Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans known as American Indians, Indigenous Americans and other terms, are the indigenous peoples of the United States, except Hawaii. There are over 500 federally recognized tribes within the US, about half of which are associated with Indian reservations; the term "American Indian" excludes Native Hawaiians and some Alaska Natives, while Native Americans are American Indians, plus Alaska Natives of all ethnicities. Native Hawaiians are not counted as Native Americans by the US Census, instead being included in the Census grouping of "Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander"; the ancestors of modern Native Americans arrived in what is now the United States at least 15,000 years ago much earlier, from Asia via Beringia. A vast variety of peoples and cultures subsequently developed. Native Americans were affected by the European colonization of the Americas, which began in 1492, their population declined precipitously due to introduced diseases as well as warfare, territorial confiscation and slavery.
After the founding of the United States, many Native American peoples were subjected to warfare and one-sided treaties, they continued to suffer from discriminatory government policies into the 20th century. Since the 1960s, Native American self-determination movements have resulted in changes to the lives of Native Americans, though there are still many contemporary issues faced by Native Americans. Today, there are over five million Native Americans in the United States, 78% of whom live outside reservations; when the United States was created, established Native American tribes were considered semi-independent nations, as they lived in communities separate from British settlers. The federal government signed treaties at a government-to-government level until the Indian Appropriations Act of 1871 ended recognition of independent native nations, started treating them as "domestic dependent nations" subject to federal law; this law did preserve the rights and privileges agreed to under the treaties, including a large degree of tribal sovereignty.
For this reason, many Native American reservations are still independent of state law and actions of tribal citizens on these reservations are subject only to tribal courts and federal law. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 granted U. S. citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States. This emptied the "Indians not taxed" category established by the United States Constitution, allowed natives to vote in state and federal elections, extended the Fourteenth Amendment protections granted to people "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States. However, some states continued to deny Native Americans voting rights for several decades. Bill of Rights protections do not apply to tribal governments, except for those mandated by the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968. Since the end of the 15th century, the migration of Europeans to the Americas has led to centuries of population and agricultural transfer and adjustment between Old and New World societies, a process known as the Columbian exchange.
As most Native American groups had preserved their histories by oral traditions and artwork, the first written sources of the conflict were written by Europeans. Ethnographers classify the indigenous peoples of North America into ten geographical regions with shared cultural traits, called cultural areas; some scholars combine the Plateau and Great Basin regions into the Intermontane West, some separate Prairie peoples from Great Plains peoples, while some separate Great Lakes tribes from the Northeastern Woodlands. The ten cultural areas are as follows: Arctic, including Aleut and Yupik peoples Subarctic Northeastern Woodlands Southeastern Woodlands Great Plains Great Basin Northwest Plateau Northwest Coast California Southwest At the time of the first contact, the indigenous cultures were quite different from those of the proto-industrial and Christian immigrants; some Northeastern and Southwestern cultures, in particular, were matrilineal and operated on a more collective basis than that with which Europeans were familiar.
The majority of Indigenous American tribes maintained their hunting grounds and agricultural lands for use of the entire tribe. Europeans at that time had patriarchal cultures and had developed concepts of individual property rights with respect to land that were different; the differences in cultures between the established Native Americans and immigrant Europeans, as well as shifting alliances among different nations in times of war, caused extensive political tension, ethnic violence, social disruption. Before the European settlement of what is now the United States, Native Americans suffered high fatalities from contact with new European diseases, to which they had not yet acquired immunity. Smallpox epidemics are thought to have caused the greatest loss of life for indigenous populations. William M Denevan, noted author and Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said on this subject in his essay "The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492".
