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Parkman, Francis (1823-1893), American historian, an authoritative historical writer on the struggle between France and England for dominance in colonial America. He was born in Boston. After graduating from Harvard University in 1844, Parkman entered Harvard Law School and earned a degree in 1846. He then set out on the Oregon Trail to explore the American West. During this famous journey, which took him on the overland route from western Missouri to Oregon, he observed several Native American peoples and lived with the Sioux. He published an account of his travels in The Oregon Trail (1849) and became a respected authority in his field.
Although plagued by ill health made worse by the hardships of travel, Parkman continued to study and write. In 1851 he published History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac, the first volume in France and England in North America, a series of connected works. Other volumes in the series include The Pioneers of France in the New World (1865), The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century (1867), The Old Régime in Canada (1874), La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West (1869), Count Frontenac and New France Under Louis XIV (1877), Montcalm and Wolfe (1884), and A Half-Century of Conflict (1892). Parkman also published Historic Handbook of the Northern Tour (1885) and numerous articles.
Cayuga (Iroquoian, “the place where locusts were taken out”), North American tribe, one of the five original tribes of the Iroquois, or Five Nations. Although their home in colonial times was on Cayuga Lake, in New York state, when the American Revolution broke out many members of the tribe took the side of the British and moved to Canada. Those who remained in America were absorbed into other Iroquois tribes. Now the Cayuga live chiefly in the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario.
European Exploration and Settlement
Spanish explorers sailed along the Maryland coast in the 16th century. In the early 17th century, fur traders from Virginia colony traded with Native Americans in the area. Under a commercial license issued by Virginia, William Claiborne built the first white settlement in the area in 1631. It was a fur trading post on Kent Island, east of modern-day Annapolis.
In 1632, George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, induced King Charles I of England to grant him the land north of the Potomac River, which had been part of the grant to Virginia colony. Calvert, a former high adviser to the king and recent convert to Roman Catholicism, wanted to establish a community where fellow Catholics, who were persecuted in England, could worship freely. In addition, he anticipated a financial profit from his colonial enterprise. Calvert died before Charles completed the charter, and the grant went to his son Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore. It included the land from the south bank of the Potomac north to the 40th parallel, as well as all but the tip of the Delmarva Peninsula. Maryland’s western boundary ran from the “fountain” (source) of the Potomac northward until it met the 40th parallel. Cecilius Calvert proceeded to organize an expedition of about 200 settlers under the leadership of his younger brother Leonard Calvert, who was to serve as provincial governor. The settlers reached the province in March 1634, first setting foot on Maryland soil at Saint Clements Island. They established Saint Marys (later Saint Marys City) on the site of a former Native American village—which they bought from its inhabitants—near the mouth of the Saint George’s River (now Saint Marys River).
The settlers cultivated the land previously cleared by the Native Americans, planting corn and tobacco. Their first harvests were good, and they remained at peace with the Native Americans. But they had difficulties of other sorts. Claiborne refused to recognize Lord Baltimore’s jurisdiction over Kent Island, which he claimed was part of Virginia. As a result, petty warfare broke out in 1635 between Claiborne’s and Baltimore’s forces. In 1638 the English Commissioners for Foreign Plantations ruled that Kent Island came under the jurisdiction of Maryland.
Another early conflict occurred between Lord Baltimore and the provincial legislature. Under the terms of the charter, the legislature was restricted to approving legislation proposed by Baltimore. The legislature soon demanded the power to initiate legislation. After resisting its demand, Baltimore yielded on this important point in 1638, when he agreed that laws enacted by the legislature and approved by the governor should be temporarily valid pending his own approval.
Ghost Dance Religion
New religious movements among Native Americans have at times taken on the character of crisis cults, which respond to cultural threat with emotional rituals. In 1889 a Paiute prophet named Wovoka foretold the imminent end of the current world order. Casting himself in a messianic role that seemed to be influenced by Christian imagery, Wovoka promised that if Native Americans would conduct a ceremony known as the Ghost Dance, depleted animal populations and deceased relatives would be restored. For several years, many indigenous peoples in the western part of North America performed the ceremony, even after United States Army troops massacred Sioux ghost dancers at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1890.
COLONIAL PERIOD
The earliest contacts between European settlers and Native Americans were, for the most part, peaceful.
The earliest contacts between the European settlers and the Native Americans were, for the most part, peaceful. Trade was the principal interaction. Tension and disputes sometimes were resolved by force but more often by negotiation or treaties, such as that made between Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag, and England’s Plymouth Colony in 1621. War with the Native Americans of New England was avoided until 1637, when the Pequot War resulted in the virtual extermination of the Pequot. The causes of this war, and of the English-Narragansett conflict of 1643-1645 (Narragansett) and King Philip’s War of 1675-1676 (Philip), were complicated and disputed, with both sides alleging violations of understandings with the other. Native Americans in New England never regained the power they possessed in the 17th century, but they played significant roles in King William’s War (1689-1697), Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713), and the French and Indian War (1754-1763).
While Spain and France maintained a presence in North America, individual native peoples could ally themselves with one of these European nations against British incursions into their territory. With the defeat of the French, however, the native peoples allied with them were more exposed to British power. In 1763 Pontiac, chief of the Ottawa, led a confederation of peoples of the Ohio-Great Lakes region in an effort to drive the British out of the area. Pontiac’s strategy failed after a peace treaty was signed between France and Britain, making French aid unavailable to the Native Americans.
In the south, when the early European settlers arrived in what is now Jamestown, Virginia, local Native Americans, loosely confederated under the chief Powhatan, were initially cooperative; however, the Europeans quickly made it clear that they planned to extend their settlements onto Native American land. On March 22, 1622, the Native Americans, under Opechancanough, Powhatan’s successor, attacked the English settlements, and 350 colonists (of about 2000) died. The colony survived, however, and retaliated in force. The following decade saw continued warfare, followed by a tenuous peace. On April 18, 1644, another attack by Opechancanough almost destroyed the growing colony. Nearly 500 settlers were killed. The war ended in 1646 when the governor, Sir William Berkeley, captured Opechancanough.
English expansion up Virginia’s rivers continued until 1675-1676, when the war with Native Americans that is associated with Bacon’s Rebellion erupted. This war was caused by a series of misunderstandings and acts of local aggression. In the end, the Native Americans were defeated. Native peoples in the Tidewater area never regained their earlier power, but in the interior and farther south, periodic wars broke out, for instance, between British settlers and the Tuscarora in North Carolina (1711-1713).
The French in Canada and in the Mississippi Valley also engaged in wars with their Native American neighbors. The Natchez in the Mississippi delta were among their victims. In the Dutch colony of New Netherland (now the states of New York and New Jersey) the policy of Governor Willem Kieft led to the death of nearly 1000 Native Americans in sporadic warfare between 1640 and 1645, when Kieft was recalled. In 1655 Native Americans attacked New Amsterdam (renamed New York in 1664) on the present-day island of Manhattan, beginning a conflict that lasted until 1664. During that time the Dutch gained control over most of the Algonquian peoples of the lower Hudson Valley.
