Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/172

152 bought out the proprietors and divided the colony into two, called respectively North and South Carolina. The present state of Georgia originally formed part of Carolina, but in 1732 George II., in honor of whom it was named, granted the territory to a corporation entitled “the trustees for settling the colony of Georgia.” In the same year a colony of about 120 persons sailed for the new province, under the direction of Gen. James Oglethorpe, and in February, 1733, founded Savannah.—In the course of little more than a century from the settlement of Jamestown, 13 permanent colonies were thus founded by the English within the present limits of the United States. Within the same limits the Spaniards had also settled in Florida and New Mexico, and the French had established posts in Michigan, in Illinois, and in Louisiana near the mouth of the Mississippi. Though agriculture was the chief pursuit of the colonists, manufactures and commerce were not wholly neglected. But as early as 1660 the mother country began to hamper their trade with navigation acts designed to compel the commerce of the Americans to pass exclusively through English hands. The house of commons in 1719 declared “that the erecting of manufactories in the colonies tended to lessen their dependence upon Great Britain,” and laws were accordingly enacted prohibiting or restricting manufactures. Prompt attention was paid to education. Provision was made for a school in Virginia in 1621, and in 1692-'3 William and Mary college was established at Williamsburg. A school was founded in New Amsterdam in 1633. Harvard college in Massachusetts was founded in 1636, and Yale college in Connecticut in 1700; the college of New Jersey was incorporated in 1746, and King's (now Columbia) college in New York in 1754. In the New England colonies, as soon almost as they were founded, laws were enacted providing for a liberal system of common schools.—The details of colonial history being given in this work under the names of the individual states, we shall only notice here the most prominent events of general interest, which may be classed under the three heads of Indian wars, French wars, and political struggles against the English government. The Indians at first received the whites as friends; but the steady encroachments of the settlers on their hunting grounds and other causes led at length to war, though to the last a few tribes continued faithful friends to the Europeans. The first serious encounter took place in 1622, after the death of the friendly Powhatan, when a general conspiracy of the Indians of Virginia broke out in a bloody massacre, in which in one hour about 350 of the English fell beneath the tomahawk. The colonists were victorious in this contest, and again in 1644-'6, when the Virginian tribes made their last struggle for independence, led by Opechancanough, who was captured and kept in prison till he died. In 1636 the powerful Pequot tribe began hostilities in Connecticut, which resulted in its destruction in 1637 by Massachusetts and Connecticut troops. In 1675 the famous Pometacom, sachem of the Wampanoags, or King Philip as he was called by the English, effected a general combination of the aborigines against the colonists. A terribly destructive war ensued, which for some months threatened the extermination of the European population of New England, but was finally ended by the defeat and death of Philip in 1676. The Carolines became involved in a fierce and sanguinary struggle with the Corecs and Tuscaroras in 1711, and with the Yemassees in 1715, in both of which the whites were victorious. Toward the close of the 17th century the hostile Indians on the northern and western frontiers began to receive powerful aid and encouragement from the French in Canada, who, whenever their mother country was at war with England, carried on hostilities with the English colonies, and frequently, accompanied by their savage allies, made destructive inroads into New England and New York. In one of these incursions, in 1689, Dover in New Hampshire was burned by the Indians, and the inhabitants were killed or carried away captive; and in 1690 a similar fate was inflicted on Schenectady in New York, by a party from Montreal. A few years later (1704-'8) Deerfield and Haverhill in Massachusetts were destroyed, with hundreds of men, women, and children, by bands led by Hertel do Rouville, a French officer. Father Marquette, Louis Joliet, Robert Cavelier de la Salle, and other missionaries and adventurers, had carried the cross and the standards of France through the wilderness, from the St. Lawrence and the great lakes to the Mississippi and the gulf; and gradually the English settlements on the Atlantic were flanked on their western side by a chain of French posts. This threatening lodgment of the French in the rear of their American colonies greatly excited the jealousy of the English, who, under the charters granted by James I., claimed dominion westward from the Atlantic to the Pacific, south of the latitude of the north shore of Lake Erie, while the French claimed all the territory watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries under the more plausible title of having made the first explorations and settlements. But the earliest conflict between the two nations in America arose not from any colonial quarrel, but from the revolution of 1688, and is known as King William's war. It lasted seven years, and during its continuance the colonies suffered exceedingly from the incursions of the French and their Indian allies. In retaliation for these attacks efforts were made by the colonists to conquer Canada, against which in 1690 two expeditions were sent, one from Massachusetts under Sir William Phips, and another from Connecticut and New York under Gen. Winthrop, neither of which accomplished