The first recorded contact between native peoples of the soon-to-be called "Americas" and the economically-motivated and overly-zealous European seafaring explorers and opportunists came in 1492 and yet it was not until 1607 that the first attempt at colonization met with any success. Why such a long delay? What could possibly have staved off these "intrepid" and "brave" and highly-motivated adventurers from settling in these fantastically bountiful lands? The reason for this improbably long waiting period before colonization attempts was three-fold.
Initial contact had found the European representative of the human species to be sickly, malnourished, and malformed (diminutive). In a gross oversimplification, this was due to the massive scale of disease epidemics, war, and famine issues plaguing the Continent throughout the 14th and 15th Centuries. Now, face-to-face with teeming numbers of healthy, vibrant, cheerful, and, in the case of the male versions of these bronze-skinned athletic peoples, an awe-inspiringly godly specimen of size, strength and ability, the Europeans were, understandably, intimidated. In almost every single first-person written account of shoreline contact, European writers describe the native populations with pronounced awe and respect; admiration and, yes, even intimidation oozes from the pages of the journals, letters, and reports that have survived from this era.
Though the accounts reveal that most Europeans were most often welcomed, celebrated, and even feted upon their arrivals, their records show that they were also, then, just as ceremoniously sent off before they could ever get a proper assessment of the treasures and resources available from their hosts and the surrounding lands: they would be firmly escorted back to their ships with displays of both gracious thanks and emphatic resolve. The explorers also recognized that the sheer numbers of the native populations, coupled with the size of these very fit males, proved even greater cause for caution and delay: it was too easy to determine that any exhibition of force would only lead to the eventual decimation and even annihilation of any armed landing force.
This second factor that kept Europeans from braving attempts to colonize the Americas (especially North America) was one that was, unbeknownst to them, being ameliorated as they sailed away. It turns out that their brief little celebratory encounters with the natives were more than enough to begin the sharing and spread of diseases: communicable diseases that the Europeans were carrying (and had, over generations of exposure, built up some immunity to) that the native peoples had never encountered and, thus, to which they had absolutely no immunity. Thus, over the course of the next century, the hitherto healthy and teeming populations of native peoples began to thin, dwindle, and move away from the shorelines that they had so joyously and abundantly populated. And the Europeans had no clue as to why this was happening--but the window of opportunity it afforded them was not left unnoticed.
At the same time, while the naturally-mobile indigens traveled their usual annual trade routes--moving their small town populations seasonally as they had done since time immemorial--they continued to oblige their usual inter-town parties and games (and resultant marriages and birth celebrations), thus unwittingly sharing and spreading these newly acquired European-transmitted diseases as quickly and easily as they shared their lively and even ribald stories of their encounters with the strange and meek "white" foreigners. The population estimates of total indigenous natives in the Americas before European contact range from 20 to 200 million. Anthropologists believe that 90% of those numbers had been killed by measles, mumps, chickenpox, smallpox, diphtheria, pneumonia, typhoid, the common cold, whooping cough, and other communicable diseases brought by the Europeans before the first permanent settlement(s) ever succeeded. Thus, by far the largest portion of the native American population died having perhaps heard of the funny little white foreigners without ever having met one. (In a laughably-ironic payback, it turns out that one of the other effluents of the so-called "Columbian Exchange"--along with coffee, cocoa, cane sugar, potatoes, and tomatoes--may have been the gift of syphilis for the Europeans to take back home.)
Over the course of the 100 years since Columbus' "First Contact," the Europeans had begun to figure out a plan that would lead to greater successes when trying to establish permanent residencies in the New World. They had finally figured out that they could land without much resistance in places with either very low native populations or in locations that had already been deemed less-desirable--even by the natives: like the swampy sandy coast lines of Florida, the Carolinas, and the barrier islands. Using this new strategy, the pesky little Europeans would gain their first footholds onto North America--a continent that would become theirs over the course of the 17th and 18th Centuries.
By the time of the establishment of the Massachusetts' Bay Colony by the Pilgrims in 1620 and other colonies thereafter, the population decline of the local native populations made European access and residency very hard to oppose much less deny.
At the same time, while the naturally-mobile indigens traveled their usual annual trade routes--moving their small town populations seasonally as they had done since time immemorial--they continued to oblige their usual inter-town parties and games (and resultant marriages and birth celebrations), thus unwittingly sharing and spreading these newly acquired European-transmitted diseases as quickly and easily as they shared their lively and even ribald stories of their encounters with the strange and meek "white" foreigners. The population estimates of total indigenous natives in the Americas before European contact range from 20 to 200 million. Anthropologists believe that 90% of those numbers had been killed by measles, mumps, chickenpox, smallpox, diphtheria, pneumonia, typhoid, the common cold, whooping cough, and other communicable diseases brought by the Europeans before the first permanent settlement(s) ever succeeded. Thus, by far the largest portion of the native American population died having perhaps heard of the funny little white foreigners without ever having met one. (In a laughably-ironic payback, it turns out that one of the other effluents of the so-called "Columbian Exchange"--along with coffee, cocoa, cane sugar, potatoes, and tomatoes--may have been the gift of syphilis for the Europeans to take back home.)
Over the course of the 100 years since Columbus' "First Contact," the Europeans had begun to figure out a plan that would lead to greater successes when trying to establish permanent residencies in the New World. They had finally figured out that they could land without much resistance in places with either very low native populations or in locations that had already been deemed less-desirable--even by the natives: like the swampy sandy coast lines of Florida, the Carolinas, and the barrier islands. Using this new strategy, the pesky little Europeans would gain their first footholds onto North America--a continent that would become theirs over the course of the 17th and 18th Centuries.
By the time of the establishment of the Massachusetts' Bay Colony by the Pilgrims in 1620 and other colonies thereafter, the population decline of the local native populations made European access and residency very hard to oppose much less deny.
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