Colonial America E-Book

Richard Middleton

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 1433

Beschreibung

Colonial America: A History to 1763, 4th Edition provides updated and revised coverage of the background, founding, and development of the thirteen English North American colonies. * Fully revised and expanded fourth edition, with updated bibliography * Includes new coverage of the simultaneous development of French, Spanish, and Dutch colonies in North America, and extensively re-written and updated chapters on families and women * Features enhanced coverage of the English colony of Barbados and trans-Atlantic influences on colonial development * Provides a greater focus on the perspectives of Native Americans and their influences in shaping the development of the colonies

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

List of Figures

List of Maps

List of Documents

Preface to the Fourth Edition

Acknowledgments

Part I: Old and New Worlds Meet

Chapter 1: The Peoples of Eastern North America: Societies in Transition

1 America Before Columbus and the Problem of History

2 The Americas in Ancient Times

3 The Eastern Woodlands, 1000–1300

4 Eastern Woodlands Societies in Transition, 1300–1500

5 Earliest Contacts with Europeans

Chapter 2: The Age of European Exploration

1 Western Europe, 1300–1450

2 The Portuguese in Africa

3 Spain Encounters the New World

4 Sixteenth-Century European Competitors

5 England: The Elizabethan Prelude

Part II: The Seventeenth-Century Settlements

Chapter 3: The English Conquer Virginia, 1607–1660

1 Virginia Before the English

2 The Virginia Company: Early Settlement

3 The Charter of Liberties

4 The Massacre of 1622 and Fall of the Company

5 Growth and Consolidation, 1625–1660

Chapter 4: The Conquest Continues: New England, 1620–1660

1 New England Before the English

2 The Pilgrims

3 Massachusetts: A City on the Hill

4 Establishing and Defending Order

5 Challenges from England

6 Stable Societies

Chapter 5: Diverse Colonies: New France, New Netherland, Maryland, and the West Indies

