January Events

• January 1, 1622 Gregorian calendar changes first day of the year to January 1 from the former date of March 25. England and its colonies continue to use the Julian calendar until September 1752.
• January 1, 1808 The federal law prohibiting the importation of African slaves went into effect. It was largely circumvented.
• January 1, 1863 The Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln; it declares free all slaves in the Confederate states (except Tennessee, southern Louisiana, and parts of Virginia) and announces the Union's intention to enlist black soldiers and sailors. By late spring, recruitment is under way throughout the North and in all the Union-occupied Confederate states except Tennessee.
• January 1 - 7, 1923 Rosewood massacre: Six African Americans and two whites die in a week of violence when a white woman in Rosewood, Florida, claims she was beaten and raped by a black man.
• January 2 1905 The Russians surrendered to the Japanese after the Battle of Port Arthur during the Russian-Japanese War. A peace conference was later held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with President Theodore Roosevelt serving as a mediator. In September of 1905, the Russians agreed to the Treaty of Portsmouth yielding Port Arthur and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan. Russia also agreed to evacuate Manchuria and recognize Japan's interests in Korea.
• January 3, 1786 The Treaty of Hopewell is signed between representatives of the Confederation Congress of the United States and the Indian nation of the Choctaw, originally located in the southeastern states of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana and known as one of the five civilized tribes.
• January 3, 1924 British Egyptologist Howard Carter found the sarcophagus of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor after several years of searching.
• January 5, 1804 The Ohio legislature passed “Black Laws” designed to restrict the legal rights of free blacks. These laws were part of the trend to increasingly severe restrictions on all blacks in both North and South before the Civil War.
• January 10, 1966 NAACP local chapter president Vernon Dahmer is injured by a bomb in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He dies the next day.
• January 11, 1865 Missouri state constitutional convention abolishes slavery.
• January 12, 1865 General William T. Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton meet with twenty black leaders in Savannah, Georgia, to discuss the future of the ex-slaves.
• January 16, 1865 General Sherman issues Special Field Order 15 setting aside part of coastal South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida for settlement exclusively by black people, settlers to receive “possessory title” to forty-acre plots.
• January 16, 1956 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover writes a rare open letter of complaint directed to civil rights leader Dr. T.R.M. Howard after Howard charged in a speech that the “FBI can pick up pieces of a fallen airplane on the slopes of a Colorado mountain and find the man who caused the crash, but they can't find a white man when he kills a Negro in the South.”
• January 22, 1599 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover writes a rare open letter of complaint directed to civil rights leader Dr. T.R.M. Howard after Howard charged in a speech that the “FBI can pick up pieces of a fallen airplane on the slopes of a Colorado mountain and find the man who caused the crash, but they can't find a white man when he kills a Negro in the South.”
• January 22–24, 1599 New Mexico governor Juan de Onate is determined to consolidate his rule in New Mexico and subjugate all of the Pueblo. Onate sends Juan de Zaldivar to Acoma, which ends in a siege and a massacre of 800 Acoma Pueblo Indians, including 300 Pueblo elders, women, and children. Two Hopi men have their right hands cut off and are sent to the Hopi mesas as a warning. All Native women between the ages of 12 and 25 became indentured slaves at the Spanish capital of San Juan. All males over the age of 14 are mutilated in the plazas of other pueblos and all males over the age of 12 have one foot chopped off (Nies, 1996). King Philip III of Spain later punishes Onate for his excessively brutal regime (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014).
• January 24, 1692 On January 24th, 1692, the morning after Candlemas Day celebrations, the Penobscot warriors left their snowshoes on a large, flat rock and raided the settlement of York. They burned 17-18 houses, killed 75 people and marched between 100-200 more to New France as prisoners. Several of these prisoners died during the march north, others were eventually set free when the English paid a ransom.
• January 25th 1704 On 25 January 1704, Moore's force reached Ayubale, a large mission in the Apalachee Province. The Creeks raided the surrounding villages. Meanwhile, around 7:00 a.m., Moore entered into the mission of Ayubale at the head of most of the colonists and 15 Creeks. Father Angel Miranda and 26 men took refuge into the church compound which was surrounded by a mud wall. They resisted to Moore’s force for nine hours, surrendering when they ran out of arrows. They were then killed. When the news of the attack reached the mission of San Luis, some 40 km south of Ayubale, Captain Juan Ruíz de Mexía came to the rescue of Ayubale with 400 Apalachees and 30 Spanish cavalry. Another engagement took place at Ayubale, some 50 Apalachees changed side during combat and the Spaniards were decisively defeated. In this action, more than 200 Apalachees were killed or captured, 3 Spaniards were killed and 8 captured (including Mexía). After these two engagements, Moore’s force counted several wounded. Instead of attacking the mission of San Luis, he decided to obtain ransoms for his prisoners, releasing Miranda, Mexía and others. However, the garrison commander refused to pay. Moore then resumed his advance into the Apalachee Province, extorting contributions from the mission of San Lorenzo de Ivitachuco and gaining seven missions to his cause. Moore later claimed to have killed more than 1,100 men, women, and children. He also stated that he chased 300 people out of the province and enslaved more than 4,300 people, mostly women and children. Only two missions survived the British raid: San Luis and San Lorenzo de Ivitachuco. The Spanish first tried to fortify these missions but soon abandon this project and relocated the survivors at Abosaya, east of San Francisco de Potano. After Moore departure, the Spaniards sent a force from San Agustín and Pensacola to Ayubale to bury the dead. The outcome, As a result of this expedition, the vast majority of the Apalachees were expelled from their homeland. Many were sold into slavery, or absorbed by the Creeks. Some refugees fled to Louisiana and a small number reached San Agustín.
• January 30 1712 Barnwell made his way north from South Carolina and arrived in the Neuses River area in late January 1712. Barnwell did not find the promised North Carolina help, but decided to attack the nearby Narhantes (Torhunta) anyway. He struck to find the village largely open, but with several small, non-supporting fortifications. There was some fierce opposition including from the women of the village, but Barnwell had taken the village within a few hours. Those not killed were taken prisoner. Barnwell had recruited plenty of his Indian allies with the promise of scalps and plunder, so it was unsurprising to see some of those captured were taken by Barnwell’s Indians and they had quietly slipped away with their booty. Barnwell stayed in the area for several days, eventually destroying Narhantes Fort totally. Barnwell would spend the remainder of the winter stomping through other Tuscaroran villages as he worked the area. However, Barnwell met his match in ferociousness with Chief Hancock, who eventually convinced Barnwell to treat by threatening to kill all of the previously captured settlers, if Barnwell continued his attacks. In the Spring, a comprehensive, but short-lived peace was agreed, but as with so many of these, the terms were not to the long term liking of either party, so they collapsed. This was not the first, nor the last of these battles or treaties, but it was defintely the most savage in this area and it was to poison relations thereafter. The Tuscaroras moved north a few year later to join their Iroquoian cousins in the New York area. Ironically, but not unpredictably, the Yamasee got the same treatment soon thereafter and had to move south into Florida to avoid being wiped out.
• January 31, 1865 The United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery and submits it to the states for ratification.

