In Discussion 3: reflect on what you learned in this modulewrite your reaction and thoughts, your observations, and conclusions. What was the most important take away and why?follow these 4 requiremen

HIST 1301 Module Three

Topic: English Colonization: Early Virginia, Puritan Massachusetts and the rest of the 13 Colonies

Upon completion of this lesson, students will be able to:

Describe the foundation origins of the colony of Virginia.

Explain the development of Virginia and the larger Chesapeake society

Analyze the significance of the year 1619.

Explain the historical developments of the Reformation, particularly in England, out of which the Puritan Church was created.

Describe aspects of the Puritan Community as influenced by Winthrop’s sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity.”

Briefly explain the early history of the rest of the thirteen colonies.

Introductory Essay by Downs

With the tremendous wealth from the mining operations in New Spain, northern European nations wanted to experience the same success though imitation of the Spanish. While Spain controlled Central and South America and the sea route around South America, Northern Europeans began voyages of exploration to North America. Their goal was two-fold: establish colonies that might prove as profitable as Spain’s based on gold and silver and to discover an all water-route through or around the North American continent. This was the elusive Northwest Passage. Remember that China was still the main goal of the Europeans and the search for the Northwest Passage would persist for the next three hundred years. Ultimately, there is no Northwest Passage. Again this is a reminder of the limits of geographical knowledge of the Americas. Until somebody gets in a boat and explores and can bring that knowledge back, uncertainty remained.

North American Exploration

Northern European nations like France, the Netherlands and England had also experienced religious civil warfare for much of the sixteenth century which had interfered with voyages of exploration. The religious transformation, particularly of Northern Europe is known as the Reformation (see lesson four). Spain and Portugal never experienced religious civil conflict and thus in addition to the development of nation-states were able to venture off of voyages of exploration much sooner. These northern European nations were finally able to seriously begin colonizing North America in the early seventeenth century. New France was claimed in the 1530s by Cartier, but Quebec was established in 1608. The Dutch established New Netherlands in the 1620s after claiming the territory explored by Henry Hudson, an Englishman in their employ. The English, under the leadership of Sir Walter Ralegh, established the colony of Roanoke in 1585 on an island off the coast of present-day North Carolina. This colony failed in a mysterious fashion as the settlers were left to fend for themselves for several years while Queen Elizabeth concentrated all her efforts to defend England against the Spanish Armada in 1588. Upon their return to Roanoke, the English discovered the colony had completely disappeared. Today it is known as the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

Jamestown

In 1607, the Virginia Company established the settlement of Jamestown in the colony of Virginia. Jamestown proved to be the first successful attempt at colonization in the Americas by the English. In 2007, Jamestown celebrated its 400th anniversary. Primogeniture is a term that simply means ‘first-born.’ However, in England what it meant was that the first born son inherited all titles and land. This was a common practice to ensure that family estates were kept in together over generations. This played an important role in the early history of Jamestown because many of the settlers were the second or third born sons of noble families. Nobles did not work. They were not laborers. When Jamestown was first settled, these noblemen refused to do the work necessary for survival, such as farming. Jamestown was on the verge of complete failure as they struggled just to feed themselves. In the winter of 1609-1610, known as the “starving times,” most of the Jamestown settlers died of starvation. Many resorted to cannibalism. While they did not kill one another and then commence to eating, they probably were eyeing each other rather closely. In fact, one man dug up his wife and ate upon her carcass throughout the winter.

John Smith

Captain John Smith was put in charge of Jamestown because he was one of the few men with military training and experience and could hopefully establish the discipline necessary to save the settlement. Smith instituted a policy of “no work, no food,” as well as harsh discipline and punishment for offenders. Jamestown was literally on the brink of collapse in these first years. Eventually, the settlers learned from nearby Powhatan Indians about corn cultivation, but it was tobacco that ultimately saved Jamestown. The settlers could grow tobacco and actually make quite a bit of profit. Tobacco cultivation was so profitable that laws became necessary requiring farmers to grow corn and not just tobacco on their land. In fact, farmers actually grew tobacco in the streets.

