Government 2305 Chapter 1

1. Describe the different early inhabitants and settlements or the New World:
-Jamestown
The founding of Jamestown, America’s first permanent English colony, in Virginia in 1607 – sparked a series of cultural encounters that helped shape the nation and the world. The government, language, customs, beliefs and aspirations of these early Virginians are all part of the United States’ heritage today.
The colony was sponsored by the Virginia Company of London, a group of investors who hoped to profit from the venture. Chartered in 1606 by King James I, the company also supported English national goals of counterbalancing the expansion of other European nations abroad, seeking a northwest passage to the Orient, and converting the Virginia Indians to the Anglican religion. Initially, the colony was governed by a council of seven, with one member serving as president.
Serious problems soon emerged in the small English outpost, which was located in the midst of a chiefdom of about 14,000 Algonquian-speaking Indians ruled by the powerful leader Powhatan. Relations with the Powhatan Indians were tenuous, although trading opportunities were established. An unfamiliar climate, as well as brackish water supply and lack of food, conditions possibly aggravated by a prolonged drought, led to disease and death. Many of the original colonists were upper-class Englishmen, and the colony lacked sufficient laborers and skilled farmers.
The first two English women arrived at Jamestown in 1608, and more came in subsequent years. Men outnumbered women, however, for most of the 17th century.
Captain John Smith became the colony’s leader in September 1608 – the fourth in a succession of council presidents – and established a “no work, no food” policy. Smith had been instrumental in trading with the Powhatan Indians for food. However, in the fall of 1609 he was injured by burning gunpowder and left for England. Smith never returned to Virginia, but promoted colonization of North America until his death in 1631 and published numerous accounts of the Virginia colony, providing invaluable material for historians.
Smith’s departure was followed by the “starving time,” a period of warfare between the colonists and Indians and the deaths of many English men and women from starvation and disease. Just when the colonists decided to abandon Jamestown in Spring 1610, settlers with supplies arrived from England, eager to find wealth in Virginia. This group of new settlers arrived under the second charter issued by King James I. This charter provided for stronger leadership under a governor who served with a group of advisors, and the introduction of a period of military law that carried harsh punishments for those who did not obey.
In order to make a profit for the Virginia Company, settlers tried a number of small industries, including glassmaking, wood production, and pitch and tar and potash manufacture. However, until the introduction of tobacco as a cash crop about 1613 by colonist John Rolfe, who later married Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas, none of the colonists’ efforts to establish profitable enterprises were successful. Tobacco cultivation required large amounts of land and labor and stimulated the rapid growth of the Virginia colony. Settlers moved onto the lands occupied by the Powhatan Indians, and increased numbers of indentured servants came to Virginia.
The first documented Africans in Virginia arrived in 1619. They were from the kingdom of Ndongo in Angola, West Central Africa, and had been captured during war with the Portuguese. While these first Africans may have been treated as indentured servants, the customary practice of owning Africans as slaves for life appeared by mid-century. The number of African slaves increased significantly in the second half of the 17th century, replacing indentured servants as the primary source of labor.
The first representative government in British America began at Jamestown in 1619 with the convening of a general assembly, at the request of settlers who wanted input in the laws governing them. After a series of events, including a 1622 war with the Powhatan Indians and misconduct among some of the Virginia Company leaders in England, the Virginia Company was dissolved by the king in 1624, and Virginia became a royal colony. Jamestown continued as the center of Virginia’s political and social life until 1699 when the seat of government moved to Williamsburg. Although Jamestown ceased to exist as a town by the mid 1700s, its legacies are embodied in today’s United States.

-New York
New York State’s location between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean make it an excellent place for trade and travel. In addition, New York is home to a wide variety of other geographical features such as forests, rivers, mountains and lakes. Long ago during the last ice age, the glaciers that covered the land created new landforms such as valleys and islands. It is against this background that the roots of New York’s Native Americans begin. Five thousand years ago, Native Americans moved into various parts of what is now New York State.
They settled along the waterways – the Finger Lakes, Lake Champlain, and Lake George; as well as the Mohawk, Hudson, Susquehanna and Genesee rivers. They also clustered in coastal areas such as Long Island and Manhattan. These early settlements provided the Native
Americans with game, fish and good water transportation. The Algonquians and the Haudenosaunee or People of the Longhouse, were the two main groups living in New York State in the late 1400s. The Haudenosaunee are also known as the
Iroquois. The Lenape people, or Delaware, populated the New York
City metropolitan area, and belonged to the Algonquian group.

The Algonquians and the Iroquois people of central and Western New York lived in the Eastern Woodlands, an area of land that covered most of the land east of the Mississippi River. The two groups shared a similar way of life. While both relied on crops for most of their food supply, fishing, hunting and gathering were also important. Work was divided between men and women, who labored interdependently to provide for the needs of their people.

