Gregory Bodenhamer Columbus referred to the lands he discovered as “the Indies” and the people he encountered as “Indians” ( Indios, in Spanish). He never wavered from the belief that he had reached the outlying islands off the Asian mainland. Amerigo Vespucci, another Italian navigator, sailed extensively along the coast of South America as a member of both Spanish and Portuguese expeditions and is considered to be the first to realize that the Indies were in fact a “New World” and not part of Asia. The first map that identified known parts of the Western Hemisphere as “America,” after Vespucci, was published in 1507.

Columbus referred to the lands he discovered as “the Indies” and the people he encountered as “Indians” ( Indios, in Spanish). He never wavered from the belief that he had reached the outlying islands off the Asian mainland. Amerigo Vespucci, another Italian navigator, sailed extensively along the coast of South America as a member of both Spanish and Portuguese expeditions and is considered to be the first to realize that the Indies were in fact a “New World” and not part of Asia. The first map that identified known parts of the Western Hemisphere as “America,” after Vespucci, was published in 1507.

The Spanish conquests of Central and South America. In the half century after Columbus's death, Spain established an extensive empire in the Western Hemisphere that stretched from the region of Mexico to the tip of South America and out into the Pacific Ocean. Ferdinand Magellan's voyage around the world (1519–22), in addition to demonstrating the true circumference of the earth, was the basis for a Spanish colony in the Philippines. In the same year Magellan set sail, Hernan Cortés and about six hundred men landed on the Gulf Coast of Mexico and marched inland to Tenochtitlán (modern Mexico City), the capital of the Aztec empire. He was able to take advantage of the Aztec belief that the Europeans might be returning gods, make strategic alliances with disaffected local tribes, and use his horses and superior firepower to capture the city in 1521. The Spaniards conquered the other native cultures in Central and South America in quick succession. The Toltec-Mayans of the Yucatan Peninsula and Guatemala fell between 1522 and 1528. Francisco Pizarro, benefiting from internal strife in the Inca empire, took Peru (1531–33) with an army that numbered less than two hundred. From there, Spanish forces moved south down the west side of the continent and east into what would become Columbia.

The early Spanish explorer-adventurers, the conquistadors, were more interested in finding gold and silver than in colonization, and they relied on the native peoples to work the sugarcane fields of the Caribbean and the mines of Mexico and Peru. While the exploitation of the native peoples had its critics, most notably in the Catholic priest Bartolomé de Las Casas, it was disease rather than harsh treatment at the hands of the Spaniards that devastated the indigenous population. First on Hispaniola and then on the mainland, millions died from smallpox, measles, and other infections. African slaves were brought to the West Indies as early as 1503 because of a critical labor shortage.

Spain in North America. Stories and legends about incredible wealth stimulated the Spanish exploration of North America. The earliest expedition brought Juan Ponce de León to the Florida peninsula in search of the mythical “Fountain of Youth” (1513). In 1528, Panfilo de Narváez sailed along the Gulf Coast of the United States, but was shipwrecked off what is now Texas. A small group of survivors under Álvaro Núñez Cabeza de Vaca made its way across Texas and the Southwest region to Mexico. Between 1539 and 1543, Hernando de Soto led a large force from western Florida to the Appalachian Mountains and then west across the Mississippi River with the major consequence of spreading smallpox throughout the lower Mississippi Valley. The search for the fabled riches of the “Seven Golden Cities of Cibola,” which de Vaca had mentioned in his account, took Francisco Vasquez de Coronado from northern Mexico as far northeast as present-day Kansas between 1541 and 1543; smaller groups from the main expedition discovered the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. Meanwhile, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed up the west coast and claimed the California area for Spain. The founding of the two oldest cities in the United States—St. Augustine, Florida, (1565) and Santa Fe, New Mexico (1609)—was the chief result of almost a century of Spanish exploration.

French and Dutch Explorations

Although French fishermen had caught cod off Newfoundland as early as 1504, fish were not what motivated the voyages sponsored by King Francis I in the sixteenth century. In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazano sailed up the east coast from present-day North Carolina to Nova Scotia looking for a northwesterly passage to Asia. The same objective was behind Jacques Cartier's three voyages (1534–42) that were the basis for future French claims to Canada. He explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence and discovered the St. Lawrence River, on which members of his expedition founded a short-lived settlement near Quebec. Abortive colonies were also established by French Huguenots (Protestants) within the modern-day boundaries of South Carolina (1562–64) and Florida (1564–65).

