Description
Textbook: Chapter 3, 4
For the initial post, pick two (2) of the following settlements:
Southern colonies
Chesapeake colonies
Middle colonies
New England colonies
Then, address the following for your selections:
Compare and contrast the settlement patterns.
What forces and ideas shaped their origin?
Examine the influence of religion for those settlements (e.g., Puritanism, Quakers, and the Anglican Church).
Unformatted Attachment Preview
Creating New Social Orders:
Colonial Societies, 1500–1700
3
FIGURE 3.1 John Smith’s famous map of Virginia (1622) illustrates many geopolitical features of early colonization.
In the upper left, Powhatan, who governed a powerful local confederation of Algonquian communities, sits above
other local leaders, denoting his authority. Another native figure, Susquehannock, who appears in the upper right,
visually reinforces the message that the English did not control the land beyond a few outposts along the
Chesapeake.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
3.1 Spanish Exploration and Colonial Society
3.2 Colonial Rivalries: Dutch and French Colonial Ambitions
3.3 English Settlements in America
3.4 The Impact of Colonization
INTRODUCTION By the mid-seventeenth century, the geopolitical map of North America had become a
patchwork of imperial designs and ambitions as the Spanish, Dutch, French, and English reinforced their
claims to parts of the land. Uneasiness, punctuated by violent clashes, prevailed in the border zones between
the Europeans’ territorial claims. Meanwhile, still-powerful native peoples waged war to drive the invaders
from the continent. In the Chesapeake Bay and New England colonies, conflicts erupted as the English pushed
against their native neighbors (Figure 3.1).
The rise of colonial societies in the Americas brought Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans together for
the first time, highlighting the radical social, cultural, and religious differences that hampered their ability to
58
3 • Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700
understand each other. European settlement affected every aspect of the land and its people, bringing goods,
ideas, and diseases that transformed the Americas. Reciprocally, Native American practices, such as the use of
tobacco, profoundly altered European habits and tastes.
3.1 Spanish Exploration and Colonial Society
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Identify the main Spanish American colonial settlements of the 1500s and 1600s
• Discuss economic, political, and demographic similarities and differences between the Spanish colonies
FIGURE 3.2
During the 1500s, Spain expanded its colonial empire to the Philippines in the Far East and to areas in the
Americas that later became the United States. The Spanish dreamed of mountains of gold and silver and
imagined converting thousands of eager Native Americans to Catholicism. In their vision of colonial society,
everyone would know his or her place. Patriarchy (the rule of men over family, society, and government)
shaped the Spanish colonial world. Women occupied a lower status. In all matters, the Spanish held
themselves to be atop the social pyramid, with Native peoples and Africans beneath them. Both Africans and
native peoples, however, contested Spanish claims to dominance. Everywhere the Spanish settled, they
brought devastating diseases, such as smallpox, that led to a horrific loss of life among native peoples.
European diseases killed far more native inhabitants than did Spanish swords.
The world Native peoples had known before the coming of the Spanish was further upset by Spanish colonial
practices. The Spanish imposed the encomienda system in the areas they controlled. Under this system,
authorities assigned Native workers to mine and plantation owners with the understanding that the recipients
would defend the colony and teach the workers the tenets of Christianity. In reality, the encomienda system
exploited native workers. It was eventually replaced by another colonial labor system, the repartimiento,
which required Native towns to supply a pool of labor for Spanish overlords.
ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA
Spain gained a foothold in present-day Florida, viewing that area and the lands to the north as a logical
extension of their Caribbean empire. In 1513, Juan Ponce de León had claimed the area around today’s St.
Augustine for the Spanish crown, naming the land Pascua Florida (Feast of Flowers, or Easter) for the nearest
feast day. Ponce de León was unable to establish a permanent settlement there, but by 1565, Spain was in need
of an outpost to confront the French and English privateers using Florida as a base from which to attack
Access for free at openstax.org.
