Founders Of America
FROM THE EARLIEST MIGRATIONS
TO THE PRESENT
Francis Jennings
Such intrusion was beyond toleration by Louis XIV, “the Sun King,” who had taken personal charge of his government in 1661, intending to conquer a great empire and to rule it absolutely. He was as aggressive in North America as in Europe (though a mite thriftier) and his government took steps to stop the advance of those rude Carolinians. Thus, missions were founded at Cahokia (1699) and farther south where the Kaskaskia River falls into the Mississippi (1703).
Most important in terms of long-range strategy, the ministry chose Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville to campaign on the Gulf coast and in the Mississippi Valley to assure France’s control. Iberville was a veteran of such frontier struggles in New France. He promptly built Fort Maurepas (1699) at Biloxi (Mississippi), and laid the groundwork for a new colony of Louisiana which flourished in the eighteenth century and did indeed thrust the Carolinians back east of the Appalachians.
Ca. 1 Teotihuacán rose to prominence
500 Identifiable remains of Hohokam, Anasazi, and Mogollon peoples (in U.S. Southwest)
600 Beginnings of Cahokia (Ill.)
Ca. 750 Teotihuacán abandoned
Ca. 800 Mesoamericans in the Mississippi Valley; introduction to Mississippi Valley of improved variety of maize
900-1110 Toltecs flourished at Tula
1132 City of Texcoco founded according to Sahagún’s informants
1200 Probable maximum population of North American Indians
1000-1300 Anasazi communities flourished
1300 Most recent migration of Delawares from west to east; Mississippians withdrew southward; Onondaga culture showed marked change; Apacheans began to separate into tribes
1358 Tlatelolco founded
1390 Traditional origin date of the League of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois)
1400 Athapascans migrated to U.S. Southwest
1428 Alliance of Tenochtitlán, Tlatelolco, and Texcoco defeated Azcapotzalco
1430 Ruler Itzcoatl ordered destruction and substitution of Tenochtitlán’s records
1473 Tenochtitlán triumphed over Tlatelolco
1486 Huitzilopochtli’s new temple dedicated in Tenochtitlán
1490 Spain began to colonize the Canary Islands
1492 Columbus made landfall in the Caribbean Sea
1493 Pope Alexander VI granted Amerindian lands to the Spanish crown
1494 Columbus sent 500 enslaved Indians to the market in Seville; Rome was invaded by French King Charles VIII
1498 Census by Bartholomew Columbus listed 1,100,000 natives in half of Hispaniola
1500 Royal decree arrived in Hispaniola making Indians vassals of the crown, otherwise personally free; it was generally ignored
1502 Las Casas arrived in Hispaniola
1511 Montesinos preached against slavery on Hispaniola
1513 Balboa claimed for Spain the lands bordering the Pacific Ocean
1515 Las Casas converted to anti-slavery for Indians
1517 Martin Luther’s attack on Papal Indulgences
1518 Population of Central Mexico estimated at 25,200,000 by Borah and Cook
1519 Cortés landed on coast of Mexico
1520 Smallpox carried from Cuba to Mexico
1521 Ponce de León failed to conquer Florida
1525 Probable time of Apacheans’ arrival in U.S. Southwest; three of Cortés letters describing conquest published
1527 City of Rome plundered by army of Emperor Charles V
1534, 1535 Jacques Cartier voyaged and wintered among St. Lawrence Iroquoians
1536 Royal College of Santa Cruz founded in Mexico
1539 De Soto invaded Florida and the Gulf region
1540 Coronado invaded Acoma and other Pueblos
1551 Emperor Charles V founded the National University of Mexico
1559 Establishment of the Spanish Inquisition’s Index of forbidden books
1564 Beginning of the annual fleet of trading galleons from Mexico to the Philippines
1565 Menéndez massacred the French colony at Fort Caroline; San Agustin founded in Florida
1570 Jesuit mission founded and destroyed by local Indians on Chesapeake Bay
1571 The Inquisition came to New Spain; it had little interest in Indians
1579 Francis Drake’s Golden Hind harbored near San Francisco on its trip around the world
1580 By this year, 500 vessels per year took part in North American fisheries, making them one of Europe’s biggest industries
