c. 40,000 - 10,000 B.C./B.C.E. - - Modern historians theorize that ancestors of the Inuit (Eskimos) and American Indians begin to arrive in western North America during this period. They migrate across a frozen - and later lost - land bridge (Beringia *) through the Bering Strait from Siberia. Some historians place the beginning of this migration as early as 65,000 B.C./B.C.E. While there is some archaeological evidence to support this theory, Native American groups have strong oral, and now written traditions that detail their origins at different locales and by various methods.
15,000 - 7,000 B.C./B.C.E. - Paleo-Indian * hunters spread throughout the North American grasslands into the American Southwest. They manufacture unique projectile * points knows as Clovis, Folsom *, and Sandia, named after respective archeological sites in New Mexico.
10,000 - 7,000 B.C./B.C.E. - In the area that is now the United States, the Archaic * Tradition develops in the Eastern Woodlands *, with hunting, fishing, and gathering. In the desert regions, the Southwestern Tradition sees the domestication of corn (maize) and other crops.
c. 5000 B.C./B.C.E. - The Cochise * culture develops in what is now southern Arizona. The Cochise people grow vegetable crops.
c. 2000 - 1500 B.C./B.C.E. - People in what is now the American Southeast first make pottery.
c. 1100 B.C./B.C.E. - The canoe comes into regular use among Native American people in the eastern and northeastern sections of the area that is now the United States.
c. 1000 B.C./B.C.E. - New vegetable crops, probably from Mexico, are introduced to the Southwest tribes. These crops include beans and squash.
c. 1000 B.C./B.C.E. - A.D./C.E. 1000 - In what is now the United States, mound building characterizes the Eastern and Midwestern native cultures. In the Southwest, Hohokam * and Anasazi * people build irrigation canals, agricultural villages, roads and complex ceremonial centers. On the Plains, people hunt buffalo on foot and live in fortified, semi-sedentary villages.
c. 200 B.C./B.C.E. - The Hopewell period begins for peoples of the central United States. Large earth mounds are constructed by various groups in the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys.
c. 100 B.C./B.C.E. - Anasazi culture flourishes in the American Southwest.
c. 500 - 900 - - The Tchefunte culture represents the beginning of complex material culture in the lower Mississippi Valley. The Tchefunte grow crops and make distinctive pottery. (Louisiana)
c. 700 - 1100 - - The Anasazi culture evolves into its Pueblo * period. This is a developmental stage that sees the use of adobe bricks, stone slabs, or mud and sticks in home building. Kivas (underground ceremonial chambers) and cotton fabrics come into use. Around 900, the pueblo structures in the American Southwest are constructed.
c. 900 - 1300 - - The Copena civilization exists in what is now northern Alabama. Its advances include pottery, tools, metal and stone ornaments and more sophisticated agriculture.
c. 1100 - - Hopis in the American Southwest use coal for cooking and heating.
c. 1100 - 1300 - - The Pueblo culture (Anasazi *) in the northern Arizona and New Mexico area reaches its height, with large apartment-type structures and many material goods.
c. 1150 - The pueblo of Oraibi (north-eastern Arizon) is founded, the oldest continuously occupied town in the present-day United States.
c. 1275 - - Many Southwest pueblos are abandoned due to drought and Athapaskan raiding parties from the north.
c. 1300 - - Hopis use coal for making pottery.
c. 1300 - 1600 - - The great Temple Mound or Middle Mississippi civilization flourishes. The highly agricultural civilization is characterized by separate republics, each having a central city, temple mounds and a chief's house. This is one of the greatest North American native civilizations. Several aspects seem to be of Mexican or Middle American origin.
c. 1350 - Tuzigoot pueblo, in what is now northern Arizona, is abandoned and the land is occupied by Yavapai and/or Western Apache people.
1390 - The Great Binding * Law is proclaimed by Huron * prophet Deganawidah, establishing the Five (later Six) Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. The five original nations are the Oneida, Onondaga, Mohawk, Seneca, and Cayuga. Some sources date the founding of the confederacy in the mid-1500s.
