments decorated his hair. Pizzarro's priests
asked Atahuallpa to give up the Inca religion and accept Christianity, and the King of Spain as ruler.
When the Inca Emperor refused, Pizarro took him prisoner. To gain his freedom, Atahuallpa promised
Pizarro enough silver and gold to fill a whole room. After the Incas provided Pizarro with the silver and
gold, Pizarro had Atahuallpa killed in 1533. The Spaniards destroyed the Inca civilization. They made
slaves of the Inca people. The Inca silver and gold was sent to
Spain.
In 1512 as the first ordained priest in the Americas Bartolome de Las Casas denounced the Spanish
exploitation of the Indians and the military conquest of the New World. By the year 1516, Las Casas
began to advocate for the importation of African slaves to compensate for the decreasing Indians
population. Though this might be surprising, it must be remembered that Las Casas was concerned with
alleviating the tremendous pressure on the Indians, whose population was rapidly declining. Las Casas
grew to realize, and regret, the gravity of his error.
English and the Wampanoag
The tradition of Thanksgiving was adopted from the Wampanoag Indians interaction with the Pilgrims.
The Wampanoag Indians lived in what is now known as Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the
early part of the 17th century. The name Wampanoag means “easterners” and at one point, their
population was 12,000. Among the more famous Wampanoag chiefs were Squanto, Samoset,
Metacomet, and Massasoit.
In the early 1670s, 50 years of peace between the Plymouth colony and the local Wampanoag
Indians began to deteriorate when the rapidly expanding English colony forced the tribe to sell
much of its land.
Reacting to increasing Native American hostility, the English met with King Philip, chief of
the Wampanoag, and demanded that his forces surrender their arms. The Wampanoag did so, but
in 1675 a Christian Native American who had been acting as an informer to the English was
murdered, and three Wampanoag were tried and executed for the crime. King Philip responded
by ordering the attack on the settlement of Swansea on June 24, 1675 which set off a series of
Wampanoag raids in which several English settlements were destroyed and scores of colonists
massacred.
The colonists retaliated by destroying a number of Indian villages. The destruction of a
Narragansett village by the English brought the Narragansett into the conflict on the side of King
Philip, and within a few months several other tribes and all the New England colonies were
involved.
In early 1676, the Narragansett were defeated and their chief killed, while the Wampanoag
and their other allies were gradually subdued. King Philip's wife and son were captured, and on
August 12, 1676, after his secret headquarters in Mount Hope, Rhode Island, was discovered,
Philip was assassinated by a Native American in the service of the English. The English drew
and quartered Philip's body and publicly displayed his head on a stake in Plymouth
The Dutch, the Mahican and the Mohawk
In 1609 the Dutch East India Company sent Henry Hudson across the Atlantic to find a passage to India.
Instead of India, Hudson came upon the Hudson River.
-In 1614, the Dutch established a trading post on Castle Island known as Fort Nassau. The trader, Jacob
Elkens, learned both the Mahican and Mohawk languages.
-Following Hudson’s return to the Netherlands and his descriptions of the wealth of the country the
Dutch West India Company was formed in 1621 to exploit the resources of the Americas and to establish
a colony among the intelligent natives.
-In 1624, 30 Dutch families arrived in what is now Manhattan, purchased it from the Native Americans
inhabitants, and established New Amsterdam. Settlers treated the Natives contemptuously, considering
them inferior and viewing them as possible slaves. Their relations centered on trading of rum and fur.
-That same year the Dutch West Indian Company established a trading post and settlement, Fort
Orange, on the western shore of the Hudson River. At Fort Orange, the Dutch traders exchanged metal
tools, cloth, glass beads, firearms, ammunition, and other European goods for furs.
-Prompted by trading concerns, war soon broke out between the Mahican and the Mohawk.
The Mohawk defeated the Mahican and in 1629, the Mahican sold most of their land around Fort
Orange to the Dutch West India Company.
By the 1640s, Dutch colonists sought to remove Native Americans from New Netherlands territory so
they could more freely implement their own way of life. In 1643, the director-general of New
Netherlands ordered an assault on Native American tribes by Dutch soldiers, asking that women and
children be spared when possible. This order was largely ignored. Eleven tribes of the Iroquois Nation
banded together and led an uprising in response to the massacre. Conflict between the Dutch and
Native American peoples (particularly the Iroquois tribes) raged until a treaty in 1645.
In 1649, the Dutch supplied the Iroquois with 400 guns and unlimited ammunition on credit and
consequently the Iroquois attacked and destroyed the Huron. The Iroquois also destroyed the Tionontati
and Nipissing. The survivors sought refuge among the Ojibwa and the Ottawa.
The English took New York from the Dutch in 1664 and signed a treaty with the Mohawk. The Mohawk
continued to trade with the Dutch traders at Albany who had remained to carry on their business under
the English flag
French and the Huron
New France did not attract many French settlers. Instead of enslaving Native Americans in farming and
mining operations, the French exploited existing inter-tribal alliances and rivalries to establish trade
relationships with the Huron, Montagnais, and Algonquins along the St. Lawrence River and further
inland toward the Great Lakes.
These Native Americans competed for exclusive status as intermediaries between other Indian traders and
the French. Although Native Americans did most of the work, tracking, trapping, and skinning the
animals and transporting the pelts to French traders, they drove hard bargains for their furs. French traders
exchanged textiles, weapons, and metal goods for the furs of animals such as beavers, bears, and wolves.
The trade strengthened traditional clan leaders' positions by allowing them to distribute these trade goods
to their clan members as they saw fit.
Jesuit (Catholic) missionaries managed to convert considerable numbers of Huron because the priests
learned the local languages and exhibited bravery in the face of danger. French officials offered additional
incentive for conversion by allowing Christian Hurons to purchase French muskets. In the eighteenth
century, the Dutch and English competed with the French for trade and territory, which gave local Indians
continued economic, diplomatic, and military leverage as Europeans competed for their trade and military
alliances through the seventeenth century.