40 Chapter 1 Alien Encounters: Europe in the Americas
ignited an uprising that ravaged much of New
England. Scores of sachems led attacks on more than
half of the ninety puritan towns in New England,
destroying twelve. About 1,000 puritans were massa-
cred; many more abandoned their farms.
The next year the colonists went on the offensive,
bolstered by Mohawk allies. The New England militias
destroyed Wampanoag villages and exhausted the
Wampanoag’s gunpowder. The Mohawks ambushed
and killed Metacom, presenting his severed head to
puritan authorities in Boston. The Wampanoag
retreated into the Great Swamp in Rhode Island and
built a large fort. The colonists surrounded and burned
the fort, massacred 300 Indians, and destroyed the win-
ter stores. In all, about 4,000 Wampanoags and their
allies died in what was called “King Philip’s” war—King
Philip being the colonist’s derisive name for Metacom.
Maryland and the Carolinas
The Virginia and New England colonies were essen-
tially corporate ventures. Most of the other English
colonies in America were founded by individuals or by
a handful of partners who obtained charters from the
ruling sovereign. It was becoming easier to establish
settlements in America, for experience had taught the
English a great deal about the colonization process.
Because they knew what to expect, settlers brought the
proper seeds and tools and went to work as soon as
they arrived planting crops and building habitations.
Many influential Englishmen were eager to try
their luck as colonizers. The grants they received
made them “proprietors” of great estates, which
were, at least in theory, their personal property. By
granting land to settlers in return for a small annual
rent, they hoped to obtain a steadily increasing
income while holding a valuable speculativeinterest
in all undeveloped land. At the same time, their polit-
ical power, guaranteed by charter, would become
increasingly important as their colonies expanded. In
practice, however, the realities of life in America lim-
ited their freedom of action and their profits.
One of the first proprietary colonies was
Maryland, granted by Charles I to George Calvert,
Lord Baltimore. Calvert had a deep interest in
America, being a member both of the London
Company and of the Council for New England. He
hoped to profit financially from Maryland, but, since
he was a Catholic, he also intended the colony to be a
haven for his co-religionists. (Puritans broke with the
Anglican church in England because they thought it
was becoming too much like Roman Catholicism; but
English Roman Catholics also regarded themselves to
be objects of persecution.)
Calvert died shortly before Charles approved his
charter, so the grant went to his son Cecilius. The first
settlers arrived in 1634, founding St. Mary’s, just
north of the Potomac. The presence of the now well-
established Virginia colony nearby greatly aided the
Marylanders; they had little difficulty in getting started
and in developing an economy based, like Virginia’s,
on tobacco. According to the Maryland charter, Lord
Baltimore had the right to establish feudal manors,
hold people in serfdom, make laws, and set up his own
courts. He soon discovered, however, that to attract
settlers he had to allow them to own their farms, and
that to maintain any political influence at all he had to
give the settlers considerable say in local affairs. Other
wise concessions marked his handling of the religious
question. He would have preferred an exclusively
Catholic colony, but while Catholics did go to
Maryland, Protestants greatly outnumbered them.
Baltimore dealt with this problem by agreeing to a
Toleration Act (1649) that guaranteed freedom of
religion to anyone “professing to believe in Jesus
Christ.” Though religious disputes persisted, the
Calvert’s compromise enabled them to make a for-
tune and maintain an influence in Maryland until
the Revolution.
The Carolina charter, like that of Maryland,
accorded the proprietors wide authority. With the help
of the political philosopher John Locke, they drafted a
grandiose plan of government called the Fundamental
Constitutions, which created a hereditary nobility and
provided for huge paper land grants to a hierarchy
headed by the proprietors and lesser “landgraves” andA rare English painting of an Indian sachem circa1700, perhaps a
gift for the tribe's support in war.
Source: Photography by Erik Gould, courtesy of the Museum of Art, Rhode
Island School of Design, 224 Benefit Street, Providence, Rhode Island 02903.