1400 - The last pueblo community in southern Arizona, Casa Grande, is abandoned, due in part to Apache raids.
c. 1492 - By the time Italian explorer Cristoforo Colombo (commonly anglicized to Christopher Columbus) and his crew arrive in America, more than 300 nations of Native Americans are established in all parts of North America, each with its own name, language, traditions and government. Columbus mistakenly calls them "Indians." This error is continued by later European colonists.
c. 1500 - Native Americans in the Florida and Mississippi areas reach high artistic skill in wood carving, ceramincs and ornaments of sheet mica.
c. 1500 - Part of the Ojibwa * (Chippewa) tribe migrates from the Atlantic coast to the southern shore of Lake Superior. At about this time, the Ojibwa, Potawatomi, Algonquin, and Ottawa develop separate tribal identities [How Dogs * Came to the Indians]
c. 1500 - European diseases begin ravaging natives of North America
1500 - 1509 - - Indian tribes on the Southern Atlantic coast begin to hear about a strange people with beards and white skin.
1513 - On his first voyage to what is now Florida, Spanish explorer, Juan Ponce de Leon explores the coast but is driven away by Calusa natives in war canoes.
1523 - A Spanish expedition to Americas southern coast (South Carolina) return to Spain with a captured American Indian they call Francisco de Chicora.
1524 - Giovanni da Verrazano * (1485?-1528?) [image] left France seeking a westward route to Cathay. He visits the Atlantic coast from the Carolinas to Newfoundland. He wrote about the Algonquian Indians of Rhode Island, "These people are the most beautiful and have the most civil customs we have found on this voyage." Still his crew kidnap an Indian child and attempt to unsuccessfully kidnap a young Indian woman. He succeeded in reaching Cape Fear (North Carolina), New York Bay, Block Island, Narragansett * Bay. [Verrazano Narrows * Bridge south of New York Bay] (Wampanoag * and Narragansett * contact)
1525 - Estban Gomez, a Spanish-Portuguese explorer, travels the coasts of Nova Scotia and Maine. He kidnaps Native Americans as slaves.
1528 - The Karankawa Indians of what is now Texas, capture de Vaca and other survivors of a Spanish shipwreck. The captives eventually escape overland to California. [Pre-contact * California tribal territories]
1534 voyage - Jacques Cartier * (1491-1557) sailed to the Americas for gold and a northwest passage to the Orient. Reached Newfoundland finding evidence * of fishermen from other areas and discovered Prince Edward * Island, Anticosti Island, the Gaspe Peninsula (Micmac *), Jacques Cartier Passage, Chaleur Bay [conflict with Donnacona, the Huron * chief]
1535-1536 voyage - Cartier * explored the St. Lawrence River to Hochelaga (now Montreal); wintered at Stadacona (Quebec City)
1537 - Pope Paul III recognizes that Native Americans are "truly men" with the right to freedom and property.
1539 - Priest Marcos de Niza and the African guide, Estevanico, in search of the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola, contact the Zuni tribe of what is now New Mexico. The Zunis kill Esevanico; de Niza returns to Mexico and continues the legend of the existence of rich cities to the north. [Reached present-day the Arizona-New Mexico region.]
1538-1543 - Hernando de Soto (1500?-1542) - sailed from Spain to Florida marching for four years with his army through southeastern North America and crossing the Appalachian Mountains, exploring Mobile Bay, the Yazoo Delta, and Oklahoma and dying along the way while his group went on down the Mississippi River across the Gulf of Mexico to Rio Panuco. He establishes the first contacts with several Muskogean tribes, and with the powerful Cherokees. De Soto leads the first armed conflict of Europeans against Native Americans, in what is now Alabama. [see: Trail of * Tears, 1838]
Lectures of Francisco de Vitoria in Spain advocate that Native Americans are free men exempt from slavery.
1540 - Reports from Spanish explorarions in the American Southwest mention "Querechos,""Teyas,""and Paducahs," Indian tribes who, unlide the pueblo dwellers, live in tents made of animal skins and hunt buffalo.
1540 - 1542 - Francisco Vasquez de Coronado traveled across the southwest looking for the Seven Cities of Cibola encountering the Hopi, Apache, Pawnee, Zuni and Wichita tribes. [Utes * | maps * | 1868 * map | Colorado * reservation | code breakers]
1550 - 1559 - - Pensacola Indians of western Florida resist a Spanish attempt led by Tristan de Luna to establish a colony at what is now Pensacola Bay.
1560 - 1570 - - The leaders of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondago, Oneida, and Mohawk tribes, after a period of internal warfare, unite and establish the Iroquois Confederacy (League of the Iroquois, or Five Nations). Some sources indicate that Confederacy was founded with The Great Binding Law of 1390.
1568 - Jesuits organize a school in Havana, Cuba, for Native American children brought from Florida. This is the first missionary school for Native North Americans.
