Making New England
White
The European
domination and later United States domination of the region now known as New
England took place over a period of almost 200 years. The British culture and
people replaced the Native Indian cultures and people in a form of ethnic
cleansing and genocide. New England is mostly White and Yankee. The Native
Indian populations and cultures are marginalized and transformed.
Some of the Native
Indian nations, tribes, and clans of New England are the following:
Abenaki -- Maine to
Lake Champlain, south to the Merimac River, north to Quebec
Algonkin -- Ottowa River
Basin, between Ontario and Quebec
Massachuset -- Valleys of
the Charles and Neponset rivers in eastern Massachusetts.
Niantic -- Southern
coast of New England
Nipmuc -- Central
Massachusetts, northern Connecticut and Rhode Island
Pennacook -- Merrimac
River Valley of Southern New Hampshire
Pequot -- Southeastern
Connecticut to the Niantic River
Pocumtuk -- Connecticut
River Valley in Massachusetts
Wampanoag -- Southeastern
Massachusetts, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket
The Native Indian
people are the first people in New England and had come to the region thousands
of years before the Europeans.
The European
dominance of New England had its ebbs and flows. Some colonies failed and
others were successful in attaining permanence. Besides the British, three
other non-Native Indian centered nations vied for control of New England,
Netherlands, France, and the United States.
The Native Indian
nations/tribes had some military success against the Europeans until the
gradual change in weaponry. Arrows vs. blunderbuss muskets was fairly even. With
the introduction of mobile artillery and repeating rifles which ensured the
success of the Europeans.
The demise of the
Native Indians people had many elements. Some of the elements were disease,
changes to cultural foundations, and war with the White colonists and their
allies. This essay concentrates on the hostilities between the White colonies
that became New England and the Native Indian people aboriginal to the region.
New Netherland
The Netherlanders were early to
settle in New England. Their colony of New Netherland was established in 1621.
The New Netherlanders claimed the area between the Delaware and the Connecticut
Rivers.
In 1624, the New Netherlanders established
a short-lived trading post in present day Old Saybrook Connecticut. The trading
post was named Kievits Hoek, or "Plover's Corner". Kievits Hoek was
soon abandoned as the New Netherlanders consolidated settlement at New Amsterdam.
In 1633 the House (Fort)
of Hope was built at the present site of Hartford Connecticut as a trading
post. The Fort was also short lived as the New Netherland colony was
soon taken over by the British.
The Plymouth Colony
The Plymouth colony was established in 1620 with its
capital in Plymouth Massachusetts. Approximately
100 British men and women, many of them members of the English Separatist
Church, set sail for the New World aboard the Mayflower.
Both the Plymouth
Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony had made treaties with the Native
Indian nations, a major party to the treaties was the Wampanoag people.
The Mayflower landed on the shores of Cape Cod, near present-day Provincetown
Massachusetts. Two months later, and in late December it anchored at Plymouth
Rock. The colonists would form the first permanent settlement of Europeans in
New England. Though more than half the original settlers died during that
grueling first winter, the survivors were able to secure peace treaties with
neighboring Native Indian tribes and build a largely self-sufficient economy
within five years
New
Hampshire
Under a British land grant, Plymouth Colony sent settlers
to establish a fishing colony at the mouth of the Piscataqua
River, near present-day Rye
and Dover in 1623. In1630 Portsmouth New Hampshire was founded.
After a 38-year period of union with Massachusetts, New
Hampshire was made a separate royal colony in 1679. ,
Massachusetts Bay Colony
The colony that
played the largest role in the formation of New England was Massachusetts Bay
Colony
The Massachusetts Bay
Colony was established in 1628 by the Massachusetts Bay Company. It was the
Company’s second attempt at establishing a colony. Its first colony in Cape
Anne set up in 1623 failed with the colonists returning to England.
The major towns of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony were Boston and Salem.
The Massachusetts Bay
Colony had a role to play in establishing or administrating all of the present
day New England states with the exception of Vermont.
Colonists from
Massachusetts Bay established new colonies in Hartford and Saybrook
Connecticut. The New Hampshire Colony was administered by Massachusetts Bay
until its separation. Colonists from Massachusetts Bay established Rhode
Island. Maine was a part of Massachusetts until its secession in 1820.
