1600-1754: Native Americans: Chronology

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1600-1754

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1600-1754

1614

• The Dutch establish Fort Nassau near present-day Albany, New York, and begin a trading alliance known as the Covenant Chain with the League of the Iroquois, a confederacy of five tribes.

1622

• The Powhatan Confederacy attacks Jamestown, and the resulting war rages intermittently until a treaty is signed in 1646.

1624

• Over the next four years the League of the Iroquois pushes the Mahicans (or Mohicans) east of the Hudson River.

1637

• The Pequot War begins in New England, and the colonists nearly exterminate the tribe.

1648

• The Iroquois launch a massive attack on the Hurons of Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay. Within a year dozens of Huron villages are destroyed and hundreds of their residents killed. The remaining Hurons flee west and gain sanctuary among the Ottawas.

1659

• According to a Spanish report approximately ten thousand Timucuans die of measles in Florida.

1660

• By the end of the Beaver Wars the Iroquois have destroyed the Hurons, Petuns, Neutrals, and Eries as political entities and adopted the captives and refugees from these tribes into their confederacy.

1663

• The Susquehannocks begin a series of raids into the heart of Iroquois country that lasts for the next thirteen years.

1675

• Metacom’s War (also known as King Philip’s War) begins in New England. When the war ends the next year, 10 percent of the adult male colonial population is dead.

1676

• Virginia colonists defeat the Susquehannocks, and the survivors seek refuge among the Iroquois and Delawares.

1677

• The League of the Iroquois and the colony of New York form a Covenant Chain.

1680

• The Pueblo Indians of present-day New Mexico revolt against the Spanish, driving them out for nine years.
• The western Iroquois attack the Illinois tribes.

1682

• René Cavelier de La Salle claims the Mississippi River valley for France and, three years later, stakes France’s claim to land on the Gulf of Mexico.
• William Penn signs a treaty with the Delawares, opening a period of peace between Quakers and native peoples of the Middle Colonies.
• The governor of New France, Joseph-Antoine Le Febvre de La Barre, leads an army of eight hundred men to upstate New York in order to subdue the Iroquois; the campaign is a complete fiasco.

1683

• The estimated strength of the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy is twenty-eight hundred warriors.

1687

• Two thousand troops led by Jacques-Réné de Brisay, Marquis de Denonville, the governor of New France, attack the Sénecas in upstate New York, destroying villages and food supplies.

1689

• King William’s War begins, the first in a series of conflicts among the French, Spanish, English, and their respective Native American allies; it ends in 1697.

1695

• The first Pima uprising against the Spanish in northern Mexico occurs.

1701

• The League of the Iroquois and New France sign a peace treaty.

1702

• Queen Anne’s War begins; it ends eleven years later.

1711

• The Tuscarora War, a two-year conflict, breaks out in North Carolina.

1715

• The Yamasee attack white settlements but are eventually expelled from South Carolina.

1720

• Warfare erupts in the Mississippi River Delta region and goes on intermittently for the next thirty-two years, pitting Chickasaws against Choctaws and their French allies.

1722

• The Tuscaroras become the sixth nation of the Iroquois Confederacy. (They do not receive full membership until 1750.)

1729

• The French governor of Louisiana orders the Natchez to transform their principal town into a plantation for his use. The ensuing revolt leads to the virtual extinction of the Natchez people.

1734

• After three decades of sporadic fighting the French finally defeat the Fox tribe of Green Bay (on Lake Michigan).

1735

• Pennsylvania governor Thomas Penn produces a fraudulent document that states the Delaware tribe agreed in 1686 to sell their lands as far west as a man could walk in a day and a half. Penn organizes a relay of three men who run sixty miles in the prescribed time, and the Delawares are forced to cede twelve hundred square miles of land in what becomes known as the Walking Purchase.

1738

• A smallpox epidemic spreads among Native American villages from North Carolina to western Canada.

1739

• The War of Jenkins’ Ear begins and lasts until 1742.

1740

• Gen. James E. Oglethorpe’s raid on Spanish-controlled Saint Augustine results in the formation of a Creek settlement near present-day Gainesville, Florida, the nucleus of early Seminole towns.

1744

• King George’s War begins; it ends four years later.
• In the Treaty of Lancaster the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy claim suzerainty over the Delawares and sell their lands between the Susquehanna River and Allegheny Mountains to the colony of Pennsylvania.

1746

• A typhoid epidemic afflicts the Micmacs of Nova Scotia.

1749

• Pierre-Joseph de Céloron de Blainville leads an expedition down the Ohio River. Aside from claiming the area for France and expelling Anglo-American traders, he attempts to improve relations with the Native American tribes in the area.

1751

• A second Pima uprising occurs against the Spanish.

1752

• The French trader Charles Langlade and 250 Ottawas and Ojibwas from the Great Lakes raid the Miami village of Pickawillany (modern Piqua, Ohio) and destroy its British trading post.

1754

• Delegates from seven British colonies north of Virginia meet at Albany to discuss a proposal for colonial confederation. The Albany Congress also devises policies regarding military defense and relations with native peoples.
• The French and Indian War plunges the North American continent into a global conflict.