1578 - 1579 - - English adventurer, Francis Drake, explores the California coast, where he encounters the Coast Miwok, a Penutian tribe of north-central California, who occupy a large part of the region that is now Marin and Sonoma counties.
1581 - In their exploration of New Mexico, Spanish explorers visit Zuni and Piro pueblos. The Pueblo Indians attack and kill those coming to convert them.
1585 - 1586 - - Maneo and Wanchese, two Algonquin Indians from North Carolina, are taken to England and eventually serve as interpreters for British colonists.
1587 - The first Native American is baptized in the Church of England.
1590 - 1599 - - Despite Indian resistance, Juan de Onate's expedition takes possession of the Pueblo region of New Mexico.
1600 - Members of the Franciscan order from Mexico establish missions in Hopi areas (now Arizona and New Mexico)
c. 1600 - In the area that is now North Dakota, several Native American groups begin migrating to new homes. The Cheyenne move to the Sheyenne River valley; the Kidatsa migrate westward to the Missouri River; and the Sioux migrate out of the Minnesota woodlands onto the Plains [see: 1800s * Sioux * timeline]
c. 1600 - 1700 - Use of horses spreads from Indian tribes in Mexico through the Southwest into America's Great Plains
1608 - A visitor to Durango, Mexico, reports that Native Americans there have horses
1609 - Samuel de Champlain (1567?-1635), with a party that includes 2 Frenchmen and about 60 Native Americans, heads down the St. Lawrence River. Near Ticonderoga, his group encounters approximately 200 Iroquois. The Iroquois, who have never seen firearms, flee.
1609 - French forces accompany a war party of Wyandots (Hurons) and Algonquins to Lake Champlain for an attack against the Mohawks. The Wyandot and Algonquin party is successful, and several Mohawk leaders are killed. [Huron contact 1611 * wampum * belt | 1635 Father Jean de Brebeuf * letter of trading relations]
1613 - Pocahontas *, daughter of Algonquin * Chief Powhatan (Virginia * Indian), marries John Rolfe of the Jamestown colony.
1613 - French colonists offer the Micmac tribe a bounty on scalps of Beothuk tribesmen. As a result, the Beothuks are virtually annihilated.
de Champlain leads a French expedition along the Ottawa River and promises to assist Hurons and Algonquins against the Iroquois. The policy of French colonists is to include Native Americans in political and economic decisions.
1615 - Champlain's French and Huron forces at Lake Oneida suffer a major defeat, causing many Hurons to question the wisdom of their alliance with the French.
1615 - 1630s - - The Hurons (Wyandots) have a vast trading * network. Graves from this period show goods from Mexico, the Gulf coast and the Minnesota River areas.
1616 - A smallpox epidemic devastates the Indian tribes in New England. [Wampanoag *]
1616 - Spanish missions are established in what is now Georgia for the conversion of Guale Indians.
1618 - French forces under Champlain attack the Iroquis, beginning animosity between the two.
1618 - At Plymouth, in what is now Massachusetts, local Algonquin Indians (Wampanoag *) help the Pilgrims overcome initial difficulties.
1618 - Fifty missions are established in Florida and 16,000 Indians are baptized.
1620 - English colonists in Virginia establish a school to try to convert Native Americans there to Christianity. The school is destroyed by Native Americans in 1622.
1620s - 1636 - - At its height, the Huron Confederacy has 30,000 to 35,000 people. Two allied tribes include the Wyandot or Tobacco Nation (15,000) and the Attiwandaronk or Neutral Nation (12,000). This alliance dominates the native trade in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region.
1621 - In New England, Chief * Massasoit of the Wampanoag befriends * English colonists and cedes land to the Pilgrims. Samoset * greeted * the Pilgrims.
1622 - 1631 - - In the first Powhatan War, Chief Opechancanough * lead the 32 Tidewater-area tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy against European colonists at Jamestown, Virginia. The conflict * ravages the area of the Chickahominy tribe and ends without a decisive victory.
1622 - 1631 - - French Jesuits begin missionary work among the Hurons. The Iroquois react violently to these activities by torturing and killing several missionaries and eventually destroying the Huron Confederacy.
1623 - 1626 - - Members of the Jemez Apache (Navajo) tribe war against Spaniards and Tiwas in the area of New Mexico.
1626 - Peter Minuit purchases Manhattan Island from the Canarsee tribe for merchandise valued at $24 (60 Dutch guilders).
1626 - Mahicans and their Dutch allies march against the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy and are defeated. As a result of this defeat, Fort Orange (Albany, New York) is largely abandoned by the Dutch, except for a small military force.