Old Saybrook Colony
The Saybrook Colony was established in late
1635 at the mouth of the Connecticut River in present-day Old Saybrook by
colonists from Massachusetts Bay. They
claimed possession of the land via a deed of conveyance from royalty.
The colonists from Old Saybrook were the main British combatants
against the Pequots during the Pequot War.
THE
PEQUOT WAR
At the time of the British expansion into the Connecticut River
Valley, the Pequot and the Narragansets were the two more powerful Native
Indian nations. The Pequot people had divided into two groups. One group,
Mohegans, had sided with the British colonists. The other Pequot faction had
favored the New Netherlanders.
The British colonists in Saybrook colony steadily expanded into Pequot
lands located predominately between the Pequot (now Thames) River and the
Mystic River.
The decisive battle of this war was that of Mystic (Missituk) Village. The British
with Native Indian allies burned Missituk and killed an estimated seven hundred
Pequot people, including women and children.
By September 1638 the Peguot people had lost the
war and was facing what we now call genocide. The British, Mohegans and
Narragansetts met at the General Court of Connecticut and agreed on the
disposition of the Pequot survivors.
The agreement is known as the first Treaty of Hartford and was signed on September 21, 1638. About
200 Pequot survived the war. They
submitted themselves to the authority of the sachem of the Mohegans or
Naragansetts.
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The Pequots were then bound by
Covenant that none should inhabit their native land, nor should any of them
be called PEQUOTS anymore. Instead they should themselves Mohegan or Narragansets
for ever more.
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”
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Other
Pequot people were enslaved and shipped to Bermuda or the West Indies, or were forced to become household
slaves in English households in Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay. The
Colonies essentially declared the Pequots extinct by prohibiting them from
using the name, Pequot.
This
was the first instance Algonquian peoples of southern New England encountered
European-style warfare. After the Pequot War, there were no significant battles
between Native Indians and southern New England colonists for about 38 years.
This long period of peace came to an end in 1675 with King Philip's War.
Hartford Colony
The
first British settlers establishing Hartford arrived in 1635 when 100 settlers
with 130 head of cattle in a trek from Newtown (now Cambridge, Massachusetts) in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The settlement was originally called Newtown, but was
changed to Hartford in
1637.The nearby town of Windsor was established in 1633.
The
fledgling colony along the Connecticut River had issues with the Massachusetts
Bay Colony because it was outside of the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony's charter.
The Hartford colonists aided Old
Saybrook in the Pequot War,
Springfield Breaks Away
From Hartford Colony.
The northernmost settlement of
the Hartford Colony was Springfield Massachusetts. It was then known as
Agawam. The Springfield settlement defected from Hartford Colony after four
years and then joined forces with the coastal Massachusetts
Bay Colony.
Springfield flourished as a trading
post and agricultural center until 1675's King Philip's War, when a coalition
of Native Indians laid siege to Springfield and later burned it to the ground.
Its prosperity waned for the next hundred years.
New Haven Colony
Before Europeans arrived, the New
Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe, which
lived in villages around the harbor and subsisted off local fisheries and the
farming of maize.
In 1637 a small party of Puritans
wintered near New Haven harbor. In April
1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans left the Massachusetts
Bay Colony to settle in New Haven. It was their hope to set up a theological
community with the government more religious than the Puritan living in
Massachusetts. The Quinnipiac, who were under attack by neighboring Pequot, allegedly sold their land to the settlers in return for
protection.
CONNECTICUT
The word "Connecticut" is derived
from various anglicized spellings of an Algonquian word for "long
tidal river"
Connecticut was
established by the unification of the Saybrook, Hartford, and New Haven
colonies.
Rhode Island
and Providence Plantation
The southern part of the island became the separate settlement
of Newport after disagreements among the founders.
Warwick Rhode Island in
1648 received a separate charter.
New England Confederation
The
Confederation gained importance during King Philip's War in 1675. The Confederation dissolved
after the revocation of the members' charters in the early 1680s
Dominion
of New England
Enslaved African people were
introduced at this time into New England., although there is no record of any
law legalizing these slave-holdings. The only legal basis for slavery was the
argument that enslaved people were property.
