HIS 201 3-20-14

American Life in the Seventeenth Century

a.) .) The cycles of the seasons and the sun set the schedules of all the earliest American
colonists (men and women); The overwhelming majority were farmers that planted their crops in the
spring, tended to them all summer, harvested them in the fall, and prepared for a new cycle in the
winter; Women, slave or free, cooked, cleaned, and cared for children; Men cleared land, fenced,
planted, and cropped it out; Children helped with all of these tasks while picking up schooling if they
could; Land was relatively cheap, yet somewhat less available in the South as it was everywhere else; An
acre of soil cost about as much as a carpenter could earn in a day’s wages;

b.) As the 17th century took place, the camps of the first settlers became permanent settlements;
Europeans and Africans adapted to the New World and Native Americans adapted to the newcomers as
well; Life in the American wilderness was nasty, tough, and short for the earliest Chesapeake settlers;
Malaria, dysentery, and typhoid reduced the life expectancy for newcomers from England by 10 years;
Half of the people born in Maryland and Virginia did not survive to celebrate their 20 th birthdays; Few of
the remaining lived to see 50 (40 if they were female); The settlements grew slowly in the 17 th century
(growing consisted of fresh immigrants from England); The majority of immigrants were single men in
their late teens and early twenties and most died soon after arrival; Surviving men competed for the
scarcely few women of which men outnumbered nearly 6-1 in 1650 and still 3-2 by the end of the
century; Eligible women did not remain single for very long; Families were scarce during this time due to
multiple reasons; One reason was there were not enough women for men and another was that most
marriages were destroyed by the death of a partner within a few years; It was very rare for any children
to reach adulthood and still have both parents and almost none knew their grandparents; However, the
settlers pushed on and the native born settlers developed immunity to the diseases that killed the
earlier settlers; At the end of the 17th century the colonies were growing at its own birth-rate;

c.) Although unhealthy for human life, the Chesapeake colony was very good for the growth of
tobacco; Profit hungry settlers often planted tobacco to sell before the planted corn to survive;
However, intense tobacco cultivation quickly exhausted the soil creating the need for new land; This led
to farmers seeking fields farther up the river valleys and resulted in more confrontations with Native
Americans; Ships were hauling 1.5 million pounds of tobacco per year out of the Chesapeake Bay by the
1630s and almost 40 million pounds a year by the end of the century; More tobacco meant more labor
needs; Indians died too quickly after contact with whites to be used for labor and African slaves cost too
much money; However, England still had a surplus of displaced workers and farmers that were in need
for employment; After boarding ships in London and Bristol, they sailed to America as indentured
servants; Virginia and Maryland employed the head-right system to encourage the importation of
servant workers; Under its terms, whoever paid the passage of a laborer received the right to acquire
fifty acres of land therefore giving the Masters, not the servants the land; Indentured servants led a hard
but hopeful life; They looked forward to becoming free and acquiring land of their own after completing
their service; However, land became scarcer and masters became increasingly resistant to including land
permits with freedom dues; Harsher penalties also began to take place as the 17th century dragged on;
Servants who “misbehaved” such as a housemaid getting pregnant or a laborer killing a hog were often
struck with longer service terms; When terms were up the servants, who were practically penniless
would have to hire themselves out for next to nothing to their former masters;

d.) In the late 17th century there were plenty of poor unemployed people drifting about the
Chesapeake region; They were mostly single men who were frustrated by not having acquired land as
well as being unable to find an available woman to marry; In 1676, around a thousand discontent
Virginians broke out of control; Led by Nathaniel Bacon, they chased Virginia Governor William Berkeley
from Jamestown and torched the capital; As this “civil war” raged on, Bacon soon died from disease as
did many of his followers; This allowed Berkeley to crush the uprising and he sent more than 20 rebels
to hang; With the rebellion squashed, tension was still present as landowners soon looked for different
types of people that would not rebel against them; Their focus soon shifted to Africa