3.1 • Spanish Exploration and Colonial Society
treasure-laden Spanish ships heading from Cuba to Spain. The threat to Spanish interests took a new turn in
1562 when a group of French Protestants (Huguenots) established a small settlement they called Fort Caroline,
north of St. Augustine. With the authorization of King Philip II, Spanish nobleman Pedro Menéndez led an
attack on Fort Caroline, killing most of the colonists and destroying the fort. Eliminating Fort Caroline served
dual purposes for the Spanish—it helped reduce the danger from French privateers and eradicated the French
threat to Spain’s claim to the area. The contest over Florida illustrates how European rivalries spilled over into
the Americas, especially religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants.
In 1565, the victorious Menéndez founded St. Augustine, now the oldest European settlement in the Americas.
In the process, the Spanish displaced the local Timucua Natives from their ancient town of Seloy, which had
stood for thousands of years (Figure 3.3). The Timucua suffered greatly from diseases introduced by the
Spanish, shrinking from a population of around 200,000 pre-contact to fifty thousand in 1590. By 1700, only
one thousand Timucua remained. As in other areas of Spanish conquest, Catholic priests worked to bring
about a spiritual conquest by forcing the surviving Timucua, demoralized and reeling from catastrophic losses
of family and community, to convert to Catholicism.
FIGURE 3.3 In this drawing by French artist Jacques le Moyne de Morgues, Timucua flee the Spanish settlers, who
arrive by ship. Le Moyne lived at Fort Caroline, the French outpost, before the Spanish destroyed the colony in 1562.
Spanish Florida made an inviting target for Spain’s imperial rivals, especially the English, who wanted to gain
access to the Caribbean. In 1586, Spanish settlers in St. Augustine discovered their vulnerability to attack
when the English pirate Sir Francis Drake destroyed the town with a fleet of twenty ships and one hundred
men. Over the next several decades, the Spanish built more wooden forts, all of which were burnt by raiding
European rivals. Between 1672 and 1695, the Spanish constructed a stone fort, Castillo de San Marcos (Figure
3.4), to better defend St. Augustine against challengers.
FIGURE 3.4 The Spanish fort of Castillo de San Marcos helped Spanish colonists in St. Augustine fend off marauding
privateers from rival European countries.
59
60
3 • Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700
CLICK AND EXPLORE
Browse the National Park Service’s multimedia resources on Castillo de San Marcos (http://openstax.org/l/
castillo) to see how the fort and gates have looked throughout history.
SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
Farther west, the Spanish in Mexico, intent on expanding their empire, looked north to the land of the Pueblo
Natives. Under orders from King Philip II, Juan de Oñate explored the American southwest for Spain in the late
1590s. The Spanish hoped that what we know as New Mexico would yield gold and silver, but the land
produced little of value to them. In 1610, Spanish settlers established themselves at Santa Fe—originally
named La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís, or “Royal City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of
Assisi”—where many Pueblo villages were located. Santa Fe became the capital of the Kingdom of New Mexico,
an outpost of the larger Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain, which had its headquarters in Mexico City.
As they had in other Spanish colonies, Franciscan missionaries labored to bring about a spiritual conquest by
converting the Pueblo to Catholicism. At first, the Pueblo adopted the parts of Catholicism that dovetailed with
their own long-standing view of the world. However, Spanish priests insisted that natives discard their old
ways entirely and angered the Pueblo by focusing on the young, drawing them away from their parents. This
deep insult, combined with an extended period of drought and increased attacks by local Apache and Navajo
in the 1670s—troubles that the Pueblo came to believe were linked to the Spanish presence—moved the Pueblo
to push the Spanish and their religion from the area. Pueblo leader Popé demanded a return to native ways so
the hardships his people faced would end. To him and to thousands of others, it seemed obvious that “when
Jesus came, the Corn Mothers went away.” The expulsion of the Spanish would bring a return to prosperity and
a pure, native way of life.