The Wars of Religion, which pitted Catholic against Protestant, delayed further French exploration until the seventeenth century. Under the leadership of Samuel de Champlain, who made numerous voyages to the eastern Canada region beginning in 1603, the city of Quebec was founded (1608) and alliances were made with the Hurons to develop the fur trade. Indeed, furs rather than settlements were more important to France at the time. The Dutch became one of the great seafaring and commercial nations of Europe in the seventeenth century and were rivals of the Portuguese in the East Indies. The Dutch East India Company financed English sailor Henry Hudson in 1609 for another search for the elusive Northwest Passage. He discovered Delaware Bay and sailed up the river later named for him, establishing Dutch claims for the territory known as New Netherland. Like the French, the Dutch were fur traders, and they established lucrative ties with the local tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy.

English Exploration, Early Settlements

With the exception of John Cabot's voyage to Newfoundland in 1497, the English showed little interest in the New World until the reign of Elizabeth I. Wary of confronting powerful Spain directly, Elizabeth secretly supported English seamen who raided Spanish settlements in the Western Hemisphere and captured their treasure ships. Men such as John Hawkins and Francis Drake, popularly known as “sea dogs,” received titles from the queen, who shared in their booty. More than fifty years after Magellan circumnavigated the globe, Drake duplicated the feat following attacks against Spanish ports on the west coast of South America (1577–80).

The lost colony of Roanoke. While English explorers, most notably Martin Frobisher, continued to look for the Northwest Passage, there was interest in colonizing North America. In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh scouted possible sites for a colony farther to the south. Naming the land Virginia after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, he chose Roanoke Island off the coast of present-day North Carolina. The first attempt to settle there (1585–86) was quickly abandoned. A group of 110 men, women, and children sailed for Roanoke in the following year. The colony's leader, John White, returned to England for additional supplies but did not return until 1590 because of the war between England and Spain. He found no trace of the colonists, and the only message left was the cryptic word “Croatoan” carved on a wooden post. It is most likely that the small settlement was overrun by local tribes, but to this day, no one has explained the meaning of “Croatoan” or found definitive evidence of the fate of the Roanoke colony.

The failure of Roanoke was expensive, and, with the war against Spain still raging, Elizabeth made it clear that there was no money for colonization ventures. When peace came in 1604, private funds rather than the royal treasury financed English settlement in North America.

The joint-stock company and the founding of Jamestown. In 1606, Elizabeth's successor, James I, issued charters to the Virginia Company of Plymouth and the Virginia Company of London to establish colonies along the Atlantic coast from modern-day North Carolina to Maine. These were joint-stock companies, the forerunner of the modern corporation. Individuals bought stock in the companies, which paid for ships and supplies, hoping to realize a profit from their investment.

The Virginia Company of Plymouth founded a colony at Sagadahoc in Maine in 1607, which quickly failed due to hostility from the local tribes, conflicts among the settlers, and inadequate supplies. The same fate almost befell the London Company's effort at Jamestown near Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. Most of the colonists were gentry unaccustomed to manual labor who wanted to spend their time looking for gold and hunting. Only the leadership of John Smith, who forced everyone to work and who negotiated with the Indians, guaranteed Jamestown's initial survival.

Conditions deteriorated after Smith left in 1609, but there were important developments over the next decade. John Rolfe introduced tobacco as a cash crop, and even though James I was an ardent antismoking advocate, it quickly became a valuable export for the colony. To attract labor and new capital, the London Company instituted the headright system in 1618. Anyone who paid his or her own passage to Jamestown received fifty acres of land plus another fifty acres for each additional individual they might bring. The latter were indentured servants, who agreed to work for their sponsor for a fixed term (usually four to seven years) in return for their passage. There were also newcomers to the colony that came in chains. The first ship to bring African slaves to North America landed at Jamestown in 1619.

Even with the headright system and the influx of indentured servants, Jamestown grew slowly. There were only about twelve hundred settlers by 1622. Death from disease and malnutrition took its toll, the company was in debt to its shareholders, and conflicts with the Indians became more common as the colony expanded. These problems led the king to revoke the charter of the London Company; Virginia became a royal colony under the direct control of the crown in 1624.