February Events

• February 3, 1690 First paper money issued in North America by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, bills of credit to pay for their military expeditions in King William's War.
• February 4, 1861 Convention of seceded states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana) meets in Montgomery, Alabama, adopts provisional constitution of the Confederate States of America (Feb. 8), and elects Jefferson Davis provisional president (Feb. 9); on March 2, the provisional Congress admits Texas to the Confederacy .
• February 8, 1690 Description
• February 8, 1697 William Penn, leader of the Pennsylvania colony, creates a plan for intercolonial cooperation, first colonial idea for combining colonies into one nation, that would influence the drafting of the Constitution.
• February 10, 1676 The conflict known as King Philip’s War started in Plymouth Colony, but soon spread to Rhode Island and Massachusetts. On February 10, 1676, the town of Lancaster was attacked by a combined force of Wampanoag, Nipmuc and Narragansett. This was part of an offensive at the start of 1676 in which the tribes achieved a wave of victories. Lancaster had been attacked the previous summer, and as a result they constructed garrisons and prepared for future raids. Despite this, and also some advance notice of impending attack gained through spies, the attack on February 10 was devastating. An overwhelming force of about 400 Indians burned houses and garrisons. Fourteen villagers were killed, but many more were captured- including Mary Rowlandson. She was held captive until the spring. One of her children died early in the captivity, and two others were kept from her. She was released in May after a ransom was paid. Most of the buildings in Lancaster were destroyed, and the supplies that weren’t destroyed were captured by the warriors. Shortly after the attack, Lancaster was abandoned and would remain empty for the remainder of the war.
• February 12, 1793 The United States Congress passes the first Fugitive Slave federal law requiring the return of slaves that escaped from slave states into free territory or states.
• February 18, 1688 The Quakers of Germantown, Pennsylvania, passed the first formal antislavery resolution.
• February 19-21, 1918 The First Pan-African Congress met in Paris, France, under the guidance of W. E. B. Du Bois.
• February 20, 1630 Myth of popcorn introduction to Pilgrim colonists at Plymouth by Indian Quadequine begins.
• February 21, 1753 On February 21, 1753, nine Mi'kmaq from Nartigouneche (present-day Antigonish, Nova Scotia) in canoes attacked a British vessel at Country Harbour. The vessel was from Canso and had a crew of four. The Mi'kmaq fired on them and drove them toward the shore. Other natives joined in and boarded the schooner, forcing them to run their vessel into an inlet. The Mi'kmaq killed and scalped two of the British crewmen and took two others captive. After seven weeks in captivity, on April 8, the two British prisoners – one of which was John Connor – killed six Mi'kmaq and managed to escape.
• February 21, 1965 Malcolm X is shot to death in the Audubon Ballroom Manhattan, New York.
• February 22, 1865 Amendment to Tennessee state constitution abolishes slavery.
• February 25, 1643 On the night of 25 Feb. 1643, Gov. Kieft ordered a force of 129 soldiers, armed and equipped for slaughter, to cross the Hudson River and attack the Indians while they were asleep in their camp. Without regard to age or sex, deliberately, and in the most horrible manner, the Dutch soldiers butchered nearly a hundred of them. Capt. de Vries, who had been spending the night at Fort Amsterdam, watched the events unfold:"...At midnight, I heard loud shrieks and went out to the parapet of the fort, and looked toward Pavonia. I saw nothing but the flashing of the guns. I heard no more the cries of the Indians. They were butchered in their sleep!" Stung by this outrage upon their neighbors and kinsmen, the northern tribes at once took the war path, attacked settlement, burned the buildings, murdered settlers, wiped the villages out of existence. Those of the settlers who were not killed outright fled across the river to New Amsterdam. Nor was the peace restored between the savages and the whites until August 1645, when the remaining owners and tenants of farms returned to the site of the old village, rebuilt their homes, and started anew.
• February 25 1644 Some African slaves who worked in New Amsterdam during more than 18 years serving the Dutch West India Company get a parole system, with the consent of Governor Willem Kieft. These included Big Manuel, Little Manuel, Paulo of Angola and his wife Dorothy Creole, Simon Congo, and Anthony Portuguese. Each pair was given a plot of land in exchange for rent payable for life to the colony and certain obligations to the Company. Their children remained however enslaved. By allowing each couple to have its own house, the regime granted was behind the creation of one of the first black communities of America.
• February 29, 1704 On the morning of February 29, 1704, a French and First Nations army fell upon the sleeping frontier village of Deerfield, Massachusetts. The raiders had spent a fireless winter night camped across the Deerfield River, -cold, hungry and tired. Before dawn they sent out scouts, who reported that the village watch had fallen asleep. Lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville called the troops and militia together and exhorted them to put aside their quarrels, pray and embrace. The little army moved slowly on their snowshoes across the deep snow until they reached the palisade. Volunteers climbed a snow bank up the stockade and spilled into the town. Soon there was a torrent of attackers sweeping into the houses. Abenaki, Kanawake Mohawk and Pennacook ransacked the home of Reverend John Williams. They killed the youngest children and seized Williams, his wife and four eldest children. Amid the battle cries, terrified screams and gunshots, some defenders were killed, others fled and others hid, only to die in flames as the attackers torched the houses.