In 1680, the Pueblo launched a coordinated rebellion against the Spanish. The Pueblo Revolt killed over four
hundred Spaniards and drove the rest of the settlers, perhaps as many as two thousand, south toward Mexico.
However, as droughts and attacks by rival tribes continued, the Spanish sensed an opportunity to regain their
foothold. In 1692, they returned and reasserted their control of the area. Some of the Spanish explained the
Pueblo success in 1680 as the work of the Devil. Satan, they believed, had stirred up the Pueblo to take arms
against God’s chosen people—the Spanish—but the Spanish, and their God, had prevailed in the end.
3.2 Colonial Rivalries: Dutch and French Colonial Ambitions
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
Access for free at openstax.org.
3.2 • Colonial Rivalries: Dutch and French Colonial Ambitions
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).
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).
61
62
3 • Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700
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 (http://openstax.org/l/WNET) 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
Access for free at openstax.org.
3.2 • Colonial Rivalries: Dutch and French Colonial Ambitions
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.
FIGURE 3.7 French Jesuit missionaries to New France kept detailed records of their interactions with—and
63
64
3 • Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700
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?
3.3 English Settlements in America
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
• Identify the first English settlements in America
• Describe the differences between the Chesapeake Bay colonies and the New England colonies
• Compare and contrast the wars between Native inhabitants and English colonists in both the Chesapeake Bay
and New England colonies
• Explain the role of Bacon’s Rebellion in the rise of chattel slavery in Virginia
At the start of the seventeenth century, the English had not established a permanent settlement in the
Americas. Over the next century, however, they outpaced their rivals. The English encouraged emigration far
more than the Spanish, French, or Dutch. They established nearly a dozen colonies, sending swarms of
immigrants to populate the land. England had experienced a dramatic rise in population in the sixteenth
century, and the colonies appeared a welcoming place for those who faced overcrowding and grinding poverty
at home. Thousands of English migrants arrived in the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Virginia and Maryland to
work in the tobacco fields. Another stream, this one of pious Puritan families, sought to live as they believed
scripture demanded and established the Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, New Haven, Connecticut, and Rhode
Island colonies of New England (Figure 3.8).
Access for free at openstax.org.
3.3 • English Settlements in America
FIGURE 3.8 In the early seventeenth century, thousands of English settlers came to what are now Virginia,
Maryland, and the New England states in search of opportunity and a better life.
THE DIVERGING CULTURES OF THE NEW ENGLAND AND CHESAPEAKE COLONIES
Promoters of English colonization in North America, many of whom never ventured across the Atlantic, wrote
about the bounty the English would find there. These boosters of colonization hoped to turn a profit—whether
by importing raw resources or providing new markets for English goods—and spread Protestantism. The
English migrants who actually made the journey, however, had different goals. In Chesapeake Bay, English
migrants established Virginia and Maryland with a decidedly commercial orientation. Though the early
Virginians at Jamestown hoped to find gold, they and the settlers in Maryland quickly discovered that growing
tobacco was the only sure means of making money. Thousands of unmarried, unemployed, and impatient
young Englishmen, along with a few Englishwomen, pinned their hopes for a better life on the tobacco fields of
these two colonies.
A very different group of English men and women flocked to the cold climate and rocky soil of New England,
spurred by religious motives. Many of the Puritans crossing the Atlantic were people who brought families and
children. Often they were following their ministers in a migration “beyond the seas,” envisioning a new English
Israel where reformed Protestantism would grow and thrive, providing a model for the rest of the Christian
world and a counter to what they saw as the Catholic menace. While the English in Virginia and Maryland
worked on expanding their profitable tobacco fields, the English in New England built towns focused on the
church, where each congregation decided what was best for itself. The Congregational Church is the result of
the Puritan enterprise in America. Many historians believe the fault lines separating what later became the
North and South in the United States originated in the profound differences between the Chesapeake and New
England colonies.