Settling the Colonies

The English colonies along the east coast of North America in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries can be categorized in several ways. Religion was the factor behind the founding of Maryland and the New England colonies, particularly Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Rhode Island, while the settlers in Virginia and the other southern colonies were more concerned with growing tobacco. Although all eventually came under direct control of the English kings, Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Virginia began as corporate colonies financed by joint-stock companies. Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas were proprietary colonies, based on grants of land to individuals or a small group of men by the king. Moreover, colonial boundaries changed; New Hampshire was carved out of land claimed by Massachusetts Bay. New York was originally New Netherland before the English took it over in 1664 and renamed it. Delaware was founded by the Swedes (New Sweden), became a Dutch colony in 1655, and then came under English control in 1664. The English colonies were not confined to the Atlantic coast of North America but were also established in the Caribbean—in the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Barbados—competing there with the Spanish, French, and Dutch.

New England Colonies

It has long been understood that the prime motive for the founding of the New England colonies was religious freedom. Certainly what those early colonists wanted was the freedom to worship God as they deemed proper, but they did not extend that freedom to everyone. Those who expressed a different approach to religious worship were not welcome. Puritans especially were intolerant toward those who held views other than their own.

Much of the religious disaffection that found its way across the Atlantic Ocean stemmed from disagreements within the Anglican Church, as the Church of England was called. Those who sought to reform Anglican religious practices—to “purify” the church—became known as Puritans. They argued that the Church of England was following religious practices that too closely resembled Catholicism both in structure and ceremony. The Anglican clergy was organized along episcopalian lines, with a hierarchy of bishops and archbishops. Puritans called for a congregationalist structure in which each individual church would be largely self-governing.

The Plymouth colony. A more extreme view was held by the Separatists, a small group mainly from the English town of Scrooby, who opposed any accommodation with the Anglican Church. Unlike the Puritans, who were also referred to as Non-Separatists, the Separatists advocated a complete break with the Church of England. At first, the Separatists left England for the more tolerant atmosphere of the Netherlands, but after a while, their leaders found the Dutch a little too tolerant; their children were adopting Dutch habits and culture. When the opportunity arose to settle on land granted by the Virginia Company of London, the Separatists accepted the offer. In 1620, they set sail for America on the Mayflower. As a result of their migrations, the Separatists became known as the Pilgrims, people who undertake a religious journey.

Instead of landing on Virginia Company land, however, the Pilgrims found themselves in what is now southern Massachusetts. Because they were outside the jurisdiction of the company and concerned that new Pilgrims among them might cause problems, the leaders signed the Mayflower Compact, an agreement establishing a civil government under the sovereignty of King James I and creating the Plymouth Plantation colony.

The Pilgrims endured terrible hardships in their first years at Plymouth, with disease and starvation taking a toll. Relations with the Indians in the area were mixed; despite the charming folktale of the peaceful “first Thanksgiving,” the reality is that the Pilgrims used force to control the local tribes. The infant colony grew slowly, raising maize and trading furs with the nearby Dutch as well as with the Indians. Plymouth Plantation was the first permanent settlement in New England, but beyond that distinction, its place in American history is somewhat exaggerated. Before long, the Pilgrims were eclipsed by the far larger and more important immigration of Non-Separatist Puritans, who started the Massachusetts Bay colony.

The Massachusetts Bay colony. Harassment by the Church of England, a hostile Charles I, and an economic recession led the Non-Separatist Puritans to decide to settle in North America. Puritan merchants bought the defunct Virginia Company of Plymouth's charter in 1628 and received royal permission to found a colony in the Massachusetts area north of Plymouth Plantation. Between 1630 and 1640, more than twenty thousand Puritan men, women, and children took part in the “Great Migration” to their new home.

The Puritans brought a high level of religious idealism to their first colony, which their leader John Winthrop described as “a city upon a hill”—a model of piety for all. Almost overnight, they founded a half dozen towns, setting up churches on the congregationalist pattern under the Reverend John Cotton. These churches ran their own affairs, taxed the community to finance operations, and hired and fired ministers. Although church attendance was compulsory, not everyone was deemed worthy of membership. The New England Way was a rigorous examination of a person's spiritual beliefs to identify “saints,” or those qualified to be a church member. This intimidating test ultimately served to limit church membership and forced the next generation to modify procedures. Education was a high priority in Puritan society because literacy was essential to Bible study. Laws were passed calling for the creation of grammar schools to teach reading and writing, and Harvard College was founded in 1636 to train the clergy.

The narrow views of the Puritan leaders regarding religious conformity provoked opposition. Roger Williams argued for the separation of church and state, and the right of privacy in religious belief, and against compulsory church service. Banished from Massachusetts Bay in 1635, he went south to Narragansett Bay and founded the Providence settlement. In 1644, Williams received royal permission to start the colony of Rhode Island, a haven for other religious dissenters.

