The New England Colonies

Where were the New England colonies?

New England is the northeastern corner of the United States. In colonial times it included four colonies: Massachusetts (which later absorbed Plymouth Colony), Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. Maine was part of Massachusetts during this period, and Vermont was not a separate colony.

The land is hilly and rocky, with thick forests, many rivers and a long Atlantic coastline. Winters are long and snowy. Summers are short. These facts shaped almost everything about how people lived.

Whose land was it?

Long before English ships arrived, New England was home to many Native nations. The Wampanoag lived in what is now southeastern Massachusetts and on islands such as Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The Narragansett lived around Narragansett Bay in present-day Rhode Island. The Pequot and Mohegan lived in what is now eastern Connecticut. The Massachusett, Nipmuc, Pocumtuc and Abenaki peoples lived in other parts of the region.

These nations farmed corn, beans and squash, fished, hunted and gathered. They moved between seasonal homes, traded with each other and had their own leaders, called sachems.

Shortly before the English settled, a terrible epidemic swept through many coastal Native towns. It was caused by diseases that came with European traders and fishermen. Whole villages were emptied. This loss of life was one reason English colonists found cleared fields when they arrived. Many Native people today stress an important point: their nations survived. Wampanoag, Narragansett, Mashantucket Pequot, Mohegan, Nipmuc and other communities still live in New England.

How did each colony begin?

Plymouth (1620)

The Mayflower passengers, later called the Pilgrims, built Plymouth Colony at a Wampanoag place called Patuxet. In 1621 they made an alliance with the Wampanoag leader Ousamequin, often called Massasoit. Plymouth stayed small and was joined to Massachusetts in 1691. You can read more on our colonial life page.

Massachusetts Bay (1630)

A much larger group of Puritans, led by John Winthrop, arrived in 1630 with a royal charter. They built Boston and many towns around it. Puritans hoped their colony would be a model Christian community. Thousands of English people followed in the next ten years.

Rhode Island (1636)

Not everyone agreed with Puritan leaders. Roger Williams, a minister, argued that the government should not force people to follow one church, and that the English should pay Native people for land. Massachusetts banished him, and in 1636 he founded Providence. Anne Hutchinson, who held religious meetings and challenged church leaders, was also banished and helped start another settlement nearby. Rhode Island became known for allowing more religious freedom than its neighbors.

Connecticut (1636)

Thomas Hooker and his followers moved west to the fertile Connecticut River valley. The towns there wrote a plan of government called the Fundamental Orders.

New Hampshire

Small fishing and lumber settlements grew along the Piscataqua River in the 1620s. New Hampshire was controlled by Massachusetts for a time and became a separate royal colony in 1679.

Daily life: church, town and school

For Puritans, religion guided daily life. The meetinghouse stood at the center of town and was used for both church services and town business. Sunday services could last most of the day.

Towns held town meetings to decide local matters such as roads, fences and taxes. This was an early form of self-government, but it was not open to everyone. Women, servants, enslaved people and Native people could not vote, and in some colonies only church members could.

Puritans believed everyone should be able to read the Bible. In 1647 Massachusetts passed a law requiring larger towns to provide schooling. Harvard College was founded in 1636 to train ministers. Families also taught children at home, and children worked hard on farms and in the household.

Making a living

The rocky soil made large farms difficult, so most families ran small farms that fed themselves. Many people turned to the sea and the forest:

• Fishing, especially for cod, became one of the most important businesses.
• Shipbuilding used tall trees from the forests. New England ships carried goods around the Atlantic.
• Lumber, furs and iron were sold or traded. Saugus, in Massachusetts, had one of the first ironworks in the colonies.
• Trade connected New England with England, the Caribbean and Africa.

It is important to know that New England’s trade was linked to slavery. New England merchants shipped food and lumber to Caribbean sugar plantations that used enslaved African labor, and some New England ships carried enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. Slavery was legal in all of the New England colonies, and enslaved Africans and Native people lived and worked in New England towns.

Conflict and war

As more colonists arrived, they wanted more land. Native nations and colonists understood land agreements very differently, and colonists often took land without fair agreement.

The Pequot War (1636–1638) began after a series of killings and raids. English soldiers and their Native allies, including Narragansett and Mohegan fighters, attacked a Pequot fort near the Mystic River in 1637 and killed hundreds of people, many of them women and children. Afterward, surviving Pequot people were captured, sold into slavery or forced to live under other nations. The Mashantucket Pequot and Eastern Pequot nations survived and are still in Connecticut today.

King Philip’s War, also called Metacom’s War (1675–1676), was one of the deadliest wars in colonial American history for the number of people living there. Metacom, a Wampanoag leader and son of Ousamequin, led an alliance of Native nations against English expansion. Many English towns were destroyed, and Native communities suffered even greater losses. After the war, many Native people were killed, forced off their land or sold into slavery in the Caribbean.

Why the New England colonies matter

The New England colonies gave the future United States traditions of town meetings, public schooling and arguments about religious freedom. They were also places of slavery and of wars that took Native homelands. Understanding both sides of this story helps explain the region, and the country, that came later.

How to use this page for homework

• Use the timeline to put events in order before you start writing.
• If your assignment asks for “causes and effects,” use the “Making a living” and “Conflict and war” sections together.
• For a report on one colony, start with its section above and then check one of the sources listed below for more detail.
• When you write about Native nations, use the nation’s own name (for example, Wampanoag or Narragansett) instead of a general word.