Page 60 - American Stories, A History of the United States

2

England’s New World

Experiments 1607–1732

Profit and Piety:
Competing Visions for

English Settlement
I n spring 1644, John

of
governor
Winthrop,
Massachusetts Bay, learned that Native
Americans had overrun the scattered
tobacco plantations of Virginia, killing some
500 colonists. Winthrop never thought much of the
Chesapeake settlements. He regarded the people
who had migrated to that part of America as grossly
materialistic, and because Virginia had recently
expelled several Puritan ministers, Winthrop
decided the hostilities were God’s way of pun-
ishing the tobacco planters for their worldli-
ness: “It was observable that this massacre
came upon them soon after they had driven
out the godly ministers we had sent to them.”
When Virginians appealed to Massachusetts
for military supplies, they received a cool
reception. “We were weakly provided our-
selves,” Winthrop explained, “and so could
not afford them any help of that kind.”
In 1675, the tables turned. Native
Americans declared all-out war against

L E arn I ng O B J E C T I V E S

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

Why did the How did How did How was the
Chesapeake differences in ethnic founding of
colonies religion affect diversity the Carolinas
not prosper the founding shape the different from
during the of the New development the founding Captain John Smith and powhatan The story of
earliest England of the Middle of Georgia? Pocahontas rescuing Capt. John Smith just as he was about to be
years of their colonies? Colonies? p. 49 executed by her father Powhatan is well known. In all likelihood
the ceremony, pictured here, was never intended to end in Smith’s
settlement? p. 36 p. 44 death. Instead, Powhatan symbolically spared Smith’s life in order
p. 29 to emphasize the werowance’s authority over Smith and the
Jamestown settlers who had come to live in his lands.
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