Anne Hutchinson was another critic of clerical authority. Puritan leaders called her and her supporters Antinomians—individuals opposed to the rule of law. As a woman, she was also seen as a challenger to the traditionally male-dominated society. Tried for sedition, Hutchinson was also exiled as a danger to the colony. She lived in Rhode Island for a time and then moved to New Netherland, where she was killed in 1643 during a conflict between settlers and Indians.

The Puritans brought disease as well as their religion to the New World, and the impact on the native population was the same as it had been in the Caribbean, Mexico, and South America a century earlier. As settlements expanded beyond the coastal region, conflicts with the local tribes became common, with equally devastating results. Notably, for the colonists in Massachusetts Bay and New England, disease was less of a problem than it was in the southern colonies. The cold winters limited travel, and the comparatively small farming communities that were established limited the spread of infection. Death rates dwindled, and life expectancy rose. Improved survival combined with the immigration of entire families contributed to the rapid growth of the population.

Massachusetts Bay was a theocratic society, or a society in which the lines between church and state were blurred. Church membership, for example, was required for men to vote for elected local officials. The intent of many of the colony's laws was regulation of personal behavior based on Puritan values. Single men and women could not live on their own. Disrespectful servants, errant husbands, and disobedient wives were subject to civil penalties, and rebellious children could even be put to death. The laws also provided a degree of protection for women by punishing abusive men and compelling fathers to support their children.

Puritan efforts to maintain an intensely ideal religious community did not endure past the first generation. Their restrictive membership requirements in place made it difficult for the Puritan churches to maintain themselves. In 1662, the Half-Way Covenant was adopted to address the problem. It allowed the church members' baptized children who would not give testimony to achieve sainthood (and thereby church membership) a “half-way” membership in the congregation. This change in the rules meant that the children's children could receive baptism after all. Without sainthood, however, they could neither vote on church matters nor take communion. Change was also imposed from outside. Massachusetts's 1691 royal charter made property ownership rather than church membership the qualification for voting and provided for the toleration of religious dissenters. The New England Way was breaking down, and a consequence was the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 and 1693.

Belief in witches and demonic possession was common in the seventeenth century, and many people, mainly middle-aged women, were accused of witchcraft throughout New England. What made the events in Salem Village unique was the extent of the hysteria, which led to the imprisonment of more than one hundred men and women and the execution of twenty. Historians attribute the outbreak to several factors—rivalries between families, a clash of values between a small farming community like Salem Village and the more cosmopolitan commercial center of Salem, and the ties between many of the accused with Anglicans, Quakers, and Baptists, whom the Puritans considered heretics.

Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Maine. Connecticut was settled by colonists from Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay in the 1630s. Thomas Hooker, a minister from Cambridge who advocated less stringent views on religious conformity than other Puritan clergy, brought part of his congregation to the territory in 1636. New Haven, on the other hand, was founded two years later by Puritans who found even Massachusetts Bay too liberal. Self-rule was established in 1639 through the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the first written constitution to create a government, which followed Hooker's approach and gave the right to vote to all freemen and not just church members. Relations with the Indians were important in Connecticut's early history. The Pequot War (1636–37) largely wiped out the Pequot tribe and cleared away the last obstacle to the expansion of settlements in the Connecticut River Valley. Despite the Fundamental Orders, Connecticut was really without legal status until 1662, when it was chartered as a royal colony.

New Hampshire and Maine were originally proprietorships granted not by the king but the Council of New England. Both colonies strove to maintain their independence but were only partly successful. Massachusetts effectively controlled New Hampshire until 1679, when it became a separate colony under a royal charter; Maine remained part of Massachusetts until 1820.

Chesapeake Colonies: Virginia, Maryland

By 1700, the Virginia colonists had made their fortunes through the cultivation of tobacco, setting a pattern that was followed in Maryland and the Carolinas. In political and religious matters, Virginia differed considerably from the New England colonies. The Church of England was the established church in Virginia, which meant taxpayers paid for the support of the church whether or not they were Anglicans. But church membership ultimately mattered little, since a lack of clergymen and few churches kept many Virginians from attending church. Religion thus was of secondary importance in the Virginia colony.

Virginia's colonial government structure resembled that of England's county courts and contrasted with the theocratic government of Massachusetts Bay. A royal governor appointed justices of the peace, who set tax rates and saw to the building and maintenance of public works, such as bridges and roads. In the 1650s, the colonial assembly adopted a bicameral pattern: the House of Burgesses (the elected lower house) and an appointed Governor's Council. The assembly met regularly, not so much for representative government as for the opportunity to raise taxes.