The source of those differences lay in England’s domestic problems. Increasingly in the early 1600s, the
English state church—the Church of England, established in the 1530s—demanded conformity, or compliance
with its practices, but Puritans pushed for greater reforms. By the 1620s, the Church of England began to see
leading Puritan ministers and their followers as outlaws, a national security threat because of their opposition
to its power. As the noose of conformity tightened around them, many Puritans decided to remove to New
England. By 1640, New England had a population of twenty-five thousand. Meanwhile, many loyal members of
the Church of England, who ridiculed and mocked Puritans both at home and in New England, flocked to
Virginia for economic opportunity.
The troubles in England escalated in the 1640s when civil war broke out, pitting Royalist supporters of King
65
66
3 • Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700
Charles I and the Church of England against Parliamentarians, the Puritan reformers and their supporters in
Parliament. In 1649, the Parliamentarians gained the upper hand and, in an unprecedented move, executed
Charles I. In the 1650s, therefore, England became a republic, a state without a king. English colonists in
America closely followed these events. Indeed, many Puritans left New England and returned home to take
part in the struggle against the king and the national church. Other English men and women in the
Chesapeake colonies and elsewhere in the English Atlantic World looked on in horror at the mayhem the
Parliamentarians, led by the Puritan insurgents, appeared to unleash in England. The turmoil in England
made the administration and imperial oversight of the Chesapeake and New England colonies difficult, and the
two regions developed divergent cultures.
THE CHESAPEAKE COLONIES: VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND
The Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland served a vital purpose in the developing seventeenthcentury English empire by providing tobacco, a cash crop. However, the early history of Jamestown did not
suggest the English outpost would survive. From the outset, its settlers struggled both with each other and with
the Native inhabitants, the powerful Powhatan, who controlled the area. Jealousies and infighting among the
English destabilized the colony. One member, John Smith, whose famous map begins this chapter, took control
and exercised near-dictatorial powers, which furthered aggravated the squabbling. The settlers’ inability to
grow their own food compounded this unstable situation. They were essentially employees of the Virginia
Company of London, an English joint-stock company, in which investors provided the capital and assumed the
risk in order to reap the profit, and they had to make a profit for their shareholders as well as for themselves.
Most initially devoted themselves to finding gold and silver instead of finding ways to grow their own food.
Early Struggles and the Development of the Tobacco Economy
Poor health, lack of food, and fighting with Native peoples took the lives of many of the original Jamestown
settlers. The winter of 1609–1610, which became known as “the starving time,” came close to annihilating the
colony. By June 1610, the few remaining settlers had decided to abandon the area; only the last-minute arrival
of a supply ship from England prevented another failed colonization effort. The supply ship brought new
settlers, but only twelve hundred of the seventy-five hundred who came to Virginia between 1607 and 1624
survived.
MY STORY
George Percy on “The Starving Time”
George Percy, the youngest son of an English nobleman, was in the first group of settlers at the Jamestown
Colony. He kept a journal describing their experiences; in the excerpt below, he reports on the privations of the
colonists’ third winter.
“Now all of us at James Town, beginning to feel that sharp prick of hunger which no man truly describe but he
which has tasted the bitterness thereof, a world of miseries ensued as the sequel will express unto you, in so
much that some to satisfy their hunger have robbed the store for the which I caused them to be executed. Then
having fed upon horses and other beasts as long as they lasted, we were glad to make shift with vermin as dogs,
cats, rats, and mice. All was fish that came to net to satisfy cruel hunger as to eat boots, shoes, or any other
leather some could come by, and, those being spent and devoured, some were enforced to search the woods and
to feed upon serpents and snakes and to dig the earth for wild and unknown roots, where many of our men were
cut off of and slain by the savages. And now famine beginning to look ghastly and pale in every face that nothing
was spared to maintain life and to do those things which seem incredible as to dig up dead corpses out of graves
and to eat them, and some have licked up the blood which has fallen from their weak fellows.
