The First Americans Timeline
80,000 b.c.e. – 1492 c.e.
80,000-15,000 b.c.e. Ancestors of the Indians enter the Americas .
15,000 b.c.e. Glaciers begin to recede and many large animal species become extinct.
10,000 b.c.e. Sophisticated forms of toolmaking known as Clovis technology appear.
9,000 b.c.e. Plant cultivation begins in central Mexico.
8,000 b.c.e. Immigrants reach the southernmost tip of South America.
7,000-4,000 b.c.e. Athabascans settle in the Pacific Northwest .
5,000 b.c.e. Inuits and Aleuts cross the Bering Straits by boat.
3,000 b.c.e. Cultivation of corn begins in the Southwest.
1,000 b.c.e. Beginning of Hohokam and Mogollon cultures.
700 b.c.e. Adena culture begins.
300 b.c.e.-500 c.e. Hopewell culture flourishes.
100 Anasazi culture emerges in the Southwest
700 Mississippian culture develops.
1000 Athabascans begin to arrive in the Southwest.
1300 The Anasazi abandon their cliff dwellings.
1451 Iroquois confederacy founded.
1492 Columbus first arrives in the Caribbean.
1492 – 1800
1521 Hernan Cortes completes his conquest of the Aztec empire.
1542 Spain's "New Laws" seek to protect New Spain's native inhabitants.
1546 Spain repeals the "New Laws" prohibiting Indian slavery.
1598 Don Juan Onate establishes the Spanish colony of New Mexico
1622 Opechancanough leads assault against English settlers in Virginia, beginning 12 years of warfare.
1634 English settlers defeat Openancanough.
1637 Pequot War.
1675 King Philip's War begins; colonists defeat southern New England Indians in 1676 and the northern New England Indians in 1678.
1680 Indians of New Mexico rise up against the Spanish in the Pueblo Revolt; Spain reconquers the territory in 1692
1700s Plains Indians adopt the horse.
1711-13 Tuscarora War in North Carolina.
1715-18 Yamasee War in South Carolina.
1758 New Jersey establishes an Indian reservation for the Delawares.
1763 Britain defeats France in the French and Indian War; Proclamation of 1763 forbids white settlement west of the Allegheny Mountains; Pontiac 's Rebellion.
1769 Franciscan Father Junipero Serra establishes the first of a string of missions near present-day San Diego.
1775 The Indians in San Diego stage an unsuccessful rebellion against Spanish missionaries.
1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers, which compels an Indian coalition to sign the Treaty of Greenville, ceding land in Ohio to the United States.
1800 – 1900
1808 The U.S. government moves Cherokees in Tennessee to Arkansas.
1811 At the Battle of Tippecanoe, William Henry Harrison defeats an Indian alliance led by the Shawnee Prophet Tenskwatawa.
1813 Tecumseh dies in the Battle of the Thames during the War of 1812.
1814 Andrew Jackson's forces defeat the Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.
1816 Land cessions by Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Creeks.
1816-18 First Seminole War in Florida forces Spain to cede the territory.
1819 Land cessions by the Cherokees.
1820s Further land cessions by the Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles.
1824 The Bureau of Indian Affairs is established.
1828 Cherokee Phoenix newspaper begins publication.
1830 Congress passes the Indian Removal Act.
1831 The Nez Perce send a delegation to St. Louis to ask for teachers, sparking an influx of missionaries into the Pacific Northwest. Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia.
1832 Sauk and Fox Indians unsuccessfully seek to recover territory in Illinois during the Black Hawk War. In Worcester v. State of Georgia , the Supreme Court rules that the federal government, not the states, has jurisdiction over Indian territories.
1833 The Choctaw complete their removal to lands west of the Mississippi River.
1835 Second Seminole War begins, lasting seven years.
1838 Cherokee removed along the Trail of Tears.
1846-64 Navajo warfare.
1851 Plains Indians agree to confine hunting to specified regions.
1853 California begins to confine its Indian population on reservations.
1854-1890 Sioux wars.
1861-1900 Apache warfare.
1864 Sand Creek , Colorado , massacre.
1867-68 U.S. demands that Plains Indians move to reservation.
1868 Colonel George Armstrong Custer's cavalry attacks a Cheyenne village on the Washita river in Oklahoma , killing more than 100.
1871 Indian Appropriations Act ends the practice of treating Indian tribes as sovereign nations.
1876 Federal authorities order the Lakota Sioux to move to their reservations. Custer's Last Stand.
1877 Congress repeals the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, taking back 40 million acres of Lakota Sioux lands. Nez Perce War begins when Nez Perce refuse to move from their homeland in Oregon 's Wallowa Valley .