1627 - Carib * natives, brought to Virginia as slaves, flee to the tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy.
1631 - English colonial leader Roger Williams * argues that the royal charter for Massachusetts illegally seizes * Indian tribal lands; he urges a more humane policy.
1633 - In New England, a smallpox epidemic kills hundreds of members of the Narragansett tribe.
1635 - By this date, beavers are virtually eliminated in Huron country.
1637 - Continued conflict between the warlike Pequot * tribe and encroaching European colonists in Connecticut erupts into open warfare * after the Pequot murder English trader, John Oldham. Colonial forces led by John Mason and John Underhill attack the Pequot's central village, killing nearly 500 Native Americans. A handful of Pequot, including Chief Sassacus, escape, but their group is intercepted by English forces near Fairfield. Most of the Indians are killed, though a few are forced into slavery. Sassacus again escapes but is executed by members of the Mohawk tribe.
c. 1637 - The English group that establishes the colony at New Haven sets aside land there for the Quinnipiac tribe.
1637 - 1641 - - Spaniards in New Mexico raid Ute villages for the purpose of acquiring slave labor. Many Utes escape, bringing Spanish horses with them.
1640 - The beaver population is decimated in Iroquois country, and the Five Nations do not have enough furs to trade for what they need from the Dutch.
1641 - In response to the killing of a farmer by Raritan Indians, Dutch authorities in New Amsterdam (New York City) offer bounties for Raritan scalps or heads. Dutch forces attack and massacre more than 100 Indians in a surprise night raid.
1642 - Virginia Governor Sir William Berkeley forces Native Americans to cede all lands between the York and James Rivers.
1643 - Roger Williams's book, Key into the Language of America, is published. This is a guide to the Native American languages to which Williams has been exposed.
1643 - The Narragansett War against the New England colonies ends with the capitulation of the Narragansett Indians.
1643 - A Protestant mission school for American Indians is established on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, by the Reverend Thomas Mayhew, Jr.
1644 -1646 - - -In the Second Powhatan War, Opechancanough, aged chief of the Powhatan Confederacy, again leads his warriors agains English colonists. Initially successful, the Powhatans are eventually driven back by superior English numbers and weapons. Opechancanough is captured and killed.
1646 - Iroquois war parties begin assaults that virtually destroy the Huron nation by 1649.
1646 - The Reverend John * Eliot begins to gather Indian converts into so-called praying * towns, the most successful being Natick (Massachusetts). Each of the 14 praying towns has a school for American Indians.
1650 - The first European traders reach Ojibwa (Chippewa) territory on the southwest shore of Lake Superior.
1650 - Five hundred Huron survivors of the Iroquois attacks of 1646-1649 flee to Quebec where they later are the only group to maintain Huron tribal identity.
1651 - The defeat of the Neutral tribe, which is frequently friendly to the French colonists, is complete when a large village of 1,600 Neutrals is captured by the Iroquois and all adult males are killed.
1653 - 1656 - - The Erie tribe is virtually annihilated by the Iroquois.
1656 - Ottawa and Huron traders, accompanied by two Frenchmen, bring a large canoe fleet of furs to Montreal, thus angering the Iroquois tribes, who are their competitors in the fur trade.
1656 - 1658 - - Laws passed by the Virginia House of Burgesses state that: lands granted to Native Americans by the assembly cannot be taken away except by consent of the assembly; no land grants can be issued to Europeans until every tribe receives 50 acres for each "bowman"; Native Americans have hunting rights on all unclaimed land; and any tribal lands included in grants at Rappanhannock must either be purchased from, or returned to, the tribe. Late in 1658, the assembly admits that English colonists are still untruding on native lands.
1657 - Following a peace treaty with the Iroquois, a group of French colonists leaves Montreal and winters in Onondaga country (upstate New York).
1660 - The Ojibwa (Chippewa) now have firearms. They migrate west into the Mississippi Valley, driving the Sioux south and west.
1660 - 1670 - - Wyandots and Ottawas establish a trade with French colonists. By 1670 there are 50 tribal villages on the bay.
1661 - The first American edition of the Bible, translated by the Reverent John Eliot with Native American assistance, is in the language of the Indians of Massachusetts.
1661 - Spanish posts in what are now Georgia and South Carolina are attacked by Indians. Missions north of the Savannah River are subsequently abandoned.
1662 - A Virginia law mandates that Native Americans are to be "protected in their property as if they were Englishmen."
1665 - Caleb Cheeshateaumuck is the first Native American to earn an A.B. degree at Harvard College.