1 New France

2 New Netherland and Delaware: The Dutch and Swedish Beginnings

3 Maryland: A Catholic Proprietary

4 English Colonies in the West Indies

Chapter 6: The Restoration Era

1 The Return of Charles II

2 Mercantilism: The Navigation Laws

3 New York Becomes an English Colony

4 The Carolinas: Early Settlement

Chapter 7: The Later Years of Charles II

1 Virginia: Bacon's Rebellion and Its Aftermath

2 Massachusetts: The Struggle to Remain Self-Governing

3 New Jersey and Pennsylvania: The Beginnings

Chapter 8: James II and the Glorious Revolution

1 The Dominion of New England

2 Massachusetts Reclaims Control

3 New York: Leisler's Rebellion

4 Maryland

5 Aftermath

Chapter 9: The Eras of William and Mary, and Queen Anne

1 William and Mary's Colonial Policy

2 The Salem Witchcraft Trials

3 War on the Northern Frontier, 1689–1713

4 War and Political Change in the Carolinas

5 Proprietary Problems in Pennsylvania and New Jersey

Part III: The Eighteenth-Century Provinces in a Changing Continent

Chapter 10: The Economy and Labor System in British North America

1 The British Atlantic Economy

2 The Southern Plantation System

3 Northern Farming and Commerce

4 The Mercantilist System

5 Money and Taxation

6 The Standard of Living: Poverty and Prosperity

Chapter 11: Settler Families and Society

1 New World Families

2 Children

3 Patriarchal Authority

4 Social Structure: Rank and Class

Chapter 12: White Women and Gender

1 Gender and the Settler Experience in the Seventeenth Century

2 Regional Variations

3 Gender in a Commercializing Culture: The Eighteenth-Century Refined Lady

4 Gender in a Commercializing Culture: Middling and Working White Women

Chapter 13: British North American Religion, Education, and Culture, 1689–1760

1 Religion

2 Education

3 The Anglicization of Taste

4 Libraries, Literature, and the Press

5 Science and the Arts

6 Popular Culture

Chapter 14: Slavery and the African American Experience, 1689–1760

1 Slavery: An Evolving Institution

2 Slaves' Experiences

3 The African American Family

4 African American Culture

5 Free African Americans

6 Resistance to Slavery

Chapter 15: Expanding Spanish and French Empires in North America

1 Florida

2 New Mexico

3 The Growth of New France

4 The French Upper Country, or Pays d'en Haut

5 Louisiana

6 Texas

7 Significance for the British Colonies

Chapter 16: Native American Societies and Cultures, 1689–1760

1 Native American Societies in the Eighteenth Century

2 The Nations of the Northern Frontier

3 The Nations of the Southern Frontier

4 Adaptation or Decline?

Chapter 17: Immigration and Expansion in British North America, 1714–1750

1 The Germans and Scots-Irish

2 The Founding of Georgia

3 The Urban Frontier

Chapter 18: British North American Institutions of Government

1 The Royal Framework

2 Local Government: Town Meeting and County Court

3 The Provincial Assembly: Crown versus People

4 Parties and Factions in the Age of Walpole

5 Toward a Republican Ideology

Chapter 19: Britain, France, and Spain: The Imperial Contest, 1739–1763

1 The War of Jenkins' Ear

2 The Struggle for the Ohio

3 The Conquest of Canada

4 The War's Consequences

Selected Bibliography

Index

This fourth edition first published 2011

© 2011 Richard Middleton and Anne Lombard

Edition history: Blackwell Publishing (1e, 1992; 2e, 2001; 3e, 2002)

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell's publishing program has been merged with Wiley's global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell

Registered Office

John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom

Editorial Offices

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA

9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK

The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.

The right of Richard Middleton and Anne Lombard to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks.

All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Middleton, Richard, 1941–

Colonial America: a history to 1763 / Richard Middleton and Anne Lombard. – 4th ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4051-9004-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. United States–History–Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775. I. Lombard, Anne S. II. Title.

E188.M52 2012

973.2–dc22

2010047220

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDFs [ISBN 9781444396270]; ePub [ISBN 9781444396287]

Figures

1 Cahokia mounds, circa 1150

2 The Indian town of Secotan, by John White

3 Indian hunter, by John White

4 Indians fishing, by John White

5 Indian man and woman preparing a meal, by John White

6 The Algonquian Indian village of Pomeiock

7 Roanoke and its vicinity, 1585, by John White

8 English colonists landing on the Potomac River in Virginia, 1634

9 An artist's impression of Jamestown, Virginia, 1607

10 Pocahontas in London

11 Portrait of John Winthrop

12 “Underhill's Diagram of the Pequot Fight”

13 First Maryland State House, 1634–1694

14 The Stadthuys of New York in 1679

15 William Penn's Treaty with the Indians

16 Portrait of King James II

17 The Salem witch trial (artist's reconstruction)

18 West Indian slaves processing indigo

19 Typical eighteenth-century kitchen hearth

20 Thomas Hancock House, Boston

21 Portrait of Mrs James Smith (Elizabeth Murray), 1769, by J. S. Copley

22 “A Westerly View of the Colledges . . . ” (Harvard College)

23 College of New Jersey (later Princeton University)

24 Portrait of Benjamin Franklin at the age of 54

25 Plan of slave ship The Brookes

26 Advertisement for a sale of slaves, 1769

27 “View of Mulberry, House and Street, 1805”