March Events

• March 1, 1642 York, Maine of the Massachusetts Colony (known as Georgeana in colonial times) becomes the first incorporated city in the American colonies.
• March 1, 1875 Congress passed a Civil Rights Bill which banned discrimination in places of public accommodation. The Supreme Court overturned the bill in 1883. 1881. ennessee passed a law requiring segregation in railroad cars. By 1907 all Southern states had passed similar laws.
• March 2, 1861 U.S. Congress adopts and sends to the states a constitutional amendment (which ultimately failed of ratification) forbidding any subsequent amendment to “abolish or interfere . . . with the domestic institutions” of the states.
• March 3, 1540 The de Soto expedition continues into Georgia in search for gold and a passage west. He would proceed into the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. An ambush in northern Alabama, which may have been precipitated by actions of the expedition, by the Mabilian Indian tribe, resulted in twenty Spanish explorer deaths and the demise of thousands of Indian warriors. De Soto burned the city. He would later winter near Tupelo, Mississippi.
• March 3, 1865 Congress approves a joint resolution liberating the wives and children of black soldiers. Congress establishes Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen's Bureau) to oversee the transition from slavery to freedom.
• March 5, 1933 On March 5th, five days after President Roosevelt came into office. He invoked the Emergency War Power Act under Public Law 1, suspending the constitution and effectively implementing Execute Branch control over the entire country. Since the Constitution is a limitation on the federal government, all such limitations have been suspended even up to now. The United States, Inc has been operating exclusively under limited martial law ever since that time.
• March 6, 1857 The Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court denied that blacks were citizens of the United States and denied the power of Congress to restrict slavery in any federal territory.
• March 11, 1526 Marriage between Emperor Charles V of Spain and ruler of the Holy Roman Empire and Isabella of Portugal, the sister to King John III, defuses disagreement over Treaty of Tordesillas and partitioning of New World territory between Spain and Portugal.
• March 12 or 13, 1644 Pound Ridge Massacre, a joint operation of the Dutch and English governments against the Wappinger Confederacy destroys several Delaware villages South of New Amsterdam and on Long Island. The first Dutch and English mixed forces were actually ineffective. An expedition on Staten Island found only abandoned villages although corn brought back to New Amsterdam was welcome to face the shortage of provisions that plagued the colony. A second expedition against Wecquaesgeek forts was not more conclusive and during another attack against villages of Siwanoy sachem Wampage, the English soldiers killed some warriors and captured old women and children. Expected results happened when John Underhill with 120 Connecticut militiamen and the Dutch settlers got on to destroy the Metoac Fort Neck village at the western end of Long Island. They killed 120 Canarsee, Massapequa and Merrick warriors. Further to this first success, John Underhill and his soldiers took advantage of the night and bad weather conditions to encircle the Indian village which hosted a party. The attack was launched under the full moon. 180 Indians were killed outside the houses whereas only one dutch soldier was killed. None would escape. Underhill and his co-commander Hendrick Van Dyck decided to set fire to houses, as well as he had done when besieging Mystic during the Pequot war. All trapped, men, women and children died in flames. They counted only 8 survivors while loss came to 700 to 800 Indians.Soldiers executed afterward seven of their captives in a close manner to the worst atrocities attributed to the Natives.
• March 13, 1865 Confederate Congress authorizes President Jefferson Davis to recruit slave men as soldiers, with the permission of their owners; Confederate War Department issues order governing the enlistment on March 23.
• MM/DD/CCYY Hannah Duston was a colonial MassachusettsPuritan mother of nine who was taken captive by Abenaki Native Americans during King William's War, with her newborn daughter, during the Raid on Haverhill (1697), in which 27 colonists were killed. While detained on an island in the Merrimack River in Boscawen, New Hampshire, she killed and scalped 10 of the Native American family members holding them hostage, with the assistance of two other captives. Hannah used a tomahawk to attack the sleeping Native Americans, killing one of the two grown men, two adult women, and six children. One severely wounded Native American woman and a young boy managed to escape the attack.
• March 16, 1863 American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission appointed by Secretary of War Stanton to investigate the condition of former slaves and recommend measures for their employment and welfare.
• March 16, 1864 New Arkansas state constitution, which abolishes slavery, is ratified by pro-Union voters.
• March 18, 1741 Twenty-nine years after the first revolt of slaves in New York, a second uprising occurs. Seventeen slaves were hanged after the revolt, thirteen burned, and seventy deported.
• March 20–23, 1713 In 1713, another appeal for aid inspired South Carolina to send a force commanded by Col. John Moore. Moore and his militia, which consisted of settlers from North Carolina and South Carolina as well as Native Americans, headed toward the Tuscarora fort known as Nooherooka (also spelled Neoheroka or Neyuher k ). This fort covered more than an acre and consisted of underground tunnels and bunkers. Moore began his siege on March 20 when he sent men to penetrate an outer wall of the fort and set it on fire. The battle was waged for three days before Moore's forces gained control of the entire area. At the conclusion of the siege, more than 390 Tuscarora were dead, and more than 550 others were killed or captured. About 200 of Moore's forces were killed. The fall of Fort Nooherooka ended the tribe's resistance to colonial settlement in North Carolina. At the end of the Tuscarora War, it is estimated that 200 whites and 1,000 natives were killed. An additional 1,000 Indians from the tribe were sold into slavery. The few Tuscarora that remained migrated north to Pennsylvania or New York.
• March 22, 1622 On March 22, 1622, Opechancanough’s warriors unleashed a coordinated military offensive on settlements along the James River. Warriors appeared at settlers’ homes and fields seemingly to share a meal or trade, then attacked all ages and genders. Jamestown evaded attack when a converted Powhatan whose name is unknown informed a settler for whom he worked, Richard Pace, who then warned the settlement. Another Virginia Indian named Chauco may have warned English settlers at a different location. Most assaults occurred at the newer, upriver settlements in the stronghold of the chiefdom. However, two settlements downriver from Jamestown were hit the hardest, Bennett’s Welcome (Warrascoyack) and Martin’s Hundred, where warriors killed more than 60 settlers. Warriors captured about 20 women, some who had recently arrived to become wives for male colonists. Around 350 English died while an unknown number of Powhatan warriors fell.
• March 26, 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold attempts to colonize New England for Great Britain with establishment of the Cuttyhunk Colony.
• March 26, 1676 On March 26, 1676, during King Philip's War, Captain Michael Pierce led approximately sixty Plymouth Colony colonial troops and twenty Wampanoag Christian Indians in pursuit of Narragansett Indians who had burned several Rhode Island towns and attacked Plymouth, Mass., as part of King Philip's War. Pierce's troops caught up with the Narragansett Indians, Wampanoag, Nashaway, Nipmuck, Podunk but were ambushed in what is now Central Falls, Rhode Island. Pierce's troops fought the Narragansetts for several hours, but were surrounded by a larger force of Narragansetts. The battle was one of the biggest defeats of colonial troops during King Philip's War with nearly all killed in the battle, including Captain Pierce and the Christian Indians ("Praying Indians") (exact numbers vary by account somewhat). The Narragansetts lost only a handful of warriors. Nine of the colonists who were among the dead were first taken prisoner (along with a tenth man who survived). These men were purportedly tortured to death by the Narragansetts at a site in Cumberland, Rhode Island, currently on the Cumberland Monastery and Library property. The nine dead colonists were buried by English soldiers who found the corpses and buried them in 1676. The soldiers created a pile of stones to memorialize the colonists. This pile is believed to be the oldest veterans' memorial in the United States, and a cairn of stones has continuously marked the site since 1676. The “Nine Men's Misery” site was disturbed in 1790 by medical students led by one Dr. Bowen looking for the body of one of the dead colonists, Benjamin Bucklin, who was said to be unusually large with a double row of teeth. They were stopped by outraged locals. The site was desecrated several more times until 1928 when the monks who then owned the cemetery built a cemented stone cairn above the site. The cairn and site can still be visited on the Monastery grounds. Pierce's Fight was followed by the burning of Providence three days later, and then the capture and execution of Canonchet, the chief sachem of the Narragansetts. The war was winding down even at the time that Pierce's party was destroyed, and in August, King Philip himself was killed.
• March 27, 1690 Following Benjamin Church’s first Acadian raid, things were quiet in Acadia and New England for seven months. Then, in the spring of 1690, the governor of Canada ordered two military officers- Joseph-Francois Hertel and his son, Jean-Baptiste- with leading a raiding expedition against New Hampshire. On March 27, 1690, the two French officers, twenty six French Canadian soldiers, and a war party of Abenaki, Mi’kmaq, and Maliseet warriors surrounded the New English settlement of Salmon Falls (present-day Berwick, Maine). The warriors attacked the village and killed thirty four of its residents before burning the settlements’ buildings and their contents, including the livestock within them. The settlement’s remaining fifty-four inhabitants, most of them women and children, were captured and later carried off to Acadia.
• March 29, 1799 A law is passed to abolish slavery in the state of New York, effective twenty-eight years later, in 1827.
• March 30, 1870 The Fifteenth Amendment, which outlawed the denial of the right to vote, was ratified.

