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THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

PART I

THE ENGLISH IN AMERICA

CHAPTER I

WHAT THE ENGLISH FOUND

1. OUR early history has to do with the Appalachian coast only. That fringe of the continent was more like the European homes of the early colonists than is any other large district in America. The lives of the English settlers were far less changed than if they had colonized the Mississippi valley or the Pacific coast.

2. The Appalachian coast, however, does differ from the European coast of the Atlantic in two vital matters: —(1) The summers are hotter and the winters colder than in Europe. Unexpected fevers in one season, and unforeseen freezing in the other, ruined more than one attempt at settlement. Captain Weymouth explored the region near the mouth of the Kennebec, in the spring of 1605, and brought back to England glowing reports of a balmy climate "like that of southern France"; but the colonists who tried to settle there two years later (§ 26) suffered cruelly from a winter like that of Norway.

(2) As one goes from north to south, the climate changes more swiftly in America than in Europe. In their settlements, between Maine and Florida, English colonists encountered climates as different as they would have found in the Old World

if they had spread out from Norway to the Sahara. This sharp difference between north and south was one reason why Virginian Englishman and New England Englishman grew apart in life and character.

3. The soil, too, and the natural products, varied from north to south. The rich lands of the south were suited to the cultivation of tobacco or rice or cotton, in large tracts, by slaves or bond servants. The middle district could raise foodstuffs

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on a large scale. The north was less fertile farming was not profitable there except in small holdings, with trustworthy "help"; but the pine and oak forests of that region, its harbors, and the fish in its seas, invited to lumbering, fishing, ship-building, and commerce. Each section had its distinct set of industries, and so came to have its peculiar habits of living.

1 This map illustrates some of the points of § 2. The line marked 20° February is supposed to run through places that have an average temperature of 20° Fahrenheit for the month of February. The two dotted lines bound a zone of climate that is sometimes called "the true temperate zone." The heavy February lines bound a zone of climate that includes all the Appalachian district. Plainly, zones of climate are narrower in America than in Europe.

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NATURAL ADVANTAGES

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4. Communication from north to south was difficult. Colony was often divided from colony, or groups of colonies were divided from one another, by arms of the sea. Even when two colonies lay side by side without intervening bays, there were still no roads from north to south. The chief highways were the rivers, running from the mountains to the sea. As a rule, a colony found it about as convenient to hold communication with England as with its neighbor on either side. This lack of intercourse hindered the different sections from growing together in feeling and character.

5. The features of geography noticed so far all tended to "sectionalism." But this evil was more than offset by two advantages that geography gave the English over their European rivals in America. The territory colonized by England was more accessible and more compact than that held by France or Spain. It was easier for the English to get into America than for the others; and it was not so easy after they got there for them to weaken themselves at once by scattering widely.

(Accessibility.) The small sailing vessels of that day found easy access to the Atlantic coast, with its countless little harbors. That region invited European settlement much more than did the vast inland valleys of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, where the French cast their fortunes. Sometimes we speak of these great river systems as "gateways to the continent"; and so they are to the interior. But, in the early days, men did not care to go far into the interior. They liked better the fringe of the continent, where they could keep closer touch with the Old World. Moreover, in the districts near the mouths of the great rivers, neither climate nor soil was suitable for European settlers; and, in the days before steamships, vessels could hardly ascend the Mississippi, above New Orleans, because of the swift current and the countless obstructions.

(Compactness.) The Appalachians kept the colonists from spreading too rapidly as they grew strong. These mountains are not lofty; but they are rugged and they were then covered with forests tangled with underbrush and vines, so as to be singularly impassable. Four rivers broke the mountain wall- the Potomac, Delaware, Susquehanna, and Hudson-Mohawk: but, without more engineering skill than belonged to that day, only the Mohawk could be used as a road to the inner country; and that route was closed by the Iroquois Indians.

6. Three groups of Indian peoples held the country between the Mississippi and the Atlantic, - the Gulf tribes, the Algonkins, and the Iroquois.

The Gulf tribes (Choctaws, Seminoles, Creeks) had made the most progress toward civilization; but they were too far south and west to affect White settlement much until the beginnings of Georgia and Tennessee, almost at the end of the colonial period.

The roaming Algonkins were the largest of the three groups, but also the weakest and least civilized. Numbering from

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AN ALGONKIN VILLAGE. From Beverly's History of Virginia (1701); based on a picture by John White (one of Raleigh's colonists) in 1585, now in the British Museum. The palisades must have been twelve feet high. Probably a spring of water was found inside. The fields of corn and tobacco in the rear were common property. Ceremonial dances were held within the circle of posts about the "lodge" in the foreground.

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75,000 to 100,000 souls, thinly scattered in a multitude of petty, mutually hostile tribes, they "haunted, rather than inhabited, a vast hunting preserve" stretching from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and from the Ohio to the far north. To this group belonged the Powhatans, Delawares, Narragansetts, Pequods, Mohegans, and, indeed, nearly all the tribes with which the early English settlers came in hostile contact.

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