★ Must-know
The first Americans are called Paleo-Indians, and the traditional account places their migration from Asia across the Bering Strait around 12,000–10,000 BC.
Paleo-Indians were nomadic hunters and gatherers who lived in bands of extended families.
By approximately 9,000 years ago, people in present-day central Mexico cultivated corn, squash, and beans, known as the three sisters, and agriculture encouraged more sedentary life.
Further detail
Recent archaeological discoveries suggest that people reached the Americas as early as 30,000 years ago, and some accounts propose an earlier seafaring settlement from northern Europe around year 1,000.
By about 11,500 years ago, Paleo-Indians made fine stone projectile points and attached them to wooden spears for hunting buffalo and woolly mammoths.
As the Ice Age ended and human populations increased, all large American mammals except the buffalo disappeared.
★ Must-know
Between 900 and 1350 AD, climatic warming known as the Medieval Optimum supported an agricultural revolution in which the three sisters became a main food source and organized societies developed.
Between 900 and 1150 AD, the Anasazi, or Ancestral Puebloans, built Great Houses in the Southwest, especially in present-day New Mexico.
The Mississippian culture developed in the present-day Midwest and southeastern United States, with Cahokia near modern Saint Louis as its largest urban center.
From the fourteenth century through the 1800s, the Little Ice Age reduced agricultural activity and contributed to political instability and the decline of major Mississippian cities, after which populations dispersed into diverse polities and language groups.
Further detail
Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde were major regional trading and processing centers connected by about 400 miles of roads, with turquoise especially important in trade.
Cahokia covered five square miles and had about 20,000 inhabitants; it was a religious and trading center whose mounds were used for burials.
Cooling and crop decline → city decline and population dispersal
In 1608, Samuel de Champlain founded the first French settlement at Quebec, and in 1682 Cavelier La Salle claimed Louisiana for Louis XIV after traveling down the Mississippi River.
In 1685, La Salle founded a French colony on the coast of present-day Texas, prompting Spain to establish a settlement in Texas in response.
French Huguenots attempted South Atlantic settlements in the 1560s, but the first failed and Spanish forces destroyed the second at Jacksonville in 1565.
★ Must-know
📌 The 1606 Virginia royal charter authorized territory from 34° to 45° latitude and divided it between the London Company, covering 34°–41°, and the Plymouth Company, covering 38°–45°; the companies could not settle within 100 miles of one another in their overlapping area.
📌 Virginia colonists received local governing powers and freedoms while remaining subjects of the English realm under the authority of the Crown and Virginia Company.
Further detail
The English Roanoke settlement on the island was established by Sir Walter Raleigh between 1585 and 1590 and became known as the lost colony.
John Smith imposed military discipline that helped save Jamestown, although the settlement suffered a severe starving time in 1609–1610.
By 1624, only about 1,300 of approximately 8,000 immigrants to Virginia had survived.
★ Must-know
The Powhatan Confederacy initially traded food, including corn, to Jamestown in exchange for weapons, but relations deteriorated amid drought, English distrust, kidnapping, and territorial expansion.
John Rolfe introduced tobacco cultivation in 1611, and tobacco exports reached 1.5 million pounds of cured leaves in the 1620s.
Further detail
Pocahontas married John Rolfe in 1614 as a diplomatic gesture, traveled to England, and died of tuberculosis in 1616 after bearing a son.
After a final attack in 1644 that killed 500 of about 8,000 settlers, Opechancanough died and a 1646 treaty imposed territorial loss and submission on Native people resisting English settlement.
Tobacco demand → land expansion → conflict with the Powhatan Confederacy
★ Must-know
📌 Virginia's 1617 headright system promised 50 acres to each new arrival who paid their own passage, encouraging migration and supplying labor.
Further detail
In late August 1619, about 20 Africans arrived in Virginia aboard the White Lion, a privateer owned by Robert Rich, the second Earl of Warwick.
The number of Black enslaved people in Virginia rose from 23 in 1625 to 3,000 in 1680 and 16,390 in 1700.
📌 Virginia's 1667 act stated that baptism or conversion did not free enslaved people, and its 1669 act allowed corporal punishment.
Indentured service ended after a contract; enslaved status became lifelong
★ Must-know
In 1620, about 100 Puritans, including 30 Separatists led by William Bradford, sailed aboard the Mayflower to establish a settlement motivated principally by religious freedom.
In 1630, John Winthrop's sermon A Model of Christian Charity described a communal Puritan project in which members should put the good of the whole before private concerns.
Further detail
The Mayflower passengers landed at Plymouth Rock on December 21, 1620, and Squanto and nearby Native people helped the settlers survive.
The Massachusetts Bay Company received a royal charter in 1629, and John Winthrop became governor in October of that year.
The Great Migration brought Massachusetts Bay's population to about 20,000 within roughly ten years.
Jamestown pursued economic survival; Plymouth centered religious ideals
★ Must-know
In Massachusetts Bay, the General Court became a colonial legislature, and voting in colony elections was granted to adult male church members who owned property.
Puritan governments treated Congregationalism as the only officially recognized religion, taxed residents to support meetinghouses and ministers, and required church membership to vote in Massachusetts Bay and New Haven.
Puritans migrated in the name of religious freedom but generally refused to extend that freedom to people outside their own church.
Further detail
Within twenty years, Massachusetts Bay developed self-government with a governor, a two-house legislature, and a judicial system.
In Massachusetts, groups of men applied to the General Court for town grants, which provided house and church lots and fields, with larger and better plots assigned to more distinguished members.
New England criminal codes drew on the Old Testament, required attendance at religious services, and punished offenses including contempt for ministers, drunkenness, card playing, and idleness.
Puritans sought religious freedom for themselves but denied it to dissenters
★ Must-know
The Salem witchcraft crisis peaked in 1692 amid insecurity associated with King William's War, which brought conflict between French and Indigenous forces and New England colonists, as well as refugees to Essex County.
During eight months in 1692, Salem-area accusations led to 14 women and 6 men being hanged, one man being pressed to death, 54 confessions, and more than 140 people being jailed.
Further detail
By the 1670s, New England's population had exceeded 70,000, and pressure on available land drove settlement into the interior and migration to neighboring colonies.
Before 1690, New England saw about 100 witchcraft trials, often rooted in longstanding disputes among neighbors in closely settled communities.
War and insecurity → displacement and panic around witchcraft
Take a 28-question practice quiz on Early American Republic, with every answer explained.
1. What was Christopher Columbus seeking when he reached the New World in 1492?
2. Which description correctly identifies the dates and Indigenous alliance associated with King Philip's War?
Memorize the key concepts of Early American Republic with 72 flashcards.
What name is given to the first Americans?
Paleo-Indians.
When does the traditional account place migration across the Bering Strait?
Around 12,000–10,000 BC.
How did Paleo-Indians organize their communities?
They lived in bands of extended families.
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