MAINE
Native
Indian People
During the latter part of the King
Phillip's War, many of these Native Indian people would merge to become the
Wabanaki Confederacy. This Confederacy aided the Wampanoag of Massachusetts and the Mahican of New York.
The colonists in Maine after the King
Phillip’s War were unable to expand and some of the Native Indian tribes of
Maine continued, unchanged, until the American Revolution.
Before the American Revolution most
of the Native Indian people were considered by the colonists to be separate nations
and not a part of the colony. This status was changed by the Indian Removal Act
of 1830.
New France and
Maine
The first British settlement in Maine was
established by the Plymouth Company at the Popham Colony in 1607. The Popham colonists returned to
England after 14 months.
KING PHILLIP’S WAR
King Philip’s War was a
short, ferocious war. The Wampanoag sachem, Metacom, or King Philip, led a war
against the rapidly expanding British colonies in Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
parts of Connecticut, and Maine.
The war laid waste to New
England. The Native Indians who had allied against the British suffered the
worst casualties. These Native Indian
people lost the greatest proportion of their population of any war fought on
American territory.
This loss of population
necessitated the adoption of many people from outside of the subject tribes.
Nearly 70 percent of the Wampanoag, Nipmuc,
and Narragansett in Southeastern New England were killed or fled as refugees.
Native Indians prisoners of war were forced into servitude in British
households or were sold into slavery in the Caribbean. King Philip’s 9-year-old
son was sold as a slave. At the war’s end there were public executions of Native
Indians in Boston.
About 400 “praying
Indians,’’ most of whom had remained neutral, were rounded up during the war and
imprisoned in a concentration camp on barren Deer Island in Boston Harbor in
winter. Hundreds starved or died of exposure. After the war, some were also
sold as slaves. The Puritans said they couldn’t tell heathen Indians from
Christian Indians.
Background to King Phillip’s
War
Sometime before the
King Phillip’s War a treaty of peace was concluded between the Wampanoag sachem
Massasoit and the colonists at Plymouth.
When Massaoit died
his son, Wamsutta, whom the colonists called Alexander became sachem. There is
evidence that Wamsutta displayed on all occasions a decided friendship for his
white neighbors.
The early death of
Wamsutta is thought by some to be a homicide by the hands of the colonists. It
said that the colonists suspected him of plotting with the Narragansett to rise against the colonists in
Plymouth. The council of Plymouth resolved to bring Wamsutta before them to answer for his conduct. It is said that Wamsutta was
killed while enroute to Plymouth.
As a result of his
death Metacomet, brother of Wamsutta, became sachem of the Wampanoag.
The conventional history of New England is that the King Philip’s War begins when Wampanoag warriors raid the frontier settlement of Swansee Massachusetts. The settlement was a part of the Plymouth Colony.
In the early 1670s, 50 years of peace between the
Plymouth colony and the local Wampanoag people began to deteriorate when the
rapidly expanding colonial settlements forced land sales on the tribe.
Reacting to
increasing Native Indian hostility, the British colonist from Plymouth met with
King Philip, sachem of the Wampanoag. The colonists demanded that the Wampanoag
surrender their arms. The Wampanoag did so.
In 1675 a
Christian Native Indian man, who had been acting as an informer to the colonists,
was murdered. The colonists reacting to this killing kidnapped three Wampanoag.
The three were given a trial and then executed for their alleged crime.
Metacomet retaliated by ordering the attack on Swansee. This
attack was followed by a series of Wampanoag raids in which several settlements
were destroyed and scores of colonists killed. The colonists then destroyed a
number of Wampanoag villages.
The destruction of a Narragansett village by the
colonists brought the Narragansett into the conflict on the side of the Wampanoag. Within a few months several other tribes and
all the New England colonies were involved.
From the St. Croix to
the Housatonic, the Native Indian tribes were formed into a vast confederacy
with Metacomet was acknowledged as the head
In early 1676, the
Narragansett were defeated and their chief killed. The main battle between the
Narragansetts and the colonist was the so called “Great Swamp Fight”
The Great Swamp Fight/
King Phillip War
The Narraganset had established a stockade like village
in the marches near Newport Rhode Island. There were provisions for the winter
and access to the sea for other food. Within
the stockades were some six hundred wigwams. The village offered relative
safety from the colonists during the winter of 1675/ 1676
After a four day battle in which the outcome was in doubt
the colonists from Connecticut who had stayed for the most part in the rear of
the fighting came forward and set fire to the village. Several thousand
Narragansets were killed including women and children.