April Events

• April 3, 1862 General David Hunter, Union commander in the South Carolina Sea Islands, requests permission to arm black men for military service; receiving no response, he begins recruiting on his own authority in early May, but the War Department refuses to pay or equip the regiment and Hunter is therefore compelled to disband it.
• April 5, 1614 The history of Jamestown continues with the marriage of Pocahontas to John Rolfe, who would bring tobacco seeds to the colony and begin its harvesting this year. Their marriage led to eight years of peace among the colonists and Indians.
• April 6, 1712 New York slave revolt results in six suicides and twenty-one executions.
• April 6, 1931 Nine young blacks were accused of raping two white women in a boxcar. They were tried for their lives in Scottsboro, Alabama, and hastily convicted. The case attracted national attention.
• April 7, 1604 Pierre Dugua sails toward establishment of early New France settlement at St. Croix Island in territory of today's Maine, but the colony fails.
• April 7, 1712 A slave insurrection occurred in New York City, resulting in the execution of 21 African Americans.
• April 8, 1864 Senate approves constitutional amendment abolishing slavery.
• April 9, 1865 Surrender of the army of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
• April 10, 1862 At Lincoln's request, Congress pledges financial aid to any state that undertakes gradual emancipation with compensation to owners.
• April 12, 1528 After much hardship and stops in the Caribbean, the Narváez expedition reaches Florida near Tampa Bay and debarks two days later in Boca Ciega Bay, where they encounter natives of the Safety Harbor region. For the next four years, the expedition met a dire fate due to battles with natives (Timucua, Apalachee, and Tocobaga), the sea, and starvation. The expedition had split into several forces by the end of this year, and in total, slightly more than eighty members of the original expedition had survived, some reaching the Galveston, Texas area by boat. (See June 17, 1527 )
• April 12, 1861 Civil War begins with Confederate attack on federal garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
• April 12, 1864 Confederate troops under General Nathan B. Forrest massacre black soldiers captured at Fort Pillow, Tennessee.
• April 14, 1865 President Lincoln assassinated; Vice-President Andrew Johnson succeeds to the presidency.
• April 15, 1715 In spring 1715 Charleston heard rumors of an uprising by the Yamassees. On April 14, 1715, William Bray, Samuel Warner, and Nairne met at Pocotaligo Town, southwest of modern Charleston, in an attempt to defuse the violence. Having exhausted their deer and slave supplies, the Yamassees decided to resolve their trade debt by killing their creditors and attacking white settlements along Carolina’s southern frontier on Good Friday, April 15, 1715. Intending to kill not only their traders and creditors but most Euro-Americans in their area, they immediately killed Bray and Warner. Nairne died after several days of ritual torture. The Yamassees then struck against plantations near the coast. Despite its name, the Yamassee War also involved the Cherokees, Creeks, and Choctaws in a far-ranging rebellion from the Savannah River to Charleston. Just as Nairne was put to death, other ally tribes, such as the Creeks, Choctaws, Apalachees, Saraws, Santees, and Waccamaws, also executed their traders, ninety percent of whom were killed by June 1715. Initial Yamassee attacks along plantations near Port Royal killed one hundred colonists. Some three hundred lucky planter families boarded a ship seized for smuggling and made their escape while the Yamassees attacked their farms and killed their livestock. White inhabitants fled the countryside for the relative safety of Charleston. There colonists struggled to achieve a defense perimeter around the city. Charles Craven, the governor, utilized all white males and even armed black slaves for the colony’s defense. Surrounding southern colonies sent little or no assistance, although Massachusetts did send weapons to South Carolina. Rumors swirled around the city that either the Spanish or the French had encouraged the uprising.
• April 15, 1861 President Lincoln issues proclamation calling for troops to put down the rebellion.
• April 16, 1862 Congress abolishes slavery in the District of Columbia, with compensation to loyal owners, and appropriates money for the voluntary removal (“colonization”) of former slaves to Haiti, Liberia, or other countries.
• April 18, 1644 A dozen years after the 1632 peace agreement, Opechancanough orchestrated another coordinated assault that was launched on April 18, 1644. The 1644 attack killed more colonists than the 1622 attack, but because the English population had grown so much the percentage killed was far less than in 1622. The wall built on the Peninsula in 1634 had been effective in excluding Native Americans from the Peninsula for a decade, and the 1644 attack did not threaten Jamestown. Instead, Opechancanough's military success was limited to outlying plantations on the frontier or edge of settlement. The English used the word “massacre” to describe the event, but other terms that could be used include “great assault” or “uprising.” Opechancanough's war aims were to re-establish Native American power, which was diminished after the Second Anglo-Powhatan War, and deter English colonists from continued encroachment on Native American lands. The timing in 1644 was similar to the attack in the spring of 1622. Choosing to attack when stockpiles of food were exhausted from the winter put the tribes at risk of another “feedfight,” with English creating hunger by cutting down ripening corn in the fields in the harvest season known to the Native Americans as “nepinough.” On the other hand, an assault in April allowed Opechancanough to keep the Native Americans dispersed on their seasonal round of wintertime hunting and less vulnerable to revenge attacks. The timing may reflect Opechancanough's awareness of civil war in England and his awareness that he was near the end of his life. He had just one last chance to expel the colonists, or at least to force them to restrict their expansion. The young men in different towns under Opechancanough's control who had matured since the end of the Second Anglo-Powhatan War also may have pushed for an attack as a way to establish their status as warriors. The peace since 1632 had limited their opportunities to demonstrate skill and bravery. The 1644 attack also failed to force the colonists to change their expansionist behavior. Once again the English retaliated, and over the next two years destroyed the resources controlled by the paramount chief. In 1646, Opechancanough was captured and soon murdered while in captivity. The remnants of Opechancanough's paramount chiefdom and the English colonists agreed to a peace in 1646. The treaty signed by Chief Necotowance, who replaced Opechancanough, restricted the Native Americans to the north side of the York River.
• April 19, 1775 Free blacks fight with the Minutemen in the initial skirmishes of the Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.
• April 22, 1529 The Treaty of Zaragosa attempts to clarify the Treaty of Tordesillas from 1494 between Spain and Portugal. Again this treaty attempted to clarify previous boundaries agreed between only two nations, Spain and Portugal, plus earlier boundaries by the papacy. All lands would still be divided between the two nations, with the Philippines and North America to Spain, and the Moluccas to Portugal.
• April 23, 1637 In April 1637, Pequot members attacked a group of settlers working in a field near Wethersfield, killing nine and taking two teenage girls captive. They had now slain more than 30 settlers and were forced to choose between flight and destruction or war and possible victory. The Connecticut General Court met at Hartford on May 1, 1637. The result was the decision to declare war against the Pequot. A draft of 90 men was ordered from the area to be under the command of Captain John Mason. They joined the company headed by Captain John Underhill, who led the combined forces of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies. Seventy Mohegan warriors led by Uncas also joined the group. With the aid of Mohegan and Narragansett allies, the colonists launched a surprise morning attack on the Pequot stronghold at Mystic River on May 26, 1637. Before the villagers were fully awake, Mason and Underhill's troops surrounded the village, setting it on fire. The terrified Pequot rushed out of their dwellings fleeing the flames only to be driven back by swords and musket-balls. Between 500 and 600 Pequot men, women, and children, perished in the flames. When an even larger group of Pequot was trapped in a swamp, the Puritans did not hesitate to kill the fighting men. The few surviving Pequot fled. Most were eventually killed. The women and children were captured and sold into slavery in the West Indies. Sassacus and the few who escaped with him were put to death by Mohawk Indians after being captured near Fairfield, Connecticut, on July 28, 1637. The head of Sassacus was sent to the English as a token of friendship. From that point on, the Mohegan took possession of all Pequot land. The Treaty of Hartford officially ended the Pequot War. The surviving Pequot were disseminated into surrounding tribes. They were forbidden to live on land previously owned by the Pequot, and they were no longer allowed to call themselves Pequot. The Pequot today number around 1,000 and are associated with the Mashantucket line (Western Pequot) and the Pawcatuck line (Eastern Pequot). After gaining a large settlement over land disputes in 1970's, the Mashantucket Pequot established a lucrative gaming and gambling casino. They are among the wealthiest Native American groups in the United States today.
• April 24, 1704 The first regular newspaper publishes its initial edition in Boston, the News-Letter. It was begun by John Campbell, the postmaster.
• April 26, 1655 Dutch West Indies Company denies Peter Stuyvesant, Director-General, request to deny Jews into New Amsterdam.
• April 1688 King William's War, also known as the Second Indian War, begins, the first in a series of colonial wars between New France and the British colonies. It would last for nine years.

