GymL_BaJ (& RuM) America | USA – First Colonies USA 1

History of America | USA

1. First Colonies, First Settlers
First Settlers: The Pilgrims
Task 1: • Read the text below and highlight or summarize the most important aspects. Think about
answering the questions who, what, where, when, why and how?
• What were some of the reasons people decided to leave their homes for the New World?
The English founded their first permanent colony, Jamestown, in Chesapeake Bay
in 1607. The French followed with their own colony, Quebec, in 1608, and soon after
the Dutch began to settle in the region that became present-day New York. Within
another generation, the Plymouth Company (1620), the Massachusetts Bay
Company (1629), the Company of New France (1627), and the Dutch West India
Company (1621) began to send thousands of colonists to North America: the
French built up large territories along the Saint Lawrence River, the Dutch along
the Hudson River, and the English in Virginia and Massachusetts.
Religious groups such as the Puritans and the Quakers felt that they had to leave
England because they were not allowed to practise their religion freely. The most
famous group, the Pilgrim Fathers, left Plymouth on board the Mayflower and
arrived at Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts, in November 1620. The hope of finding
gold and treasure attracted explorers and adventurers. Pamphlets (see picture)
encouraged new emigrants and described America as a paradise. Thus Englishmen,
Frenchmen, Germans, Scots, Irishmen, Dutchmen and Swedes crossed the Atlantic
Ocean in search of rich, fertile lands and a better life in the colonies.
Only a few colonists could finance their trip for themselves and their families to Pamphlet by Robert Johnson, London, 1609
make a start in the New World. In many cases, their transportation was paid for by ship captains, merchants and
landowners who needed workers. In return, immigrants had to work as unpaid and unfree labourers, called
indentured servants, usually for four to seven years. It has been estimated that half the settlers living in the
colonies south of New England came to America under this system. Indentured servants signed a contract to work
for an employer in another country. The employer then paid for that person’s passage to the new country. During
the 17th century, most of the white workers in Maryland and Virginia came from England as indentured servants.
They sold themselves to an agent or ship captain before leaving Britain who then sold them to a buyer in the
colonies. Most indentured servants were young, single males in their teens or twenties. They typically worked for
somebody for seven years; in most cases as household servants or unskilled workers on farms and plantations. In
theory, the person only sold his or her labour. In practice, however, indentured servants were basically slaves. The
treatment of the servant was harsh and often brutal.
The system developed because of the labour shortage in the colonies: The plantations USEFUL VOCABULARY:
th th
in Virginia needed a lot of workers. In the course of the 17 and 18 centuries, settler: Siedler
however, the white servants were more and more replaced with African slaves. fertile: fruchtbar
merchant: Kaufmann
KEY TERMS:
labourer: Arbeitskraft, Arbeiter
Colony: A country or area that is settled, conquered or controlled
to estimate: schätzen
by another, more powerful, country which uses the colony’s
resources to increase its own power or wealth. Often, the local
native population of a colony did not enjoy full rights. Many were Pilgrim Fathers: A group of Puritans who emigrated to
forced into slave labour or driven out of their homes. Their land North America in 1620 because they wanted to separate
was sometimes taken and given to settlers from the ruling from the Church of England. They founded Plymouth
country. Foreign customs, religions or legal systems were Colony, the first permanent colony in New England. They
imposed. were on the pursuit of Utopia – a new Jerusalem.
Puritans: English Protestants who wanted to ‘purify’ the Church Indentured servitude (see also text): A form of labour in
of England and make it less like the Catholic Church. They which a person signs a contract to work without salary for a
wanted church services to be simple and plain and churches to specified number of years. A person could sign such a
look plainer too, without crosses, candles, pictures and statues. contract voluntarily (= out of their own free will) – e.g. in
Some Puritans believed they should show their religion by living return for a good or service like a voyage or a piece of land –,
very simply. They wore simple, dark clothes, worked hard and but often, they had to sign to ‘pay’ a debt or as a form of
disapproved of pleasures like dancing and theatre-going. In punishment by law. This form of labour has often been
England, the Puritans weren’t allowed to live and practise their compared to slavery, although there are differences.
 GymLi_RuM Northern America – Colonies become America USA 2

Task 2: Analyse the source text below:

• What were the hopes and fears of the Pilgrim Fathers before sailing to the New World?
• US highschool textbooks still include sentences like: “The early European settlers found an
empty wilderness.” Do you think Bradford’s account can serve as evidence for this
statement?

