2.2 European Colonization

Spain's northern borderlands, in Florida and New Mexico, were not rich in gold, so Spain used them mainly as defensive buffers and mission fields. It founded St. Augustine (1565) and Santa Fe (about 1610). Catholic missions, especially those run by Franciscan friars, tried to convert Native people, often forcing them to work and to give up their own religious practices. Soldiers at forts called presidios backed up the missions.

Spain kept the casta system it had built in Mexico (1.5), and Spanish settlers often had children with Native people. Harsh treatment and attacks on Native religion led to major resistance, especially the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 (2.5).

France founded Quebec in 1608 under Samuel de Champlain. New France grew slowly, and by the mid-1700s it had far fewer colonists than British America, perhaps 60,000 to 70,000 compared with more than a million. The fur trade drove the colony's economy, although most French colonists were farmers along the St. Lawrence River.

French traders, called coureurs des bois ('runners of the woods'), traveled deep into the interior, lived among Native peoples, learned their languages and often married Native women. Jesuit missionaries tried to convert Native people but usually lived in their villages rather than forcing them into missions. Because the French needed Native trading partners and allies more than they needed land, they built close alliances, especially with the Huron (Wendat) and Algonquian peoples.

The Dutch West India Company, a joint-stock company, founded New Netherland in the Hudson River Valley, with Fort Orange (Albany) in 1624 and New Amsterdam on Manhattan around 1625. The Dutch focused on the fur trade, partnering with the Iroquois, and on commerce.

New Amsterdam was religiously and ethnically diverse and run for profit. In 1664 England seized the colony without a fight and renamed it New York.

The Virginia Company, a joint-stock company, founded Jamestown in 1607. The colony nearly failed: many settlers died of disease and starvation, especially in the 'Starving Time' of 1609–1610. It survived because of help and trade with the Powhatan Confederacy at first, and later because John Rolfe began growing a sweet tobacco variety around 1612. Tobacco became a profitable export and drove a hunger for more land.

In New England, religious dissenters came in family groups: the Pilgrims at Plymouth (1620) and the much larger Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay (1630).

The English model differed sharply from the French and Dutch. English colonists came in large numbers, often as families, and wanted to farm land permanently. They rarely intermarried with Native people and usually pushed them off the land rather than building trade partnerships. That pattern produced repeated wars, such as the Powhatan Wars in Virginia and the Pequot War (1636–1638) in New England.