May Events

• Month of May The month of May is considered Afrikan Liberation Month.
• May 1, 1776 On May 1st, 1776 that Adam Weishaupt, a professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt, founded the Order of the Illuminati, a secret organisation formed to oppose religious influence on society and the abuse of power by the state by fostering a safe space for critique, debate and free speech. Inspired by the Freemasons and French Enlightenment philosophers, Weishaupt believed that society should no longer be dictated by religious virtues; instead he wanted to create a state of liberty and moral equality where knowledge was not restricted by religious prejudices. However religious and political conservatism ruled in Ingolstadt at that time, and subject matter taught at the Jesuit-controlled university where Weishaupt lectured was strictly monitored. This date is also found on the back of the one dollar bill, under the 13 Kemetic Pyramid steps with roman numerals of MDCCLXXI.
• May 6, 1626 Peter Minuit, one of eight men left by Dutch explorers headed for the Albany area from the ship New Netherland on Manhattan Island, buys the island from the Man-a-hat-a Indians for $24 in trinkets.
• May 6, 1763 PeterChief Pontiac rebels against British rule after the Treaty of Paris ending the French and Indian War and attacks the British from Detroit to Pennsylvania in Pontiac's Rebellion.
• May 7, 1718 French colonists under the governor of the French colony of Louisiana, Jean-Baptiste le Moyne, Sieur de Bienvile, with the French Mississippi Company found the City of New Orleans, named after the regent of France, Philip II, the Duke of Orleans. It is located on the lands of the Chitimacha tribe.
• May 8, 1541 After a Chickasaw raid earlier in the year, de Soto's expedition was in dire shape, however, they pushed forward, reaching the Mississippi River and becoming the first documented Europeans to witness it. Hernando de Soto led his expeditionary force across the Mississippi River and would explore the territory of Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. This expedition claimed these territories for the Spanish. De Soto would die early in 1542.
• May 9, 1725 Battle of Pequawket in Dummer's War leads to peace treaties between the colonies of New England and the Indian allies of New France in 1725-7.
• May 9, 1862 General David Hunter declares free all slaves in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
• May 11, 1502 Christopher Columbus left Spain on his fourth voyage to the New World, landing back on the islands of Martinique and Jamaica in June. This voyage would take him to Central America, but not to North America.
• May 12, 1611 King James version of the Bible published for the first time.
• May 12, 1623 Capt. William Tucker led English soldiers from Jamestown to meet with Indian leaders here in Pamunkey territory. The Indians were returning English prisoners taken in March 1622 during war leader Opechancanough’s orchestrated attacks on encroaching English settlements along the James River. At the meeting, the English called for a toast to seal the agreement, gave the Indians poisoned wine, and then fired upon them, injuring as many as 150, including Opechancanough and the chief of the Kiskiack. The English had hoped to assassinate Opechancanough, who was erroneously reported as having been slain; they succeeded in 1646.
• May 13, 1712 The First Fox War (1712-16) began when Fox, Kickapoo and Mascouten attacked Fort Pontchartrain on May 13th. The initial assault failed and was followed by a siege. With over 300 well-armed warriors pitted against 20 French soldiers inside a fort with crumbling walls, there is reason to ask if the Fox intended to kill the French or just scare them. In any case, a relief party of Wyandot, Ottawa, Potawatomi and Mississauga (Ojibwe) arrived and fell upon the Fox from behind. In the slaughter which followed, more than 1,000 Fox, Kickapoo and Mascouten were killed. Only 100 of the Fox escaped to find refuge with the Iroquois (English traders called them Squawkies). Otherwise, only a few Fox returned to Wisconsin with the Kickapoo and Mascouten. They joined the Fox who had remained behind and made the French and their allies pay dearly for the massacre at Detroit.
• May 16–20, 1690 Here was “a village called Falmouth and a wooden fort,” which was Fort Loyal, built where now is the foot of India Street in Portland. Le Sieur de Portneuf, with Courtemanche second in command, left Quebec late in January with fifty Frenchmen and as many Abenakis from the St. Francis Mission. By visiting Abenaki villages in Maine he increased their number. Among them were certain leaders of Philip's war who had been imprisoned at the fort and released by Andros. Of course they knew the place well. Saint-Castin, too, came with his Penobscot Indians, and all these with Hertel's men made a body of four or five hundred who were ready in May to attack what the French described as “A large fort well supplied with ammunition and eight cannon, with four other small forts near.” Massachusetts had been too busy deposing Andros to remember her far-away settlements. In the fall of 1689, however, Captain Church was sent to the "poore Distressed province" and in checking the enemy, aided by information given by Mrs. Leigh, it is believed that the State of Maine was saved to Massachusetts and the United States. Fort Loyal had been garrisoned during the winter of 1689-90, but most of the soldiers from this and other eastern posts were withdrawn before Phips sailed for Port Royal. Nevertheless, the people from the Kennebec and beyond, deprived of their own defence, had hurried to the fort. There had been “desperate need” among the soldiers who, the commissary writes, “enquire for Cloathing, Shoes & Blanketts, and if you (the Honored Governor and Council) think good . . . Sumthing Suitable to make Straw beds.”
• May 17, 1749 Georgia Trustees petition parliament to overturn the original ban against slavery in Oglethorpe's colony. It would be lifted two years later.
• May 18, 1652 Rhode Island passes the first law in the American colonies restricting slavery, making it illegal for more than ten years.
• May 18, 1896 In Plessy v. Ferguson the Supreme Court give legal backing to the concept of separate but equal public facilities for blacks.
• May 19, 1643 The New England Confederation, a military alliance, is established by the Colony of Connecticut (Saybrook), Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth, and New Haven Colony.
• May 19, 1676 TURNERS FALLS -- On May 19, 1676, English settlers attacked and killed roughly 200 multi-tribal Native Americans gathered near modern-day Turners Falls -- mostly women, children and elderly. The attack, on what was then the Wissantinnewag-Peskeompskut fishing encampment, became one of the most significant battles of King Philip's War. After initially falling back, a Native alliance rallied warriors to lead major offensives against the English settlers in Northampton, Hatfield and Hadley over the next month. The war ended in 1676, when the Wampanoag chief Metacomet -- who had adopted the English name King Philip -- and Pocasset war chief Anawan were both captured and brutally killed. It resulted in the disbandment of some and great weakening of other Native American tribes.
• May 19, 1862 President Lincoln issues a proclamation nullifying General Hunter's emancipation edict and urging the border states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware) to embrace gradual, compensated emancipation.
• May 20, 1570 Abraham Ortelius, Flemish Netherlands cartographer publishes the first modern world atlas of fifty-three maps, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World). He is credited with first to imagine continents had at one time been joined together.
• May 20, 1861 Following Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia into the Confederacy, North Carolina becomes the last state to secede.
• May 22, 1712 Description
• May 22, 1863 Bureau of Colored Troops created within the War Department.
• May 24, 1861 Fugitive slaves at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, are received and put to work by Union general Benjamin F. Butler, who declares them “contraband of war”.
• May 26, 1637 On May 26, 1637, two hours before dawn, the Puritans and their Native allies marched on the Pequot village at Mystic, slaughtering all but a handful of its inhabitants. On June 5, Captain Mason attacked another Pequot village, this one near present-day Stonington, and again the Native inhabitants were defeated and massacred. On July 28, a third attack and massacre occurred near present-day Fairfield, and the Pequot War came to an end. Most of the surviving Pequot were sold into slavery, though a handful escaped to join other southern New England tribes.
• May 27, 1863 Black soldiers play important role in failed assault on Port Hudson, Louisiana.
• May 28, 1677 Black soldiers play important role in failed assault on Port Hudson, Louisiana.
• May 29, 1647 The constitution of the General Assembly of Rhode Island is drafted, under the values of separating church and state, as well as permitting public referendums and initiatives in legislation.
• May 30, 1498 The third voyage of Columbus began in the Spanish city of Sanlucar. During this voyage, he explored the islands of the Caribbean again as well as the South American territories of what is now Venezuela. Upon visiting the previously established settlements, he found much discontent among those left behind to colonize the region.
• May 30, 1822 The Denmark Vesey conspiracy was betrayed in Charleston, South Carolina. It is claimed that some 5,000 blacks were prepared to rise in July.

