Page 13 - Pilgrims in Georgia

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After Christopher Columbus’s “discovery”* of the
New World in 1492, for 200 the years before the
founding of the colony of Georgia in the early
1730’s, and the empires of England, Spain, and
France had been competing with each other to
claim and settle North America.

On the map we will see:

- Spain (purple) had been the most successful in conquering and creating an empire that included almost all of
Central America, Western South America, the Islands of the Caribbean Sea and Southern Florida in North
America.
- France (gray) concentrated on the Northeastern part of North America in what is now Canada, the Great

Lakes region, and down the Mississippi River to what is now New Orleans.
- England (brown) since the founding of Jamestown Va. in 1607, progressively successfully colonized the
eastern/Atlantic coast of North America. By 1670 they founded and successfully grew the thriving port town
of Charlestown, in their most southern colony South Carolina.

- All these empires wanted the territory we now call Georgia!

• Columbus “discovered” the New World for European civilization at his time, but evidence shows that it had been visited by other Europeans
including the Vikings, perhaps some Asians, and of course it had been already inhabited by the Native American peoples for millennia.