Old World diseases were the primary killer. In many regions the tropical lowlands, populations fell by 90 percent or more in the first century after the contact. "Estimates of the pre-Columbian population of what today constitutes the U. S. vary ranging from William M Denevan's 3.8 million in his 1992 w
Puritans
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been reformed and needed to become more Protestant. Puritanism played a significant role in English history during the Protectorate. Puritans were dissatisfied with the limited extent of the English Reformation and with the Church of England's toleration of certain practices associated with the Roman Catholic Church, they formed and identified with various religious groups advocating greater purity of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and corporate piety. Puritans adopted a Reformed theology and, in that sense, were Calvinists. In church polity, some advocated separation from all other established Christian denominations in favour of autonomous gathered churches; these separatist and independent strands of Puritanism became prominent in the 1640s, when the supporters of a Presbyterian polity in the Westminster Assembly were unable to forge a new English national church.
By the late 1630s, Puritans were in alliance with the growing commercial world, with the parliamentary opposition to the royal prerogative, with the Scottish Presbyterians with whom they had much in common. They became a major political force in England and came to power as a result of the First English Civil War. All Puritan clergy left the Church of England after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the 1662 Uniformity Act. Many continued to practice their faith in nonconformist denominations in Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches; the nature of the movement in England changed radically, although it retained its character for a much longer period in New England. Puritanism was never a formally defined religious division within Protestantism, the term Puritan itself was used after the turn of the 18th century; some Puritan ideals, including the formal rejection of Roman Catholicism, were incorporated into the doctrines of the Church of England. The Congregational churches considered to be a part of the Reformed tradition, are descended from the Puritans.
Moreover, Puritan beliefs are enshrined in the Savoy Declaration, the confession of faith held by the Congregationalist churches. In the 17th century, the word Puritan was a term applied not to many. Historians still debate a precise definition of Puritanism. Puritan was a pejorative term characterizing certain Protestant groups as extremist. Thomas Fuller, in his Church History, dates the first use of the word to 1564. Archbishop Matthew Parker of that time used it and precisian with a sense similar to the modern stickler. Puritans were distinguished for being "more intensely protestant than their protestant neighbors or the Church of England"."Non-separating Puritans" were dissatisfied with the Reformation of the Church of England but remained within it, advocating for further reform. "Separatists", or "separating Puritans", thought the Church of England was so corrupt that true Christians should separate from it altogether. In its widest historical sense, the term Puritan includes both groups.
Puritans should not be confused with more radical Protestant groups of the 16th and 17th centuries, such as Quakers and Familists who believed that individuals could be directly guided by the Holy Spirit and prioritized direct revelation over the Bible. In current English, puritan means "against pleasure". In such usage and puritanism are antonyms. In fact, Puritans placed it in the context of marriage. Peter Gay writes of the Puritans' standard reputation for "dour prudery" as a "misreading that went unquestioned in the nineteenth century", commenting how unpuritanical they were in favour of married sexuality, in opposition to the Catholic veneration of virginity, citing Edward Taylor and John Cotton. One Puritan settlement in western Massachusetts banished a husband because he refused to fulfill his sexual duties to his wife. Puritanism has a historical importance over a period of a century, followed by fifty years of development in New England, it changed character and emphasis decade-by-decade over that time.
Elizabethan Puritanism contended with the Elizabethan religious settlement, with little to show for it. The Lambeth Articles of 1595, a high-water mark for Calvinism within the Church of England, failed to receive royal approval; the accession of James I to the English throne brought the Millenary Petition, a Puritan manifesto of 1603 for reform of the English church, but James wanted a religious settlement along different lines. He called the Hampton Court Conference in 1604, heard the teachings of four prominent Puritan leaders, including Laurence Chaderton, but sided with his bishops, he was well informed on theological matters by his education and Scottish upbringing, he dealt shortly with the peevish legacy of Elizabethan Puritanism, pursuing an eirenic religious policy, in which he was arbiter. Many of James's episcopal appointments were Calvinists, notably James Montague, an influential courtier. Puritans still opposed much of the Roman Catholic summation in the Church of England, notably the Book of Common Prayer but the use of non-secular vestments during services, the sign of the Cross in baptism, kneeling to receive Holy Communion.