Origin Myths

When Americans are asked when does American history begin, I think often the answer harkens back to elementary school plays in the fall, where we made drawings of turkeys by tracing the outline of our hand. Paper buckles on hats and shoes, pumpkin pies and watching the Dallas Cowboys on television are common. The Pilgrims are often invoked as the foundation of American society because it conjures up images of religious freedom, escaping persecution and friendly relations with Indians. Somewhere, Squanto is teaching the Pilgrims how to grow corn by fertilizing the ground with a fish. These are all comforting images and that is often the case with myths that are created and passed down generation to generation. It is understandable, if completely inaccurate. After all, who wants to imagine our foundations as those of cannibalism and tobacco? Yet, these are the origins of what will become the United States.

1619

In the year 1619, three hugely important events took place. It had been about a decade since the founding of Jamestown and that harsh discipline instituted by Smith had continued even though it was largely unnecessary. Jamestown was surviving due to tobacco cultivation although it was still harsh living. In 1619, the burgesses (land owners) of Jamestown created the House of Burgesses, the first representative assembly in the New World. The principle concern was the defense of liberty, civil rights. This has been one of the major themes in American history, liberty. Yet in that same year another monumental event took place, the first Africans arrived in Virginia. They were slaves from a Dutch ship. To the Dutch, who were the great slave traders of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, they were slaves. However, slavery is a legal institution which did not exist in England or English territories in 1619. While these people were laborers for the rest of their lives, we cannot automatically assume that they were slaves. For these twenty Africans, it may just be a matter of semantics. However, for the rest of American history, it will set us down a path that still haunts us to the present. Slavery was not here from the beginning, as if it were something natural that we have had to overcome. Slavery begins later as a matter of choice. But from our earliest beginnings, Americans have lived a paradoxical existence of promoting liberty for some and denying it for others. We will compromise between these two extremes for the next two centuries until we are no longer able to compromise and then we will fight the most bloody and destructive war in our history. The year 1619 sees us step onto that path. Finally, in 1619 another significant event takes place. The Virginia Company, realizing that in order for the colony to survive the population was grow internally and not just from immigration, brings fifty women to Jamestown. These women’s labor is auctioned off to the highest bidder as they enter into indentured servitude. But the reality is that they ended up marrying most of these men and having children. While Jamestown will continue to grow more from immigration than reproduction, the foundation of future generations has begun.

Introduction to Puritan Massachusetts

The main motivating factors for the earliest English colonization profit. While there was no gold in Virginia, tobacco and the need for land allowed Virginia to prosper. Now we will look at another reason for colonization and that is religion. The Puritans who migrated to New England did so largely to be free of religious persecution back in England where they were considered second-class citizens and were barred from holding government positions. To understand where the Puritans came from, we have to go back to the sixteenth century and briefly look at the Reformation.

Martin Luther and the Reformation

The Reformation was a chaotic and often violent upheaval of the relative religious uniformity that had dominated Christian Europe throughout the medieval period. Where there had been only one Christian Church in the west, the Catholic Church, now there would be many. In 1517, Martin Luther, a German monk and priest, nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. The 95 Theses were 95 criticisms and points of dispute that Luther had with the Church, largely concerned with the selling of indulgences, a get to heaven more quickly card, and a huge fund raiser. The nailing of the 95 Theses to the cathedral door is the biggest symbol of the entire Reformation and it never actually happened. Luther instead mailed his 95 Theses to his Archbishop, Albrecht of Brandenburg, who was in on the whole selling of indulgences scheme and promptly forwarded it on to the pope. Luther was eventually excommunicated by Pope Leo X in 1521 and would go on to found a new church, the Lutheran Church. Much of the Reformation can be reduced down to Luther’s inability to feel that indeed he was going to heaven and would attain salvation and grace. The Church argued that good deeds helped one get to heaven but no matter how hard he worked, Luther never felt it and thus was consumed with the fear of hell and damnation. Luther finally solved his theological dilemma when he began espousing that salvation was attainable only by faith alone. That faith was based upon reading the bible and Protestant emphasized literacy in order to be able to read scripture. Lutherans and other new churches that will spring up in the sixteenth century were known as Protestants because a group of German Lutheran Princes stormed out of the German national assembly in “protest” in 1529 when the Catholics tried to restrict Lutheranism.