—George Percy, “A True Relation of the Proceedings and Occurances of Moment which have happened in Virginia
from the Time Sir Thomas Gates shipwrecked upon the Bermudes anno 1609 until my departure out of the
Access for free at openstax.org.
3.3 • English Settlements in America
Country which was in anno Domini 1612,” London 1624”
What is your reaction to George Percy’s story? How do you think Jamestown managed to survive after such an
experience? What do you think the Jamestown colonists learned?
By the 1620s, Virginia had weathered the worst and gained a degree of permanence. Political stability came
slowly, but by 1619, the fledgling colony was operating under the leadership of a governor, a council, and a
House of Burgesses. Economic stability came from the lucrative cultivation of tobacco. Smoking tobacco was a
long-standing practice among native peoples, and English and other European consumers soon adopted it. In
1614, the Virginia colony began exporting tobacco back to England, which earned it a sizable profit and saved
the colony from ruin. A second tobacco colony, Maryland, was formed in 1634, when King Charles I granted its
charter to the Calvert family for their loyal service to England. Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore,
conceived of Maryland as a refuge for English Catholics.
Growing tobacco proved very labor-intensive (Figure 3.9), and the Chesapeake colonists needed a steady
workforce to do the hard work of clearing the land and caring for the tender young plants. The mature leaf of
the plant then had to be cured (dried), which necessitated the construction of drying barns. Once cured, the
tobacco had to be packaged in hogsheads (large wooden barrels) and loaded aboard ship, which also required
considerable labor.
FIGURE 3.9 In this 1670 painting by an unknown artist, enslaved people work in tobacco-drying sheds.
To meet these labor demands, early Virginians relied on indentured servants. An indenture is a labor contract
that young, impoverished, and often illiterate Englishmen and occasionally Englishwomen signed in England,
pledging to work for a number of years (usually between five and seven) growing tobacco in the Chesapeake
colonies. In return, indentured servants received paid passage to America and food, clothing, and lodging. At
the end of their indenture, servants received “freedom dues,” usually food and other provisions, including, in
some cases, land provided by the colony. The promise of a new life in America was a strong attraction for
members of England’s underclass, who had few if any options at home. In the 1600s, some 100,000 indentured
servants traveled to the Chesapeake Bay. Most were poor young men in their early twenties.
Life in the colonies proved harsh, however. Indentured servants could not marry, and they were subject to the
will of the tobacco planters who bought their labor contracts. Treated much like property, the contracted
servants could be essentially sold or traded among those with means to purchase them. Some contract holders
did not feed or house their servants well. If an indentured servant committed a crime or disobeyed those who
held their contracts, they found their terms of service lengthened, often by several years. Female indentured
servants faced special dangers in what was essentially a bachelor colony. Many were exploited by
unscrupulous tobacco planters who seduced them with promises of marriage. If the women became pregnant,
the planters would then sell them to other tobacco planters to avoid the costs of raising a child.
67
68
3 • Creating New Social Orders: Colonial Societies, 1500–1700
Nonetheless, those indentured servants who completed their term of service often began new lives as tobacco
planters. To entice even more migrants to the New World, the Virginia Company also implemented the
headright system, in which those who paid their own passage to Virginia received fifty acres plus an
additional fifty for each servant or family member they brought with them. The headright system and the
promise of a new life for servants acted as powerful incentives for English migrants to hazard the journey to
the New World.
CLICK AND EXPLORE
Visit Virtual Jamestown (http://openstax.org/l/jamestown1) to access a database of contracts of indentured
servants. Search it by name to find an ancestor or browse by occupation, destination, or county of origin.
The Anglo-Powhatan Wars
By choosing to settle along the rivers on the banks of the Chesapeake, the English unknowingly placed
themselv
