APUSH Period 2 (1607–1754): How Regional Colonies Took Shape in British North America

Indigenous homelands

Densely mapped Native lands with established trade networks, rivalries, and diplomatic traditions that Europeans entered when founding colonies like Jamestown (1607) and Plymouth (1620).

Native dependency (early colonization)

The reality that many early European colonies survived only through Native trade, agricultural knowledge, and tactical alliances.

Indigenous agency

The idea that Native nations made strategic choices—using diplomacy, trade, warfare, migration, and coalition-building—to protect their interests rather than acting as passive victims.

Epidemic disease (e.g., smallpox)

Diseases that often spread faster than Europeans themselves, weakening Native communities and reshaping regional political power.

Land pressure

Escalating conflict caused by expanding colonial populations and settlement patterns (especially English) that demanded more land over time.

Fur trade

A major early economic exchange (especially in the Northeast interior) that tied Native politics to European markets and intensified competition among Native groups.

Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee)

A powerful Native confederacy that leveraged diplomacy and strategic positioning to influence trade routes and play European powers against one another.

Balance-of-power alliances

A diplomatic strategy in which Native nations partnered with rival European empires to prevent any single empire from becoming too dominant locally.

Missionizing

European efforts to convert Native peoples to Christianity and reshape Indigenous life, often paired with pressure to adopt European social and agricultural norms.

Exclusive, permanent land ownership

An English settler land practice emphasizing fenced fields and expansion of town boundaries, often clashing with Native land-use systems.

Shared or seasonal land use

A common Indigenous approach (with regional exceptions) featuring layered rights (hunting/planting/fishing) and diplomacy-based boundaries rather than exclusive ownership.

Jamestown–Powhatan relations

A pattern of trade, uneasy cooperation, and warfare showing that early English survival depended on Native power, but later English stability increased land-driven conflict.

Pequot War (1636–1637)

A New England conflict driven by trade and territorial competition that ended in devastating violence against the Pequot and shifted regional power.

King Philip’s War (1675–1676)

A major New England war (also called Metacom’s War) in which a Native coalition resisted English expansion; it ultimately strengthened English control and weakened Native autonomy.

Pueblo Revolt (1680)

A Native uprising against Spanish rule showing that coercive labor systems and religious suppression could trigger unified resistance and temporarily expel Europeans.

Indentured servitude

A labor system in which workers (often from England) signed contracts to work for a set term in exchange for passage, widely used before slavery expanded further.

Racialized chattel slavery

A system that developed over the 1600s–early 1700s treating enslaved Africans and their descendants as property for life, with status often inherited through the mother.

Bacon’s Rebellion (1676)

A Virginia uprising exposing class tensions and intensifying elite fears about relying on large numbers of poor, armed freedmen—encouraging a shift toward enslaved labor and hardened racial boundaries.

Atlantic slave trade

A transatlantic system linking African coastal trade networks, European shippers/financiers, and American plantation markets to supply enslaved labor.

Middle Passage

The forced ocean crossing of enslaved Africans under brutal conditions, contributing to trauma and cultural diversity among enslaved communities in North America.

Slave codes

Colonial laws that defined enslaved people as property and restricted movement, assembly, education, and legal rights—both tightening labor control and enforcing racial categories.

Gang labor

A Chesapeake labor organization in which groups of enslaved people worked under close supervision, common on tobacco plantations.

Task system

A Lower South labor organization (especially in rice regions) assigning specific tasks; after completion, workers might have limited personal time (without implying humane conditions).

Stono Rebellion (1739)

A South Carolina revolt showing enslaved resistance and prompting harsher laws and surveillance—evidence of the cycle of oppression and resistance.

Regional colonial development

An APUSH framework explaining how differing geography, economies, labor systems, and religious goals produced distinct colonial societies (New England, Middle, Southern) with lasting political consequences.