The vast political and social changes of Europe in this age found their echo in the New World. The decay of Spain left her American colonies to feebleness and decay. The islands of the Caribbean Sea became the haunt of the buccaneers, pirates, desperadoes of all nations who preyed upon Spanish ships, and, as their power grew, extended their depredations northward along the American coast. So important did these buccaneers become that they formed regular governments among themselves. The most famed of their leaders was knighted by England as Sir Henry Morgan; and the most renowned of his achievements was the storm and capture of the Spanish treasure city, Panama.[2]
[Footnote 2: See Morgan, the Buccaneer, Sacks Panama, page 66.]
As Spain grew weak in America, France grew strong. From her Canadian colonies she sent out daring missionaries and traders, who explored the great lakes and the Mississippi valley.[3] They made friends with the Indians; they founded Louisiana.[4] All the north and west of the continent fell into their hands.
[Footnote 3: See Discovery of the Mississippi, page 108.]
[Footnote 4: See Colonization of Louisiana, page 297.]
Never, however, did their numbers approach those of the English colonists along the Atlantic coast. Both Massachusetts and Virginia were grown into important commonwealths, almost independent of England, and well able to support the weaker settlements rising around them. After the great Puritan exodus to New England to escape the oppression of Charles I, there had come a Royalist exodus to Virginia to escape the Puritanic tyranny of Cromwell's time. Large numbers of Catholics fled to Maryland. Huguenots established themselves in the Carolinas and elsewhere. Then came Penn to build a great Quaker state among the scattered Dutch settlements along the Delaware.[1] The American seaboard became the refuge of each man who refused to bow his neck to despotism of whatever type.
[Footnote 1: See William Penn Receives the Grant of Pennsylvania: Founding of Philadelphia, page 153.]
Under such settlers English America soon ceased to be a mere offshoot of Europe. It became a world of its own; its people developed into a new race. They had their own springs of action, their own ways of thought, different from those of Europe, more simple and intense as was shown in the Salem witchcraft excitement, or more resolute and advanced as was revealed in Bacon's Virginia rebellion.[2]
[Footnote 2: See Salem Witchcraft Trials, page 268.]
The aboriginal inhabitants, the Indians, found themselves pressed ever backward from the coast. They resisted, and in 1675 there arose in New England, King Philip's war, which for that section at least settled the Indian question forever. The red men of New England were practically exterminated.[3] Those of New York, the Iroquois, were more fortunate or more crafty. They dwelt deeper in the wilderness, and formed a buffer state between the French in Canada and the English to the south, drawing aid now from one, now from the other.