1879 84 Lakota children become the first to attend the U.S. Indian Training and Industrial School, a boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
1880 Sitting Bull returns from Canada.
1881 Helen Hunt Jackson's A Century of Dishonor.
1883 A group of reformers, clergy, and government officials, who call themselves “The Friends of the Indians, call for government policies emphasizing the assimilation of Indians into the mainstream of American life. The U.S. government opens the Lakota reservation to white settlers. Buffalo Bill Cody launches his Wild West show.
1886 After more than a decade of guerrilla warfare, the Apache leader Geronimo surrenders.
1887 Dawes Severalty Act provides individual Indians with up to 160 acres of land. The remaining tribal lands are sold. By 1934, Indian landholdings have been reduced from 138 million acres to 48 million acres.
1889 Wovoka, a Paiute holy man, teaches the Ghost Dance. The federal government opens unoccupied lands in Indian Territory (Oklahoma ) to white settlement.
1890 Sitting Bull is murdered during a confrontation with Lakota police officers. Massacre of Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee.
1898 Curtis Act expands federal authority over tribes in Indian Territory.
1900 to the Present
1901 Congress confers citizenship on all Native Americans in Oklahoma Territory.
1924 Citizenship Act declares all Native Americans to be U.S. citizens. John Meriam leads an investigation of conditions on Indian reservations.
1934 Indian Reorganization Act encourages the preservation and recovery of Native Americans' cultural traditions.
1950s Termination Policy withdraws federal services from some 60 tribes.
1961 American Indian Conference in Chicago promotes tribal sovereignty.
1968 American Indian Movement founded.
1969 Native American protesters occupy Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.
1972 Native Americans occupy the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarter in Washington, D.C.
1973 American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
1978 The Indian Child Welfare Act gives tribes the authority to determine the tribal membership of children and to raise children as they see fit.
1987 The U.S. Supreme Court frees Indian tribes from most state gambling regulations.
1990 Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act requires the return of human remains and sacred funerary objects to the tribes to which they belong.
1992 Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan Indian and human rights activist, receives the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to protect indigenous people from discrimination.
1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act prohibits states from interfering with the practice of traditional Native American religions.
1994 Zapatista rebels in Chiapas state seize several towns to expose the exploitation of Mexico 's indigenous peoples.
1999 Canada splits its Northwest Territory into two parts; the eastern half, Nunavut, becomes the largest part of the Americas governed by its native peoples.
1999 Bill Clinton visits the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota , becoming the first sitting president to visit an Indian reservation since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936.
The Colonial Era Timeline
17th Century
1607 May 13: The first permanent English colony is founded in Jamestown, Virginia.
1619 July 30: Virginia's House of Burgesses convenes; it is the first legislative assembly in English North America.
August: A Dutch ship carries 20 blacks to Virginia. We now know that these were not the first blacks to arrive in Virginia.
1620 May 21: The Mayflower Compact, signed by 41 adult males in Provincetown Harbor, Mass., represents the first agreement on self-government in English North America.
December 26: The Pilgrim Separatists land at Plymouth, Mass.
1621 December 25: Massachusetts Governor William Bradford forbids game-playing on Christmas day.
1622 March 22: Indian attacks kill one-third of the English settlers in Virginia.
1624 John Smith publishes his General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, which describes his rescue by Pocahontas.
May: The Dutch establish the colony of New Netherland.
May 1: The Maypole at Mare Mount. In what is now Quincy, Mass., Thomas Morton and others set up a May Pole, engaged in drinking and dancing with Indian women, and celebrated "the feasts of the Roman Goddes Glora, or the beastly practises of the Madd Bacchinalians," according to Massachusetts Governor William Bradford. Morton was deported to England.
1632 Charles I grants Lord Baltimore territory north of the Potomac River, which will become Maryland. Because the royal charter did not restrict settlement to Protestants, Catholics could settle in the colony.
1634 Massachusetts' sumptuary law forebodes the purchase of woolen, linen or silk clothes with silver, gold, silk, or lace on them.
1636 June: After being expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony, Roger Williams founds Rhode Island, which becomes the first English colony to grant complete religious tolerance.
1637 November 7: Massachusetts banishes Anne Hutchinson for preaching that faith alone was sufficient for salvation.
1638 March: The first Swedish colonists settle in Delaware.
1654 The first Jews arrive in New Amsterdam, fleeing the Spanish Inquisition in Brazil.
1660 May: Massachusetts forbids the celebration of Christmas.
December 1: Parliament adopts the First Navigation Act, which requires all goods carried to and from England to be transported on English ships and that the colonies could export cotton, ginger, sugar, tobacco, and wool exclusively to England. Other Navigation Acts were enacted in 1662, 1663, 1670, and 1673.
1661 September: Governor John Endicott orders an end to persecution of Quakers in Massachusetts, where three Quakers had been executed.
1662 A synod of Massachusetts churches adopts the Halfway Covenant, which permits baptism of children whose parents had not become full church members.