28 Advertisement for the return of a runaway slave, 1765

29 Portrait of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés

30 Portrait of Sagayenkwaraton

31 A draught of the Creek nation, 1757

32 View of Savannah, March 29, 1734

33 A Northeast View of Boston

34 Southeast Prospect of the City of Philadelphia

35 Portrait of Major General Robert Hunter

36 French map of North America, 1756

37 A view of Québec

38 The Death of General Wolfe, by Benjamin West

Maps

1 Eastern Woodlands coastal peoples, circa 1530–1608

2 The age of exploration

3 The Powhatan Confederacy in 1607

4 Seventeenth-century New England and New York

5 Major Indian peoples and European settlements in eastern North America, circa 1640

6 The English West Indies, 1660

7 The early Carolinas

8 Mid-seventeenth-century Maryland and Virginia

9 The middle colonies in the later seventeenth century

10 Eastern North America, 1715–1760

11 The provincial economy, 1700–1760

12 Africa as known to Europeans in the mid eighteenth century

13 Major British North American slaveholding regions

14 Stono Rebellion, South Carolina

15 Missions in Spanish Florida, circa 1674–1675

16 Spanish, French, and Indian settlements in the Gulf of Mexico in the mid eighteenth century

17 French claims in North America, circa 1700

18 The lower Mississippi Valley in the 1730s

19 Locations of major Indian peoples in eastern North America, circa 1750

20 Major Native American powers of the northern frontier, circa 1725

21 Major Native American powers of the southern frontier, circa 1725

22 Immigration and expansion, 1700–1760

23 The manors of New York

24 French-claimed, British-claimed, and disputed territory, 1755

25 The British offensive to secure the backcountry, 1755

26 The struggle for Canada, 1756–1760

Documents

1 The upbringing of children, Father Gabriel Sagard, 1632

2 The Indian method of warfare, Thomas Harriot, 1588

3 A first meeting with Europeans

4 License granted by Henry VII to John Cabot

5 John Rolfe's request for permission from Governor Sir Thomas Dale to marry Pocahontas, 1614

6 Formal constitution for a council and assembly in Virginia, July 24, 1621

7 The Mayflower Compact, November 1620

8 The examination of Mrs Hutchinson, November 1637

9 A call for Indian unity by Chief Miantonomo, 1642

10 An Act Concerning Religion

11 The Duke's Laws, April 2, 1664

12 Declaration of Nathaniel Bacon in the name of the people of Virginia, July 30, 1676

13 The Bill of Rights, 1689

14 Recantation of the women of Andover and Confession of Sarah Carrier, aged seven, 1692

15 Benjamin Franklin on the Protestant ethic: the advice of Poor Richard

16 Benjamin Franklin, “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c.” (1751, published 1755)

17 An Act to Enable Femes Coverts to Convey Their Estates, Georgia, 1760

18 Benjamin Franklin on George Whitefield

19 On training to be a lawyer: the early career of John Adams, 1758

20 A slave market, circa 1755

21 “Afro-Floridians to the Spanish King, 1738”

22 A suspected African rising prevented, 1680

23 The Iroquois reject English missionaries, circa 1710

24 The Micmacs ridicule the French, 1677

25 An attempt to cheat Indians of their lands, New Jersey, 1716

26 Gottlieb Mittelberger on the perils of crossing the Atlantic, 1750

27 Lord Cornbury instructed to obtain a permanent salary, 1703

28 The Albany plan of union, 1754

Preface to the Fourth Edition

This book tells the story of the British North American colonies, from the initial encounters between Europeans and the Native Americans who lived here in the sixteenth century to the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, when Great Britain won political control over most of the territory in North America east of the Mississippi and north of the Gulf of Mexico.

Since the first edition of this book appeared in 1992, historical scholarship about this story has been substantially revised. History is always a work in progress, and the need to understand America's origins has been a compelling one for each generation of scholars. Not long ago the main objective of historians studying the colonial period was to understand the political and economic institutions created by British North Americans and their place in the development of democratic capitalist societies. Historians' focus, therefore, was mostly upon the Englishmen who settled in North America between 1607 and 1776 and the societies that they created.

Over time the scope of historians' questions about early British American history broadened. Scholars began to look not only at the roots of political democracy and social mobility but also at the origins of institutions such as slavery and indentured servitude. Assumptions about the impact of individuals on the historical process began to be questioned as historians realized that historical change is often shaped more by the unintentional consequences of interactions between many actors than by the intentional actions of a few. Rather than implicitly assuming that the only European colonists to influence North American history were men, researchers began to focus upon the impacts of European women on colonial development. Scholars became increasingly interested in the millions of Africans who were transported to the Americas during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, asking how their presence and their actions shaped the societies of which they became a part. Perhaps the most fruitful new questions concerned the millions of indigenous Americans who were killed, displaced, or assimilated into European-American societies as the colonies developed.

But these have not been the only changes. Since the ending of the Cold War in the early 1990s, scholarship on British colonial North America has experienced something of a paradigm shift as historians began to consider their findings in the light of globalization. Rather than focusing on the internal dynamics of particular societies, scholars have increasingly begun to consider the ways in which cross-border interactions have shaped the historical process. New questions have been raised about the contest between the English colonizers and indigenous American peoples for control of the land. More attention has also been paid to the efforts of competing European powers to gain ascendancy in North America. How did British competition with the Spanish, French, and Dutch for control of the population, territory, trade, commodity production, and naval dominance shape the growth of the English-speaking colonies? Another result of this paradigm shift has been the greater scrutiny of the transoceanic flow of commodities, pathogens, crops, livestock, and migrants. What were their impact on the economies, societies, and political institutions of communities on both sides of the Atlantic?

These changing trends in historical scholarship have inevitably been reflected in the evolution of this book. The first edition explained the political and institutional development of the early American colonies while also describing the lives of European-American women and families, African-Americans, and indigenous North American peoples during the colonial period. The second edition, in 1996, added newer scholarship about the history of indigenous peoples before the colonies began. The third edition, in 2002, provided more background on the transnational competition of England, France, and Spain for control over North America in the eighteenth century.