1667 - 1680 - - Apache and Navajo groups begin continual warfare against Spanish forces in New Mexico. One valuable commodity is horses, which the Native American capture and trade to tribes to the north and east.
1670 - The first Protestant Indian Church is established on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts by Thomas Mayhew, Jr.
c. 1670 - Mohawk girl, Catherine Tekakwitha, converts to Catholicism and becomes the first known Native American nun.
1672 - Colonial postal clerks use Native American couriers between New York City and Albany due to their endurance in cold weather.
1672 - 1680 - - Apache and Navajo warriors continue to fight Spanish colonists in New Mexico.
1675 - In New Mexico, tension grows between Pueblo Indians and Spaniards, who accuse the Pueblos of using witchcraft to kill several friars and colonists. Three Indians are hanged by the Spanish.
1675 - 1676 - - In King Philip's War, Metacomet * (also called King * Philip) attempts to unite the New England tribes against English encroachment. The "praying Indians" of New England, converts of John Elio (1646) are caught in the middle of this bloody fight and are virtually annihilated. The war ends with the defeat of the Indians. Metacomet is killed and dismembered and his wife and son are separated and sold as slaves to the West Indies.
1675 - 1676 - - The Susquehannock tribe of Maryland retaliates for the murder of their chiefs by attacking English communities. Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., a young planter, leads unauthorized attacks on friendly Indians in Virginia. Bacon's Rebellion lasts several months until its leader suddenly dies. His followers are caught and 23 are hanged. In 1677, a treaty of peace is signed with the local Indians.
1680 - 1683 - - English forces in (South) Carolina attack the Westos to acquire slaves for trade and to gain better access to interior areas. By 1683 only 50 Westos remain. They later join the Creek tribe.
1680 - 1684 - English colonists in (South) Carolina and their Indian allies attack Spanish outposts in Georgia. Spanish control in the area crumbles after these raids.
1680 - 1688 - - Pope, a Pueblo Indian and medicine man, leads a sussessful revelt against Spanish colonists in New Mexico. About 2,000 Spanish and mestizo (a person of combined European and Native American ethnicity) colonists flee to El Paso and more than 400 are killed by Indians. Pope begins a campaign to eradicate Spanish cultural signs, disallowing the use of the Spanish language, and insisting that Indians baptized as Christian be bathed to reverse or negate the baptism.
1681 - 1682 - - Nanagoucy, a Mahican leader, travels among the Ohio country tribes advocating an intertribal confederacy.
1682 - William * Penn's treaty with the Delawares * begins a time of * cooperation between Quakers and Native Americans.
1683 - 1690s - - The Shawnee of the Savannah River (Georgia) dominate trade with European American colonists in South Carolina, acquiring firearms in exchange for furs and enslaved Indians captured in raids on other tribes.
1687 - Members of the Yamasee tribe revolt against Spanish rule in Florida and Georgia and flee north.
1690 - 1720s - - The Apache Indians in Arizona and New Mexico are weakened as their eastern enemies - Pawnees, Wichitas, and other Caddoan tribes, acquire guns. Raids from the north by Utes and Comanches further hamper the Apache.
1692 - English traders in (South) Carolina provoke Indian tribes against one another in order to acquire slaves.
1692 - 1696 - - Diego de Vargas leads the Spanish reconquest of the Pueblo region of the American Southwest. The Pueblos try again to revolut but are subdued. Only the distant Hopi and non-Pueblo tribes such as the Navajo and Apache continue to elude Spanish rule.
1693 - A large party of Iroquois is defeated at the St. Joseph River (central Michigan) by French troops.
1693 - The College of William and Mary is founded in Williamsburg, Virginia. Its charter contains special provisions for the education of Native Americans.
1695 - The first Pima uprising against Spanish dominance takes place in the American Southwest.
1695 - Chief Chingcabee of the Ojibwa tribe (Great Lakes region) travels to Quebec seeking French assistance against the Sauk and Fox.
1700 - English traders in the Mississippi Valley incite the Quapaw Indians to raid neighboring tribes to acquire slaves.
1700 - 1709 - - War, dispossession, and disease cause a considerable decline in the population of Atlantic coast Indians.
1700 - 1724 - - The Ute * [*] and Comanche tribes become allies against Apaches, Pueblos, and Spaniards in northern New Mexico. Ute-Comanche raids probably are a factor in splitting the Apache tribe into northern Kiowa * and southern Jicarilla-Lipan branches. Utes later become allies to the Jicarilla Apaches.
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