The Thirteen Colonies

A colony is a settlement ruled by a faraway home country. A colonist lives there. England claimed land in North America, but Native nations already lived on that land.

A plan to make money

England wanted wealth, land, power and places to spread its faith. Investors paid into the Virginia Company, hoping to earn a profit. King James I gave the company a charter, written permission to start a colony, in 1606.

Three ships carried settlers across the Atlantic: the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery. In May 1607, 104 men and boys settled beside Virginia's James River. They named Jamestown for their king. It became the first permanent English settlement in North America. Permanent means it lasted. Spanish St. Augustine, founded in 1565, was older. An earlier English settlement at Roanoke had failed.

Why people went hungry

The riverside site helped defend against Spanish ships. Yet the swampy ground and dirty, sometimes salty water made people sick. Many settlers lacked farming skills. Searching for gold also took time away from growing food.

John Smith led the colony from 1608. He required settlers to work and traded for Powhatan corn. After an injury, he left in 1609. The winter of 1609–1610 became the Starving Time. Several troubles came together:

• Drought damaged crops, and little food was stored.
• A supply ship wrecked near Bermuda.
• English demands for corn caused fighting with Powhatan's people.
• Powhatan warriors kept settlers inside the fort.

People ate horses, dogs, rats and leather. Counts differ, but one common estimate falls from about 500 people to about 60. New supply ships arrived in 1610 just as survivors were leaving. They stayed.

Tobacco changed the colony

In 1612 John Rolfe began growing tobacco that English buyers liked. A cash crop is grown mainly to sell. It can be food, such as wheat, or another crop, such as tobacco.

Follow what happened: buyers wanted tobacco; growing tobacco brought money; more settlers arrived. Tobacco helped the colony last, but growers wanted more Native land and more workers. Earning money created new pressures on people nearby.

The first English women arrived in 1608. About 90 women recruited to marry settlers arrived in 1620. Families helped turn a fort into a lasting community. In 1624 the king canceled the company's charter and took direct control of Virginia.

Jamestown stood inside Tsenacomoco, a homeland along Virginia's rivers. About 30 Native groups spoke related Algonquian languages there. The English entered a place with towns, farms and leaders already in charge.

A powerful neighbor

Wahunsenacawh, called Chief Powhatan by the English, led these groups. A paramount chief is a leader over other chiefs. Communities gave him tribute, such as corn and deer hides. The word Powhatan can name the leader, his town or his people. Notice which meaning fits a sentence.

Women grew corn, beans and squash. They built houses from bent saplings and mats. Men hunted, fished and defended their towns. Rivers helped people travel and find food.

At first, Powhatan's people were far stronger than the small English settlement. Wahunsenacawh chose to trade. His people wanted copper, metal tools and beads. The English needed corn. He may also have hoped the newcomers would become useful allies.

One food supply, two needs

During droughts, Powhatan families had less corn to spare. The English kept demanding it and sometimes took it by force. Imagine a store of corn meant to feed a town through winter. Taking it helped hungry settlers, but left Native families with less food. Their fears and choices belong in the story too.

Pocahontas was a real person

Pocahontas was Wahunsenacawh's daughter, born around 1596. She was about 11 when the English arrived. Her names included Amonute and Matoaka; Pocahontas was a nickname. She visited Jamestown as a girl.

John Smith later wrote that she saved his life in 1607. He left this out of his first account. Historians question whether it happened as he described. A movie romance between them is false: she was a child and he was an adult.

English colonists kidnapped her in 1613 and held her for ransom. While captive, she learned English ways and was baptized Rebecca. She married John Rolfe in 1614, and peace followed for a time. Mattaponi oral history tells parts of her experience differently from English accounts.

In 1616 she traveled to England with Rolfe and their son, Thomas. She became ill and died there in 1617, around age 21. After Wahunsenacawh died in 1618, his brother Opechancanough became the main leader. Tobacco farms kept spreading across Powhatan land.

The Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic in 1620. Many wanted to worship freely. Others wanted work or a fresh start. The passengers did not all have the same beliefs.

Leaving England and the Netherlands

England expected people to belong to the Church of England. Separatists wanted to leave that church. Their secret meetings could bring fines or jail. Around 1608, a group moved to the Netherlands, where they could worship freely.

Work there was hard. Parents also worried that their children were losing English ways. The group decided to move again. Investors helped pay for a voyage to North America.

The Mayflower carried 102 passengers, including children. Many passengers were not Separatists. William Bradford called some of them strangers. The name Pilgrims came later and now often means the whole group.