John Calvin and Predestination

John Calvin was an even more important religious reformer than Luther. Calvin believed in Luther’s theology of faith alone, but Calvin went even further. Calvin suggested that God chose only a few humans to enter into heaven and the rest were going to hell. The chosen few were the “elect” and Calvin, naturally, believed he was one of them. God chose the elect before they were ever born; therefore one’s fate was predetermined by divine Providence. This is known as predestination. Rather than lead to a fatalistic attitude of “it doesn’t really matter what I do in life since it is already predetermined,” Calvin argued that the evidence of one’s salvation is in how one lives their lives. A person who leads a moral and ethical life is probably one of the elect and a person that chose to live a life of sin was probably going to hell. Calvinists were obsessed with looking for evidence that they were one of the elect and living lives of purity and steadfastness. This will lead to the development of a hallmark of American culture and that is the Protestant Work Ethic. If you work hard, follow the rules, mind your p’s and q’s and keep your nose to the grindstone (insert your favorite cliché) then good things will happen and God will bless you.

The Puritans

In England, the Reformation was more political than religious. King Henry VIII wished to annul his marriage to Catharine of Aragon in order to remarry so that he might have a son to carry on the Tudor Dynasty. When the Pope refused, Henry separated the Church in England from the control of the Pope in Rome and created a new church, the Anglican Church, which Henry was now the head of. Henry could now grant his own annulment and marry Anne Boleyn who also failed to provide Henry with a son. Henry had no intention of reforming the English Church and went to his grave believing that he was a good catholic. The Anglican Church was very similar to the Catholic Church. Many people wished for significant religious reform and thus wanted to purify the Catholic elements out of the English Church, thus the Puritan Church was created to do that very thing. John Calvin had stressed missionary work and was very successful at spreading his theology. The Puritans were English Calvinists.

The First Thanksgiving

The Pilgrims of Plymouth Bay Colony and the first Thanksgiving are often the earliest stories many Americans encounter. This is the foundation myth of our beginning. The Pilgrims came over in 1620, but you will remember that Jamestown was founded in 1607 and the pivotal year of 1619 occurred the previous year, before the Pilgrims arrived. The Pilgrims were Puritan Separatists who left England to escape religious persecution. They went to the Calvinist Netherlands where they practiced their religion freely. So the Pilgrims did not come to America to practice their religion. They already could do that in the Netherlands. The Pilgrims came to America because their children were assimilating into Dutch society. That is, their children were losing their English culture and adopting the Dutch culture. The Pilgrims arrived in New England in 1620 and instead of a virgin wilderness encountered a lush but well cultivated landscape. The Indians of New England had worked that land for thousands of years. However, from 1617-1619 European diseases, specifically the plague decimated native populations significantly reducing their numbers. The Puritans then arrived in a relative position of strength. Upon arrival, the Pilgrims encountered Squanto, a Wampanoag Indian who spoke English. This was evidence of divine Providence at work for Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to survive in the New England wilderness. And for this the Pilgrims gave Thanks to God. Why did Squanto speak English? He had been caught up in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. He eventually bought his freedom and worked his way back across the Atlantic where he picked up some English serving under an English ship captain. When Squanto returned, he found many of his people dead from disease so he and other Wampanoag Indians allied themselves to the Pilgrims for defense against their longtime enemies, the Narragansett.

Aspects of the Puritan Community

John Winthrop gave a lay sermon entitled “A Model of Christian Charity,” which was intended to make clear to all of the Puritans what their purpose was in founding Massachusetts. According to Winthrop, Boston was to be a “City Upon a Hill,” and the Puritans purpose was to establish a religious utopia based upon their understanding of the Bible. In other words, Winthrop was laying out the mission and to understand the Puritan community in Massachusetts one must understand the mission. Why do Puritans have a lasting reputation for being oppressive and controlling? It all goes back to the mission. Carefully read “A Model of Christian Charity” to understand what that mission was to be. Further, be open to the possibility that the Puritans were not as controlling as their reputation suggests and in some sense women had it much better in Puritan New England than in many other parts of the English colonies or for that matter back in England itself.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Explain the changes brought by the Protestant Reformation and how it influenced the development of the Atlantic World

Describe Spain’s response to the Protestant Reformation

Until the 1500s, the Catholic Church provided a unifying religious structure for Christian Europe. The Vatican in Rome exercised great power over the lives of Europeans; it controlled not only learning and scholarship but also finances, because it levied taxes on the faithful. Spain, with its New World wealth, was the bastion of the Catholic faith. Beginning with the reform efforts of Martin Luther in 1517 and John Calvin in the 1530s, however, Catholic dominance came under attack as the Protestant Reformation, a split or schism among European Christians, began.

