Several hundred Native American tribes already populated America by the time the Europeans arrived. The Europeans didn’t encounter all of these tribes at once. Explorers from many different nations came into contact with them at different times. These widely dispersed tribes of Native Americans differed from one another in government, customs, language, housing, social organization, and methods of survival.
No one knows for sure when or how the first Americans arrived in what is now the United States. It may have been as long as 70,000 years ago or as recently as 12,000 years. Even if the shorter length is correct, Native Americans have been on the continent thirty times longer than the Europeans. European colonists did not begin arriving on the East Coast of North America until the late 1500’s.
What were the early Americans doing for those centuries? The answer is shrouded in mystery to a great extent. The historian Samuel Eliot Morison noted this when he said, “Even now we cannot write ‘The History of America before 1492’ because history presupposes a more or less continuous and dated story.” There is no such Native American story that exists. Archeologists have done their best and have deduced a great deal from artifacts. Folklorists have recorded a rich variety of songs, legends, and myths, which are equally as helpful.
The Native Americans instructed the newcomers in the ways of the New World agriculture and woodcraft. The introduced them to beans, squash, maize, toboggans, snowshoes, maple sugar, and birch bark canoes. Many European settlers would have died due to the bitter Northeastern winters had it not been for the help of these first Americans.
The settlers who colonized New England called themselves Puritans. They were persecuted in England for their belief. They believed that the Protestant church needed to be purified. These devout Christians wanted to establish a more God-centered society in a new land. Traders, and hardworking farmers, they strongly promoted the values of industry, moderation, sobriety, and simplicity.
Because the Puritan leaders believed their souls were a battleground between Satan and God, they passed strict laws against activities of pleasure. They thought that the failed to glorify God. Puritans could not bowl, gamble, dance around the maypole, or attend plays. They continually judged their own behavior and that of their neighbors by the strictest standards. The witchcraft trials that erupted in Salem in 1692 stemmed partly from the Puritan fervor to rot out the devil.
The Puritans believed strongly in education for both sexes. In 1636, they founded Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They opened free public schools in 1647. Puritans’ value of hard work and education are considered a vital part of American ethic still today.
As early settlements became towns and cities and more liberal Protestant congregations attracted followers, Puritan beliefs lost much of their vital force. However, from about 1735 to 1750, a religious revival called the Great Awakening blazed through New England.