Some of the bishops under both Elizabeth and James tried to suppress Puritanism, though other bishops were more to
Mohegan
The Mohegan are a Native American tribe based in present-day Connecticut. It is one of two federally recognized tribes in the state, the other being the Mashantucket Pequot whose reservation is in Ledyard, Connecticut. There are three state-recognized tribes: Schaghticoke and Eastern Pequot. At the time of European contact, the Mohegan and Pequot were a unified tribal entity living in the southeastern Connecticut region, but the Mohegan became independent as the hegemonic Pequot lost control over their trading empire and tributary groups; the name Pequot was given to the Mohegan by other tribes throughout the northeast and was adopted by themselves. In 1637, English Puritan colonists destroyed a principal fortified village at Mistick with the help of Uncas and the Narragansetts during the Pequot War; this ended with the death of Uncas' cousin Sassacus at the hands of the Mohawk, an Iroquois Confederacy nation from west of the Hudson River. Thereafter, the Mohegan became a separate tribal nation under the leadership of their sachem Uncas.
Uncas is a variant anglicized spelling of the Algonquian name Wonkus, which translates to "fox" in English. The word Mohegan translates in their respective Algonquin dialects as "People of the Wolf". Over time, the Mohegan lost ownership of much of their tribal lands. In 1978, Chief Rolling Cloud Hamilton petitioned for federal recognition of the Mohegan. Descendants of his Mohegan band operate independently of the federally recognized nation. In 1994, a majority group of Mohegan gained federal recognition as the Mohegan Tribe of Indians of Connecticut, they have been defined by the United States government as the "successor in interest to the aboriginal entity known as the Mohegan Indian Tribe." The United States took land into trust the same year, under an act of Congress to serve as a reservation for the tribe. Most of the Mohegan people in Connecticut today live on the Mohegan Reservation at 41°28′42″N 72°04′55″W near Uncasville in the Town of Montville, New London County; the MTIC operate one of two Mohegan Sun Casinos on their reservation in Uncasville.
The Mohegan Indian Tribe was based in central southern Connecticut part of the Pequot people. It became independent and served as allies of English colonists in the Pequot War of 1636, which broke the power of the dominant Pequot tribe in the region. In reward, the Colonists gave Pequot captives to the Mohegan tribe; the Mohegan homelands in Connecticut include landmarks such as Trading Cove on the Thames River, Cochegan Rock, Fort Shantok, Mohegan Hill, where the Mohegan founded a Congregational church in the early 1800s. In 1931, the Tantaquidgeon family built the Tantaquidgeon Indian Museum on Mohegan Hill to house tribal artifacts and histories. Gladys Tantaquidgeon served for years as unofficial historian, she studied anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and worked for a decade with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Returning to Connecticut, she operated this museum for six decades, it was one of the first museums to be operated by American Indians. In 1933, John E. Hamilton was appointed as a Grand Sachem by his mother Alice Storey through a traditional selection process based on heredity.
She was of Tamaquashad, Sachem of the Pequot tribe. In Mohegan tradition, the position of tribal leadership was hereditary through the maternal line. In the 1960s, during a period of rising activism among Native Americans, John Hamilton filed a number of land claims authorized by the "Council of Descendants of Mohegan Indians." The group had some 300 members at the time. In 1970 the Montville band of Mohegans expressed its dissatisfaction with land-claims litigation; when the Hamilton supporters left the meeting, this band elected Courtland Fowler as their new leader. Notes of that Council meeting referred to Hamilton as Sachem; the group led by John Hamilton worked with the attorney Jerome Griner in federal land claims through the 1970s. During this time, a Kent, Connecticut property owners' organization, with some Native and non-Native members, worked to oppose the Hamilton land claims and the recognition petition for federal recognition, out of fear that tribal nations would take private properties.