During the sixteenth century, Protestantism spread through northern Europe, and Catholic countries responded by attempting to extinguish what was seen as the Protestant menace. Religious turmoil between Catholics and Protestants influenced the history of the Atlantic World as well, since different nation-states competed not only for control of new territories but also for the preeminence of their religious beliefs there. Just as the history of Spain’s rise to power is linked to the Reconquista, so too is the history of early globalization connected to the history of competing Christian groups in the Atlantic World.

MARTIN LUTHER

Martin Luther (Figure 2.8) was a German Catholic monk who took issue with the Catholic Church’s practice of selling indulgences, documents that absolved sinners of their errant behavior. He also objected to the Catholic Church’s taxation of ordinary Germans and the delivery of Mass in Latin, arguing that it failed to instruct German Catholics, who did not understand the language.

A painting depicts Martin Luther.

Figure 2.8 Martin Luther, a German Catholic monk and leader of the Protestant Reformation, was a close friend of the German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder. Cranach painted this and several other portraits of Luther.

Many Europeans had called for reforms of the Catholic Church before Martin Luther did, but his protest had the unintended consequence of splitting European Christianity. Luther compiled a list of what he viewed as needed Church reforms, a document that came to be known as The Ninety-Five Theses, and nailed it to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517. He called for the publication of the Bible in everyday language, took issue with the Church’s policy of imposing tithes (a required payment to the Church that appeared to enrich the clergy), and denounced the buying and selling of indulgences. Although he had hoped to reform the Catholic Church while remaining a part of it, Luther’s action instead triggered a movement called the Protestant Reformation that divided the Church in two. The Catholic Church condemned him as a heretic, but a doctrine based on his reforms, called Lutheranism, spread through northern Germany and Scandinavia.

CLICK AND EXPLORE

Visit Fordham University’s Internet Medieval Sourcebook for access to many primary sources relating to the Protestant Reformation.

JOHN CALVIN

Like Luther, the French lawyer John Calvin advocated making the Bible accessible to ordinary people; only by reading scripture and reflecting daily about their spiritual condition, he argued, could believers begin to understand the power of God. In 1535, Calvin fled Catholic France and led the Reformation movement from Geneva, Switzerland.

Calvinism emphasized human powerlessness before an omniscient God and stressed the idea of predestination, the belief that God selected a few chosen people for salvation while everyone else was predestined to damnation. Calvinists believed that reading scripture prepared sinners, if they were among the elect, to receive God’s grace. In Geneva, Calvin established a Bible commonwealth, a community of believers whose sole source of authority was their interpretation of the Bible, not the authority of any prince or monarch. Soon Calvin’s ideas spread to the Netherlands and Scotland.

PROTESTANTISM IN ENGLAND

Protestantism spread beyond the German states and Geneva to England, which had been a Catholic nation for centuries. Luther’s idea that scripture should be available in the everyday language of worshippers inspired English scholar William Tyndale to translate the Bible into English in 1526. The seismic break with the Catholic Church in England occurred in the 1530s, when Henry VIII established a new, Protestant state religion.

A devout Catholic, Henry had initially stood in opposition to the Reformation. Pope Leo X even awarded him the title “Defender of the Faith.” The tides turned, however, when Henry desired a male heir to the Tudor monarchy. When his Spanish Catholic wife, Catherine (the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella), did not give birth to a boy, the king sought an annulment to their marriage. When the Pope refused his request, Henry created a new national Protestant church, the Church of England, with himself at its head. This left him free to annul his own marriage and marry Anne Boleyn.