e.) More than 7 million slaves from Africa were carried in chains to the New World in the 3
centuries following the arrival of Columbus; Only around 400,000 made their way to North America and
most of those came after 1700; Most of the slaves were shipped to the West Indies or to the Spanish
and Portuguese South America; Africans had been brought to Jamestown in 1619 for the first time but in
1670 they only numbered around 2,000 in the whole Virginia area; Drastic changes came after 1680
when wages in England increased thus making it less appealing to enter indentured servitude; At the
same time planters were growing increasingly weary of potential servants that would rebel; By the mid-
1680’s black slaves outnumbered white servants among the plantation colonies’ new arrivals; In 1698,
the Royal African Company, first chartered in 1672, lost its monopoly on carrying slaves to the colonies;
More than 10,000 Africans were pushed ashore in America in the decade after 1700; Tens of thousands
more landed in America in the next century; By 1750, Blacks accounted for half of the population in
Virginia and in South Carolina they outnumbered whites 2 to 1;

f.) In the deep South, slave life was especially severe; The climate was hostile to health and the
labor was draining; Especially in the rice fields of South Carolina; Only fresh slave imports could sustain
the slave population and keep the plantations going since so many slaves died due to the harsh
conditions; Blacks in the tobacco-growing Chesapeake region had it easier than those in the deep south;
Tobacco was an easier and less physically demanding crop to grow; By 1720 the proportion of females in
the slave population had grown so much that family life was possible in the Chesapeake region; This
enabled the slave population to grow, not only through imports, but through birth making it one of the
few slave populations to keep itself going through natural reproduction; Slaves still longed for freedom
in America and some even revolted against their “owners”; In 1712, a revolt known as the New York
slave revolt ended up costing nine white people their lives and led to the execution of 21 blacks, some of
which were burned over a slow fire; A South Carolina slave revolt erupted in 1739 when more than fifty
resentful blacks along the Stono River tried to march to Spanish Florida, only to be stopped by local
militia; However, African slaves were more tightly controlled than the previous indentured servants and
no rebellion would match that of Bacon’s Rebellion;

g.) As slavery spread, the gaps in the South’s social structure widened; The equality of poverty
and disease of the early days was giving ways to a defined hierarchy of wealth and status in the early
1700s; At the top of this social ladder was the powerful planters; They owned plenty of slaves and a lot
of land and ruled the economy and political scene; However, they were not the silk robed country
gentlemen as depicted; They often were hard working, businesslike, and labored long hours over the
problems of running a plantation; Below the large plantation owners were the small farmers; They were
the largest social group and may own a slave or two but performed most of their labor themselves;
Below the small farmers were the landless whites, most of which were former indentured servants; The
next group was the remaining indentured servants which were quickly diminishing in number due to the
arrival of African slaves; Africans were the lowest on the social scale; Due to the lack of cities in the Deep
South, plantations dominated the scene and lawyers and bankers were slow to emerge as social players;

h.) New Englanders evolved a tightly knit society in small villages and farms; They were basically
anchored to an area due to the geography and the Indians, the French, and the Dutch; New England
society grew in a more orderly fashion than other places; New towns were legally chartered by the
colonial authorities and the distribution of land was entrusted to “town fathers” or proprietors; Towns
of more than fifty people were required to provide elementary education, and roughly half of the adults
knew how to read and write; In 1636, Harvard College was founded by the Massachusetts Puritans to
train local boys for the ministry;

i.) However, pioneers in the New England settlements had worries as the population was
increasing gradually dispersing the Puritans onto outlying farms, far from the control of the church;
Troubled ministers came up with a new formula for church membership in 1662 called the Half Way
Covenant; The modified the “covenant” or the arrangement between the church and its adherents to
admit to baptism, but not “full communion”; The effect of this was that strict religious policy gave way
to wider religious participation and women became the majority in the Puritan congregations; Women
also played a role in one of New England’s most frightening religious events; A group of adolescent girls
in Salem, Massachusetts claimed to have been bewitched by certain older women; A witch hunt ensued,
leading to the legal lynching in 1692 of twenty individuals; 19 of these were hanged and one was
pressed to death; Two dogs were also hanged; This was known as the Salem Witch Trials and it lasted
until 1693 when the governor pardoned those already convicted after accusations against his wife were
made;

j.) Since the New England soil was not good for growing crops, settlers depended on other ways
to make a living; They turned to their natural harbors and cut down timber from their forests; They
became experts in shipbuilding and commerce; During colonial days, one very rarely got out of earshot
of an ax, hammer, or smell of fish;