|
-1649 |
Political and
Social History
|
Literature
|
|
Pre-History |
1000-1300
Anasazi communities inhabit southwestern regions |
Peoples indigenous to the Americas orally
perform and transmit a variety of "literary" genres that include, among
others, speeches, songs, and stories (e.g., Iroquois and Pima creation
narratives, trickster tales, etc.) |
|
1490-1500 |
1492
Christopher Columbus arrives in the Bahamas. Between 4 and 7 million Native
American peoples estimated in present-day United States, including Alaska
1499 Amerigo
Vespucci visits South America |
1493
Columbus, Letter
to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage |
|
1500-1549 |
1500 Native
American populations begin to be ravaged by European diseases
1512: Spanish Laws of Burgos forbid
enslavement of Indians and advocate Christian conversion
1514:
Bartolome
de las Casas petitions Spanish crown on behalf of Native Americans
1519-1521 Cortes's conquest of Aztecs in
Mexico.
1528-1536 A member of the Narvaez
expedition,
Alvar
Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is shipwrecked first near Tampa Bay and later on
Galveston Island off the coast of what is now Texas. After six years spent
among the Indians of the region, he and his companions travel westward
across Texas and Mexico.
1540-1542 Seeking gold first in the city of
Cibola, reportedly larger and richer than Mexico City, and then in Quivera,
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado leads an
expeditionary
force through the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, with much loss of life
among the area's native peoples. He returns to Mexico City in 1542 and dies
in 1544.
1542 Urged on by
Bartolome
de las Casas and others, Carlos V enacts the "New Laws" designed to end
the encomienda system
that enslaves native people. |
1519: Hernan Cortes,
First Letter from Mexico to the Spanish Crown
1542:
Alvar
Nunez Cabeza de Vaca,
The Relation of Alvar
Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
|
|
1550-1599 |
1584: Sir
Walter Ralegh
sends a reconnaissance fleet under Captains Amadas and Barlow to the future
Croatoan Sound, North Carolina. Based on their glowing account, he sends
out a colonizing expedition the next year of 100 men who settle on Roanoke
Island, among them artist John White and surveyor
Thomas
Harriot. Sir Francis Drake later takes the colonists back to England at
their request.
1587:
Ralegh sends out a
fresh colony of 117 men, women, and children in three ships, with John White
as governor.
1590: White returns to find that settlers
have disappeared, leaving "Croatoan" carved on a tree
1598: Don Juan Oņate establishes the colony
of New Mexico by taking over a pueblo, which he renames San Juan, near
modern-day Santa Fe. In retaliation for an attack on the settlement, he
destroys the Acoma pueblo,
killing 800 and capturing 500. |
1550
Tales of
La Llorona (the Weeping Woman), an important cultural figure and legend,
begin to be told in Mexico City.
1552:
Casas,The
Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies, a protest against
the treatment of
1568:
Bernal
Diaz del Castillo writes The True History of the Conquest of New
Spain (1632)
1588: Thomas Harriot,
A Brief and
True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia
1589: Arthur Barlow,
The First Voyage
Made to the Coasts of America |
|
1600-1619 |
1607: Establishment of
Jamestown
1608 Colony of Quebec is established.
1610. Santa Fe is established as the new
capital of New Mexico, with Pedro de Peralta as the governor of the new
colony. |
1616:
John
Smith, A Description of New England |
|
1620-1629 |
1621 First Thanksgiving, at Plymouth
1628 (May 1) Thomas Morton and
colonists at Merrymount dance around a maypole and celebrate May Day,
upsetting the Plymouth Pilgrims. In June, Capt. Miles Standish is sent to
eradicate the settlement and Morton is sent back to England.
1630-43: English Puritans immigrate to
Massachusetts Bay Colony
|
1630
John Cotton preaches the sermon
God's Promise to His Plantation to the departing colonists aboard the
Arb
John
Winthrop delivers the lay sermon
A Model of
Christian Charity while aboard the ship Arbella.
|
|
1630-1639 |
1630 Population: 3,000 colonists in
Virginia; 300 at Plymouth. During 1630-1640, another 16,000 colonists will
arrive.
1636 Founding of Providence, R. I. by
Roger
Williams, who establishes Rhode Island as a place of religious
toleration.
1636-1637. Pequot War.
July 1636. The murder in 1634 of Capt. John
Stone, a disreputable English seaman and merchant, and of trader John Oldham
on 20 July 1636, reportedly by Pequots, leads to reprisals against Pequot
settlements. This marks the beginning of the Pequot War, although the
conflict is not officially so designated until 1637.
24 August 1636. After Massachusetts Governor
Henry Vane commissions John Endicott to assemble a force of 90 men to seek
out Block Island tribe of Pequots and demand their surrender, Endicott
destroys the Block Island settlement. In retaliation, the Pequots attack
Fort Saybrook and its commander Lieutenant Lion Gardiner.
1637 Pequot War.
Roger
Williams helps to convince the Narragansetts, traditional enemies of the
Pequots, to join the New Englanders' side of the conflict.
20 January. Boston clergyman John Wheelwright
preaches a sermon supporting the ideas of Anne Hutchinson and her followers
and is thereby sentenced to banishment on 12 November. Anne Hutchinson is
sentenced to banishment at the same time.
26 May.The burning of the Pequot fort by Capt.
John Mason and his forces at Fort Mystic, Connecticut, kills 300-700 men,
women, and children (Go to an
essay on the Pequot War that discusses the conflicting historical
accounts and to
Mason's narrative on the war.)
28 July. Most of the remaining Pequots are
killed near New Haven, Connecticut, by combined forces from Massachusetts
and Connecticut.
To prevent the re-election of Governor Vane,
who is sympathetic to Anne Hutchinson and her ideas,
John
Winthrop moves the voting to Newtown and thus is himself elected
Governor of the colony.
December. Under the leadership of Peter Minuit,
a group of Swedish colonists establishes a settlement called New Sweden on
the Delaware River.
1638 7 March. Banished from the
Massachusetts Bay Colony for her religious beliefs,
Anne
Hutchinson leaves Boston and helps to establish Pocasset, or Portsmouth,
Rhode Island.
21 September 1638. Signing of the Treaty of
Hartford formally ends the Pequot War. Remaining members of the Pequot tribe
are divided up among the Puritans Indian allies; Pequot territories are
turned over to the Puritans as spoils of war. This treaty marked the end of
the Pequots as a distinct people.
|
1637
Thomas
Morton, New English Canaan |
|
1640-1649 |
1630-50
William Bradford begins writing Of Plymouth Plantation (pub.
1856)
1643 Anne Hutchinson and family murdered by
Native Americans near Eastchester, Long Island (N. Y.)
1646 Robert Child and others protest the
intolerance of Massachusetts Puritans toward those of other faiths; in
response, Governor John Winthrop and others justify their policies and
banish Child.
At the Synod of 1646 in Boston, John Cotton
and others draft a document published in 1648 as the
Cambridge Platform,
which codifies and defines New England Congregationalism.
1647 First woman barrister in the colonies,
Margaret Brent of Maryland, seeks and is denied the right to vote in the
assembly.
|
1642
John Cotton, The True
Constitution of a Particular Visible Church
1643
Roger
Williams, A Key into the Language of America
1645 John Cotton preaches and publishes
The Way of the Churches of Christ in New England, a sermon that
justifies the New England Way
1650
Anne
Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse |
|