The Wampanoag and
their allies were gradually subdued. King Philip’s wife and son were captured,
and on August 12, 1676, after his secret headquarters in Mount Hope, Rhode
Island, was discovered, Metacomet was assassinated by a Native Indian in the
service of the British. The British drew and quartered Metacomet’s body and
publicly displayed his head on a stake in Plymouth.
Battle of Turner's
Falls / King Phillip’s War
A band of British colonists under the
command of Captain William Turner fell upon the poorly guarded Native Indian
village of Peskeompscut near the falls at dawn. The colonists slaughtered many
of its inhabitants. Most of the Native Indian people were children, women, and
the elderly.
Some of the warriors in the camp escaped,
and they regrouped with those from other nearby camps to harass the colonist’s
retreat, during which Turner was killed.
After
initially falling back, a Native alliance, some of whom came from Canada
through Vermont, rallied warriors to wage a major offensives against the
British settlers in the area of Turner Falls. The settlements of Northampton,
Hatfield and Hadley were destroyed over the next month
The Wampanoag and others had lost
almost all of their remaining children at Turner Falls. In many ways their very
reason for fighting no longer existed. The war ended within a few months after
the battle of Turner Falls.
The colonists also suffered
from King Phillip’s War. One in 16 colonist men of military age was killed,
half the towns in Plymouths and Massachusetts were ruined, and the economy was
hobbled for 100 years.
Plymouth could not sustain
itself after King Phillip’s War and was forced to become a part of
Massachusetts.
THE FRENCH/ NATIVE INDIAN WARS
AGAINST THE BRITISH
Britain and
France struggled for colonial supremacy around the world, including in North
America. In North America this struggle for imperialist power took place as a
series of wars. These wars were on and off for a better part of a century from
1688 to 1763. These wars have several name depending on which side did the
writing. For the New England colonists the wars are collectively referred to as
the French and Indian Wars.
1688: (1688-1699) King
William's War was between France and the
Wabanaki Confederacy and Britain and the Iroquois
Confederacy.
1702: (1702-1713) Queen
Anne's War between the French and
Spanish colonies allied with the Wabanaki Confederacy, Mohawk, Choctaw,
Timucua, Apalachee and Natchez tribes against the British colonies allied with
the Muscogee (Creek), Chickasaw and Yamasee tribes.
1744: (1744–1748) King
George's War between the French colonies allied with the Wabanaki Confederacy
and the British colonies allied with Iroquois Confederacy
1749: (1749 – 1754) Father Le Loutre's War
MORE ON MAINE
KING WILLIAM’S WAR
King William's War (1688–97, also known as
the Second Indian War, Father Baudoin's War, Castin's
War or the First Intercolonial War.
For the French it was the
North American theater of the Nine Years' War (1688–97).
This war is additionally called the War of the Grand Alliance or the War of the
League of Augsburg. It was the first of six colonial wars
New France and the Wabanaki Confederacy were able to thwart New England
expansion into Acadia, whose border
New France defined as the Kennebec River in southern Maine. According
to the terms of the 1697 Treaty of Ryswickthat which ended the Nine Years' War, the
boundaries and outposts of New France, New England, and New York remained
substantially unchanged.
North America at the end of the 17th century
Causes of King William’s War
The cause of the War is disputed. It is
undisputed that the Native Indians did not submit to the demands of the British
and their colonists.
The Iroquois
dominated the economically important Great Lakes fur trade and had been in conflict with New
France since 1680. At the urging of New England, the Iroquois interrupted
the trade between New France and the western tribes. In retaliation, New France
raided Seneca lands of
western New York. In turn, New England supported the Iroquois in attacking New
France, which they did by raiding Lachine.
There were
similar tensions on the border between New England and Acadia, which New France defined as the Kennebec River in southern Maine. Massachusetts’ charter
included the Maine area and the colony would later att expanded its settlements
into Acadia.