June Events

• June 2, 1863 Black soldiers repel Confederate attack at Milliken's Bend, Louisiana.
• June 6, 1736 The voyageur by the name of Bourassa reports that on June 3, 1736, he was the fifth to leave Fort Saint-Charles on Lake of the Woods in order to go to Michillimackinac. The following morning, as he was about to set out, he met thirty Sioux canoes, made up of eighty to one hundred men who surrounded him, disarmed him and all his men, and robbed him. After having learned from him that there were five or six lodges of Crees under the parapet of M. de La Vérendrye's fort, and whom they were coming to attack, they let him go and left with the intention of destroying those lodges. The Sioux told Bourassa that he had only to wait for them, and that upon their return they would give him back his weapons. He did not believe it was prudent to do this. On the contrary, he went to Michillimackinac. The Sioux, for their part, went to Fort Saint-Charles where they didn't find the five lodges of Crees because they had struck camp. They went back. Meanwhile, twenty voyageurs who had just arrived from Lake Alepimigon were starting out for Michillimackinac. One day out they ran into the same Sioux, and were all massacred. Among their number were the son of La Vérendrye and Father Aulneau, a Jesuit missionary. Their bodies were seen and recognized by the French who were passing through the same region a few days later. The heads were all placed upon beaver robes, most of them having been scalped. The missionary was down on one knee with an arrow in his side, his chest split open, his left hand on the ground and his right hand raised. Sieur La Vérendrye was lying face down, with his back covered in knife wounds, a hoe driven into his ribs, headless, his torso decorated with garters and bracelets made of porcupine quills. We won't find out until later this year all the circumstances of this unfortunate affair. Some think that these Indians had a particular grudge against the son of M. de La Vérendrye who, two years earlier, had marched with the Crees to go to war against the Sioux. He had been made chief during the council, according to claims. Be that as it may, the young man had withdrawn and did not go to war. The majority of the Indian party, according to Bourassa's report, was made up of Prairie Sioux, a few Lake Sioux and some from the post of Monsieur de La Ronde. The latter seemed to be well disposed towards the French; perhaps they were not the instigators of the La Vérendrye affair. If the Lake Sioux have plotted with the Prairie Sioux to kill the French, we must fear greatly for Sieur Saint-Pierre, commanding officer of the post in Sioux territory. The Sioux in general are the most ferocious of all the Indians. They have from time immemorial been at war with the Crees and the Assinibones. The latter are of Sioux origin, they all speak more or less the same language, and yet are irreconcilable enemies. One detail that the man called Bourassa reports is that the Sioux complained to him that the French were providing the Crees with weapons and ammunition. The Crees could in the same manner complain that the French provide ammunition to the Sioux. Sieur La Vérendrye writes that, grief-stricken by the loss of his son, his intention was to lead the Crees and the Assiniboines to march against the Sioux (a decision both extreme and inappropriate). It might be better to abandon the post of the Western Sea or to send another officer there to relieve Sieur de La Vérendrye and who could work towards a reconciliation of all these nations.
• June 7, 1494 The Treaty of Tordesillas, between Spain and Portugal, attempts to ratify and clarify ownership of the lands outside Europe and who could claim them. This was an effort to resolve questions arising from the return of Columbus. This treaty, and a subsequent treaty on April 22, 1529, the Treaty of Zaragosa, would only further confuse the issue beyond the two nations Spain and Portugal.
• June 7, 1864 Enlistment in Kentucky opened to slave men irrespective of their owners' consent, with compensation to loyal owners.
• June 8, 1685 Three Wampanoag Indians were hanged in Plymouth, Massachusetts. On the testimony of a Native American witness, Plymouth Colony arrested three Wampanoags, including a counselor to Metacom, a Pokanoket sachem. A jury among whom were some Indian members convicted them of the recent murder of John Sassamon, an advisor to Metacom.
• June 9, 1534 French explorer Jacques Cartier, searching for the northwest passage to Asia, becomes the first European to discover the St. Lawrence River area, encountering natives of the Iroquois Confederacy until turning back at Anticosti Island.
• June 9, 1650 The Harvard Board becomes the first legalized corporation in the American colonies, fourteen years after the estabishment of Harvard College.
• June 9, 1695 On June 9, Piman leaders, along with some of the Indians who had participated in the revolt, met with Solís at El Tupo. According to an agreement, the Pimas left their arms outside the clearing where Solís and several of his soldiers awaited them. When a cacique brought forward one of the guilty Indians, Solís, surrounded by his armed men, drew his saber. With one glittering stroke, the cavalry leader cut off the warrior’s head. The Indians ran for their weapons; but before they could reach them, they were cut down, every man of them, by Solís’ horsemen. For the next three months, warfare raged through the Pimería. Bands of Pimas destroyed missions and laid waste their fields. All the while, Padre Kino worked for peace; but Solís, trusting in brute force, ranged through the country, striking terror into the natives. It soon became apparent that such harshness only prolonged the war, and at last Solís agreed to Kino’s demands for a peace conference. Meeting at the scene of the El Tupo slaughter, Pima caciques and Solís signed a treaty. With peace restored, the site of the peace treaty, that had been called La Matanza (the massacre), was renamed Santa Rosa.
• June 10, 1940 Marcus Garvey (b.1887), Jamaica-born US black leader (Back to Africa Movement), died in London. In 1964 his remains were transferred to Jamaica, where he was proclaimed Jamaica’s first national hero. In 2008 Colin Grant authored “Negro With a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey.”
• June 13, 1980 Walter Rodney at the age of thirty-eight was killed by a bomb in his car, a month after returning from the independence celebrations in Zimbabwe and during a period of intense political activism.