The Algonquians lived in wigwams while the Iroquois lived in longhouses. Their homes distinguished these groups of people from other Native Americans of the time. A group of longhouse families with a common female ancestor formed an Iroquois clan, and each clan was named after an animal or bird. The Iroquois longhouse family was matrilineal, and traced its history through the female line. The head of the family was the oldest or most respected woman in the longhouse known as the Chief Mother. Although the political leaders of each clan were men, it was the women who held the real power, for they appointed the men to their positions and could remove people who were not doing a good job.

Strong Iroquois traditions of family and clan organization led to the creation of a powerful political league known as the League of the Five Nations, the most powerful alliance of Native
American people ever to exist in North America. The Iroquois Confederacy was made up of five groups – the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas.

-Playmouth
Plymouth Colony, America's first permanent Puritan settlement, was established by English Separatist Puritans in December 1620. The Pilgrims left England to seek religious freedom, or simply to find a better life. After a period in Holland, they set sail from Plymouth, England, on Sept. 16, 1620, aboard the Mayflower, its 102 passengers spending 65 days at sea. Passengers, now known as the Pilgrim Fathers, included leader William Brewster; John Carver, Edward Winslow, and William Bradford, early governors of Plymouth Colony; John Alden, assistant governor; and Myles Standish, a professional soldier and military advisor. The Mayflower dropped anchor near present-day Provincetown on Nov. 21, 1620, and 41 male passengers signed the Mayflower Compact, an agreement to enact "just and equal laws for the general good of the colony." The Pilgrims finally landed at the site of present-day Plymouth, Mass., on Dec. 26, 1620.
By legend the Pilgrims stepped ashore at Plymouth Rock; their records do not mention this landmark. Settlers began erecting buildings and rough shelters for the winter. But harsh climate and illness took their toll. By the end of winter half the colonists had died. The colonists encountered the Indian Samoset, who surprised them by speaking English, learned from English traders on the coast of Maine. Samoset introduced the colonists to Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag Indians, who signed a peace treaty with the Pilgrims. Squanto, another English-speaking Indian, acted as guide and interpreter, and with his help the colonists learned to plant corn, catch fish, and gather fruit. The Pilgrims invited the Indians to celebrate their first harvest in 1621, an event now celebrated as Thanksgiving Day. After Massasoit's death, the Wampanoag joined a tribal coalition to eliminate English settlers, but in the ensuing King Philip's War the Wampanoag were nearly exterminated. The colony gradually grew in size, and the original settlement known as the Plimoth Plantation expanded as settlers built houses in the area. Plymouth Colony retained its independence for over 70 years, and by 1691 its population exceeded 7,000. It was integrated with the Massachusetts Bay Company's much larger colony to establish the royal colony of Massachusetts — now the state of the same name.