A hard voyage and winter

The Speedwell, a second ship, leaked and turned back. The Mayflower sailed alone. It left England on September 6, 1620 and reached Cape Cod on November 11. These are the dates in the old English calendar. The crossing took 66 days in crowded, damp spaces.

The settlers had permission to settle near the Hudson River, in land then called northern Virginia. Rough water turned them back toward Cape Cod. That put them outside their permission's area. They needed an agreement about rules: the Mayflower Compact.

In December they chose Plymouth, with a harbor, fresh water and cleared fields. These were the former fields of Patuxet, a Wampanoag town. The land had a history before the newcomers saw it.

Many people stayed on the ship while houses were built. Cold, hunger and sickness killed about half the passengers. About 50 remained by spring. None returned with the ship in April 1621.

Compare two beginnings

Jamestown came 13 years before Plymouth. Both depended on nearby Native people. Seeking freedom to worship did not mean the Pilgrims promised religious freedom to everyone.

After John Carver died in 1621, Bradford became governor. He served for about 30 years in all and wrote Plymouth's history. Plymouth later joined Massachusetts in 1691. Pilgrims wore colors, too; the all-black outfits in some pictures are misleading.

The Wampanoag, or People of the First Light, have lived in southeastern Massachusetts and eastern Rhode Island for more than 10,000 years. Their communities farmed, fished and hunted. Leaders called sachems guided them.

Before Plymouth

In 1614 an English captain, Thomas Hunt, kidnapped Native men to sell in Spain. One was Tisquantum, also called Squanto, from Patuxet. He escaped, reached England and learned English. When he came home in 1619, his town was gone.

Disease had swept the coast from 1616 to 1619. In some places, two of every three people or more died. Plymouth's cleared fields belonged to Patuxet. They were signs of Native farming, not an untouched wilderness.

Why make an alliance?

In March 1621 Samoset, an Abenaki leader, greeted the settlers in English. He helped bring Tisquantum and Ousamequin, the Wampanoag leader. The English called Ousamequin Massasoit, a title meaning great leader.

Ousamequin and Governor John Carver made a treaty, a formal agreement. It promised peace and help against attacks. Ousamequin's people had been weakened by sickness. Their Narragansett rivals had suffered less. English allies with guns could help protect the Wampanoag.

The written treaty also favored the English in important ways. It required Ousamequin to send Wampanoag offenders to the English for punishment. Wampanoag visitors were to leave their weapons behind. Friendship did not mean equal power in every part of the agreement.

Tisquantum helped settlers plant corn in spring 1621, with fish to feed the soil. This happened after the first winter. The fall harvest grew from Native knowledge used on Native fields.

What happened at the gathering?

About 90 Wampanoag men joined about 50 English people for three days in fall 1621. The Wampanoag brought five deer. English hunters brought wild birds, and the harvest supplied corn. Edward Winslow's account does not say the Wampanoag were invited.

People there did not call it the First Thanksgiving. That name appeared in 1841. The national Thanksgiving holiday began in 1863. The 1621 gathering was a meeting of allies, each with its own needs.

Peace lasted more than 50 years, then broke down in 1675. Wampanoag voices tell of lost lives and homelands as well as help and trade. Some Native people have marked a National Day of Mourning at Plymouth since 1970. Wampanoag nations, including Mashpee and Aquinnah, continue today.

Both Pilgrims and Puritans wanted to worship their own way. Their plans for the Church of England were different. Separatists left it. Puritans wanted to change it while remaining part of it.

Building Massachusetts Bay

In 1630 John Winthrop led about 700 Puritans to Massachusetts Bay. They founded Boston. Many came with whole families, useful skills and savings. By about 1640, roughly 20,000 English newcomers had reached New England. This movement is called the Great Migration.

Winthrop wanted their community to be an example for others. His image of a city on a hill meant everyone would watch how they lived. Leaders tried to build a community following their understanding of God's rules.

The meetinghouse stood at the center of town life. People attended long Sunday church services. Leaders punished behavior they considered sinful. For many years, only male church members could vote in colony elections. Harvard College began in 1636, partly to train ministers.

Freedom for whom?

Puritan leaders did not welcome all beliefs. People who challenged their religious rules could be punished or forced out. A person seeking religious freedom could still refuse that freedom to someone else.

Roger Williams argued that government should not punish religious beliefs. He also said colonists should pay Native nations for land. Massachusetts ordered him out in 1635. Narragansett people helped him. In 1636 he founded Providence, and Rhode Island welcomed many faiths.

