I. Introduction: The Context of Colonization
The English colonization of America began relatively late compared to Spanish and French efforts that had been underway since the 1500s. English motivations for colonization were multifaceted, combining economic opportunity, religious freedom, and national competition with European rivals. The use of joint-stock companies like the Virginia Company and Massachusetts Bay Company allowed private investors to fund these ventures while spreading financial risk. This system created a crucial dynamic where colonization served both as an economic venture and a religious mission, though the balance between these goals varied significantly between different colonies.
Two distinct models of colonization emerged in early America. The Southern model, exemplified by Virginia, focused primarily on economic and commercial goals, while the Northern model in New England emphasized religious and community building. Despite their different motivations, both models invariably involved the displacement of indigenous peoples who had inhabited these lands for thousands of years.
II. Jamestown and the Chesapeake (1607-1620s)
The Virginia Company established Jamestown in 1607 with high hopes but unclear objectives. The initial goals included finding gold, discovering a Northwest Passage to Asia, and establishing a profitable colony that could compete with Spanish wealth from the Americas. However, the early years proved disastrous as colonists faced disease, starvation, and poor leadership. The period known as the “Starving Time” from 1609 to 1610 saw the population plummet from 500 to merely 60 survivors, highlighting the enormous challenges of establishing permanent settlements in unfamiliar territory.
John Smith emerged as a crucial figure during these early years. Born around 1580 in Lincolnshire, England, Smith was a soldier, adventurer, and skilled self-promoter who remained a member of the Anglican Church throughout his life. His role in Virginia from 1607 to 1609 proved pivotal to the colony’s survival. Serving as colonial president from 1608 to 1609, Smith imposed military discipline with his famous decree that “he who does not work, does not eat.” He also established vital trade relationships with the Powhatan confederacy, securing corn and other supplies that kept the colonists alive. His leadership ended abruptly in 1609 when he suffered injuries in a gunpowder accident and returned to England permanently.
Smith’s connection to New England proved equally significant for future colonization. In 1614, he explored and mapped the New England coast, coining the very name “New England” that would stick for centuries. His promotional literature, particularly A Description of New England published in 1616, emphasized the economic opportunities and natural abundance available to potential settlers. Unlike later Puritan writers, Smith took a practical, secular approach to colonization, focusing on material benefits rather than religious missions. Though he never successfully returned to establish a permanent settlement in New England, his writings and maps influenced later colonists including the Pilgrims and Puritans.
The Powhatan Confederacy represented a sophisticated indigenous political system that English colonists encountered upon arrival. Chief Powhatan, whose actual name was Wahunsenacawh, ruled a confederacy of approximately thirty tribes scattered across eastern Virginia, governing a population estimated between 8,000 and 15,000 people. This was no simple tribal organization but rather a complex political and economic system that had developed over centuries.
Relations between the English and the Powhatan Confederacy followed a complex pattern of cooperation and conflict. During the initial period, both sides engaged in cautious trade and diplomacy, with Powhatan attempting to incorporate the English as tributaries within his existing political framework. Key figures like Pocahontas became important intermediaries in these relationships. However, after Powhatan’s death, his brother Opechancanough led a major uprising in 1622 that killed nearly 350 colonists. This established a long-term pattern of cycles involving cooperation, violent conflict, and steady English expansion at Native expense.
Economic interactions between the two cultures revealed fundamental differences in understanding land use and ownership. Trade in corn, furs, tools, and weapons created mutual dependencies, with the English often relying on Native food supplies for survival. However, competing concepts of land use created ongoing tension, as English colonists believed in private property and permanent settlement while Native Americans practiced seasonal use and maintained more communal relationships with the land.
III. Plymouth and the Pilgrims (1620-1630)
The Plymouth colony emerged from the specific religious context of early 17th-century England, where various Protestant groups challenged the established Church of England. While Puritans sought to “purify” the church from within, a smaller group known as Separatists believed the Church of England was irredeemably corrupt and required complete separation. This theological distinction had profound practical consequences, as Separatists faced more severe persecution and were more likely to seek refuge outside England entirely.
The Leiden community formed when the Scrooby congregation fled to Holland in 1608 to escape religious persecution. For twelve years, from 1608 to 1620, these English Separatists lived in exile in Leiden, where they could worship freely but faced new challenges. Parents worried about their children losing English identity while struggling with economic hardship in a foreign land. After much deliberation, they decided to seek religious freedom in America, believing they could maintain their English heritage while practicing their faith freely.
William Bradford became the most important chronicler and leader of this movement. Born in Yorkshire, England in 1590, Bradford joined the Separatist congregation as a teenager in 1606. Despite limited formal education, he became remarkably learned, teaching himself Hebrew, Latin, and Greek to better understand biblical texts. When the Mayflower sailed in 1620, Bradford was among the passengers, and the following year he began serving as Plymouth governor, a position he would hold for over thirty years until 1656.
