Massachusetts, Province of (English Crown Colony)

The thirteen colonies that will become the United States of America have all been established by 1732 with the British colonization of Georgia.

All have local governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self-government stimulating support for republicanism.

With extremely high birth rates, low death rates, and steady settlement, the colonial population grows rapidly as relatively small native populations are eclipsed.

British forces seize Canada from the French during the Seven Years' War (known as the French and Indian War in America), but the francophone population remains politically isolated from the southern colonies.

Excluding the natives, who are being conquered and displaced, the thirteen British colonies that will form the United States have a population of over two million one hundred thousand in 1770, about one-third that of Britain.

Despite continuing new arrivals, the rate of natural increase is such that by the 1770s only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas.

The colonies' distance from Britain has allowed the development of self-government, but their success motivates monarchs to periodically seek to reassert royal authority.

North America's natives have often been conquered and displaced with the progress of European colonization in the territories of the contemporary United States.

The native population had declined after Europeans arrived, and for various reasons, primarily diseases such as smallpox and measles.

Violence is not a significant factor in the overall decline among Native Americans, though conflict among themselves and with Europeans affects specific tribes and various colonial settlements.

In the early days of colonization, many European settlers were subject to food shortages, disease, and attacks from Native Americans.

Native Americans were also often at war with neighboring tribes and allied with Europeans in their colonial wars.

At the same time, however, many natives and settlers have come to depend on each other.

Settlers trade for food and animal pelts, natives for guns, ammunition and other European wares.

Natives have taught many settlers where, when and how to cultivate corn, beans and squash.

European missionaries and others feel it is important to "civilize" the Native Americans and urge them to adopt European agricultural techniques and lifestyles.

A few young girls in the Massachusetts town of Salem, stimulated by voodoo tales told by a West Indian slave, Tituba, claim they are possessed by the devil and subsequently accuse three local women, including Tituba, of witchcraft.

As Tituba and other accused persons are pressured and consequently incriminate others in false confessions, public hysteria over the threat of witchcraft mounts throughout Massachusetts.

Civil magistrates, encouraged by the clergy, set up a special court in Salem to try those accused of practicing witchcraft, and Samuel Sewall, John Hathorne, and William Stoughton are chosen as the court's judges.

The jurors are drawn from church membership lists, the chained defendants have no counsel, and the evidence presented is largely “spectral”—testimony about voices or apparitions seen only by the witnesses.

In early June, Bridget Bishop is convicted.

Following a brief delay, during which several leading ministers advise the use of spectral evidence only with “exquisite caution,” twenyt-six more are convicted.

Nineteen persons, fourteen of them women, are executed, including Bridget Bishop.

Another man, Giles Corey, is tortured to death in an attempt to coerce a guilty plea from him by crushing him with rocks.

By September 22, when the jails overflow with prisoners (even royal governor William Phips's wife is implicated), the hysteria abates.

Cotton Mather delivers a sermon arguing against mass convictions and other clergymen openly question the uses of spectral evidence.

Governor Phips abruptly intervenes in October and frees all those in jail.

Subsequently, the jurors admit their errors and both Judge Sewall and Reverend John Hale, the chief witness against Bridget Bishop, publicly confess their culpability. (The Massachusetts General Court will later annul the witch trials' convictions and grant indemnities to the families of those who had been executed.)

Abenaki raiders nearly destroy York, Maine, on January 24, 1692.

...Casco Bay (Portland, in present Maine) but ...

Lahontan, now a captain, makes a return trip to France in 1692 with a plan for a fleet on the Great Lakes, stopping at Newfoundland and defending the French colonists against the English at at Plaisance, where he is made king's lieutenant.

Lahontan, accused of insubordination by the governor at Plaisance, flees to Portugal in 1693 and will remain in Europe hereafter.

The privateer Pierre Maisonnat dit Baptiste in the summer of 1696 leads Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville's expedition out of Acadia to attack strongholds on the New England coast.

After having captured two frigates at the mouth of St. John River, the first target is the vitally important port at Pemaquid (present day Bristol, Maine).

The port is protected by Fort William Henry (also known as Fort Pemaquid).

Baptiste and the expedition soundly destroy the fort and dismantle it.

Acadia becomes a source of torment for the settlers of New England.

The New Englanders strike back within weeks of the attack on Pemaquid.

An expedition under command of Colonel John Hathorn and accompanied by Major Benjamin Church sets out in 1696 to destroy Fort Nashwaak (present day Fredericton, New Brunswick), Acadia's capital.

Governor Villebon had been alerted and prepared his defenses.

The New England troops arrive opposite the fort on October 18, land three cannons and assemble earthworks on the south bank of the Nashwaak River.

Baptiste, here to defend the capital, joins the natives and puts himself at their head for the duration of the siege.

There is a fierce exchange of fire for two days, with the advantage going to the better-sited French guns.

The New Englanders are defeated, having suffered eight killed and seventeen wounded.

The French have lost one killed and two wounded.