Anne Hutchinson held religious discussions in her home. She challenged the ministers' teachings and said people could know God's will without relying on them. Leaders also objected to a woman teaching men. After a trial in 1637, she was ordered out and moved to Rhode Island.

Towns became colonies

Thomas Hooker led families to Hartford in 1636. They wanted good farmland and more say in their affairs. Their settlements helped form Connecticut. New Hampshire grew from fishing and trading settlements begun in 1623, with later arrivals from Massachusetts.

Follow one chain: strict religious rules caused disagreements; some people left; new towns grew into new colonies. Rhode Island and Connecticut had different beginnings even though both drew settlers from Massachusetts. Williams emphasized religious freedom; Hooker's followers also wanted land and a stronger voice in government.

The thirteen colonies stretched along North America's Atlantic coast. The ocean lay east; the Appalachian Mountains lay west. England joined Scotland in 1707 to form Great Britain, so the English colonies later became British colonies.

Sort the regions

Read down the table to follow the coast from north to south. Four New England colonies, four Middle Colonies and five Southern Colonies make thirteen. Maine belonged to Massachusetts. Vermont was not one of the thirteen. Florida was Spanish until 1763, then British for about 20 years, but it was not one of this group.

Faith, land and profit

Virginia began with Jamestown in 1607. Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay grew from religious settlement. New Hampshire began with fishing and trade. Roger Williams helped start Rhode Island; Thomas Hooker's followers helped start Connecticut.

The Calvert family, called the Lords Baltimore, started Maryland in 1634. They wanted income from land and a safe home for English Catholics. Its 1649 law protected different kinds of Christians, not every belief.

New York began as Dutch New Netherland in 1624. New Amsterdam stood on Manhattan Island. The English took over in 1664 and renamed it for the Duke of York. He gave New Jersey to John Berkeley and George Carteret. They had supported the king's family and hoped to earn rent from settlers.

Delaware began as New Sweden in 1638 under Peter Minuit. The New Sweden Company sought furs and tobacco. Dutch rule followed, then English rule.

King Charles II paid a family debt by granting land to William Penn in 1681. Penn's Pennsylvania welcomed Quakers and other faiths. Quakers believed people were equal before God and opposed war. Some had been jailed in England.

The southernmost colonies

In 1663 Charles II granted Carolina to eight wealthy supporters. They hoped to make money. Charles Town began in 1670. Carolina divided into North and South Carolina in the early 1700s.

James Oglethorpe and other leaders received Georgia's charter in 1732. They founded Savannah in 1733 with help from Tomochichi, a Yamacraw leader. Georgia offered poor English people a fresh start and helped defend South Carolina against Spanish Florida. Few settlers came from prison.

A founding date can mean a charter, first settlement or change of ruler. For Georgia, 1732 means the charter and 1733 means Savannah. Say which event a date names. Colonies also had several purposes: Maryland combined faith with profit.

Picture a small farm with rocky fields near a busy harbor. In New England, farms, forests and the ocean all helped people earn a living.

Farming through short summers

Long, cold winters left a short growing season: the warm months when crops can grow. Much soil was thin and rocky. This made very large crop farms harder to run.

Most families still farmed. They grew corn, rye, beans, squash and apples. They kept cows, pigs and sheep. Subsistence farming means growing food mainly for your own household. Small farms supported families even where farming earned little money.

From forests to ships

Deep harbors offered places to build and launch ships. Forests supplied materials. Tall white pines became masts; oak became strong hulls. Shipbuilding was an industry, a kind of business doing similar work.

Fishing crews caught cod. Salt helped fish last through a voyage, so merchants could sell it far away. Whalers hunted whales for oil used in lamps. Fast rivers and nearby forests also supported work on land.

Follow a ship's materials: a tree is cut in the forest; workers shape the wood; builders fit the pieces together at a harbor. The finished ship can carry fish or lumber to buyers. One resource supports several kinds of work.

Boston became a busy port. Merchants, people who buy and sell goods, traded fish, lumber and ships with England and the West Indies. Ships returned with goods such as sugar and molasses. Some New England ships also carried enslaved people. Northern trade was connected to slavery.

Living close together

Many people lived in towns with a green and meetinghouse. Schools came later in many places. Blacksmiths, shoemakers and barrel makers served nearby families. Town life made it easier to attend church and discuss local needs together.

The land was also home to the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Pequot, Mohegan, Nipmuc and Abenaki nations. As colonial towns expanded, they took over Native homelands.

Rich soil and milder winters helped Middle Colony farms produce extra grain. Rivers connected those farms to mills and ports. People called the region the bread colonies.