• June 15, 1607 Colonists in North America completed James Fort in Jamestown. Hostilities with the Indians ended as ambassadors said their emperor, Powhatan, had commanded local chiefs to live in peace with the English.
• June 15, 1864 Congress makes pay of black soldiers (which had been $10 per month for all ranks) equal to that of white soldiers ($13 per month for privates, larger amounts for higher ranks); the change is retroactive to January 1, 1864, or, for men who were free before the war, to the time of enlistment.
• June 16, 1720 The Villasur expedition of Spanish troops leaves Mexico on a mission to control the increasing presence of the French in the Great Plains. It would end with a defeat by the Pawnee on August 14 near the Loup and Platte Rivers, near Columbus, Nebraska.
• June 16, 1833 Lucie (Ruthy) Blackburn (30), a fugitive slave, escaped from jail in Detroit and made her way to Canada. The next day a riot erupted, “The Blackburn Riots,” as her husband, Thornton Blackburn (21), was escorted for return to slavery. Thornton escaped to Canada to join his wife. The first extradition case between the US and Canada over the issue of fugitive slaves soon followed. Canada ruled it could not extradite people to a jurisdiction that imposed harsher penalties then they would have received for the same offense in Canada and the Blackburns remained in Ontario.
• June 17, 1527 The Narváez expedition leaves Spain to explore and colonize Spanish Florida under the command of Pánfilo de Narváez. There were 600 members of the expedition. (See April 12, 1528)
• June 19, 1862 Congress prohibits slavery in the territories.
• June 20, 1675 King Philip’s War began when Indians--retaliating for the execution of three of their people who had been charged with murder by the English--massacred colonists at Swansea, Plymouth colony. Abenaki, Massachusetts, Mohegan & Wampanoag Indians formed an anti English front. Wampanoag warriors attacked livestock and looted farms. Beginning of King Philip's War in New England with Metacom Indian forces attacking colonial settlements due to encroachment on the land. Considered the costliest war for European Settlements in relation to population with Indian success during first year halted later when their alliances fell apart. Twelve towns destroyed.
• June 21, 1752 On the morning of June 21, 1752, Charles-Michel Mouet de Langlade (1729-1801), an Odawa and French soldier, launched an assault on Pickawillany. Langlade led a force of approximately 210 Ojibwe and Odawa warriors recruited from the northern Great Lakes and 30 French soldiers from Fort Detroit. Some sources say Pontiac (circa 1714-1769) was among the Odawa who joined the attack. The raiders caught the residents of Pickawillany by surprise. Most of the men were away hunting. The women of the village were outside the village walls tending their gardens. They were quickly made prisoners. After six hours of fighting, the small group of defenders realized they could not hold out and surrendered Pickawillany to Langlade. The mission was not just to take a village. It was also to send a strong message about the risk to English traders and the Native people that chose to do business with them. Langlade’s warriors killed a wounded English trader, tore out his heart, and consumed it. They then boiled and ate Memeskia. The raid and its brutal conclusion had the desired effect. Pennsylvania traders fled the Ohio territory, fearing for their safety after this attack. Native “nations began returning to the French fold despite the trade advantages the British offered” after this demonstration of violence. In seizing the village and killing Memeskia, the French-allied raiders halted Pickawillany’s ability to function as a trading emporium.
• June 20, 1864 Congress increases the pay of all privates, black and white, to $16 per month, with corresponding increases for higher ranks.
• June 22, 1983 The state legislature of Louisiana repealed the last racial classification law in the United States. The criterion for being classified as black was having 1/32nd Negro blood.
• June 23, 1675 An English youth shot a Marauding Wampanoag warrior.
• June 23, 1683 The colony of Pennsylvania is established when William Penn signs a treaty with the Delaware Indians and pays for Pennsylvania lands.
• June 24, 1675 King Philip’s War began when Indians--retaliating for the execution of three of their people who had been charged with murder by the English--massacred colonists at Swansee, Plymouth colony.
• June 26, 1604 French explorer Samuel de Champlain, Pierre Dugua and 77 others landed on the island of St. Croix and made friends with the native Passamaquoddy Indians. It later became part of Maine on the US-Canadian border.
• June 26, 1980 In Syria there was an assassination attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood on Pres. Assad. Syrian security forces retaliated by killing hundreds of Islamist inmates at the Tadmur prison. The Syrian public did not find out about this until January 1981.
• June 27–28, 1689 The war began by a series of Indian massacres orchestrated by St. Castin and Father Louis-Pierre Thury. The first of these was the destruction of Dover, a town of fifty inhabitants. Major Richard Waldron allowed two local native women into the garrisoned homes of the settlers when they requested to stay the night of 27 June 1689. After all was still, the women stealthily opened the doors to waiting armed native warriors. “In one bloody afternoon, a quarter of the colonists in what is now downtown Dover, NH were gone – 23 killed, 29 captured in a revenge attack by native warriors. In one afternoon, 50 years of peaceful co-existence between the Pennacook tribe and European colonists ended. The massacre of 1689 entered the history books ....” The sword-wielding elderly Waldron, once disarmed, was singled out for special torture and mutilation. In the following month Pemaquid, Maine, met a similar fate.
• June 30, 1834 Congress passed the final Indian Intercourse Act. In addition to regulating relations between Indians living on Indian land and non-Indians, this final act identified an area known as “Indian country”. This land was described as being “…all that part of the United States west of the Mississippi and not within the states of Missouri and Louisiana, or the territory of Arkansas…” This is the land that became known as Indian Territory. Oklahoma was declared Indian Territory.

