First Americans to a New Nation

• • There were more than 200 North American tribes speaking 200 different languages, with each tribe having its own way of living.
• • In the Southwest, the Anasazi tribe had large cliff cities, where the dwellings were built into the mountainside.
• • Tribes in parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic of the United States are identified as belonging to the Algonquian family, based on the languages they spoke.
• • The Iroquois Tribes located in Ontario and upstate New York, united in the 1500s to a confederation.
• Since 1492, European explorers and settlers have tended to ignore the vast diversity of the people who had previously lived here. It soon became common to lump all such groups under the term “Indian.”
• Between 1942 and 1945, about 400 Navajos served as code talkers for the US Marines.
• Anasazi means “ancient outsiders.”
• Deep pits were periodically dug within the living quarters. These pits, called kivas, served as religious temples for the ancient Anasazi
• The representatives, or sachems, from the Seneca and Mohawk tribes, met in one house and those of the Oneida and Cayuga met in the other.
• The longhouse was the center of Iroquois life. Archaeologists have unearthed longhouse remains that extend more than the length of a football field.
• Anasazi lived in Large cliff dwellings
• Anasazi and the Iroquois' food source was through farming. Algonkian was through fishing and hunting
• Anasazi's artifacts were Baskets and pottery
• Algonkian's artifacts were Smaller hunting items, such as arrowheads, and cultural influences on settlers (such as farming corn, beans, and squash).
• Algonkian's end was due to being conquered and illness from European settlers. Many were also assimilated into Iroquois tribes.
• Anasazi is located in Southwest United States. Algonkian is located New England through the Mid-Atlantic coast. Iroquois is located Inland New England and Mid-Atlantic as well as Canada.
• When Jamestown was settled in 1607, North America was settled by many countries other than Great Britain, despite their dominance several centuries later.
• John Rolfe led to the development of tobacco as a cash crop in Virginia which led to a need for manual labor to grow the crops.
• Despite their help in the early years of settlement, the colonists' need for more land soon saw them in conflict with the local Powhatan tribes.
• A voyage by John Cabot to Canada on behalf of English investors in 1497 failed to spark any great interest in the New World
• These sea dogs, including Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake, and the infamous John Hawkins, helped provoke the eventual showdown between Elizabeth I’s England and Philip II’s Spain. Sea dogs were English mariners of the Elizabethan era employed by the queen to harass the Spanish fleets and establish a foothold in the New World.
•  In 1588, one of the greatest turning points in world history occurred when Spain’s “invincible” armada of 130 ships sailed into the English Channel. With the aid of a great storm, Elizabeth’s ships humiliated Philip’s navy, which returned to Spain with fewer than half their original number.

  This battle marked the beginning of the end of Spain’s domination of Europe and the Western Hemisphere. More importantly for England, it marked the dawn of the era of permanent English settlement of the New World.
• The winter of 1609–10 was known as the Starving Time.
• Joint-stock companies were the key to colonizing the new world. These companies were created to pool the enormous amounts of resources and share the large amount of risk involved in overseas exploration and colonization.
• The first joint-stock company to launch a lasting venture to the New World was the Virginia Company of London.
• John Smith imposed strict discipline on the colonists. “Work or starve” was his motto, and each colonist was required to spend four hours per day farming.
• by the end of the 1620s only one Virginia crop was drawing a fair market price in England: tobacco
• Indentured servants became the first means to meet this need for labor. In return for free passage to Virginia, a laborer worked for four to five years in the fields before being granted freedom
• Modeled after the English Parliament, the House of Burgesses was established in 1619 in the colony. Members would meet at least once a year with their royal governor to decide local laws and determine local taxation.
• The Puritans settled in North America because they wanted to practice their religion freely.
• John Rolfe decided to grow tobacco to generate wealth for the colony.
• Richard Hakluyt suggested that New World colonies could serve two purposes.

  1. they could challenge Spanish domination

  2. the poorer classes could be transported there, easing England’s population pressures.
• The first settlers, the Pilgrims, were bound for Virginia but were put off course by a storm. They ended up in modern-day Massachusetts.
• Life in the South was a study of contrasts. A small number of people were wealthy plantation owners. The majority of the population were yeoman farmers, indentured servants or slaves.
• The middle colonies were most notable for their diversity of cultures and religions.
• Pilgrims and Puritans both believed in the teachings of John Calvin. According to Calvin, neither the teachings of the Catholic nor the Anglican Churches addressed God’s will.
• The Pilgrims, called the Separatists, were persecuted by agents of the throne. The Puritans experienced the same degree of harassment. By the second and third decades of the 1600s, both decided to travel to the new world.
• In the landmark Mayflower Compact of 1620, the Pilgrims decided that they would rule themselves, based on majority rule of the townsmen. 
• Future governor John Winthrop stated their purpose quite clearly: “We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.”
• The Arbella was one of 11 ships carrying over a thousand Puritans to Massachusetts that year.