In 1978, in response to the desires of tribal nations across the country to gain federal recognition and recover tribal sovereignty, the Bureau of Indian Affairs established a formal administrative process. The process included specific criteria that BIA officials would judge as evidence of cultural continuity. In that same year, Hamilton's band submitted a petition for federal recognition for the Mohegan tribe; the petition process stalled when John Hamilton died in 1988. The petition for federal recognition was revived in 1989, but the BIA's preliminary finding was that the Mohegan had not satisfied the criteria of documenting continuity in social community, political authority and influence as a tribe through the twentieth century. In 1990, the Mohegan band led by Chief Courtland Fowler submitted a detailed response to meet the BIA's concerns; the tribe included compiled genealogies and other records, including records pertaining to the Mohegan Congregational Church in Montville. BIA researchers used records provided by the Hamilton band, records from the Mohegan Church, records maintained by Gladys Tantaquidgeon, who had kept genealogy and vital statistics of tribal members for her anthropological r
Thirteen Colonies
The Thirteen Colonies known as the Thirteen British Colonies or the Thirteen American Colonies, were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America founded in the 17th and 18th centuries. They formed the United States of America; the Thirteen Colonies had similar political and legal systems and were dominated by Protestant English-speakers. They were part of Britain's possessions in the New World, which included colonies in Canada, the Caribbean, the Floridas. Between 1625 and 1775, the colonial population grew from 2,000 to over 2.5 million, displacing American Indians. This population included people subject to a system of slavery, legal in all of the colonies prior to the American Revolutionary War. In the 18th century, the British government operated its colonies under a policy of mercantilism, in which the central government administered its possessions for the economic benefit of the mother country; the Thirteen Colonies had a high degree of self-governance and active local elections, they resisted London's demands for more control.
The French and Indian War against France and its Indian allies led to growing tensions between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies. In the 1750s, the colonies began collaborating with one another instead of dealing directly with Britain; these inter-colonial activities cultivated a sense of shared American identity and led to calls for protection of the colonists' "Rights as Englishmen" the principle of "no taxation without representation". Grievances with the British government led to the American Revolution, in which the colonies collaborated in forming the Continental Congress; the colonists fought the American Revolutionary War with the aid of France and, to a smaller degree, the Dutch Republic and Spain. In 1606, King James I of England granted charters to both the Plymouth Company and the London Company for the purpose of establishing permanent settlements in America; the London Company established the Colony and Dominion of Virginia in 1607, the first permanently settled English colony on the continent.
The Plymouth Company founded the Popham Colony on the Kennebec River. The Plymouth Council for New England sponsored several colonization projects, culminating with Plymouth Colony in 1620, settled by English Puritan separatists, known today as the Pilgrims; the Dutch and French established successful American colonies at the same time as the English, but they came under the English crown. The Thirteen Colonies were complete with the establishment of the Province of Georgia in 1732, although the term "Thirteen Colonies" became current only in the context of the American Revolution. In London beginning in 1660, all colonies were governed through a state department known as the Southern Department, a committee of the Privy Council called the Board of Trade and Plantations. In 1768, a specific state department was created for America, but it was disbanded in 1782 when the Home Office took responsibility. Province of New Hampshire, established in the 1620s, chartered as crown colony in 1679 Province of Massachusetts Bay, established in the 1620s, a crown colony 1692 Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, established 1636, chartered as crown colony in 1663 Connecticut Colony, established 1636, chartered as crown colony in 1662 Province of New York, proprietary colony 1664–1685, crown colony from 1686 Province of New Jersey, proprietary colony from 1664, crown colony from 1702 Province of Pennsylvania, a proprietary colony established 1681 Delaware Colony, a proprietary colony established 1664 Province of Maryland, a proprietary colony established 1632 Colony and Dominion of Virginia, proprietary colony established 1607, a crown colony from 1624 Province of Carolina, a proprietary colony established 1663 Divided into the Province of North-Carolina and Province of South Carolina in 1712, each became a crown colony in 1729 Province of Georgia, proprietary colony established 1732, crown colony from 1752.
