In contrast, in the eleventh century the Norsemen who attempted to found settlements on the New England coast had met with savage resistance from the natives, whom they called Skrellings.
Intermarriage between Whites and Indians was almost unknown save in the occasional case in which a colonist was carried into captivity. The antipathy of the English settlers to the Indians was far too great to lead to the sort of miscegenation which was encouraged by the French in their part of the continent, and to which reference will be made later. In the British colonies the half-breed was looked upon as an Indian, whereas in the French colonies, as generally in all Colonial countries that had the Roman imperial tradition and the Roman Catholic religion, the half-breed was assimilated to the European group. Some of the remaining Indians along the Atlantic coast mixed with the runaway Negro slaves, but few of them contributed to the white population, and the term "half-breed" was in general a term of contempt. It was not until within the life-time of those now living that an infusion of Indian blood became a subject of pride, particularly in Oklahoma, unless one makes exception for such isolated tales as the somewhat grotesque Pocahontas tradition in Virginia.
The predominant influence of Massachusetts at the time of the Revolution is easy to understand. It possessed, to an unusual degree, unity in the various fields in which unity is most valuable to a nation—unity of race, unity of language, unity of culture, unity of religion, unity of institutions—and, more than anywhere else in the United States, its unity was attained through a long-continued, independent growth on American soil.
The French and Indian menace held back the rapidly multiplying population of New England for at least a generation. The agricultural areas were carrying more population than they could support, and they were waiting for a favorable opportunity to spread out. This opportunity came in the overthrow of Montcalm at Quebec in 1759. The Peace of Paris in 1763 left the road open, and the New England population began to push north, west, and south with a vigor that was reflected in the activity of the communities at home. The succeeding half-century is correctly regarded as the golden age of New England. Its country districts were more densely populated when the first census of the United States was taken in 1790 than they have been since. The decline, which will be traced in the next section, then began and decade after decade thereafter the New England towns and villages are found in a surprisingly large percentage of cases either standing still or actually declining in number of inhabitants.
The history of American colonization is usually written only in terms of the additions to population. The subtractions from it may be no less important. Subtractions by migration westward were less significant because in many cases the frontier merely proliferated itself by sending its surplus out without diminishing its own standards or numbers.
The first national loss of population occurred after 1640 when the changing political conditions in England, and the tyranny of the Massachusetts Bay authorities, drove many people out of Massachusetts. This loss, serious as it was, is insignificant compared with the tremendous loss of superior stock at the time of the Revolution. The Loyalists made up an undetermined part of the population, perhaps as much as one-third. Those who had been most conspicuous or most active were obliged in many cases to flee, and persecution with the confiscation of their property was carried on even after the war. Most of the Loyalists who left the colonies went either to Canada or to the West Indies. Altogether the loss from this source may have been as great as 100,000 people representing on the whole a superior selection of the population. It is comparable in the racial damage done the American population with the loss which France suffered from the expulsion of the Huguenots.
By the Revolution, the colonizing impulse of New England had not merely begun to fill up western New York, as will be described shortly, but had led to the formation of speculative land companies for settlement in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania, and even on the lower Mississippi. The hard times following the Revolution led to a great increase in migration, which, in general, has been rapid in hard times, slower in periods of prosperity. Vermont, as already said, felt the impulse markedly. Maine also seems to have grown most rapidly in the decade or two following the Declaration of Independence, though Portland and Falmouth were the only towns worthy of the name. New Hampshire, likewise, slower in its development than other parts of New England, had begun to catch up by attracting those ready to better themselves by a change of location. Connecticut had made a steady growth and had fewer non-English elements than almost any other of the New England colonies, small as these elements were everywhere. The growth of Massachusetts had been largely in the interior, Boston having made less progress than many other cities. People were moving from Massachusetts to other colonies. Many were moving through Boston but not staying there. Politically and culturally important, the Hub of the Universe stagnated industrially until the beginning of the manufacturing era.