1585 Ralegh’s Roanoke colony founded
1588 The Netherlands and England defeated the Spanish “Invincible Armada”
1597 Guale Indians (of Georgia) rebelled against Spanish missions and were suppressed
1598 Juan de Oñate conquered the Rio Grande Pueblos; Philip II of Spain died
1607 Jamestown (Va.) founded
1608 Quebec founded
1609 Champlain aided Algonquins and Montagnais in war against Mohawks
1610 Santa Fé founded
1614 Dutch traders founded a year-round trading post on the upper Hudson River
1620 New Plymouth founded
1622 Powhatan rising against Virginia colony
1624 Dutch West India Company founded Manhattan and built Fort Orange (Albany, N.Y.)
1630 Massachusetts Bay founded
1632 Publication of Chronicles of Bernal Diaz del Castillo
1634 Maryland founded
1636 Massachusetts and Connecticut warred against Pequots; Harvard College founded
1638 New Sweden founded
1640 New Netherland’s Willem Kieft warred against surrounding tribes, and had to hire English mercenaries to win.
1642 Montreal founded; Maryland defeated Susquehannocks
1643 Susquehannocks, with Swedish help, defeated Maryland; Mayhew mission began on Martha’s Vineyard
1644 The second rising and suppression of the Powhatans
1646 Massachusetts founded John Eliot’s mission with Col. Daniel Gookin as administrator
1648 Semen Dezhnev’s voyage through the Bering Strait
1649-1655 Mohawks and Senecas broke up the Huron confederation and drove the people out of Ontario, after which they scattered the other Iroquoian tribes between lakes Erie and Ontario
1656 Jesuit mission founded near Ontario; Timucuans of Florida rebelled against missions and were suppressed
1658 Mohawks ruined the mission near Onondaga; Esopus Indians rose against New Netherland
1659 10,000 Florida Indians died of measles
1659-1660 Des Groseilliers and Radisson traded near Hudson Bay for the first time
1661 Louis XIV began personal rule
1664 Second Esopus rising; New Netherland conquered by Duke of York’s fleet
1666 De Tracy burned Mohawk villages
1668 Des Groseilliers sailed from England to Hudson Bay wintered there at “Charles Fort”; Fathers Claude Dablon and Jacques Marquette founded Mission Saulte Ste. Marie
1669 Praying Indians of Massachusetts attacked Mohawks and were defeated
1670 Charles Town (S.C.) founded; English crown chartered Hudson’s Bay Company
1671 Hudson’s Bay Company set up its first “factory”; Father Mar
quette founded Mission Saint-Ignace at Michilimackinac; Dau
mont de Saint-Lusson officially claimed the entire Northwest for France; a French trading post was set up to compete with the Hudson’s Bay Company
1673 Jolliet and Marquette found the Mississippi for the French, and canoed down it to Arkansas; Iroquois pleaded with Frontenac to save them from his rampaging allies
1674 Edmund Andros arrived as New York’s governor
1675 Intersocietal wars in New England and the Chesapeake Bay region
1677 The Covenant Chain founded
1680 South Carolina, with Shawnee allies, destroyed the Westos; Pueblos, outraged by efforts to ruin their religion, revolted, captured Santa Fe, and drove out Spaniards
1681 French crown chartered Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson; English crown chartered colony of Pennsylvania; proprietors of Carolina ordered trade in guns as means of creating tribal dependence
1682 La Salle cruised down the Mississippi River to its mouth; French took prisoner the crews of English ships in Hudson Bay; the Hudson’s Bay Company expanded from one post to three
1684 Onondaga chief Garangula humiliated New France’s Governor La Barre
1685 New York’s Governor Dongan sent a successful trading party from Albany to Michilimackinac
1686 French intercepted a large trading party from Albany (intending to go to Michilimackinac) and confiscated its goods; French seized all but one Hudson Bay English posts
1691 Jacques Le Tort’s expedition from Burlington (N.J.) via Susquehanna, Allegheny, Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers made contact with “over forty” native peoples
1692 Shawnee band, with Martin Chartier, arrived in Pennsylvania after leaving Tonty’s Fort St. Louis; Spaniards reconquered Pueblo Indians and restored Santa Fé
1698 Dr. Daniel Coxe planned a giant English colony to be called Carolana which would conflict with territories pre-empted by the French; it never came to anything
1699 Le Moyne de Iberville built Fort Maurepas at Biloxi (Miss.); French mission founded at Cahokia
1700 Hopis massacred male villagers of Awatovi who had decided to receive Spanish priests
1701 Iroquois made peace with New France and its allies; French founded Detroit; Iroquois refused to attack Detroit, but gave New York a
“deed” to it; William Penn treated with the Susquehannocks for trade and cession of their valley
1701-1713 Queen Anne’s War
1703 French mission founded at junction of Kaskaskia River with Mississippi
1708 By this date, Carolina traders had seized 10,000 to 12,000 Spanish mission Indians and had sold them into West Indian slavery
1710 Treaty at Conestoga between Pennsylvania and the Iroquois League was kept secret from New York
1711 Mobile (Ala.) made capital of Louisiana