Anne Boleyn also failed to produce a male heir, and when she was accused of adultery, Henry had her executed. His third wife, Jane Seymour, at long last delivered a son, Edward, who ruled for only a short time before dying in 1553 at the age of fifteen. Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII and his discarded first wife Catherine, then came to the throne, committed to restoring Catholicism. She earned the nickname “Bloody Mary” for the many executions of Protestants, often by burning alive, that she ordered during her reign.

Religious turbulence in England was finally quieted when Elizabeth, the Protestant daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, ascended the throne in 1558. Under Elizabeth, the Church of England again became the state church, retaining the hierarchical structure and many of the rituals of the Catholic Church. However, by the late 1500s, some English members of the Church began to agitate for more reform. Known as Puritans, they worked to erase all vestiges of Catholicism from the Church of England. At the time, the term “puritan” was a pejorative one; many people saw Puritans as holier-than-thou frauds who used religion to swindle their neighbors. Worse still, many in power saw Puritans as a security threat because of their opposition to the national church.

Under Elizabeth, whose long reign lasted from 1558 to 1603, Puritans grew steadily in number. After James I died in 1625 and his son Charles I ascended the throne, Puritans became the target of increasing state pressure to conform. Many crossed the Atlantic in the 1620s and 1630s instead to create a New England, a haven for reformed Protestantism where Puritan was no longer a term of abuse. Thus, the religious upheavals that affected England so much had equally momentous consequences for the Americas.

RELIGIOUS WAR

By the early 1500s, the Protestant Reformation threatened the massive Spanish Catholic empire. As the preeminent Catholic power, Spain would not tolerate any challenge to the Holy Catholic Church. Over the course of the 1500s, it devoted vast amounts of treasure and labor to leading an unsuccessful effort to eradicate Protestantism in Europe.

Spain’s main enemies at this time were the runaway Spanish provinces of the North Netherlands. By 1581, these seven northern provinces had declared their independence from Spain and created the Dutch Republic, also called Holland, where Protestantism was tolerated. Determined to deal a death blow to Protestantism in England and Holland, King Philip of Spain assembled a massive force of over thirty thousand men and 130 ships, and in 1588 he sent this navy, the Spanish Armada, north. But English sea power combined with a maritime storm destroyed the fleet.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 was but one part of a larger but undeclared war between Protestant England and Catholic Spain. Between 1585 and 1604, the two rivals sparred repeatedly. England launched its own armada in 1589 in an effort to disable the Spanish fleet and capture Spanish treasure. However, the foray ended in disaster for the English, with storms, disease, and the strength of the Spanish Armada combining to bring about defeat.

The conflict between Spain and England dragged on into the early seventeenth century, and the newly Protestant nations, especially England and the Dutch Republic, posed a significant challenge to Spain (and also to Catholic France) as imperial rivalries played out in the Atlantic World. Spain retained its mighty American empire, but by the early 1600s, the nation could no longer keep England and other European rivals—the French and Dutch—from colonizing smaller islands in the Caribbean (Figure 2.9).

A portrait of Elizabeth I shows the queen in full regalia with her hand on a globe. Behind her, through the windows, scenes showing the defeat of the Spanish Armada are visible.

Figure 2.9 This portrait of Elizabeth I of England, painted by George Gower in about 1588, shows Elizabeth with her hand on a globe, signifying her power over the world. The pictures in the background show the English defeat of the Spanish Armada.

Religious intolerance characterized the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an age of powerful state religions with the authority to impose and enforce belief systems on the population. In this climate, religious violence was common. One of the most striking examples is the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, in which French Catholic troops began to kill unarmed French Protestants (Figure 2.10). The murders touched off mob violence that ultimately claimed nine thousand lives, a bloody episode that highlights the degree of religious turmoil that gripped Europe in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation.

A painting shows French Catholic troops slaughtering French Protestant Calvinists in the streets of Paris.

