Search Results: Colonial America

Pre-Colonial North America (also known as Pre-Columbian, Prehistoric, and Precontact) is the period between the migration of the Paleo-Indians to the region between 40,000-14,000 years ago and contact between indigenous tribes and European...

Pets in Colonial America were kept by the colonists for the same reasons they were in Europe: for companionship and, in the case of dogs, for protection, hunting, and herding. Cats controlled vermin in homes and barns until the 18th century...

Slavery in Colonial America, defined as white English settlers enslaving Africans, began in 1640 in the Jamestown Colony of Virginia but had already been embraced as policy prior to that date with the enslavement and deportation of Native...

African slave life in Colonial British America was far worse than slavery practiced in the Americas prior to the arrival of Europeans. The indigenous tribes took people as slaves in raids, enslaved those convicted of crimes, and traded slaves...

Religion and superstition went hand in hand in Colonial America, and one’s belief in the first confirmed the validity of the second. The colonists' worldview was completely informed by religion and so everything that happened - good or bad...

Life in Colonial America was difficult and often short but the colonists made the best of their situation in the hopes of a better life for themselves and their families. The early English colonists, used to purchasing what they needed, found...

The most important cash crop in Colonial America was tobacco, first cultivated by the English at their Jamestown Colony of Virginia in 1610 CE by the merchant John Rolfe (l. 1585-1622 CE). Tobacco grew in the wild prior to this time and was...

Religion in Colonial America was dominated by Christianity although Judaism was practiced in small communities after 1654. Christian denominations included Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Congregationalists, German Pietists, Lutherans, Methodists...

The apparatus of colonial government in the Spanish Empire consisted of multiple levels, starting with the monarchy and Council of the Indies at the top and moving down to the viceroy, audiencias, mayors, and local councils. The system was...

Slavery was practiced by the Native Americans before any Europeans arrived in the region. People of one tribe could be taken by another for a variety of reasons but, whatever the reason, it was understood that the enslaved had done something...