1712 Dubuisson and allies massacred Foxes fleeing from Detroit; Tuscaroras warred against Virginia; large-scale immigration began to Pennsylvania from Rhineland and Ulster; Louis XIV gave Louisiana to Antoine Crozat
1715 Yamasees warred against South Carolina
1716 Louvigny led a trading expedition in the guise of war against the Foxes
1717 Antoine Crozat surrendered his profitless charter for Louisiana
1718 New Orleans founded as new capital of Louisiana; John Law given Louisiana as the Company of the Indies which soon went bankrupt ; Michel Bisaillon gave information to James Logan that stimulated the English Board of Trade to aggressive new policies; William Penn died in England
1724 Local French commander exterminated the Natchez nation to gain their lands; some survivors were given refuge and protection by the Chickasaws
1728 Vitus Bering’s voyage through Bering Strait
1730 French and allies massacred Foxes trekking eastward in hope of sanctuary among Iroquois
1731 Company of the Indies surrendered its Louisiana charter
1733 English colony of Georgia founded
1734 French defeated by Foxes and allies in battle of Butte des Morts
1737 Beauharnois made peace with Foxes under pressure from his Indian allies; the “Walking Purchase” took place in Pennsylvania
1738 Gaultier de La Vérendyre made the first official visit to the Mandans ; coureurs de bois had preceded him
1741 Bering’s voyage to mainland Alaska
1742 Acceding to Pennsylvania’s wishes, Onondaga Chief Canasatego ordered the Delawares off their land; he fabricated an Iroquois conquest supposedly making the Delawares into “women”; this became a support for the myth of a giant Iroquois “empire” over other Indians
1744 The Russian fur trade was extended to the Aleutian Islands
1744-1748 King George’s War
1749 Céloron de Blainville toured Ohio tribes to demand expulsion of Pennsylvania traders and was rebuffed
1750 The Ohio Company of Virginia formed
1752 Virginia’s treaty at Logstown (Ambridge, Pa.) with tribes resident in Ohio Country
1753 French expelled Pennsylvania’s traders from Ohio Country; George Washington took Virginia’s demand that French abandon their forts in the Ohio Country
1754 Washington capitulated to French at Fort Necessity; Albany Congress of English colonies with Iroquois
1754-1763 The Seven Years War (or “French and Indian War”)
1755 Braddock routed at Fort Duquesne; Vaudreuil instigated Indian raids on English outpost colonials
1758 At a treaty at Easton (Pa.), Delawares agreed to leave the French in return for a promise of a boundary line between Indians and colonials; Forbes captured Fort Duquesne
1763 Treaty of Paris took France out of North America by cession of claimed lands to Britain and Spain; “Pontiac’s Conspiracy” besieged British forts in the Old Northwest; Fort Pitt’s garrison created a smallpox epidemic among the Delawares; British crown proclaimed a boundary line between colonials and Indians
1769 Captain Will’s Shawnees captured Daniel Boone and freed him after confiscating his goods and gear; Spaniards founded Mission San Diego as the first in a series extending northward along the California coast
1773 Creeks ceded territory
1774 Lord Dunmore warred against the Shawnees; Iroquois refused to help them; Mingo James Logan’s family massacred; the Quebec Act legislated a boundary between English colonies and crown lands reserved to the Indians
1776 United States declared Independence; Cherokee rising suppressed by South Carolina and Virginia
1776-1783 The War for American Independence
1777 1778 The Battle of Oriskany set Iroquois against Iroquois; Iroquois grand council “covered the council fire”; Americans won the Battle of Saratoga Delawares proposed creation of an Indian state with themselves at its head; Congress ignored the proposal; Captain James Cook landed on Vancouver Island
1779 Sullivan’s army destroyed Iroquois towns
1783 Treaty of Paris recognized U.S. independence and ceded British territorial claims; it made no mention of Indian rights
1784 Treaty of Fort Stanwix between Iroquois and U.S.
1786 New Mexico’s Governor Bernardo de Galvez inaugurated policy of treaties and trade with Apacheans; Grigori Shelikhov began Russian conquest of Alaska
1787 Northwest Ordinance provided for organization of Old Northwest into States
1788 Kentucky lands claimed by Shawnees, ceded by Iroquois
1790 General Harmar’s army defeated by western Indian confederation ; the Trade and Intercourse Act enacted
1791 Vermont admitted as a State; General St. Clair’s army routed by western Indian confederation
1792 Kentucky admitted as a State
1794 Russian missionaries arrived on Kodiak Island; General Wayne defeated the western confederation at Fallen Timbers
1795 The Treaty of Greenville re-established a boundary between Indian territories and the U.S.
1796 Tennessee admitted as a State
1799 Russian American Company granted monopoly of fur trade; most Russian missionaries died in a shipwreck; Onondaga Handsome Lake had a vision that began the Longhouse religion
1802 Tlingit Indians destroyed New Archangel (Sitka)
1803 William Henry Harrison’s Treaty of Fort Wayne obtained cession of 1,152,000 acres under dubious circumstances; Napoleon Buonaparte sold the Louisiana Territory to the U.S.