From field to market

The growing season was longer than New England's. Farmers grew wheat, rye, barley and corn. They could sell what their families did not need.

Imagine a Pennsylvania family's wheat harvest. First, the family grows wheat in rich soil. Next, a mill grinds the grain into flour. A wagon or boat carries the flour to Philadelphia. Finally, a merchant ships it to buyers, including people in the West Indies. Farming, milling and shipping all earn income from the same crop.

Wide rivers, including the Hudson and Delaware, reached inland. Boats could move heavy goods toward the sea. Moving water also turned mill wheels. Gristmills ground grain; sawmills cut lumber. Ironworks produced tools and pots. Farms and towns needed these skilled workers.

Busy ports and many peoples

New York and Philadelphia became busy ports. By the 1770s Philadelphia was the largest city in the thirteen colonies. Traders in New York also bought furs from Native nations, especially the Haudenosaunee.

English, Dutch, Swedish, German and Scots-Irish settlers lived in the region, along with Africans. People followed many faiths, including Quaker, Lutheran, Catholic and Jewish traditions. Earlier Dutch settlement had attracted people from several places. William Penn's welcome to different faiths also drew newcomers.

Diversity means having people with different backgrounds and ways of life. It helped shape the region's towns, languages and worship. It did not mean everyone was treated equally. Enslaved people worked here too, especially in cities such as New York.

Whose homeland?

The Lenape, also called the Delaware, lived across much of New Jersey, Delaware and eastern Pennsylvania. Other Native nations included the Haudenosaunee and Susquehannock. Colonial farming and trade grew within their homelands.

The word Middle tells you where the region lay along the colonial coast. It does not place these colonies in the center of today's United States. Nor does the name bread colonies mean farming was everyone's job: port workers, millers and craftspeople mattered too.

Warm weather gave the Southern Colonies a long growing season. Rich coastal soil and broad rivers supported crops for distant markets. Farther west, the backcountry held forests, hills and small farms.

Crops for sale

Virginia and Maryland grew tobacco. Wet lowlands in South Carolina and Georgia supported rice. South Carolina also grew indigo, a plant used to make blue dye. North Carolina's pine forests supplied tar and pitch to help keep ships watertight.

A plantation was a very large farm growing crops mainly for sale. It could have barns, workshops, the owner's home and cabins for enslaved people. Early tobacco growers used many indentured servants, who worked for a set time. Later, owners forced more enslaved people to do the work for life.

Tobacco and rice took many hours of labor. Planters wanted the profit without paying free workers. They helped build and defend laws that let them hold people as property. Warm weather allowed crops to grow; it did not require people to enslave others. Slavery grew through human choices and power.

Africans brought important skills, including knowledge of rice farming. Their forced work made planters wealthy. By 1708 more than half of South Carolina's population was of African descent, nearly all enslaved.

Rivers changed settlement

A broad river could bring a ship straight to a plantation dock. Workers loaded tobacco there, so every farm did not need a nearby port town. Families lived farther apart than in many New England towns.

Charles Town, now Charleston, was a major exception. Rice and indigo exports made it the South's busiest port. A port is a place where ships load and unload goods.

More than plantations

Most white Southerners did not own plantations. Many worked small farms, growing food and some tobacco. Backcountry life differed from life on a rich coastal estate. Even so, wealthy plantation owners held much of the region's political power.

The Powhatan peoples, Cherokee, Catawba, Muscogee, Tuscarora and Yamasee were among the region's Native nations. Deerskins were an important trade good. As farms spread, colonists demanded more Native land.

A strong comparison does more than name a region's jobs. It connects work and daily life with reasons. Start by choosing the same topic for all three regions.

Compare one topic at a time

Most settlers in New England came from England. The Middle Colonies had the most mixed population. A large share of the South's people were enslaved Africans. These are regional patterns: people within each region had different lives.

Build an answer step by step

Suppose you compare New England and the South's settlement patterns.

1. Name the difference: New England had many close towns; Southern farms were more spread out.
2. Add a reason: New England families gathered around churches and local services. Southern plantations used river docks to ship crops directly.
3. Include an exception: Charles Town still became a large Southern port.

What did they share?

Most people in all three regions farmed. All were ruled by the English, later British, crown. All stood on Native homelands, and all sent goods overseas. Slavery was legal in every one of the thirteen colonies by the 1750s.

The regions also depended on each other. A New England ship could carry Southern tobacco. Middle Colony grain could feed people overseas. Colonists exported raw goods and bought finished cloth and tools from England.

