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Arrival in Virginia
In April 1607 Englishmen aboard three ships—the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery -
First Anglo-Powhatan War
The First Anglo-Powhatan War was fought from 1609 until 1614 and pitted the English settlers at Jamestown against an alliance of Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians led by Powhatan (Wahunsonacock). -
First Slave Imports
Virginia, the oldest of the English mainland colonies, imported its first slaves in 1619. -
Second Anglo-Powhatan War
The conflict resulted in the destruction of the Indian power. -
Pequot War
The Pequot War was a short, vicious war in 1634-1638 between the Pequot tribe, who were members of a powerful tribe of Algonquian-speaking Indians of Connecticut, against an alliance of the Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut and Plymouth English colonies with their Indian allies, the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes. The Pequot were defeated in a crushing defeat in which they were forced to sign the Treaty of Hartford declaring the Pequot nation to be dissolved. -
Sugar Cultivation
British colonists in the Caribbean began cultivating sugar in the 1640s, and sugar took the Atlantic World by storm. -
Governor Kieft’s War
Dutch colonists in New Netherland (New York and New Jersey) enslaved Algonquian Indians -
Two races, white and black
The 1660s marked a turning point for black men and women in English colonies like Virginia in North America and Barbados in the West Indies. New laws gave legal sanction to the enslavement of people of African descent for life. Skin color became more than a superficial difference; it became the marker of a transcendent, all-encompassing division between two distinct peoples, two races, white and black.2 -
Slavery and the Law
A 1662 Virginia law stated that an enslaved woman’s children inherited the “condition” of their mother; other colonies soon passed similar statutes.This economic strategy on the part of planters created a legal system in which all children born to slave women would be slaves for life, whether the father was white or black, enslaved or free. -
King Philip's War
King Philip’s War (1675-1676) marked the last major effort by the Native Americans of southern New England to drive out the English settlers. Around 3,000 Native Americans were killed and many more were captured and shipped off to slavery. -
Paper Bills
Colonial Massachusetts became the first place in the Western world to issue paper bills to be used as money.
