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Treaty of Tordesillas

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North America

North America: Human Geography

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This map was created by National Geographic, for the book Voices from Colonial America: Maryland, 1643-1776, to demonstrate what this area was like before John Smith’s voyages as well as the routes of his voyage.  Until John Smith's exploratory voyages of the Chesapeake Bay in 1608 and 1609 opened the region to European settlement, the land belonged to the Piscataways, Choptanks, and other Algonquian peoples, as it had for thousands of years. Choice land on the eastern and western shores of the bay was snapped up by colonists and turned into large English farms. 

John Smith's Exploration Routes in the Chesapeake Bay

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Starting in 1607, Captain John Smith set about exploring and describing the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. This map, published in 1612, would become the primary cartographic resource on the region for nearly seven decades. 

John Smith Map of 1612

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European colonial powers in North America

North America in 1800

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Map of Connecticut and the New England Colonies

Colonies in Connecticut in the 1640s

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Map of early settlement on the eastern coast of the U.S.

Growth of Colonial Settlement

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Delaware as Part of New Sweden

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Jamestown 1607: A Clash of Cultures

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The opportunity to make money was one of the primary motivators for the colonization of the New World. The Virginia Company of London established the Jamestown colony to make a profit for its investors.

Jamestown Colony Ferry

Motivations for Colonization

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This woodcutting shows a Native American man greeting Pilgrims as the come to New England on the Mayflower. It suggests a positive relationship between the two groups. That idea, however, is largely false.

Native American Man and the Mayflower

New England Native American Groups

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The Seminole (like this group of Seminole Braves) were among the southeastern nations called the "Five Civilized Tribes" by European settlers. These nations were considered such because of their adoption of European cultural traits.

Seminole Braves

Southeast Native American Groups

National Geographic Society

European colonization of North America expanded through Spanish colonists establishing themselves in present-day Florida in the 1500s and English colonists doing so farther up the East Coast in the 1600s. North America’s Indigenous peoples preserved their cultures and dignity through this period, despite facing violent dispossession by the colonists; enslaved Africans did as well, amid the horrors of their forced transportation to North America and inhumane treatment by their enslavers.

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Seventeenth century map of the Americas created by Dutch cartographer Jodocus Hondius.

Jodocus Hondius map of the Americas

European Colonization of North America

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European Colonization of North America

European Colonization of North America

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