Land and choices both mattered

Rocky soil made large crop farms difficult in New England. It helped make fishing and ships useful sources of income. Yet soil cannot explain why a colony welcomed several faiths or denied someone freedom. Religious rules, trade plans and decisions to enslave people also shaped society.

Native nations made their own decisions about the newcomers. There was no single Native side. A nation might trade with colonists, ally with them against a rival, or fight them to protect its homeland.

Learning and trading

Colonists learned to grow corn, beans and squash from Native people. They used Native trails and traveled by canoe. Names such as Massachusetts also came from Native languages.

Trade connected different needs. Native people exchanged furs, deerskins and food for metal pots, knives, cloth and guns. Europeans wanted beaver fur for hats. Trade could help both groups, but dependence on imported tools also gave traders power.

Disease changed the balance of power. Europeans brought illnesses such as smallpox. Native communities had little protection against these new diseases. Many people died, leaving fewer people to farm, care for families and defend homelands.

Different ideas about land

Many Native communities shared rights to use land and cared for it together. English colonists often expected one owner to fence, sell or keep others off a piece of land. These ideas varied, but a written agreement could mean different things to its signers.

Imagine an agreement to use a riverside field. A Native leader might expect both communities to share access. An English settler might expect the Native community to leave. The disagreement changes who can plant, fish or hunt there.

Other troubles were plain acts of harm. Colonists' pigs and cows ate Native crops. Clearing forests removed hunting grounds. More ships kept bringing settlers who wanted farms.

Pennsylvania changed over time

William Penn paid Lenape leaders for land and made agreements with them. These deeds are real records. The famous story of a treaty under a tree at Shackamaxon in 1682 has no surviving record from that time.

Penn's sons later used unfair methods. In the Walking Purchase of 1737, they claimed land as far as someone could walk in a day and a half. The Lenape expected an ordinary walk. The Penns used fast walkers and a cleared path, taking about 1,200 square miles.

Trade did not keep peace when colonists kept taking land and food. In Virginia and Connecticut, different struggles grew into wars. To understand each one, find its causes, the groups involved and what changed.

Three wars in Virginia

The Powhatan Wars took place in 1609–1614, 1622–1632 and 1644–1646. The first grew from English demands for food. It ended after Pocahontas married John Rolfe.

Later, tobacco farms spread across Powhatan land. Opechancanough tried to drive the settlers out. On March 22, 1622, his people attacked settlements, killing about 350 of roughly 1,200 colonists. The English answered with years of attacks on Native towns and cornfields. Destroying crops made whole families go hungry.

Opechancanough led another attack in 1644. The English captured him, and he was killed. The 1646 treaty made Powhatan peoples pay tribute to the English and live on smaller lands. The Pamunkey and Mattaponi are among the nations that continue in Virginia today.

War in Pequot country

In what is now Connecticut, the Pequot competed with English and Dutch traders and other Native nations. Furs and wampum, shell beads, were important trade goods. More English settlers moved into the Connecticut River valley. Killings on both sides helped bring war in 1636.

The Mohegan and Narragansett joined the English against their Pequot rivals. Native nations did not all make the same choice. An alliance could serve one nation's goals while harming another.

In May 1637 English soldiers and allies surrounded a Pequot fort near the Mystic River. The English set it on fire. About 400 Pequot people died, including many women and children. Some English allies were shocked. Most fighting ended that year; a treaty followed in 1638.

The English tried to break up the Pequot nation. Survivors were placed under other nations, and some were enslaved and shipped away. The Pequot survived. Mashantucket Pequot and Eastern Pequot people live in Connecticut today.

Connect causes and results

In Virginia, spreading tobacco farms increased pressure on Native land. In Connecticut, trade competition and new settlements helped drive war. Both ended with terrible losses and less Native control over land. Neither story ends with Native people disappearing.

A war can have causes that build for years and a trigger that brings fighting soon afterward. King Philip's War shows why you need both to explain what happened.

Pressure after a long peace

The 1621 Wampanoag treaty lasted more than 50 years. During those years, English settlement grew from a few dozen people to many thousands. Wampanoag land shrank.

Ousamequin died around 1660. His son Metacom, called King Philip by the English, became sachem in 1662 after his brother Wamsutta died. Plymouth claimed power over his people. In 1671 its leaders made him surrender guns. Colonists wanted more land, and missionaries pressed Native people to give up their ways.

What set off fighting?

John Sassamon, a Christian Native man who had warned the English about Metacom, was found dead in 1675. Plymouth tried three Wampanoag men for his killing and hanged them in June. War followed within weeks.

