Overview:
The Pilgrims settled in the New World in 1620, and with it came a story of simple English colonists searching for a safe haven to freely practice their religion. Here, we see in the image left, above, that there is a welcoming relationship between the Pilgrims and Native Americans, which is celebrated every year during Thanksgiving. In this section, we will learn about the first colonies and interactions that took place between settlers and natives in North America, as they may not have been as pretty and clean as we have been taught to believe.
Roanoke: "The Lost Colony"
'The Roanoke Island colony, the first English settlement in the New World, was founded by English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh in August 1585. The first Roanoke colonists did not fare well, suffering from dwindling food supplies and Indian attacks, and in 1586 they returned to England aboard a ship captained by Sir Francis Drake. In 1587, Raleigh sent out another group of 100 colonists under John White. White returned to England to procure more supplies, but the war with Spain delayed his return to Roanoke. By the time he finally returned in August 1590, everyone had vanished.'
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/roanoke-colony-deserted |
As of August of 2015, new artifacts have emerged in the town of Merry Hill, NC that suggest early English exploration on the mainland of present-day North Carolina. This evidence suggests a potential connection to the "lost" colony of Roanoke, leading some historians to believe that the settlers may have moved from Roanoke to this new location within the three years that John White was in Europe. This map from John White shows an area that was once marked with an X on the location of current archaeological discoveries. It appears to have been whited-out on the map, and is only visible with a back-light. But why was this area painted over? And why was it marked in the first place? Read the New York Times article to find out more about this mystery: |
What Was the First Permanent English Colony?Watch this EdPuzzle on the first exploration and settlement of Jamestown. Learn about the colonists who were seeking riches of America, but faced struggles that led to the brink of failure. Why don't we celebrate Jamestown in the same way that we celebrate the Pilgrims? |
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What Was the Colony of Plymouth Like in 1620?Watch this EdPuzzle on early life for the Pilgrims that settled in the Plymouth Colony. Learn about the difficulties that these settlers faced during their establishment in North America. Would you have gone through these conditions? |
Virtual Field Trip!
Tour the Plymouth Plantation plantation, where the Pilgrims later founded the state of Massachusetts! Using Google Maps, you can explore around the plantation, and even into some of the houses!
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Interactive TimelineCheck out this interactive timeline to learn about the first European settlements in North America:
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Colonial RegionsClick here for an interactive history from PBS allowing you to learn who was in North America in 1628:
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Life in the ColoniesCheck out this Brain POP link where you can watch a brief overview of the 13 colonies, and then take their quiz:
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What About the Famous Pocahontas? |
The Harsh Realities of Slavery
"From the trade’s beginning in the 16th century to its conclusion in the 19th, slave merchants brought the vast majority of enslaved Africans to two places: the Caribbean and Brazil. Of the more than 10 million enslaved Africans to eventually reach the Western Hemisphere, just 388,747—less than 4 percent of the total—came to North America." To continue reading, click on the link below: |
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The New England Colonies
The first English emigrants to what would become the New England colonies were a small group of Puritan separatists, later called the Pilgrims, who arrived in Plymouth in 1620. Ten years later, a wealthy syndicate known as the Massachusetts Bay Company sent a much larger (and more liberal) group of Puritans to establish another Massachusetts settlement. With the help of local natives, the colonists soon got the hang of farming, fishing and hunting, and Massachusetts prospered.
As the Massachusetts settlements expanded, they generated new colonies in New England. Puritans who thought that Massachusetts was not pious enough formed the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven (the two combined in 1665). Meanwhile, Puritans who thought that Massachusetts was too restrictive formed the colony of Rhode Island, where everyone–including Jews–enjoyed complete “liberty in religious concernments.” To the north of the Massachusetts colony, a handful of adventurous settlers formed the colony of New Hampshire. http://www.history.com/topics/thirteen-colonies |
The Middle Colonies
In 1664, King Charles II gave the territory between New England and Virginia, much of which was already occupied by Dutch traders and landowners called patroons, to his brother James, the Duke of York. The English soon absorbed Dutch New Netherland and renamed it New York, but most of the Dutch people (as well as the Belgian Flemings and Walloons, French Huguenots, Scandinavians and Germans who were living there) stayed put. This made New York one of the most diverse and prosperous colonies in the New World.
In 1680, the king granted 45,000 square miles of land west of the Delaware River to William Penn, a Quaker who owned large swaths of land in Ireland. Penn’s North American holdings became the colony of “Penn’s Woods,” or Pennsylvania. Lured by the fertile soil and the religious toleration that Penn promised, people migrated there from all over Europe. Like their Puritan counterparts in New England, most of these emigrants paid their own way to the colonies–they were not indentured servants–and had enough money to establish themselves when they arrived. As a result, Pennsylvania soon became a prosperous and relatively egalitarian place. http://www.history.com/topics/thirteen-colonies |
The Southern Colonies
By contrast, the Carolina colony, a territory that stretched south from Virginia to Florida and west to the Pacific Ocean, was much less cosmopolitan. In its northern half, hardscrabble farmers eked out a living. In its southern half, planters presided over vast estates that produced corn, lumber, beef and pork, and–starting in the 1690s–rice. These Carolinians had close ties to the English planter colony on the Caribbean island of Barbados, which relied heavily on African slave labor, and many were involved in the slave trade themselves. As a result, slavery played an important role in the development of the Carolina colony. (It split into North Carolina and South Carolina in 1729.)
In 1732, inspired by the need to build a buffer between South Carolina and the Spanish settlements in Florida, the Englishman James Oglethorpe established the Georgia colony. In many ways, Georgia’s development mirrored South Carolina’s. In 1700, there were about 250,000 European and African settlers in North America’s thirteen English colonies. By 1775, on the eve of revolution, there were nearly 2.5 million. These colonists did not have much in common, but they were able to band together and fight for their independence. http://www.history.com/topics/thirteen-colonies |
Colonial Fair Project:
Now that we have learned about the settlement of North America, we have a fun and informational project: The Colonial Fair! In this assignment you will work with groups to represent one of the original 13 colonies, and it is your job to attempt to "sell" your colony to prospective settlers at our Colonial Fair!
If you are interested in watching a fun animated version of the instructions, you can check them out here, and/or you can read the instruction document below:
If you are interested in watching a fun animated version of the instructions, you can check them out here, and/or you can read the instruction document below:
Project Resources: |