This new, fourth edition broadens the topic still further, incorporating a multiplicity of perspectives on colonial America. While we have retained much of the book's original focus on the origins and development of the British colonies in North America, we show that their creation was the product of interactions between a variety of peoples and nations with distinct histories, interests, and objectives. The story told here is not so much about the planting of English seeds in North American soil and their growth into American institutions, as about the many different groups of Europeans, Africans, and indigenous North Americans who competed as well as cooperated to gain control of North American resources. Their interactions transformed traditional legal, political, and social institutions and created a dynamic New World unlike the worlds in which any of these peoples, or their ancestors, had lived.

To make it easier for students to understand the implications of the new scholarship on colonial America, we have made some changes to the structure of the book. In Part I, to help students understand how transatlantic interactions between western Europeans, West Africans, and indigenous North Americans contributed to the creation of new societies in colonial America, we take a brief look at western European, African, and Native American societies before the fifteenth century Atlantic seagoing voyages that brought these three continents into sustained contact with one another. In Part II, we have sought to incorporate new findings about how Native American peoples influenced and responded to the colonizing process from the beginning. We chronicle their roles in shaping the earliest colonies, explore the origins and outcomes of major Indian wars and rebellions, and explain their roles in the various imperial wars fought on the continent before 1713. In addition, consistent with the broader geographical focus of recent scholarship, we have added new sections on the development of slavery in the British West Indies and the founding and expansion of New France.

Part III provides a topical rather than a chronological account of the economic, social, cultural, and political changes that took place within (and on the borders of) British North America during the eighteenth century. Our own respective backgrounds, one as a scholar of political and military history and the other as a scholar of the history of gender and society, have informed our reframing of sections on Anglo-American women and families, and the section on the Seven Years War and the Indian wars that grew out of it. These chapters suggest that families' childbearing and economic decisions contributed to the growing North American demand for British goods that in turn helped convince the British government to invest in the defense of its North American possessions during the 1750s. We have extensively updated and rearranged chapters on Native Americans and the borderlands so as to highlight the roles played by Native Americans along with their French and Spanish allies in shaping the imperial contest for control over North America during the eighteenth century. We end the book not with the beginning of the American Revolution, but with the Seven Years War and the culmination of that long imperial contest in 1763.

This edition, like previous ones, provides a number of pedagogical tools designed to help students understand history as an interpretive process. To show how historical inquiry evolves, chapters feature brief discussions not only of the kinds of interpretive questions historians have asked about the period or a topic but also of how approaches to these questions have changed. Footnotes have also been provided in order to highlight new research questions and explain the evolution of particular historical debates. To encourage students to consider the relationship between primary sources and historical interpretation, we have included 28 primary source excerpts, along with questions to provoke discussion and analysis. We include a timeline at the beginning of each chapter so as to reinforce students' understanding of relationships between events across time, illustrations to give students a visual sense of the world they are learning about, and a total of 26 maps to help students place the peoples of colonial North America into a geographical context. Finally, we have compiled a selected bibliography to provide students with suggestions for further reading on topics of current historical interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the help of Peter Arnade, Jessie Cammack, and the anonymous reviewers of this book for their comments and suggestions on various drafts of this new edition, or portions thereof, and thank Paul Mapp for generously sharing his unpublished manuscript. We are also grateful to all the students who offered suggestions regarding the book's contents, particularly Patricia Manley and Craig Frame. The editorial staff at Wiley-Blackwell was immensely helpful and professional. We would especially like to thank Peter Coveney, Galen Smith, and Jacqueline Harvey.

The authors and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book:

Document 2: From Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ed., Major Problems in American Colonial History: Documents and Essays (Lexington, Mass., 1993), 13. Paper, 1E © 1993 Wadsworth, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc. Reproduced by permission.

Document 5: From Warren M. Billings, The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606–1689 (Chapel Hill, 1975), 216–19. Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture © 1975 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher.

Document 8: From Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, edited by Lawrence Shaw Mayo (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), Vol. 2, 368, 370, 383–4. Copyright © 1936 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1964 by Lawrence Shaw Mayo. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Document 9: From Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ed., Major Problems in American Colonial History: Documents and Essays (Lexington, Mass., 1993), 135. Paper, 1E © 1993 Wadsworth, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc. Reproduced by permission.

Document 14: From Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, edited by Lawrence Shaw Mayo (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), Vol. 2, 31–2, 34. Copyright ©1936 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1964 by Lawrence Shaw Mayo. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Document 16: From The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Leonard W. Labaree et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), Vol. 4, 225–34.

Document 19: From The Adams Papers: Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, Diary 1755–1770, edited by L. H. Butterfield, Leonard C. Faber, and Wendell D. Garrett (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), Vol. 1, 54–5. Copyright © 1961 by the Massachusetts Historical Society. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Document 20: From Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ed., Major Problems in American Colonial History: Documents and Essays (Lexington, Mass., 1993), 454. Paper, 1E © 1993 Wadsworth, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc. Reproduced by permission.