Figure 2.10 Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1772-84), by François Dubois, shows the horrific violence of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. In this scene, French Catholic troops slaughter French Protestant Calvinists.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Compare and contrast the development and character of the French and Dutch colonies in North America

Discuss the economies of the French and Dutch colonies in North America

Seventeenth-century French and Dutch colonies in North America were modest in comparison to Spain’s colossal global empire. New France and New Netherland remained small commercial operations focused on the fur trade and did not attract an influx of migrants. The Dutch in New Netherland confined their operations to Manhattan Island, Long Island, the Hudson River Valley, and what later became New Jersey. Dutch trade goods circulated widely among the native peoples in these areas and also traveled well into the interior of the continent along preexisting native trade routes. French habitants, or farmer-settlers, eked out an existence along the St. Lawrence River. French fur traders and missionaries, however, ranged far into the interior of North America, exploring the Great Lakes region and the Mississippi River. These pioneers gave France somewhat inflated imperial claims to lands that nonetheless remained firmly under the dominion of native peoples.

FUR TRADING IN NEW NETHERLAND

The Dutch Republic emerged as a major commercial center in the 1600s. Its fleets plied the waters of the Atlantic, while other Dutch ships sailed to the Far East, returning with prized spices like pepper to be sold in the bustling ports at home, especially Amsterdam. In North America, Dutch traders established themselves first on Manhattan Island.

One of the Dutch directors-general of the North American settlement, Peter Stuyvesant, served from 1647 to 1664. He expanded the fledgling outpost of New Netherland east to present-day Long Island, and for many miles north along the Hudson River. The resulting elongated colony served primarily as a fur-trading post, with the powerful Dutch West India Company controlling all commerce. Fort Amsterdam, on the southern tip of Manhattan Island, defended the growing city of New Amsterdam. In 1655, Stuyvesant took over the small outpost of New Sweden along the banks of the Delaware River in present-day New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. He also defended New Amsterdam from Native American attacks by ordering enslaved Africans to build a protective wall on the city’s northeastern border, giving present-day Wall Street its name (Figure 3.5).

The Castello Plan shows New Amsterdam as a small settlement of buildings and fields divided by roads or paths. A fort can be seen near the tip of the peninsula. On the right side of the colony, a line with spikes indicates the wall that protects the colony to the northeast; its other three sides are protected by water.

Figure 3.5 The Castello Plan is the only extant map of 1660 New Amsterdam (present-day New York City). The line with spikes on the right side of the colony is the northeastern wall for which Wall Street was named.

New Netherland failed to attract many Dutch colonists; by 1664, only nine thousand people were living there. Conflict with Native peoples, as well as dissatisfaction with the Dutch West India Company’s trading practices, made the Dutch outpost an undesirable place for many migrants. The small size of the population meant a severe labor shortage, and to complete the arduous tasks of early settlement, the Dutch West India Company imported some 450 enslaved Africans between 1626 and 1664. (The company had involved itself heavily in the slave trade and in 1637 captured Elmina, the slave-trading post on the west coast of Africa, from the Portuguese.) The shortage of labor also meant that New Netherland welcomed non-Dutch immigrants, including Protestants from Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and England, and embraced a degree of religious tolerance, allowing Jewish immigrants to become residents beginning in the 1650s. Thus, a wide variety of people lived in New Netherland from the start. Indeed, one observer claimed eighteen different languages could be heard on the streets of New Amsterdam. As new settlers arrived, the colony of New Netherland stretched farther to the north and the west (Figure 3.6).

A 1684 map of New Netherland shows Dutch settlements in parts of present-day New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Connecticut.

Figure 3.6 This 1684 map of New Netherland shows the extent of Dutch settlement.

The Dutch West India Company found the business of colonization in New Netherland to be expensive. To share some of the costs, it granted Dutch merchants who invested heavily in it patroonships, or large tracts of land and the right to govern the tenants there. In return, the shareholder who gained the patroonship promised to pay for the passage of at least thirty Dutch farmers to populate the colony. One of the largest patroonships was granted to Kiliaen van Rensselaer, one of the directors of the Dutch West India Company; it covered most of present-day Albany and Rensselaer Counties. This pattern of settlement created a yawning gap in wealth and status between the tenants, who paid rent, and the wealthy patroons.

During the summer trading season, Native Americans gathered at trading posts such as the Dutch site at Beverwijck (present-day Albany), where they exchanged furs for guns, blankets, and alcohol. The furs, especially beaver pelts destined for the lucrative European millinery market, would be sent down the Hudson River to New Amsterdam. There, enslaved laborers or workers would load them aboard ships bound for Amsterdam.