To secure
New France's claim to present-day Maine, New France established Catholic missions among the three largest native villages in
the region: one on the Kennebec River (Norridgewock); one further north on the Penobscot River (Penobscot) and one on
the Saint John
River (Medoctec).For
their part, in response to King Philip's War, the five
Indian tribes in the region of Acadia created the Wabanaki Confederacy to form a political and military alliance with New France
to stop the New England expansion.
Aftermath of King William’s War
The Treaty of Ryswick signed in September 1697 ended
the war between the two colonial powers, reverting the colonial borders to
the status quo ante bellum. The peace did not last long; within
five years, the colonies were embroiled in the next phase of the colonial
wars, Queen Anne's War.
QUEEN ANNE’S WAR
War was declared
against France by Queen Anne, of England, in May, 1702, and, of course, the
contest was renewed in America.
The conflict
was characterized by frequent raids in Massachusetts, including one on Groton and
the Deerfield Massacre in
1704. By the end of the war, natives
were successful in killing more than 700 British and capturing over 250 along
the Acadia/ New England border.
The casualties’
statistics suffered by the Wabanaki Confederacy are difficult to find. This is
likely because it did not lose the King William’s War.
The King
William’s War ended in what was essentially a draw with the British colonist unable to further expand.
France recognized British suzerainty over the Iroquois and
agreed that commerce with American Indians farther inland would be open to all
nations. It retained all of the islands in the Gulf of Saint
Lawrence, including Cape Breton Island, and retained fishing rights in
the area, including rights to dry fish on the northern shore of Newfoundland.
By the later years of the war, many Abenakis had
tired of the conflict despite French pressures to continue raids against New
England targets. The peace of Utrecht, however, had ignored Indian interests,
and some Abenaki expressed willingness to negotiate a peace with the New
Englanders.
Governor
Dudley of Massachusetts organized a major peace conference at Portsmouth,
New Hampshire .
In negotiations there and at Casco Bay, the Abenakis objected to British assertions that
the French had ceded to Britain the territory of eastern Maine and New Brunswick, but they agreed to a confirmation of boundaries
at the Kennebec River and the establishment of
government-run trading posts in their territory.
The Treaty of
Portsmouth was
ratified on July 13, 1713 by eight representatives of some of the tribes of the
Wabanaki Confederacy; however, it included language asserting British sovereignty
over their territory.
Over the
next year, other Abenaki tribal leaders also signed the treaty, but no Mi'kmaq
ever signed it or any other treaty until 1726.
DMMER'S WAR
The Dummer's War (1722–1725, also
known as Father Rale's War, Lovewell's
War, Greylock's War,
the Three Years War,
the 4th Anglo-Abenaki War, Wabanaki-New England War of 1722–1725, or
Father Rale’s War was a series of battles between New England and
the Wabanaki Confederacy (specifically
the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, and Abenaki) who were allied with New France.
The eastern theater of the war
was fought primarily along the border between New England and Acadia in Maine, as well as in Nova Scotia; the western theater was fought in northern
Massachusetts and Vermont at the border between Canada (New France) and
New England.
Some Cause of
Dummer’s War
Following the peace after Queen
Anne’s War , New England settlements expanded east of the Kennebec River, and
significant numbers of New Englanders began fishing in Nova Scotia waters. They
established a permanent fishing settlement at Canso which
upset the local Mi'kmaq, who then began raiding the settlement and attacking
the fishermen.
The root cause of the conflict
on the Maine frontier was over the border between Acadia and New England, which
New France defined as the Kennebec River in southern Maine. Mainland Nova Scotia came under British
control after the Siege of Port
Royal in 1710 and the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 (not
including Cape Breton), but
both New Brunswick and
virtually all of Maine remained contested territory between New England and New
France.
The Treaty of Utrecht
ended Queen Anne's War, but it had
been signed in Europe and had not involved any member of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The
Abenaki signed the Treaty of
Portsmouth (1713), but none had been consulted about British
ownership of Nova Scotia, and the Mi'kmaq began to make raids against New England fishermen and settlements.
