Review CHAPTER III THE GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES IN AMERICA The Spreading of the Settlements.-All the English colonies in America except Georgia were begun in the seventeenth century. Virginia and Maryland, all the Puritan colonies in New England, and the Dutch and Swedish settlements upon the Hudson and Delaware rivers were planted before 1640. We have seen that the Carolinas, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were established during the reign of Charles II between 1660 and 1685. When the colonial period of our history ended in the Revolution, Georgia was a little less than fifty years of age, and Pennsylvania had not quite reached the century mark. All the other colonies were more than one hundred years old, and many of them were nearly one hundred and fifty. The most important fact in this century or more of colonial history was the steady growth of the small settlements of early colonial time into vigorous states that declared their independence of Great Britain in 1776. This growth of the colonies took place in the most simple and natural way. New settlers from the Old World, and boys who grew to manhood in the early settlements, pushed farther settlements into the country, settled upon wild land, and began to build How the grew homes of their own. Sometimes hunters or exploring parties brought back glowing reports of the beauty or the fertility of some valley far in the interior, and the more ambitious and daring among the pioneers went in little companies to possess it. Soon the long silence of the forest was broken by the ringing sound of their axes, a clearing was made, log cabins were built, and in this way a new settlement was established. This steady spreading of the settlements into the interior of the country was attended by toil, hardships, and no little Hardships of danger. It took years of hard work to cut down and burn the the settlers heavy timber with which the land was covered, to clear the new farms of stumps and stones, to build houses and barns, and to open roads through the forests to connect the new settlements with the older ones. Our colonial fathers and mothers were men and women of industrious habits, of great strength and endurance, and of steadfast courage. Only such people could survive in the long hard struggle with the wilderness. Some of the early settlements, like Boston, New York, and Charleston, were made along the coast; others, like Jamestown and Philadelphia, were established upon the banks of navigable rivers. They all grew in the same way, spreading into the interior along the rivers and their tributaries because these waterways were easy roads to travel. Towns grew up near the mouths of the rivers. The furs, lumber, and farm produce of the colonies were brought down the rivers to be exchanged for the wares which the merchants of the towns had imported from England. In the course of time wagon roads were opened from the sea ports into the interior. In Virginia the ships of England came up the rivers to the plantations to trade, and consequently few towns developed in that colony. This map shows the settled area of the colonies at the close of the colonial period of our history. Nearly all the land in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut was in Extent of the hands of actual settlers. Elsewhere in New England the colonial settlements were confined to the coast, except where the settlement pioneers had advanced up the valleys of the Connecticut, Merrimac, and Kennebec rivers in New Hampshire and Maine. Long Island and the valleys of the Hudson and the Mohawk were the only parts of New York yet occupied by white men. From New Jersey to Virginia the settlers had pushed into the interior as far as the Blue Ridge Mountains, and were already in possession of some of the rich limestone mountain valleys like those of the Potomac and the Shenandoah and the fine Cumberland Valley in Pennsylvania. In the Carolinas and The influence of the Appalachian mountain system Loading Tobacco Ships in the James River Georgia nearly all the colonists lived within one hundred miles of the coast although some hardy frontiersmen had made their way up the rivers far beyond this point. Except in the far south, nearly all the good land between the sea and the Appalachian mountain system was occupied by settlers by the close of the colonial period. The mountain system which extends from New England to Georgia exerted a very great influence upon our early history. If it had not been there the colonists would have scattered widely in a search for the best lands. But the difficulty of passing this mountain barrier held them for a hundred years between the mountains and the sea. Here they grew strong, learned to be neighborly, developed their institutions, and kept in close touch through their commerce with the mother country beyond the Atlantic. Thus when the colonial period drew to an end the descendants of the early settlers in America had firmly established themselves upon the Atlantic seaboard, and were ready to begin the conquest of the great Mississippi Valley beyond the mountains. The Colonists and the Indians:-During the century or more while the colonists were winning and settling the land from the Atlantic Coast to the Alleghany Mountains they The Indians were beset by many perils. By far the most serious of these dangers was the hostility of the Indians, as the native inhabitants of America have been called ever since the time of Columbus. The Indians are often called the Red Men though they really were brown in color with a slight tinge of copper in some cases. They were a tall, finely formed race of men, with high cheek bones, small eyes, and long, coarse, black hair. They were clad in the skins of wild animals, although in summer the men wore very little clothing and the children. none at all. They lived in rude huts called wigwams. Some of these Indian houses were built by setting saplings in the ground, bending them together at the top, and covering the rounded frame thus formed with brush, bark, weeds, Indian Wigwam and leaves. Other Indians built "long houses" by setting upright posts in the ground, laying a roof of poles, and then covering the whole structure with bark shingles. Some of these Indian "long houses" were a hundred feet long, fifteen or twenty feet wide, and large enough to accomodate several families. races The number of Indians in the United States when the white men began to settle in the country was not large. They Tribes and lived in small tribes scattered here and there in the wilderness. Tribes of Indians who spoke languages which were very much alike are sometimes grouped together to form what are called linguistic families. There was a large number of these families in America, but the English colonists came in contact with only three important groups, the Algonquins, the Iroquois, and the Muskhogean, or Southern family. Algonquins Iroquois Southern The Algonquins were the most numerous. They occupied the country from the Carolinas northward to Hudson Bay, and from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi River. The Narragansetts, the Pequots, the Lenape, and the Shawnees were some of the Algonquin tribes whom the settlers knew best. The Iroquois lived in New York in the midst of the vast Algonquin territory. The most savage, crafty, and daring of all the Indians, the Iroquois, were the terror of their neighbors. Their five great tribes, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, were called "The Five Nations" by the white people. After the Tuscaroras from North Carolina joined their Iroquois kinsmen in New York in 1714 these tribes were called "The Six Nations." The Muskhogean, or Southern Indians, lived in the country between South Carolina and the Mississippi River. The Creeks and Cherokees were the most important members of this group. An Indian Warrior The most important need of the Indians, as of all other people, was a supply of food. They lived upon game, fish, Indian life and the wild berries, fruits, and edible roots which they found. Some of the tribes also cultivated patches of corn, beans, |