1664 Maryland adopts a statute denying freedom to slaves who converted to Christianity. A similar act was adopted by Virginia in 1667.
September 7: The Dutch surrender New Netherland to the English, who rename the colony New York. The Dutch temporarily regained possession in 1673 and 1674.
1669 John Locke drafts the Fundamental Constitutions for the Carolinas, which combines a feudal social order with a stress on religious toleration.
1675 June 24: King Philip's War begins. Relative to the size of the population, this conflict between the New England colonists and the Mohegans, Naragansetts, Nipmucks, Podunks, and Wampanoags was the deadliest in American history.
1676 September 19: Jamestown, Virginia., is burned during Bacon's Rebellion. Declining tobacco prices, a cattle epidemic, and a belief that the colony's governor had failed to take adequate measures to protect Virginia against Indian attacks contributed to the rebellion, which petered out after its leader, Nathaniel Bacon, died in October 1676.
1681 March 4: Charles II grants William Penn a charter to what is now Pennsylvania.
1682 Mary Rowlandson publishes an account of her captivity among Indians.
1684 June 21: Charles II revokes Massachusetts' charter on the grounds that it had imposed religious qualifications for voting, discriminated against the Church of England, and set up an illegal mint.
1685 James II consolidates the New England colonies into the Dominion of New England and names Sir Edmund Andros governor, who dissolved the New England colonies' assemblies.
1689 Leisler's Insurrection. Following the overthrow of James II, Jacob Leisler, a German merchant, force New York's governor to flee. He was subsequently executed for treason.
The first French and Indian war, King William's War begins. Colonists launch attacks on Port Royal, Nova Scotia, and Quebec, and the French and their Indian allies burn Schenectady. The 1697 Treaty of Ryswick restored the pre-war status quo.
April 18: The New England colonies out Royal Governor Edmund Andros.
1692 March: The Salem Witch Scare begin when a group of young girls claims that they have been bewitched. When Massachusetts Governor William Phips halted the trials in October, 19 people had been hanged, one man had been crushed to death, and two people had died in prison. In 1697, one of the Salem witch judges, Samuel Sewall, publicly repented his role in the affair.
18th Century
1700 Population of the British colonies: approximately 275,000. Boston, the largest city, has about 7000 inhabitants.
Samuel Sewall publishes The Selling of Joseph, one of the first expressions of antislavery thought in the American colonies.
1702 May 4: Queen Anne's War, the second French and Indian War, begins. It lasts until 1713.
1704 February 29: French and Indian forces attack Deerfield, killing fifty and taking a hundred residents captive, in one of the most violent episodes in Queen Anne's War.
April 24: The Boston News-Letter is the first successful newspaper in the British colonies.
1705 Massachusetts prohibits marriages between whites and blacks.
1711 September 22: The Tuscarora Indian War (1711-13) begins. Surviving Tuscaroras move northward and join the League of the Six Nations.
1713 April 11: The Treaty of Utrecht ends Queen Anne's War. France cedes Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to Britain.
1716 January: South Carolina settlers, aided by Cherokees, defeat the Yamassee Indians, and move southward into lands claimed by Spain.
1721 May: Connecticut prohibits Sunday travel except for attendance at worship.
1733 May 17: The Molasses Act levies heavy duties on rum and molasses imported from the French and Spanish West Indies.
1734 The Great Awakening begins in New England, ignited by Jonathan Edwards, who sermons in Northampton, Mass., emphasize human depravity and divine omnipotence.
1735 Peter Zenger, publisher of the New York Weekly Journal is acquitted of seditious libel, helping to establish the principle of freedom of the press.
1739 June 9: George II grants James Oglethorpe a charter for Georgia to serve as a buffer against Spain and as a haven for debtors. Georgia was the only one of the original 13 colonies to forbid slavery.
August: George Whitefield, a Methodist preacher, arrives from England, and preaches from New England to Georgia.
September 9: The Stono slave rebellion in South Carolina.
1740 Population of the British colonies: approximately 889,000.
1741 The Negro Conspiracy of 1741, an alleged plot to burn down New York City, leads authorities to burn 13 blacks alive, hang eight, and transport 71 out of the colony.
1744 King George's War, the third French and Indian war, begins. It lasts until 1748.
1745 June 16: New Englanders capture Fort Louisbourg, a French stronghold in Nova Scotia. The fort was returned to the French at the end of King George's War, outraging New Englanders.
1751 Benjamin Franklin publishes his Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, perhaps the most influential essay written by an American colonist.
1752 June: Benjamin Franklin demonstrates that lightning is form of electricity by flying a kite and a key during a thunderstorm.
1754 30-year-old Benjamin Banneker, an African American, constructs the first clock made entirely in the American colonies.
May 28: The fourth and most important French and Indian War (1754-1763) begins when British and French and Indian forces clash near Fort Duquesne (the site of present-day Pittsburgh) for control of the Ohio River Valley.