During the war,
Father Rale (mitlitary leader of the allied French forces) was killed by the
British at Norridgewock. The Indian population retreated from the
Kennebec and Penobscot rivers to St. Francis and Becancour, Quebec, and New
England took over much of the Maine territory. In New
Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the treaty that ended Father Rale's war marked a
significant shift in European relations with the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet.
Battle of Norridgewock
The colonists determined on an expedition
against the Norridgewock Indians. The force consisted
of two hundred and eight men and three Mohawk warriors.
The
colonists army opened fired on the village when most of the Native Indian
warrior were away. The colonist killed many women and children as they fled.
Many of the Native Indian women and children were killed while fleeing into the
river.
Aftermath of Dummer’s War
The Abenaki tribes along the
Maine border suffered several severe defeats during Dummer's War. With the
capture of Norridgewock in 1724 and the defeat of
the Pequawket in 1725, which greatly
reduced their numbers, the Native Indians withdrew to Canada, where they were settled at Bécancour and Sillery, and later at St. Francis, along
with other refugee tribes from the south.
Father
Le Loutre's War
Father Le Loutre's War (1749–1755),
also known as the Indian War,
the Micmac War and
the Anglo-Micmac War, took
place between King George's War and
the French and Native Indian War in Acadia and Nova Scotia. On one
side of the conflict, the British and New England colonists, New England
provided soldiers known as Rangers
Some Causes of the Father Le Loutre War
Although the British captured
Port Royal in 1710,
the Mi'kmaq and Acadians continued to contain the British in settlements at
Port Royal and Canso. The rest of the Province was in the control of the
Catholic Mi'kmaq and Acadians.
About forty years
later, the British made a concerted effort to settle Protestants in the region
and to establish military control over all of Nova Scotia and present-day New Brunswick, igniting armed response from Acadians in Father Le Loutre's War.
The British
settled 3,229 people in Halifax during the first years. This exceeded the
number of Mi'kmaq in the entire region and was seen as a threat to the traditional
occupiers of the land. The Mi'kmaq and some Acadians
resisted the arrival of these Protestant settlers.
Father Le Loutre tried to prevent the New Englanders from
moving into present-day New Brunswick just as a generation earlier,
during Father Rale's War, Rale tried to prevent New Englanders from taking over
present-day Maine.
Throughout the war, the Mi’kmaq and Acadians attacked the
British forts in Nova Scotia and the newly established Protestant settlements.
They wanted to retard British settlement and buy time for France to implement its
Acadian resettlement scheme
Aftermath
of Father Le Loutre’s War
Father Le Loutre's War continued the
British war tactics of total war which
target civilians. British civilians had not been spared from some aspects of
total war.
The war caused unprecedented upheaval in the area.
Atlantic Canada witnessed large population movements.
With the defeat of the French, the
Acadians, and the Mi'kmaq by the British, the Mi'kmaq was force to sue for
peace. The Mi'kmaq signed successively more disadvantageous peace treaties
until they were forced into reservations. All claims to rights and lands
outside of the reservation were taken away.
The Acadians who did not pledge loyalty to
Britain were expelled from Nova Scotia.
The British colony of Massachusetts claimed
Maine with borders extending into present day Newfoundland. The border between
Maine and British Canada was not formalized until the 19th Century
THE FRENCH AND NATIVE
INDIAN WAR
At the start of the war, the French North
American colonies had a population of roughly 60,000 settlers, compared with 2
million in the British North American colonies.[3] The outnumbered French
particularly depended
on the Indians.
The name French and Indian War is
used mainly in the United States. It refers to the two main enemies of the
British colonists: the royal French forces and the various American Indian forces
allied with them. The British colonists were supported at various times by
the Iroquois, Catawba, and Cherokee.
The outcome was one of the most
significant developments in a century of
Anglo-French conflict. France ceded to Great Britain its territory east of the
Mississippi. It ceded French Louisiana west of
the Mississippi River (including New Orleans) to its ally Spain in compensation
for Spain's loss to Britain of Florida. (Spain had ceded Florida to Britain
in exchange for the return of Havana, Cuba.) France's colonial presence
north of the Caribbean was reduced to the islands of Saint Pierre and
Miquelon, confirming Great Britain's position as the dominant colonial
power in eastern North America.
