1797 presidio commanders began to send troops into the Central Valley of California to capture potential neophytes

neophytes

especially impressive number given that only a few practiced horticulture

insubordinate

1764, the British government sought to end the expensive and frustrating frontier war. Blaming Amherst for the crisis, the government recalled him and appointed a more flexible commander, Thomas Gage, who followed the pragmatic advice of the superintendent for Indian affairs, Sir William Johnson

the British military commander, Jeffrey Amherst, foolishly cut off the delivery of presents expected by the Indians. He deemed presents a waste of money after the removal of the French competition.

As a sop to appease their Spanish allies, the French gave them New Orleans (page 112)p. 112and most of Louisiana

Pitt’s policy was financially reckless: by compounding the national debt, Pitt saddled the colonists and Britons with a burden that would later disrupt the empire.

(1689–97) ended in a stalemate

Puritanism

the French had to make a grudging peace, while grumbling at their inability to dictate to their allies.

emigration

enforce Crown orders while competing for Crown favor by jealously watching one another for corruption, heresy, and disloyalty

, the Crown provided a cash marriage dowry, an alluring incentive for orphan girls, who lacked the family money expected for a marriage

Iroquoian

Haudenosaunee had formed a confederation

occupying two adjacent river systems, the French and the Dutch drew the battle lines of European commerce and empire along the preceding battle lines of native rivalry, and they raised the stakes.

Champlain and nine French soldiers joined an allied war party that ventured south to attack a Haudensaunee camp on the lake subsequently named “Champlain.

ingress

founding Québec in 1608.

mariners

Raping a slave was not a crime but marrying her was

The black freedmen and women could move as they pleased, baptize their children, procure firearms, testify in court, buy and sell property, marry white people, and even vote.

Early in the century Chesapeake slavery had been relatively amorphous and fluid

Bacon’s Rebellion did not cause the switch from servants to slaves, but that shift did diminish the motives for poor white rebellion.

Bacon promised immediate freedom to servants who deserted Berkeley’s supporters to join the rebellion

In part, “Bacon’s Rebellion” represented a division within the planter elite, a split between a cabal allied with the royal governor and a rival set of ambitious but frustrated planters who resented their relative lack of patronage from Berkeley.

Three-quarters of the immigrants arrived as indentured servants.

Every little commonwealth had a petty monarch, ordinarily a married man, more rarely a widow.

tobacco

Even when healthy, many early colonists refused to work diligently at raising crops to feed themselves, for they preferred to search for gold and to extort corn from the Indians

The English sense of superiority remained impervious to their own follies as colonists in a land long mastered by the Indians.

the English sent no missionaries to convert the Indians of Virginia. Instead, the English meant first to absorb the Indians as economic subordinates, who could then be taught Protestant Christianity at the regular church services of the colonists

The colonizers meant to subordinate the Indians, lest the lower-sort colonists turn Indian and thus against the colony.

Powhatan left the subordinate chiefs alone so long as they paid their tribute in wives, maize, and deerskins, and so long as they joined his war parties sent against the Siouan

took one hundred wives from subordinated chiefdoms to produce numerous sons to govern their villages in the next generation

chiefdom

When the local Indians refused to provide food, the colonists massacred the local chiefs

courtiers

called that entire coast “Virginia” to honor their queen, Elizabeth I, a supposed virgin

(Nova Scotia).