The first successful English colony was Jamestown, established May 1607 near Chesapeake Bay. The business venture was financed and coordinated by the London Virginia Company, a joint stock company looking for gold, its first years were difficult, with high death rates from disease and starvation, wars with local Indians, little gold. The colony flourished by turning to tobacco as a cash crop. In 1632, King Charles I granted the charter for Province of Maryland to Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore. Calvert's father had been a prominent Catholic official who encouraged Catholic immigration to the English colonies; the charter offered no guidelines on religion. The Province of Carolina was the second attempted English settlement south of Virginia, the first being the failed attempt at Roanoke, it was a private venture, financed by a group of English Lords Proprietors who obtained a Royal Charter to the Carolinas in 1663, hoping that a new colony in the south would become profitable like Jamestown.
Carolina was not settled until 1670, then the first attempt failed because there was no incentive for emigration to that area. However, the Lords combined their remaining capital and financed a settlement mission to the area led by Sir John Colleton; the expedition located fertile and defensible ground at what became Charleston Charles Town for Charles II of England. The Pilgrims were a small group of Puritan separatists who felt that they needed to physically distance themselves from the corrupt Church of England. After moving to the Netherlands, they decided to re-establish themselves in America; the initi
Province of Carolina
The Province of Carolina was an English and a British colony of North America. Carolina was founded in. Carolina expanded south and, at its greatest extent, nominally included the present-day states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi, parts of modern Florida and Louisiana. Sir Robert Heath, attorney-general of King Charles I of England, was granted the Cape Fear region of America, incorporated as the Province of Carolana, in 1629; the charter was unrealized and ruled invalid, a new charter was issued to a group of eight English noblemen, the Lords Proprietors, on March 24, 1663. It was not until 1663 that the province became known as "Carolina." Charles II granted the land to the eight Lords Proprietors in return for their financial and political assistance in restoring him to the throne in 1660. Charles II intended for the newly created province to serve as an English bulwark to contest lands claimed by Spanish Florida and prevent their northward expansion. Led informally by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, the Province of Carolina was controlled from 1663 to 1729 by these lords and their heirs.
In 1669, the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina divided the colony of Carolina into two provinces, Albemarle province in the north and Clarendon province in the south. Due to dissent over the governance of the colony, the distance between settlements in the northern half and settlements in the southern half, in 1691 a deputy governor was appointed to administer the northern half of Carolina. In 1712, the two provinces became separate colonies, the colony of North Carolina and the colony of South Carolina. Although the division between the northern and southern governments became complete in 1712, both colonies remained in the hands of the same group of proprietors. A rebellion against the proprietors broke out in 1719 which led to the appointment of a royal governor for South Carolina in 1720. After nearly a decade in which the British government sought to locate and buy out the proprietors, both North and South Carolina became royal colonies in 1729. On October 30, 1629, King Charles I of England granted a patent to Sir Robert Heath for the lands south of 36 degrees and north of 31 degrees, "under the name, in honor of that king, of Carolana."
Carolus is Latin for'Charles'. Heath wanted the land for French Huguenots, but when Charles restricted use of the land to members of the Church of England, Heath assigned his grant to George, Lord Berkeley. King Charles I was executed in 1649 and Heath fled to France. Following the 1660 restoration of the monarchy, Heath's heirs attempted to reassert their claim to the land, but Charles II ruled the claim invalid. On March 24, 1663, Charles II issued a new charter to a group of eight English noblemen, granting them the land of Carolina, as a reward for their faithful support of his efforts to regain the throne of England; the eight were called Lords Proprietors or Proprietors. The 1663 charter granted the Lords Proprietor title to all of the land from the southern border of the Virginia Colony at 36 degrees north to 31 degrees north. In 1665, the charter was revised with the northerly boundary extended to 36 degrees 30 minutes north to include the lands of settlers along the Albemarle Sound who had left the Virginia Colony.
The southern boundary was moved south to 29 degrees north, just south of present-day Daytona Beach, which had the effect of including the existing Spanish settlement at St. Augustine; the charter granted all the land, between these northerly and southerly bounds, from the Atlantic, westward to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. The Lords Proprietors named in the charter were Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon. Of the eight, the one who demonstrated the most active interest in Carolina was Lord Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury, with the assistance of his secretary, the philosopher John Locke, drafted the Grand Model for the Province of Carolina, a plan for government of the colony influenced by the ideas of the English political scientist, James Harrington; some of the other Lords Proprietors had interests in other colonies: for instance, John Berkeley and George Carteret held stakes in the Province of New Jersey, William Berkeley had an interest in Virginia. The Lords Proprietors, operating under their royal charter, were able to exercise their authority with nearly the independence of the king himself.
