Brief Timeline of American Literature and Events: 1500-1649 (Plain html version)
On these pages, the historical information for each section appears first,
followed by the information on literary events.
Pre-1650
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1500-1549
1512: Spanish Laws of Burgos forbid enslavement of Indians and advocate
Christian conversion
1514: Bartolome
de las Casas petitions Spanish crown on behalf of Native Americans
1519-1521 Cortes's conquest of Aztecs in Mexico.
1528-1536 A member of the Narvaez expedition, Alvar
Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is shipwrecked first near Tampa Bay and later on Galveston
Island off the coast of what is now Texas. After six years spent among the Indians
of the region, he and his companions travel westward across Texas and Mexico.
1540-1542 Seeking gold first in the city of Cibola, reportedly larger
and richer than Mexico City, and then in Quivera, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado
leads an expeditionary
force through the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, with much loss of life
among the area's native peoples. He returns to Mexico City in 1542 and dies
in 1544.
1542 Urged on by Bartolome
de las Casas and others, Carlos V enacts the "New Laws" designed to
end the encomienda system
that enslaves native people.
1519: Hernan Cortes, First Letter from Mexico to the Spanish Crown
1542: Alvar
Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, The
Relation of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
1550-1599
1584: Sir Walter
Ralegh sends a reconnaissance fleet under Captains Amadas and Barlow to
the future Croatoan Sound, North Carolina. Based on their glowing account,
he sends out a colonizing expedition the next year of 100 men who settle on
Roanoke Island, among them artist John White and surveyor Thomas
Harriot. Sir Francis Drake later takes the colonists back to England at
their request.
1587: Ralegh sends
out a fresh colony of 117 men, women, and children in three ships, with John
White as governor.
1590: White returns to find that settlers have disappeared, leaving "Croatoan"
carved on a tree
1598: Don Juan Oñate establishes the colony of New Mexico by taking
over a pueblo, which he renames San Juan, near modern-day Santa Fe. In retaliation
for an attack on the settlement, he destroys
the Acoma pueblo, killing 800 and capturing 500.
1550 Tales of
La Llorona (the Weeping Woman), an important cultural figure and legend,
begin to be told in Mexico City.
1552: Casas,The
Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies, a protest against
the treatment of
1568: Bernal
Diaz del Castillo writes The True History of the Conquest of New Spain
(1632)
1588: Thomas Harriot, A
Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia
1589: Arthur Barlow, The First Voyage Made to the Coasts of America
1600-1619
1607: Establishment of Jamestown
1608 Colony of Quebec is established.
1610. Santa Fe is established as the new capital
of New Mexico, with Pedro de Peralta as the governor of the new colony.
1616: John Smith, A Description of New England
1620-1639
1621 First Thanksgiving, at Plymouth
1628 (May 1) Thomas Morton and colonists at Merrymount dance around a maypole
and celebrate May Day, upsetting the Plymouth Pilgrims. In June, Capt. Miles
Standish is sent to eradicate the settlement and Morton is sent back to England.
1630-43: English Puritans immigrate to Massachusetts Bay Colony
1630 John Cotton preaches the sermon God's Promise to His Plantation to the departing colonists aboard the Arb
John Winthrop delivers the lay sermon A Model of Christian Charity while aboard the ship Arbella.
1630 Population: 3,000 colonists in Virginia; 300 at Plymouth.
During 1630-1640, another 16,000 colonists will arrive.
1636 Founding of Providence, R. I. by Roger
Williams, who establishes Rhode Island as a place of religious toleration.
1636-1637. Pequot War.
July 1636. The murder in 1634 of Capt. John Stone, a disreputable English seaman and merchant, and of trader John Oldham on 20 July 1636, reportedly by Pequots, leads to reprisals against Pequot settlements. This marks the beginning of the Pequot War, although the conflict is not officially so designated until 1637.
24 August 1636. After Massachusetts Governor Henry Vane commissions John Endicott to assemble a force of 90 men to seek out Block Island tribe of Pequots and demand their surrender, Endicott destroys the Block Island settlement. In retaliation, the Pequots attack Fort Saybrook and its commander Lieutenant Lion Gardiner.
1637 Thomas Morton, New English Canaan
1640-1649
1630-50 William
Bradford begins writing Of Plymouth Plantation (pub. 1856)
1643 Anne Hutchinson and family murdered by
Native Americans near Eastchester, Long Island (N. Y.)
1646 Robert Child and others protest the intolerance
of Massachusetts Puritans toward those of other faiths; in response, Governor
John Winthrop and others justify their policies and banish Child.
1647 First woman barrister in the colonies, Margaret Brent of Maryland, seeks and is denied the right to vote in the assembly.
1642 John Cotton, The True Constitution
of a Particular Visible Church
1643 Roger
Williams, A Key into the Language of America
1645 John Cotton preaches and publishes The
Way of the Churches of Christ in New England, a sermon that justifies the
New England Way
1650 Anne
Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse
Page written and maintained by D. Campbell