This article is the first in a series of articles that will look at the North American frontier and colonists. It will be divided between its initial stage of 16th and 17th centuries, then the century of empire wars, the 18th century, and its final stage, the conquest of the west in the 19th century and the initial years of the 20th century.
In this article we look at the early years of colonization, the main colonizers, and some of their interactions and battles with Native American tribes.
Champlain's Battle with the Iroquois, Ticonderoga, July, 1609. Part of the Beaver Wars.
Early activity
The conquest of this inhospitable place began from the moment the first Spanish settlement was founded in Florida in the 1550s. These first settlements were not permanent and were often used as military outposts and camps or used as bases for the intrepid Spanish explorers, then in the 17th century, more precisely in 1607, the British founded the settlement of Jamestown in the now state of Virginia. After that moment the conquest of the frontier really began. The British started to go inland, the French, who already had a few failed costal settlements founded by maritime explorers, as well as the Dutch, soon followed, with conquest or occupation of inland territories near their settlements.
At this initial stage the French colonized the valley of the Saint Lawrence River founding Quebec, in present-day Canada, in 1608, and the territory of the Great Lakes, and around the city of New Orleans. The Dutch, settled and colonized the Hudson River valley, where they would build the city of New Amsterdam, the future New York, in 1624; and last but not least, the Spanish settled and colonized the territories of Florida, Texas, Arizona, California and New Mexico, and even though we talk about the conquest of west, and the Spanish were already there, they were in such small numbers and so disperse that these southwest colonies were used as buffer territories, to separate the Spanish colonists that occupied the former Aztec Empire from the Native Americans that occupied the Midwest, Rocky Mountains, and the southwest.
Organization
At the head of colonial organization were the trade companies, like the Compagnie de la Nouvelle-France (Company of New France), the Dutch West India Company, the London Virginia Company, and the Plymouth Company. In the specific case of the Spanish, the head of the colonial organization in North America was the Viceroy of the Vice-royalty of New Spain, founded in 1521, who then appointed various governors and military leaders, scattered in the different regions and colonies.
During this initial period, the border territories were marked by trade with Native Americans, and the main items were the pelts of bears, wolves, deer, raccoons, and other animals. This business was located especially in the region of valley of the Saint Laurence River, location of military and colonial clashes between the French and the British. As colonization advanced in the south, the now states of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, commerce and trade was marked by the selling of slaves, cotton, and tobacco.
This struggle for the frontier, led to countless wars, revolts, popular uprisings and attacks by Native Americans, that is, all those who were not “civilized” by the conquerors. In the initial period of the colonization two major confederacies occupied the territories of northeast America, the Powhatan Confederacy composed of tribes in the region of Virginia, New York, and Maryland. The tribes included the Powhatan, the Chesapeake, and the Appomattoc. The second was the Iroquois Confederacy or Haudenosaunee, composed of tribes in the region of the valleys of the Hudson and St. Lawrence River. The tribes included the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Cayuga, the Seneca, the Tuscarora, and the Onondaga. Alongside these two confederacies, a few other tribes occupied this vast region, such as the Métis, the Abenaki, the Lenape, the Cree, and the Algonquin.
Conflict
After a few years of peace, conflicts between colonists, for territory, trade and political causes started to occur and were supported by the different tribes who signed alliances with the French, British or Dutch. Of the conflicts that occurred in the first years of colonial occupation, the Beaver Wars between the Iroquois, who were supported by the British and the Dutch, and the French supported by an alliance of tribes from the Great Lakes Region, is one of the first major conflicts of the colonial era in North America. At the same time the British fought skirmishes with the Powhattan Confederacy among others. Alongside these tribal skirmishes, they had conflicts with the French and Dutch colonists. All of these conflicts were mostly for territory in the regions that were occupied by colonial powers or by the tribal confederacies or solo tribes. These colonial conflicts were shadowed by larger imperial conflicts in Europe, like the Thirty Years’ War, or other regional conflicts that occurred between the different states and empires.
By the end of the 17th century the colonial powers were politically consolidated in North American territories, but they were not established territorially. That only happened in the next two centuries, and for that to happen a lot of battles and wars would happen and a lot of men and women, colonists and natives, would die.
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