-Boston (Boat Town)
The point of land that juts into a natural harbor connecting with the Atlantic Ocean and forms the site of present-day Boston was once occupied by Native American tribes. They named the peninsula "Shawmut," which meant variously "land accessible by water" in reference to the harbor or "land with living fountains," a comment on the area's abundant fresh water springs. When two-thirds of the native population succumbed to a European disease against which they carried no immunity, the way was clear for transAtlantic settlers.
The area's first white settler from across the Atlantic arrived on the peninsula in the 1620s. William Blackstone, an English clergyman, was the leader of a small band who eventually returned to England, leaving Blackstone alone in his home atop what was later Boston's Beacon Hill. Blackstone and subsequent English settlers eventually became friendly with the local native tribes, whose democratic form of tribal governance, some historians claim, influenced the country's founding fathers in their conception of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution.
Boston was founded in 1630 by a Protestant religious sect called the Puritans. They named the new town for their former home in Lincolnshire, England. The same year, Boston was declared the capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Bounded on three sides by water, Boston soon became the colonies' major New England seaport and the largest British settlement on the continent as well. When the Massachusetts Bay Colony's charter was revoked in 1684, Boston for the first time was subject to direct British authority.
Although unused to trans-Atlantic interference in their affairs, Bostonians nevertheless enjoyed a flowering of thought and culture never allowed during the years of strict Puritan dominance. As it developed into a major colonial center, Boston was the site of the calling of the nation's first Grand Jury in 1635; the opening of the nation's oldest school, the Boston Latin School, in 1635; the building of the first post office in 1639; the chartering of the colonies' first bank in 1674; the publication of the nation's oldest newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, banned after one issue in 1690; and the publishing of the nation's first long-running newspaper, the Boston News-Letter, in 1704. By 1750, Boston's population was 15,000 people.
-Providence
Providence is the capital and most populous city in Rhode Island. Founded in 1636, it is one of the oldest cities in the United States. It is located in Providence County, and is the third-largest city in the New England region after Boston and Worcester. The city is situated at the mouth of the Providence River, at the head of Narragansett Bay.
Providence was founded by Roger Williams, a religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He named the area in honor of "God's merciful Providence", which he believed was responsible for revealing such a haven for him and his followers to settle. After being one of the first cities in the country to industrialize, Providence became noted for its jewelry and silverware industry. Today, the city of Providence is home to eight hospitals and seven institutions of higher learning, which has shifted the city's economy into service industries, though it still retains significant manufacturing activity.
-Hartford
The Connecticut Colony was an English colony located in North America that became the U.S. state of Connecticut. Originally known as the River Colony, it was organized on March 3, 1636 as a settlement for a Puritan congregation. After early struggles with the Dutch, the English had permanently gained control of the colony in the year 1636. The colony was later the scene of a bloody and raging war between the English and Indians, known as the Pequot War. It played a significant role in the establishment of self-government in the New World with its refusal to surrender local authority to the Dominion of New England, an event known as the Charter Oak incident which occurred at Jeremy Adams' inn & tavern.
Two other English colonies in the present-day state of Connecticut were merged into the Colony of Connecticut: Saybrook Colonyin 1644 and New Haven Colony in 1662.
Thomas Hooker, a prominent Puritan minister, and Governor John Haynes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who led 100 people to present day Hartford in 1636, are often considered the founders of the Connecticut colony.
-Maryland
The first inhabitants of Maryland were Paleo-Indians who came more than 10,000 years ago from other parts of North America to hunt mammoth, great bison and caribou. By 1,000 B.C., Maryland had more than 8,000 Native Americans in about 40 different tribes. Most of them spoke Algonquian languages. They grew corn, peas, squash and tobacco. They also hunted, fished and traded with tribes as far away as New York and Ohio.
Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian explorer in the 1500s, was the first European to visit the Chesapeake. Later came English settlers, who left England for more economic opportunities and to escape religious oppression. In 1608, Captain John Smith thought there was "no place more perfect for man's habitation" than the Chesapeake Bay. Fur trader William Claiborne thought so, too, and set up a fur trading post on Kent Island in 1631. This was the first English settlement in the upper Chesapeake.
Maryland began as a colony when King Charles I promised George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, a colony north of Virginia. Before he could visit the colony, George Calvert died. His son, Cecilius, became the second Lord Baltimore and the Lord Proprietor of Maryland. He named his colony "Terra Maria," or "Maryland" in honor of the king's wife, Queen Henrietta Maria. Because Cecilius Calvert had to remain in England, he sent his younger brother, Leonard, to accompany the colonists and to be the first governor.
Maryland was notable for having been established with religious freedom for Catholics Like other colonies of the Chesapeake Bay, its economy was based on tobacco as a commodity crop, cultivated primarily by African slave labor, although many young people came from Britain as indentured servants in the early years.
In 1776, during the American Revolution, Maryland became a state in the United States. After the war, numerous planters freed their slaves as the economy changed. Baltimore grew to become one of the largest cities on the eastern seaboard, and a major economic force in the country. Although Maryland was still a slave state in 1860, by that time nearly half the African American population was already free, due mostly to manumissions after the American Revolution.Maryland was among the border states that remained in the Union during the American Civil War.

-Pennsylvania
When first discovered by Europeans, Pennsylvania, like the rest of the continent, was inhabited by groups of American Indians, people of Mongoloid ancestry unaware of European culture. The life of the Indians reflected Stone Age backgrounds, especially in material arts and crafts. Tools, weapons and household equipment were made from stone, wood, and bark. Transportation was on foot or by canoe. Houses were made of bark, clothing from the skins of animals. The rudiments of a more complex civilization were at hand in the arts of weaving, pottery, and agriculture, although hunting and food gathering prevailed. Some Indians formed confederacies such as the League of the Five Nations, which was made up of certain New York-Pennsylvania groups of Iroquoian speech. The other large linguistic group in Pennsylvania was the Algonkian, represented by the Delawares, Shawnees, and other tribes.
The rise of nation-states in Europe coincided with the age of discovery and brought a desire for territorial gains beyond the seas, first by Spain and Portugal and later by England, France, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Wars in southern Germany caused many Germans to migrate eventually to Pennsylvania. The struggle in England between the Crown and Parliament also had a pronounced effect on migration to America. The Reformation led to religious ferment and division, and minorities of various faiths sought refuge in America. Such an impulse brought Quakers, Puritans, and Catholics from England, German Pietists from the Rhineland, Scotch Calvinists via Ireland, and Huguenots from France. Also, great economic changes took place in Europe in the 17th century. The old manorial system was breaking down, creating a large class of landless men ready to seek new homes. An increase in commerce and trade led to an accumulation of capital available for colonial ventures. The Swedish and Dutch colonies were financed in this way, and William Penn's colony was also a business enterprise.