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250 Years Ago in North America

George Washington

The spiritual leader Popay heads a revival of the traditional religion of the "pueblo people", the Hopi and Zuni (the descendants of the Anasazi), in what is now New Mexico. A pueblo is a cliff-side city. This leads to a conflict with Spain which, by 1640, had conquered most of the pueblos. The revolt, 1660-1680, was to be the most successful Indian revolt in North American history. The Spanish were defeated and their capital of Santa Fe captured. But pueblo independence did not last long, and a Spanish counter-attack 12 years later completely defeated the Hopi and Zuni.

Horses brought over by the Spanish, and which had escaped, form wild herds throughout the plains of North America. Horses are rapidly adopted by the plains Indians, radically altering their way of life. By 1700, most plains people up to the border of Canada are using horses. Distance had been the great obstacle in crossing the wide plains of central North America, but horses now allowed the plains people to cover much greater distances than before.

The Spanish in New Mexico engage in a long series of wars lasting the whole 18th century against the traditional enemies of the pueblo people, the nomadic Navajo and Apache nations, both peoples now using horses. The Apache had been driven into the desert areas of New Mexico by the expanding Comanche nation to the east.

The Mandan are the richest of the plains nations at this time, their wealth coming from trade for food and other produce. They lived in permanent farming villages and towns, and traders from other nations travelled long distances to barter with the Mandan.

The Five Nations (expanded to Six Nations with the addition of the Tuscarora nation in the early 1700s) go to war with the Ojibwa over control of the rich hunting grounds and transportation routes in southern Ontario, following the dispersal of the Wendake and Attiwandaronk (see North America 400 years ago). The Ojibwa clans that lived and hunted in southern Ontario were usually called the Mississauga. Many raids and counter raids are made, but a major lake battle was fought between flotillas of canoes on Lake Huron around 1712. The Mississauga Ojibwa win a decisive victory.

Although the Spanish still had colonies, and the French held onto the Mississippi region, the British victory in the Seven Years War in 1763 meant England controlled most of the eastern part of North America, divided into 13 colonies, plus the ex-French colony of Canada. Of the Indian nations, the Six Nations were allied to the British, while a federation of nations between the western Great Lakes and the Mississippi, led by the Shawanese leader Pontiac, had been defeated in a war, called "Pontiac's Rebellion" in 1763. This was not a revolt, but after years of illegal settlement by the Europeans of their land, by settlers such as Daniel Boone, the Shawanese and their allies were finally goaded into armed resistance. Pontiac was defeated, in part because of a small pox epidemic. The disease was introduced through blankets which had been secretly infected with small pox by the British--a historical example of biological warfare.

In 1775, the British Empire, then the most powerful in the world, is shaken by the American Revolution. Many people in the 13 British colonies in North America began to protest control of their lives from England. What caused the most problems were taxation policies. The high cost of the recent Seven Years War was one of the reasons the English king, George III, needed more money. Even though the French threat against the 13 colonies had been eliminated by the victory at Quebec, the British colonists objected to having pay for the army. They also wanted more freedom to expand into Indian land. Protests, like the "Boston Tea Party", eventually break out into armed conflict, and a new war is started. France, Spain and the Dutch eventually join the war against Britain. The most important leader of the revolution was George Washington who becomes the first president. By the time peace was made in 1783, a new nation had been born, the United States of America.

250 Years Ago in Canada

By 1745, Britain and France are the two dominant powers on the east coast of North America. As part of the Seven Years War (one of the first true world wars), in September 1759, the Battle of the Plains of Abraham is fought between the British army of General Wolfe and the French army under General Montcalm. By European standards, where armies usually numbered 100,000 men, the armies commanded by Wolfe and Montcalm are very small, only about 5000-6000 men each. The French lose the battle and Quebec City, but both generals are killed. The French try to retake Quebec City in 1760, but fail. The British keep the French colony, what becomes the core territory of the modern nation of Canada, but the French keep their colony of Louisiana along the Mississippi River.

After the American Revolution, tens of thousands of Loyalists resettle in Canada. The Loyalists were families who had supported King George III against the American rebels. The Loyalists were not just English, but included all the different ethnic groups that had lived in what is now called the United States: Dutch, Germans, Hungarians, Serbs, Irish and Scottish. There were also several thousand Africans, (most still slaves). The Six Nations, who had remained allied to Britain, were given a large tract of land to live on along the Grand River by their former enemies, the Mississauga.

The War of 1812 is fought between the United States of America and Great Britain between 1812 and 1815. Famous battles were fought at Detroit, Washington, York (Toronto), Queenston Heights, Chippewa, Chateauguay, Beaver Dam, Stoney Creek, Moraviantown, Crysler's Farm and Lundy's Lane.

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