Document 22: From Warren M. Billings, The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606–1689 (Chapel Hill, 1975), 160. Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture © 1975 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher.

Document 23: From Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ed., Major Problems in American Colonial History: Documents and Essays (Lexington, Mass., 1993), 489. Paper, 1E © 1993 Wadsworth, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc. Reproduced by permission.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

Part I

Old and New Worlds Meet

Chapter 1

The Peoples of Eastern North America

Societies in Transition

30,000–11,000 BCEIndian peoples migrate to North America from Asia via the Bering Strait.11,000 BCEThe land bridge disappears as the climate warms.5000 BCEAgriculture begins to develop in Tehuacan Valley, Mexico.1200 BCEThe first Mesoamerican civilization, the Olmecs, emerges.500 BCEMayan civilization flourishes.500 BCE–400 CEAdena and Hopewell cultures develop in the Ohio Valley.600 CEThe Mississippi mound builders emerge.1000 CEEastern Woodlands societies adopt agriculture.1200 CEThe city of Cahokia's population numbers around 30,000.1300 CEThe “Little Ice Age” begins.1400 CEThe Mississippi mound builders disappear. Warfare becomes common among the Eastern Woodlands peoples.1450 CEThe Iroquois form the League of Five Nations.

1 America Before Columbus and the Problem of History

THE STORY OF the North American British colonies begins in America. For well over 12,000 years before Columbus made his accidental landfall in the Bahamas, people had been living on the North and South American continents, where they had created agricultural societies and complex cultures, developed political systems, fought wars, and formed alliances. When Europeans began to arrive, first in 1492 and then with increasing frequency during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was these indigenous American people who decided whether the newcomers would be welcomed to stay or forced to flee for their lives. Native Americans would make key decisions that shaped diplomatic relationships, influenced the kinds of colonial societies that could be built in North America, and changed the course of empires. To understand how they influenced the colonial process – to understand why they behaved as they did – we need to begin with their story.

The problem for historians is how to tell that story. Unlike peoples who had developed a written language, the original Americans left no written records. Although surviving oral traditions can tell us a great deal about Native American origin stories and collective memories, they are far removed in time from the events they describe. Of course Europeans, once they arrived and began observing Native American peoples, produced all sorts of written records: descriptions, memoirs, pictures, maps, and other kinds of documents. All of these have provided historians with additional sources about Native American societies. But the testimony of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europeans about their encounters with indigenous Americans is deeply problematic as a source for twenty-first-century historians. Fifteenth-century Europeans had never imagined that the American continents existed, much less that there were people who had lived here for over 11,000 years. Thus when European observers like Christopher Columbus, Hernando de Soto, Jacques Cartier, and John White tried to understand who these people were and why they acted as they did, they were unable to comprehend this new world except in the context of their own experiences. The lens through which they viewed the Americas produced thousands of distortions and mistakes. Indeed the very term “Indian” was applied because Columbus was mistakenly convinced that he had arrived in Asia.1

The inaccuracies that crept into the earliest European records of encounters with Native Americans in North America have persisted in shaping the way we imagine the past. For example, one of the most commonly asserted misrepresentations of Native American peoples in the early modern era was that they were simple primitives, people who had not yet been caught up in the historical processes that were transforming the rest of the world by the end of the fifteenth century.2 In the past many historians unwittingly contributed to this distortion by portraying the Indians as the helpless victims of European colonizers who had superior technology, broader worldly experience, and more lethal diseases.

More recently, however, historians have used a range of sources that go beyond conventional written records to reconstruct the histories of indigenous American peoples in North America the arrival of Europeans. Evidence about climate change has allowed historians to estimate the dates of various changes in the North American environment, while archaeological evidence has provided information about the kinds of societies indigenous peoples developed as they adapted to these changes. Evidence about the behavior of Native Americans after the arrival of Europeans has been re-examined alongside the oral traditions of contemporary Native American peoples and the findings of ethnographers so as to understand that behavior in the context of their own cultural traditions and experiences. These sources have enabled historians to understand that the economies, cultures, and political relationships of Native Americans on the eastern seaboard of North America had already undergone a wrenching historical transformation over the 500 years between approximately 1000 and 1500 CE. Well before Columbus arrived on American shores, millions of Native American peoples had been swept up by a saga of war, diaspora, relocation, and rebirth, decades before any contemporary European even dreamed that they existed.