The actual government consisted of a governor, a powerful council, on which half of the councillors were appointed by the Lords Proprietors themselves, a weak, popularly elected assembly. Within three generations of Columbus, the Spanish from their Florida base had started to emigrate up the coast of modern North Carolina. A hostile Virginia tribe drove them back to Georgia. A Scottish contingent had meanwhile settled in South Carolina only to be extirpated by the Spanish, who inhabited Parris Island, SC, as late as 1655; the Spanish were again beaten back to Georgia. Although the Lost Colony on Roanoke Island was the first English attempt at settlement in the Carolina territory, the first permanent English settlement was not established until 1653, when emigrants from the Virginia Colony, with others from New England and Bermuda, settled at the mouths of the Chowan and Roanok
Province of Maine
The Province of Maine refers to any of several English colonies. They were not called "Province of Maine." They were small short-lived operations in the 17th century along the northeast coast of North America, at times encompassing portions of the present-day states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, the Canadian provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick. The province existed through a series of land patents in several incarnations, including one known as New Somersetshire; the final incarnation of the Province of Maine, encompassing the western portions of present-day Maine, was absorbed into the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1650s. The first patent establishing the Province of Maine was granted on August 10, 1622 to Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason by the Plymouth Council for New England, which itself had been granted a royal patent by James I to the coast of North America between the 40th to the 48th parallel "from sea to sea"; this first patent encompassed the coast between the Merrimack and Kennebec rivers, an irregular parcel of land between the headwaters of the two rivers.
In 1629, Gorges and Mason agreed to split the patent at the Piscataqua River, with Mason retaining the land south of the river as the Province of New Hampshire. Gorges named his more northerly piece of territory New Somersetshire. Lack of funding and the absence of a royal charter held back development, only a few small settlements were established. In 1639, Gorges obtained a renewed patent, the Gorges Patent, for the area between the Piscataqua and Kennebec Rivers, in the form of a royal charter from Charles I of England; the area was the same as that covered in the 1622 patent after the 1629 split with Mason. This renewed colonization effort was hampered by lack of money and settlers, but continued to survive after the death of Gorges in 1647. Beginning in the 1640s, the nearby Massachusetts Bay Colony began claiming territories north of the Merrimack River, because the Merrimack's northernmost point was farther north than its mouth; this resulted in its administration of the early settlements of what became New Hampshire.
After a survey made in the early 1650s, Massachusetts extended its land claims as far north as Casco Bay. By 1658 Massachusetts had completed the assimilation of all of Gorges' original territory into its jurisdiction. In 1664, Charles II of England made a grant to James, Duke of York for territories north and east of the Kennebec River. Under the terms of this patent the territory was incorporated into Cornwall County, part of the duke's proprietary Province of New York; the territory stipulated in this charter encompassed the areas between the Kennebec and St. Croix Rivers; this region, called the Territory of Sagadahock, forms the eastern portion of the present-day state of Maine. Charles had intended to include the former Gorges territory in this grant, but the Gorges' heirs instead chose to sell their remaining claims to Massachusetts. In 1691 William III and Mary II issued a charter for the new Province of Massachusetts Bay that encompassed the former claims of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, those of the Duke of York.