Native
Indians likewise were driven off the land to make way for settlers from New
England.
MORE ABOUT MAINE
After the British defeated the French in Acadia in
the 1740s, the territory from the Penobscot River east fell under the nominal
authority of the Province of Nova
Scotia, and
together with present-day New Brunswick formed the Nova Scotia county of Sunbury, with
its court of general sessions at Campobello. American and British forces
contended for Maine's territory during the American Revolution and the War of
1812, with the British occupying eastern Maine in both conflicts.
Maine was physically separate from
the rest of Massachusetts. Long-standing disagreements over land speculation
and settlements led to Maine residents and their allies in Massachusetts proper
forcing an 1807 vote in the Massachusetts Assembly on permitting Maine to secede;
the vote failed. Secessionist sentiment in Maine was stoked during the War of 1812 when
Massachusetts pro-British merchants opposed the war and refused to defend Maine
from British invaders.
In 1819, Massachusetts agreed to permit
secession, sanctioned by voters of the rapidly growing region the following
year. Formal secession and formation of the state of Maine as the 23rd state
occurred on March 15, 1820, as part of the Missouri Compromise, which geographically limited the
spread of slavery and enabled
the admission to statehood of Missouri the following year, keeping a balance between slave and free
states.
VERMONT
For many years some historian
believed that Native Indians did not inhabit the region now called Vermont.
Those historians argued that it was a hunting ground without permanent Native
Indian occupation.
The point of view of no permanent
occupation of Vermont is disputed as research on the issue continues.
During the series of French and Native Indian wars against the
British fighting took place in Vermont especially during the Father Rale’s War.
Vermont was never a British colony. It was disputed territory between
New Hampshire and New York colonies. Settlers who held land titles granted by
New York were opposed by the Green Mountain Boys militia,
which supported the many settlers whose claims were based on grants from New
Hampshire.
Ultimately, the settlers with New Hampshire grants
prevailed in creating an independent state, the Vermont Republic. Founded in 1777
during the American
Revolutionary War, the republic lasted for 14 years. Vermont was
also the first state to join the U.S. as its 14th
member state after the original 13. While still an independent republic,
Vermont was the first of any future U.S. state to partially abolish
slavery.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
It is written in the Declaration of Independence the dislike of Native
Indians by the American revolutionist.
The Declaration of Independence describes Native Indian people as
“merciless Indian Savages”. The American claimed that the Native Indians
conspired with King George to attack the colonists.
This mind can be found in the earliest descriptions of Native Indians by
colonists such as those of the Pequot War and the King Phillip’s War.
Reasonable people can make the case the American colonists were racist and that
racism has continued through today.
After the defeat of the French in 1763 the British Crown made some efforts
to protect the Native Indian lands from the encroachment of the American
colonists and land speculators. The colonists resented even this effective
efforts by the British Crown.
The Treaty of Paris which resolved the issue of the American Revolution,
the British ceded to the American colonist control of the lands between the
Mississippi River and the Appalachian Mountains. The Native Indicans living there were no longer
afforded any protection from the encroaching Americans.
Those Native Indian nations that supported the King of England did so for
rationale reason of promised protection from American colonists.
For the most part the Native Indian tried to remain neutral in the
conflict of the American colonist against the British government.
THE INDIAN REMOVAL
ACT OF 1830.
The act of Congress
removed the nationhood from all Native Indians living in the United States. A
Native Indian could not be a member of a Native Indian nation after 1830.
For those Native
Indians who renounced their tribal nationhood there was no automatic
citizenship in the United States. There was for them a form of statelessness
which each state had to address at some point.
In Massachusetts
Native Indians were not recognized as residents of the State until the mid-19th
Century.
It wasn't until
1993 that the Cairo tribe was officially recognized by the Georgia General
Assembly. McCormick said American Indians could
secure a visa to travel through Georgia, but they were not legally allowed to
live here until that Act was repealed.
The Native Indian
nations had no legal status except to void its legal status. The individual
Native Indians who no longer claimed membership in a tribal nation were allowed
to stay in the United States. Those who refused were expelled to what was then
called Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. That area is now called
Oklahoma.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830
was repealed in March
1980. The Federal government of the United States is now in the process of
recognizing Native Indian nations.
