| A | B |
|---|
| Coureurs de bois | French for "woods runner," an independent fur trader in New France |
| Beaver Wars | Series of bloody conflicts, occurring between 1640s and 1680s, during which the Iroquois fought the French for control of the fur trade in the east and the Great Lakes region. |
| Virginia Company | A group of London investors who sent ships to Chesapeake Bay in 1607. |
| House of Burgesses | The legisalture of colonial Virginia. First organized in 1619, it was the first institution of representative government in the English colonies. |
| Indentured servants | Individuals who contracted to serve a master for a period of four to seven years in return for payment of the servant's passage to America. |
| Pilgrims | Settlers of Plymouth Colony, who viewed themselves as spirital wanderers. |
| Separatists | Members of an offshoot branch of Puritanism. They believed that the Church of England was too corrupt to be reformed and hence were convinced they must "separate" from it to save their souls. |
| Mayflower Compact | The first document of self-government in North America. |
| Massachusetts Bay Company | A group of wealthy Puritans who were granted a royal charter in 1629 to settle in Massachusetts Bay. |
| Great Migration | Puritan emigration to North America between 1629 and 1643. |
| Proprietary Colony | A colony created when the English monarch granted a huge tract of land to an individual or group of individuals, who became "lords proprietor." |
| Quakers | Members of the Society of Friends, a radical religious group that arose in the mid-seventeenth century. They rejected formal theology, focusing instead on the Holy Spirit that dwelt within them. |
| Frame of Government | William Penn's constitution for Pennsylvania which included a provision allowing for religious freedom. |
| Pequot War | Conflict between English settlers and Pequot Indians over control of land and trade in eastern Connecticut. |
| King Philip's War | Conflict in New England (1675-1676) between Wampanoags, Narragansetts, and other Indian peoples against English settlers; sparked by English encroachments on native lands. |
| Covenant Chain | An alliance between the Iroquois Confederacy and the colony of New York which sought to establish Iroquois dominance over all other tribes and thus put New York in an economically and politically dominant position among the other colonies. |
| Bacon's Rebellion | Violent conflict in Virginia (1675 - 1676), beginning with settler attacks on Indians but culminating in a rebellion against Virginia's government. |
| Culpeper's Rebellion | The overthrow of the established government in the Albermarle region of North Carolonia by backcountry men in 1677. |
| King William's War | The first of a series of colonial struggles between England and France; these conflicts occurred principally on the frontiers of northern New England and New York between 1689 and 1697. |