The region remained a part of Massachusetts, the District of Maine, until it achieved statehood of its own in 1820. History of Maine List of Maine land patents List of colonial governors of Maine Avalon Project Listing of early Maine patents and charters Library of Congress Grants of the Province of Maine
New Netherland
New Netherland was a 17th-century colony of the Dutch Republic, located on the east coast of America. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva Peninsula to southwestern Cape Cod, while the more limited settled areas are now part of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island; the colony was conceived by the Dutch West India Company in 1621 to capitalize on the North American fur trade. It was settled at first because of policy mismanagement by the WIC and conflicts with American Indians; the settlement of New Sweden by the Swedish South Company encroached on its southern flank, while its northern border was redrawn to accommodate an expanding New England Confederation. The colony experienced dramatic growth during the 1650s and became a major port for trade in the north Atlantic Ocean; the Dutch surrendered Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan island to England in 1664, contributing to the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In 1673, the Dutch retook the area but relinquished it under the Treaty of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War the next year.
The inhabitants of New Netherland were European colonists, American Indians, Africans imported as slave laborers. The colony had an estimated population between 7,000 and 8,000 at the time of transfer to England in 1674, half of whom were not of Dutch descent. During the 17th century, Europe was undergoing expansive social and economic growth, known as the Dutch Golden Age in the Netherlands. Nations vied for domination of lucrative trade routes around the globe those to Asia. Philosophical and theological conflicts were manifested in military battles across the European continent; the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands had become a home to many intellectuals, international businessmen, religious refugees. In the Americas, the English had a settlement at Jamestown, the French had small settlements at Port Royal and Quebec, the Spanish were developing colonies to exploit trade in South America and the Caribbean. In 1609, English sea captain and explorer Henry Hudson was hired by the Dutch East India Company located in Amsterdam to find a Northeast Passage to Asia, sailing around Scandinavia and Russia.
He was turned back by the ice of the Arctic in his second attempt, so he sailed west to seek a Northwest Passage rather than return home. He ended up exploring the waters off the east coast of North America aboard the Flyboat Halve Maen, his first landfall was at the second at Cape Cod. Hudson believed that the passage to the Pacific Ocean was between the St. Lawrence River and Chesapeake Bay, so he sailed south to the Bay turned northward, traveling close along the shore, he first began to sail upriver looking for the passage. This effort was foiled by sandy shoals, the Halve Maen continued north. After passing Sandy Hook and his crew entered the Narrows into the Upper New York Bay. Hudson believed that he had found the continental water route, so he sailed up the major river that now bears his name, he found the water too shallow to proceed several days at the site of Troy, New York. Upon returning to the Netherlands, Hudson reported that he had found a fertile land and an amicable people willing to engage his crew in small-scale bartering of furs, trinkets and small manufactured goods.
His report was first published in 1611 by the Dutch Consul at London. This stimulated interest in exploiting this new trade resource, it was the catalyst for Dutch merchant-traders to fund more expeditions. Merchants such as Arnout Vogels sent the first follow-up voyages to exploit this discovery as early as July 1610. In 1611–12, the Admiralty of Amsterdam sent two covert expeditions to find a passage to China with the yachts Craen and Vos, captained by Jan Cornelisz Mey and Symon Willemsz Cat respectively. In four voyages made between 1611 and 1614, the area between Maryland and Massachusetts was explored and charted by Adriaen Block, Hendrick Christiaensen, Cornelius Jacobsen Mey; these surveys and charts were consolidated in Block's map, which used the name New Netherland for the first time. During this period, there was some trading with the Indian population. Fur trader Juan Rodriguez was born in Santo Domingo of African descent, he arrived in Manhattan during the winter of 1613–14, trapping for pelts and trading with the Indians as a representative of the Dutch.
He was the first recorded non-native inhabitant of New York City. The immediate and intense competition among Dutch trading companies in the newly charted areas led to disputes in Amsterdam and calls for regulation; the States General was the governing body of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, it proclaimed on March 17, 1614 that it would grant an exclusive patent for trade between the 40th and 45th parallels. This monopoly would be valid for four voyages. All of which had to be undertaken within three years. Block's map and the report that accompanied it were used by the New Netherland Company to win its patent, which expired on January 1, 1618; the New Netherland Company ordered a survey of the Delaware Valley. This was undertaken by Cornelis Hendricksz of Monnickendam who explored the Zuyd Rivier in 1616 from its bay to its northernmost nav