The trials were a trigger. Pressure over land and power had built much earlier. Imagine a timeline: years of lost land come first; the trial comes near the start of fighting. Naming only the trial leaves out why tensions were already so high.

Many nations, heavy losses

Nipmuc people joined the fighting against colonists. Narragansett people joined after an English attack in 1675. Mohegan forces fought on the English side. The war is also called Metacom's War.

In December 1675 the English attacked a Narragansett town in a Rhode Island swamp. This Great Swamp Fight killed many people. Metacom was killed in August 1676. Fighting ended in southern New England, though it continued longer farther north.

Estimates put the dead at about 600 colonists and 3,000 Native people. Many towns burned. Hundreds of Native captives were sold into slavery overseas. Metacom's wife and young son were captured. Native nations lost much of their land and power, but Wampanoag, Narragansett and Nipmuc peoples survived.

Compare other places and accounts

Similar pressures caused Southern wars. The Tuscarora fought Carolina settlers in 1711–1715. Yamasee and allied nations fought South Carolina in 1715–1717. Land loss, dishonest traders and the capture of people for slavery helped cause them.

An English account might celebrate a victory. A Native account might describe a massacre and lost homes. Ask who made the account and whose experience it describes. Include colonists' losses without leaving out the Native loss of homelands.

Slavery treats people as property and forces them to work without freedom to leave. Enslaved people were people with families, skills and hopes. Slavery was something done to them.

Africans forced to Virginia

In August 1619 the White Lion reached Point Comfort, Virginia, carrying more than 20 Africans. They had been captured in Ndongo, in present-day Angola. English raiders took them from a slave ship bound for Spanish colonies. The crew exchanged them for food.

These were the first Africans recorded in English Virginia, not the first in all of today's United States. Africans had already lived in Spanish lands, including Florida. Angela, another African woman brought to Virginia in 1619, was forced to work in a Jamestown household.

Servants and enslaved people

At first, many tobacco workers were English indentured servants. A contract usually required four to seven years of work in return for travel, food and shelter. Many signed willingly, though their work could be harsh.

A contract ending in 1664 gave a servant a date to expect freedom. An enslaved worker had no such end date.

Early Virginia law did not yet fix every African person's status. Some gained freedom. Anthony Johnson arrived as a captive around 1621 and later became a free landowner. His experience does not mean later enslaved people had the same chances.

Laws closed paths to freedom

Massachusetts wrote slavery into law in 1641. Virginia's 1662 law made a child's status follow the mother. A child born to an enslaved mother was enslaved even if the father was free. By 1705 Virginia law treated enslaved people as property for life.

Owners wanted workers they could hold permanently. Fewer English servants arrived in the late 1600s, and laws tied slavery to African ancestry. Profit and political choices helped slavery grow. Captives from many African nations endured crowded Atlantic crossings and were sold on arrival.

Slavery existed in all thirteen colonies, including Northern homes, shops and docks. Southern plantations held far more enslaved people. By 1770 about one in five people in the colonies was of African descent, most enslaved.

Georgia banned slavery in 1735, but settlers demanded it to grow rich like Carolina's planters. The ban ended in 1751. The change shows that lawmakers could choose to allow or forbid slavery.

Enslaved people helped build the colonies through farming, crafts and care work. They also raised families, shared stories and fought for freedom. Their lives were more than the work owners forced them to do.

Work and stolen wealth

Many worked from sunrise to dark in tobacco, rice or indigo fields. Rice fields were hot, wet and dangerous. Others cooked, cared for children or worked as blacksmiths, carpenters and boat pilots. Owners used violence to control them.

Africans brought farming and building knowledge. Rice-growing skills from West Africa helped make South Carolina rich. Yet enslaved workers could not keep the wealth their work created. Skills did not protect them from slavery.

Family and culture

Parents cared for children and passed on names, stories and knowledge. Colonial law did not protect enslaved marriages. An owner could sell a parent or child away. Families faced separation even while trying to keep their bonds strong.

Small children carried water, watched babies and pulled weeds. As they grew, they were forced into harder work. Few could attend school. A South Carolina law in 1740 punished people who taught enslaved people to write.

People from different African nations shared traditions and created new ones. Songs, stories, rice dishes, okra and instruments helped carry culture across generations. The banjo grew from West African instruments. Gullah Geechee language and culture continue along the Southern coast today.

Fighting back took many forms

Resistance means opposing unfair power. Some people worked slowly, broke tools or learned to read secretly. Others escaped, seeking family, hiding places or freedom. All these actions could bring harsh punishment.