1804-1806 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark explored the U.S. Northwest all the way to the Pacific Coast
1805 Tlingit Indians destroyed Yakutat
1807-1808 Black Hoof’s Shawnee farm and mission ruined by official decision after hopeful start
1811 William Henry Harrison defeated Tenskwatawa’s Shawnees and allies at Tippecanoe
1812-1815 “The War of 1812”
1813 William Henry Harrison defeated the British and Indian allies at the Battle of the Thames in which Tecumseh was killed
1814 Andrew Jackson defeated the Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, after which he forced cession of 20,000,000 acres
1815 Jackson and Lafitte won the Battle of New Orleans
1818 Jackson seized Pensacola (Florida)
1820-1823 Mexico became independent and abolished the legal status of “Indian” by absorbing it into “citizen”
1821 Stephen Austin brought “Anglos” to Texas; Hudson’s Bay Company acquired North West Company
1823 Oneidas settled at Green Bay
1825 Erie Canal opened
1830 President Jackson’s administration enacted the Indian Removal Law to force Indians west of the Mississippi; ultimatum given to Choctaws at Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek
1831 De Tocqueville observed Choctaws on their “trail of tears”
1833 Japanese junk wrecked near Queen Charlotte’s Island after drifting across the Pacific
1834-1836 California missions secularized by Mexico
1835 Cherokees, at Treaty of New Echota, accepted removal west of the Mississippi
1836 Cherokee “trail of tears”; Texas seceded from Mexico
1837 Seminole Chief Osceola was seized at treaty negotiations and imprisoned; he died in prison
1837-1838 Smallpox destroyed the Mandan Indians
1838 The “blatantly corrupt” purchase of Seneca land by the Ogden Land Company
1841 Migration began on the Oregon Trail
1842 Allegany and Cattaraugus reservations were confirmed to the Seneca Indians
1845 Texas admitted as a State
1846-1848 War between the United States and Mexico
1848 Mexico’s provinces north of the Rio Grande were ceded to the U.S. by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; most Senecas replaced their traditional hereditary government with elected officers; Tonawanda kept the traditional system
1849 The gold rush to California began
1854 Japan was opened to western trade by Admiral Matthew Perry
1857 Seminoles accepted a cash payment to move west; massacre at Mountain Meadows (Utah)
1861 Texas seceded from the United States to join the Confederate States
1861-1865 The Civil War in the United States
1867 Russia sold its North American colony to the U.S.
1869 Texas re-admitted to the United States
1870 Congress substituted “agreements” for “treaties”
1875 Comanches surrendered after war with the U.S.
1876 Massacre of Custer’s cavalry troop at Little Big Horn
1880 Full publication of Fr. Diego Durán’s manuscript about Mexican Indians
1887 The General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) passed
1890 U.S. Indian population at nadir; massacre of Chief Big Foot’s Sioux at Wounded Knee; U.S. census proclaimed “the end of the frontier”
1893 Oklahoma Territory opened to homesteaders; Spanish-American War and cession to U.S. of Philippines and Puerto Rico
1900 Hawaii annexed as a U.S. territory
1900-1910 18,000,000 acres of tribal lands taken by U.S.
1924 American Indians made U.S. citizens
1934 John Collier’s Indian Reorganization Act enacted
1946 The Philippines given independence by U.S. Congress; the Indian Claims Commission enacted
1950 BIA initiated a relocation program to move Indians from reservations to urban areas; by this date 13.4 percent of American Indians had become urban, mostly by personal action
1953 “Termination” begun with 13 tribes released from federal supervision ; American Society for Ethnohistory founded
1959 Hawaii admitted as the 50th State
1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act enacted
1973 “Wounded Knee II” on the Pine Ridge reservation; Menominee termination rescinded
1977 Final report of U.S. Congress American Indian Policy Review Commission
1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act enacted; U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Oliphant v. Suquamish leaned toward tribal termination
1982 English translation of Sahagún’s manuscript about the Aztecs completed and published
1990 At least half of U.S. Indians have become urban
Redbone Nation 
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