Bradford’s most lasting contribution was his literary legacy in Of Plymouth Plantation, which he wrote between 1630 and 1650. This detailed chronicle of Plymouth’s first thirty years provides the primary source for understanding the Pilgrim experience, though readers must remember that Bradford interpreted events through a providential lens, seeing God’s hand in all occurrences. His account shaped how later Americans understood their colonial origins, though it represents only one perspective on these complex events.
The establishment of Plymouth Colony proved enormously challenging. The winter of 1620-1621 became another “starving time” as half the colonists died from disease, exposure, and malnutrition. The settlers had chosen a poor location with inadequate supplies and little understanding of local conditions. Their survival depended heavily on assistance from local Native Americans, particularly the alliance they formed with Massasoit, the principal sachem of the Wampanoag confederacy.
Plymouth developed as a religious community based on Congregationalist church structure, where each congregation operated independently without bishops or higher church authorities. Covenant theology shaped their understanding of their relationship with God, believing they had entered into a special compact that required them to build a godly society. Civil and religious authority intertwined closely, with church membership often determining political participation.
Economically, Plymouth remained relatively small and struggled financially for decades. The colonists engaged in fishing, farming, and fur trading while carrying enormous debt to their London investors. Unlike later Puritan colonies, Plymouth never achieved significant prosperity or rapid population growth, remaining a modest community overshadowed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony that arrived in 1630.
The Wampanoag Confederacy that encountered the Pilgrims had recently experienced devastating population loss. Massasoit, whose name was actually Ousamequin, led a confederacy of multiple bands scattered across southeastern Massachusetts, governing an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people. However, between 1616 and 1619, an epidemic likely involving plague devastated the population, with some areas losing up to 90% of their inhabitants. This demographic catastrophe created a power vacuum that significantly influenced Pilgrim survival and regional politics.
The relationship between Plymouth and the Wampanoag began with the peace treaty of 1621, creating a strategic alliance for mutual protection against the more powerful Narragansett tribe to the west. Squanto, whose actual name was Tisquantum, played a crucial role as intermediary and translator, teaching the Pilgrims essential survival skills including where to fish and how to fertilize corn with fish. The First Thanksgiving in 1621 celebrated a successful harvest and the diplomatic relationship that had enabled Plymouth’s survival, though later commemorations often overlooked the complex political motivations behind this cooperation.
IV. Patterns and Consequences
Cultural encounters between English colonists and Native Americans revealed fundamental differences in understanding land use and ownership. English concepts of private property and permanent settlement conflicted directly with Native practices of seasonal use and communal rights to territory. English colonists developed the legal fiction of “vacuum domicilium” or empty land to justify taking territory they claimed was not being properly used according to European standards.
Trade relationships created mutual dependencies in the early years of colonization, with both sides benefiting from exchange. English colonists offered metal tools, weapons, and textiles that Native Americans valued, while Native Americans provided food, furs, and crucial geographical knowledge that enabled English survival. However, as English populations grew and became self-sufficient, these relationships shifted toward English dominance, with Native Americans increasingly marginalized in their ancestral territories.
Religious dimensions of colonization included both conversion efforts and justifications for territorial expansion. While missionary work remained limited in the early period, figures like John Eliot, known as the “Apostle to the Indians,” established “praying towns” where Christian Native Americans lived in segregated communities. These conversion efforts often required suppressing traditional cultural practices and represented cultural destruction alongside spiritual transformation.
English colonists developed multiple justifications for colonization that served both to motivate continued migration and to rationalize displacement of indigenous peoples. Religious mission provided one justification, with colonists claiming they brought Christianity to “heathen” populations. Civilization represented another argument, as colonists believed they brought superior European culture and more efficient agricultural practices. Divine providence offered the ultimate justification, with many colonists believing God intended them to inherit the land and establish godly communities.
The long-term consequences of early colonization proved devastating for indigenous peoples who experienced population collapse through disease, warfare, and displacement. Gradual land loss accompanied the steady expansion of English settlements, while cultural disruption undermined traditional ways of life that had sustained Native communities for millennia. Political subordination followed as Native Americans lost sovereignty over their ancestral territories and became subject to English colonial governments.
For English colonies, early colonization established patterns of economic success through tobacco cultivation in Virginia and mixed economies in New England. Religious diversity flourished as multiple Protestant denominations found space to practice their faiths, though this freedom often did not extend to Catholics, Quakers, or other dissenting groups. Political development proceeded through self-government and representative assemblies that provided models for later American political institutions. Perhaps most significantly, successful early colonization established precedents for westward expansion that would characterize American development for the next two centuries.
Understanding these early colonial patterns reveals competing narratives about American origins. English sources typically emphasize colonist hardship, divine providence, and Native American “savagery,” while Native perspectives remain largely absent from written records. Modern readers must question the bias inherent in historical accounts and consider what voices have been heard or silenced in traditional narratives. Economic motives were often dressed as religious missions, legal frameworks were created to legitimize land taking, and cultural superiority arguments justified displacement of indigenous peoples. Environmental and cultural changes accompanied colonization as European crops, animals, and land use patterns transformed the landscape, while demographic catastrophe decimated Native populations and cultural synthesis created new practices emerging from sustained contact between different peoples.