Some tried to reach Spanish Florida. Spain offered freedom under conditions, including becoming Catholic; men could also be required to serve in the military. The journey was dangerous and freedom was not guaranteed simply by crossing a border.

On September 9, 1739, about 20 enslaved people began the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina. They took weapons and marched toward Florida; others joined. Colonists stopped the uprising that day, and many people died. Harsher laws followed.

People also challenged slavery in writing

In 1688 Germantown Quakers wrote a protest against slavery. They challenged people who wanted freedom for themselves while denying it to others. Slavery continued despite the protest.

For many children, home was also a workplace. Most colonial families farmed. Your day could include carrying water, collecting eggs and helping prepare food before any reading lesson.

Heat, light and food

Many homes had only one or two rooms. The hearth, or fireplace, gave heat and light and cooked meals. Families carried water from a well or stream. There was no running water or electricity.

Iron pots held stews over the fire. Families ate bread, corn mush, vegetables in season, salted meat and fish. Corn became a basic food through Native farming knowledge.

With no freezer, fresh meat would spoil. Salt and smoke helped preserve it for later. Families made some candles from animal fat and some soap from fat and ashes. They bought or traded for other supplies. Some spun wool and flax into thread, while many bought imported cloth and sewed their own clothes. Home work and trade fitted together.

Everyone had work

Men and older boys often plowed, cut wood and tended animals. Women and older girls often cooked, gardened, sewed, made butter and cared for babies. These tasks could change with a family's needs. A missed job could mean less food, fuel or clothing.

Women had few legal rights. Husbands generally controlled married women's property. Women could not vote, even though their work was vital. Some worked as midwives, helping with births; some widows ran farms and shops.

Young children might fetch water or watch siblings from about age five. Around seven or eight, they took larger jobs. Small boys and girls often wore long gowns before dressing more like adults around age six.

Illness made life risky. Many children died young, and parents could die too. Neighbors or relatives often cared for children after a parent's death. New England families commonly had six or more children.

Home depended on who you were

A New England household might live near a town green. A German family in Pennsylvania might use a stone farmhouse and a large barn. Wealthy plantation owners lived in large houses while enslaved families lived in small cabins nearby.

Wampanoag families lived in homes called wetus, made from bent saplings covered with bark or mats. They moved with the seasons to fish, plant and hunt.

Colonial children learned in several ways. A classroom was only one possibility. Family work, stories and training with skilled workers taught many useful things.

Reading at home and school

Many children learned at home in winter or evenings. The Bible was a common book. Early Plymouth had no school.

A hornbook was a board with letters and a prayer on a sheet. A thin, clear layer of horn protected it. Children held its handle to study. A dame school met in a woman's home, where young children learned letters and reading. Families often paid a small fee.

Puritans wanted people to read the Bible. Massachusetts's 1647 law required a teacher in towns with 50 households. Towns with 100 households needed a grammar school, which prepared boys for further study. A town with 75 households therefore needed a teacher, though it had not reached the grammar-school threshold.

From about 1690, the New England Primer taught reading with religious rhymes. One began, “In Adam's Fall / We sinned all.” Lessons joined letters with religious belief.

School was not equal for everyone

Scattered Southern farms made shared schools harder to reach. Wealthy families could hire tutors or send sons to England. Boys generally received more schooling than girls. Many girls learned reading but less writing. Poor children might have little schooling at all.

Enslaved children were usually kept from school and learned survival skills from family. Wampanoag children learned from parents and Elders through stories and practice. Fishing, farming and toolmaking needed careful learning too.

Learning a trade

An apprentice lived and worked with a skilled worker to learn a job. Training often began in the early teens and lasted about seven years. The master supplied food, housing and teaching. The apprentice supplied work.

Printing apprentices learned to set type and run a press. Blacksmith apprentices learned to shape iron. Benjamin Franklin started training with his printer brother in Boston at age 12. Apprenticeship was training for a trade, not just a reading lesson.

Finding time for fun

Children played marbles, leapfrog and Nine Men's Morris. They rolled hoops, told riddles and played with cloth dolls called poppets. Strict Puritan families limited play, especially on Sundays.

Who makes rules when the ruler lives across an ocean? Colonial settlers faced that problem. Ships could take two months to cross about 3,000 miles. Everyday decisions could not always wait for England.

Different ways to govern

A government is the people and rules running a community. In a monarchy, a king or queen rules. Self-government means people make decisions for their own community. In representative government, voters choose people to make decisions for them.

