Before the Colonies
This Indigenous cultural region included the Powhatan peoples encountered by English settlers in Virginia.
What is the Atlantic Seaboard?
Established in Virginia in 1607, this English settlement began primarily as an investment.
What is Jamestown?
Rocky soil, forests, a short growing season, and excellent harbors characterized this colonial region.
What is New England?
A crop grown mainly for sale rather than for the farmer's own use.
What is a cash crop?
This Virginia institution, established in 1619, became an early elected representative assembly in the English colonies.
What is the House of Burgesses?
This leader used strict discipline and labor requirements to help the struggling Jamestown colony survive, as stated in his rule: "He that will not work shall not eat.”
Who is John Smith?
Cahokia, a large Indigenous urban and ceremonial center, belonged to this cultural region.
What is the Mississippi River Valley?
This English planter helped make tobacco profitable in Virginia after 1612, and later married Pocahontas.
Who is John Rolfe?
Fertile soil, navigable rivers, wheat farming, and major port cities earned this region a reputation as the colonial “breadbasket.”
What are the Middle Colonies?
Under this labor system, a person worked for a limited number of years, often in exchange for passage to the colonies.
What is indentured servitude?
Signed in 1620, this agreement committed Plymouth settlers to form a civil government and enact just laws.
What is the Mayflower Compact?
This brutal Atlantic voyage carried enslaved Africans to the Americas amid confinement, disease, violence, and high mortality.
What is the Middle Passage?
Caravels and carracks, improved navigational tools, and knowledge of wind systems all helped make this activity increasingly possible for Europeans.
What is transatlantic/oceanic exploration?
William Bradford was associated with this New England colony, founded by Separatists seeking a religious community and self-rule.
What is Plymouth?
Tobacco, rice, and indigo flourished in this region because of its warm climate and long growing season.
What are the Southern Colonies?
This economic system directed colonial trade toward enriching the mother country, with colonies supplying raw materials and buying manufactured goods.
What is mercantilism?
These local institutions allowed eligible New England community members to participate directly in decisions.
What are town meetings?
The first recorded Africans arrived in Virginia and the first elected representative assembly met at Jamestown during this pivotal year.
What is 1619?
Rocky deserts, dense forests, fertile river valleys, and abundant coastal resources produced different ways of life among Indigenous peoples because geography influenced this process.
What is human adaptation?
John Winthrop used the phrase “city upon a hill” while describing the kind of disciplined Christian community he hoped to build here.
What is Massachusetts Bay?
New England developed fishing, timber, shipping, and Atlantic trade rather than large plantation agriculture largely because of these two geographic features.
What are rocky soil and access to harbors/timber?
This term describes the simplified Atlantic trading model connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas through manufactured goods, raw materials, and enslaved people.
What is Triangular Trade?
Rhode Island, Maryland, and Pennsylvania experimented with different versions of this principle, although in colonial times it did not yet mean modern religious equality.
What is religious toleration/liberty of conscience?
In 1676, this early colonial insurrection was led by frontier settlers and former indentured servants against Governor William Berkeley and the planter elite.
What is Bacon's Rebellion?
Living in longhouses throughout the Northeast, this Indigenous people formed a powerful political alliance among several nations while adapting to the region's forests, waterways, and agricultural resources.
Who are the Iroquois?
Match all three founders to the colonial experiments they helped establish: Roger Williams, Lord Baltimore, and William Penn.
What are Rhode Island (Roger Williams), Maryland (Lord Baltimore), and Pennsylvania (William Penn)?
Complete the causal chain: fertile Southern land + long growing season → profitable cash crops + increased demand for these two things.
What are land and labor?
Unlike indentured servitude, this labor system became permanent, hereditary, and legally defined people as property.
What is racialized chattel slavery?
Distance from England helped encourage this development in the colonies, as settlers increasingly made local decisions through assemblies, compacts, councils, and town meetings.
What is local self-government?
Although tobacco dominated the Chesapeake and rice and indigo became important in the Carolinas, this highly profitable Caribbean cash crop helped drive the expansion of Atlantic trade and enslaved labor.
What is sugar?