William Bradford, one of the leaders of the group of Pilgrims known as the "Pilgrim Fathers'; described
their hopes and fears before sailing to the new land in his book History of Plymouth Plantation:
The place we had thoughts on were some of those should be in never ending danger of the savage
vast and un-peopled countries of America. 10 people, little different from wild beasts, who not
Although fertile, they are without civilized only kill men, but torment them in the most
inhabitants. This idea [to go to those places] bloody manner that may be imagined. We agreed
5 caused many doubts and fears among us. Some that the dangers were great, but though they were
objected, saying that the length of the voyage was likely, yet they were not certain. And all of them,
such as the weak bodies of women and old people 15 through the help of God, by strength and patience,
would never be able to endure. And once there we could be borne and overcome.
William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation (1630}, in: David D. Hall (ed.). Puritans in the New World. Princeton
University Press, 2004,from: www.pupress.princeton.edu/ chaptersls7738.html, 10 September 2005. Abridged and
simplified.

Task 3: Read and discuss the content of the source text below.
What role would Puritanism play in the new colonies? USEFUL VOCABULARY:
to object: entgegnen, sich gg.
etwas/jmd. auflehnen
John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, gave a
to endure ertragen, aushalten
sermon ‘A Model of Christian Charity’, 1630:
savage: wild, ein Wilder
For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of to tormen: quälen, peinigen
all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in to bear > tob e borne: ertragen,
this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His aushalten
present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through
5 the world.

John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity,” in A Library of American

Literature: Early Colonial Literature, 1607-1675, Edmund Clarence Stedman
and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson, eds. (New York: 1892), 304-307.
GymL_BaJ (& RuM) America | USA – First Colonies USA 1

Slavery in the colonies: shiploads of unfree labourers

Task 4: • Read the text below and study the tables on the next page.
• Describe the development of tobacco imports from Virginia.
• Compare the growth of the tobacco exports with the development of slavery and draw
conclusions: What was the difference between indentured servants and slaves?
The first black Africans were brought to Virginia in 1619, just 72 years after the founding of Jamestown. In the
beginning, many were seen as "servants" who could earn their freedom just like the white indentured servants. In
1664, however, the colony of Maryland declared that all blacks and their children in the colony would "serve for
life". Virginia soon followed the example. From then on, more and more black slaves worked on the booming
tobacco plantations in Virginia and Maryland instead of white indentured servants. Although some slaves lived as
household servants in the Middle Atlantic and New England colonies, the majority of slaves worked on the cotton,
tobacco and rice plantations in the southern colonies of Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia.

Tobacco exports from Virginia, 1616-1775 (in pounds) VOCABULARY TALKING ABOUT STATISTICS:
Year Tobacco exports Figures increased/rose/went up…
1616 2,300 There was an increase/a rise in…
1617 20,000 Figures decreased/dropped/fell…
1618 50,000 There was a decrease/drop/fall in…
1622 60,000
Figures remained steady…
1626 300,000
to rise sharply / dramatically / slightly /
1639 1,500,000 gradually…
1700 20,000,000
to rise by … per cent/by 100,000
1775 100,000,000

Slave population of Virginia, 1619-1860

Year Number of slaves Number of total Percentage of
population enslaved
1619 20 1,000 2.0
1625 23 1,232 1.8
1648 300 15,000 2.0
1670 2,000 40,000 5.0
1700 8,000 58,000 13.7
1750 120,000 231,000 51.9
1800 339,796 807,557 42.1
1820 411,886 938,261 43.9
1840 431,873 1,025,227 42.1
1860 472,494 1,219,630 38.7
www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_tobacco_slavery.htm;
www.economics.ucr.edu/papers/papers03/03-12.pdf;
www.eh.net/encyclopedia/?article=wahl.slavery.us, 10 September 2005.
GymL_BaJ (& RuM) America | USA – First Colonies USA 1

Task 5: Study the map paying attention to territorial expansion, trading routes and points of contact
between different peoples.