The colonies remained under England's king, but settlers made many local rules. English people already knew Parliament shared power with the king. Some people elected the House of Commons. Nobles and bishops sat in the unelected House of Lords. Only a small part of England's population could vote.

A problem aboard the Mayflower

The Mayflower reached Cape Cod in November 1620. The settlers' paper allowed settlement farther south, in an area then called northern Virginia. At Cape Cod, some passengers argued that the old permission could not control them.

The passengers needed rules everyone would obey. On November 11, using the old English calendar, 41 men signed the Mayflower Compact aboard the ship. A compact is an agreement. They promised to form a government, make fair laws for the community's good and obey those laws. They then chose John Carver as governor.

How agreement gives authority

Suppose people in a new settlement face a dispute over shared work. If no one accepts the leader's right to decide, work may stop. An agreement to choose leaders and follow shared laws gives them a way to act together.

This is consent of the governed: the people being governed agree to the government's authority. The Compact became a famous early example of that idea in English North America.

Who was included?

The agreement did not include everyone. Women were on the ship but did not sign. Native people whose homeland the settlers entered were not part of it. The Compact also declared loyalty to King James. It did not make Plymouth independent.

The Compact was a short promise to form a government. It was not a full constitution laying out many offices and powers.

A town meeting lets voters decide face to face. A larger colony needs another way to hear from its settlements. Virginia began choosing people to carry local voices to an assembly.

Why the company allowed an assembly

The Virginia Company wanted more people to settle in its colony. In 1618 it promised new rights, including an assembly, a group meeting to make decisions or laws. Giving settlers a voice could make Virginia more appealing.

On July 30, 1619, elected men met in Jamestown's church with Governor George Yeardley and his council. There were 22 burgesses, two chosen by each of eleven settlements. Burgess meant a representative for a town or area. This beginning is remembered as the start of the House of Burgesses, the first elected lawmaking body in English North America.

How representation worked

Free men in each settlement chose burgesses to speak for them. The voters did not all travel to Jamestown to decide every law. Their chosen representatives did that work.

Imagine your class choosing two students for a school council. Your class gives those students a voice on its behalf. That is the basic idea of representation, though colonial voting rules were far less equal than a classroom vote.

The first assembly lasted about six days. Sickness and summer heat shortened it. It passed laws about tobacco, Native trade, church attendance, gambling and swearing. Lawmakers dealt with work, trade and behavior as well as money.

Power had limits

The governor could call the assembly together or end its meeting. The Virginia Company could overrule it; later the king could reject laws. In 1670 Virginia limited voting to landowning men.

An elected assembly therefore shared power with authorities chosen elsewhere. Having local lawmakers did not mean the colony ruled itself completely.

Two events in 1619

In July, Virginia's first elected assembly met. In August, Africans were brought by force to Point Comfort. Political freedom expanded for some while others faced bondage in the same colony.

The House and the Mayflower Compact did different jobs. The Compact was a promise to form a government and obey laws. The House was a body of chosen lawmakers. Other colonies later built their own elected assemblies, giving voters more experience in choosing representatives.

A town meeting brought New England voters together to discuss local needs. They could debate roads, fences, schools, taxes or a minister. Then voters decided for themselves.

Direct or representative?

Imagine a town deciding whether to repair its meetinghouse roof. Voters discuss the cost and raise their hands. That is direct democracy: voters decide the question directly. If they choose lawmakers who decide it later, that is representative government.

Towns also elected selectmen to manage business between meetings. Close settlements made meetings easier. Scattered Southern farms were harder to gather, so leading landowners usually ran county affairs.

Who chose the governor?

By the 1770s the thirteen colonies included eight royal, three proprietary and two self-governing colonies. Even royal colonies usually had elected assemblies. A king-chosen governor and voter-chosen lawmakers could hold power in the same place.

Assemblies often controlled taxes, giving them a strong voice. Connecticut towns wrote the Fundamental Orders in 1639, setting out a plan for government. Different colonies developed different ways to manage their affairs.

Ask who could vote

Colonial voters were usually free adult white men who owned land. Early Massachusetts also required church membership for colony voting. Rules varied, but women, enslaved people, Native people, servants and most poor men were generally excluded.

Consider a woman who runs a shop and pays taxes. Her work supports the town, but she still has no vote. Or consider an enslaved carpenter repairing the meetinghouse: his work does not give him a say inside it. Helping a community and sharing its political power were different things.

Self-government gave some farmers and shopkeepers practice in debating, voting and making laws. It left most people without an equal voice. When you compare governments, ask both how decisions were made and who was allowed to take part.