CLICK AND EXPLORE

Explore an interactive map of New Amsterdam in 1660 that shows the city plan and the locations of various structures, including houses, businesses, and public buildings. Rolling over the map reveals relevant historical details, such as street names, the identities of certain buildings and businesses, and the names of residents of the houses (when known).

COMMERCE AND CONVERSION IN NEW FRANCE

After Jacques Cartier’s voyages of discovery in the 1530s, France showed little interest in creating permanent colonies in North America until the early 1600s, when Samuel de Champlain established Quebec as a French fur-trading outpost. Although the fur trade was lucrative, the French saw Canada as an inhospitable frozen wasteland, and by 1640, fewer than four hundred settlers had made their home there. The sparse French presence meant that colonists depended on the local native Algonquian people; without them, the French would have perished. French fishermen, explorers, and fur traders made extensive contact with the Algonquian. The Algonquian, in turn, tolerated the French because the colonists supplied them with firearms for their ongoing war with the Iroquois. Thus, the French found themselves escalating native wars and supporting the Algonquian against the Iroquois, who received weapons from their Dutch trading partners. These seventeenth-century conflicts centered on the lucrative trade in beaver pelts, earning them the name of the Beaver Wars. In these wars, fighting between rival native peoples spread throughout the Great Lakes region.

A handful of French Jesuit priests also made their way to Canada, intent on converting the native inhabitants to Catholicism. The Jesuits were members of the Society of Jesus, an elite religious order founded in the 1540s to spread Catholicism and combat the spread of Protestantism. The first Jesuits arrived in Quebec in the 1620s, and for the next century, their numbers did not exceed forty priests. Like the Spanish Franciscan missionaries, the Jesuits in the colony called New France labored to convert the native peoples to Catholicism. They wrote detailed annual reports about their progress in bringing the faith to the Algonquian and, beginning in the 1660s, to the Iroquois. These documents are known as the Jesuit Relations (Figure 3.7), and they provide a rich source for understanding both the Jesuit view of the Native Americans and the Native response to the colonizers.

One Native convert to Catholicism, a Mohawk woman named Kateri Tekakwitha, so impressed the priests with her piety that a Jesuit named Claude Chauchetière attempted to make her a saint in the Church. However, the effort to canonize Tekakwitha faltered when leaders of the Church balked at elevating a “savage” to such a high status; she was eventually canonized in 2012. French colonizers pressured the native inhabitants of New France to convert, but they virtually never saw Native peoples as their equals.

DEFINING AMERICAN

A Jesuit Priest on Native Healing Traditions

The Jesuit Relations (Figure 3.7) provide incredible detail about Native life. For example, the 1636 edition, written by the Catholic priest Jean de Brébeuf, addresses the devastating effects of disease on Native peoples and the efforts made to combat it.

A seventeenth-century French copy of the Jesuit Relations is shown.

Figure 3.7 French Jesuit missionaries to New France kept detailed records of their interactions with—and observations of—the Algonquian and Iroquois that they converted to Catholicism. (credit: Project Gutenberg).

Let us return to the feasts. The Aoutaerohi is a remedy which is only for one particular kind of disease, which they call also Aoutaerohi, from the name of a little Demon as large as the fist, which they say is in the body of the sick man, especially in the part which pains him. They find out that they are sick of this disease, by means of a dream, or by the intervention of some Sorcerer. . . .

Of three kinds of games especially in use among these Peoples,—namely, the games of crosse [lacrosse], dish, and straw,—the first two are, they say, most healing. Is not this worthy of compassion? There is a poor sick man, fevered of body and almost dying, and a miserable Sorcerer will order for him, as a cooling remedy, a game of crosse. Or the sick man himself, sometimes, will have dreamed that he must die unless the whole country shall play crosse for his health; and, no matter how little may be his credit, you will see then in a beautiful field, Village contending against Village, as to who will play crosse the better, and betting against one another Beaver robes and Porcelain collars, so as to excite greater interest.

According to this account, how did Native Americans attempt to cure disease? Why did they prescribe a game of lacrosse? What benefits might these games have for the sick?