July Events

• July 1 - 3, 1863 Confederate offensive into Maryland and Pennsylvania repulsed at Gettysburg.
• July 1, 1878 Treaty of Berlin divided Africa for colonization.
• July 2, 1676 On July 2, 1676, an Indian camp at Nachek was raided; the location of Nachek, seven or eight miles from Providence, sometimes erroneously associated with Natick in Warwick, was probably in Smithfield. Philip had returned to the neighborhood of Mount Hope, and there was tracked down by Captain Church, and shot to death on August 12, 1676, by a renegade Indian. Like Canonchet his body was violated. An Indian beheaded it and quartered it. The head was exhibited on a gibbet at Plymouth for twenty years. One hand was sent to Boston as a trophy. The other hand was given to Alderman the Indian who had shot Philip. The quartered body was hung on four trees. Anawan, chief counselor of Philip, was captured by Captain Church and shot at Plymouth. Qumapan, second m command to Canonchet, and his brother were shot, following sentence to death. Pomham died fighting, July 25, near Dedham.
• July 2, 1917 Race riots erupted in East St. Louis, Illinois. The official death toll was put at 48, but as many as 200 were believed killed. In 1964 Elliott M. Rudwick authored Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917.” In 2008 Harper Barnes authored “Never Been a Time: The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked the Civil Rights Movement.”
• July 3rd, 1676 Pennacook leader Wanalancet signs a peace treaty in Dover (Maine) with Major Richard Waldron. He had always tried to preserve a degree of neutrality and friendly relations with the English but he was also aware of the catastrophic condition in which were his people, devastated by diseases and starved. He had to get the hell out the war to stand apart of the hostilities that moved then towards Maine.
• July 3, 1799 In Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) Gen. Toussaint L’Ouverture formally declared Gen. Andre Rigaud, the leader of a revolutionary army in the south and west of Saint-Domingue, a rebel.
• July 4, 1863 Confederate surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi.
• July 5, 1969 Tom Mboya (b.1930) of Kenya’s Luo tribe was assassinated in Nairobi. He was the expected successor to Pres. Jomo Kenyatta (1894-1978).
• July 6, 1813 Granville Sharp (b.1735), biblical scholar and English abolitionist, died.
• July 7, 1893 In Bardwell, Ky., C.J. Miller, a black man accused of murdering two white girls, was mutilated, torched and left hanging from a telegraph pole. Ida Wells (1862-1931) was commissioned to investigate the story by the Chicago Inter-Ocean newspaper and published her findings under the title “History Is a Weapon.”
• July 8, 1863 Confederate surrender of Port Hudson clinches Union control over the Mississippi River.
• July 12, 1862 President Lincoln appeals to congressmen from the border states to support gradual, compensated emancipation, with colonization of freed slaves outside the United States, warning that if they do not act soon, slavery in their states “will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion – by the mere incidents of the war”; two days later, a majority of the congressmen reject Lincoln's appeal.
• July 14, 1520 Hernando Cortes fought the Aztecs at the Battle of Otumba, Mexico.
• July 14, 1938 Italian Premier Mussolini published an anti-Jewish and African manifesto prepared by Italian “scientists.”
• July 17, 1862 Second Confiscation Act frees the slaves of persons engaged in or assisting the rebellion and provides for the seizure and sale of other property owned by disloyal citizens; it also forbids army and navy personnel to decide on the validity of any fugitive slave's claim to freedom or to surrender any fugitive to any claimant, and authorizes the president to employ “persons of African descent” in any capacity to suppress the rebellion. Militia Act provides for the employment of “persons of African descent” in “any military or naval service for which they may be found competent,” granting freedom to slaves so employed (and to their families if they belong to disloyal owners).
• July 18, 1694 During King William's War, on July 18, 1694 "Oyster River" was attacked in the Oyster River Massacre by French career soldier Sebastien de Villieu with about 250 Abenaki Indians under command of their sagamore, Bomazeen. In all, 45 inhabitants were killed and 49 taken captive, with half the dwellings, including 5 garrisons, burned to the ground. Crops were destroyed and livestock killed, causing famine and destitution for survivors. The community would rebuild, and by 1716 Durham was a separate parish, named after Durham, England. Incorporated in 1735, Durham once included portions of the present-day towns of Madbury, Lee and Newmarket
• July 18, 1863 Black soldiers spearhead failed assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina.
• July 20, 1588 First battle of the English fight against the Spanish Armada begins, leading to their defeat nine days later and the lessening of Spain's influence in the New World and the rise of English influence in the Americas.
• July 20, 1636 Pequot War begins between Pequot tribe and their alliance against the Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Saybrook colonies. War ended on September 21, 1638 with the Treaty of Hartford. Only two hundred Pequot tribe members remained.
• July 21, 1861 Confederate victory at battle of Bull Run (Manassas) dashes Union hopes of quelling the rebellion quickly and without great loss of life.
• July 21, 1996 In Burundi Hutu rebels killed 320 Tutsis, mostly women and children, at a refugee camp 45 miles north of the capital.
• July 22, 1862 President Lincoln announces to his cabinet his intention to issue a proclamation freeing slaves in the rebel states, but agrees to postpone it until after a suitable military victory.
• July 25, 1722 Declaration of war occurs in Dummer's War after skirmishes earlier in the year between New England colonists and the Wabanaki Confederacy, backed by New France. Lasted three years until December 15, 1725.
• July 27, 1587 A second try to colonize Roanoke Island is attempted by Sir Walter Raleigh under the governor John White. White came back to England to find more supplies, but his return was delayed due to the need for ships to fight the Spanish Armada.
• July 27, 1996 In Burundi a Tutsi-led army killed at least 30 Hutu rebels in retaliation for an attack on a coffee plantation. Independent sources said that Hutus set fire to the factory and rice plantation in Giheta to justify a retaliatory attack on villages where Hutu rebels were thought to have taken refugees. Villagers said Tutsi soldiers massacred about 1,000 Hutus as they roamed from village to village in Gitega province..
• July 28, 1915 The United States occupation of Haiti began as 330 US Marines landed at Port-au-Prince on the authority of President Woodrow Wilson to safeguard the interests of US corporations. Roger Gaillard (d.2000 at 77), historian, later wrote a multi-volume chronicle of the US Marine occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934.
• July 29, 1609 Samuel Champlain battles an Iroquois party after his further exploration of the New World discovers Lake Champlain in early July and claims Vermont for the Kingdom of France.
• July 29, 1800 In Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) Gen. Andre Rigaud, defeated by Gen. Dessalines, set sail for France.
• July 30, 1619 First representative assembly, the House of Burgesses, held in America is elected in Jamestown. The next month, the Dutch land with indentured servants, African slaves, in Jamestown.
• July 30, 1863 President Lincoln pledges that Union soldiers, black or white, are entitled to equal protection if captured by the enemy and threatens retaliation for Confederate enslavement of black prisoners of war.

August Events

• August 3, 1492 After years of negotiations to get the funds to make his journey, Christopher Columbus sets out on three ships, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, to find a westward passage to the Indies under the auspices of Queen Isabella I of Spain.
• August 3, 1795 After years of negotiations to get the funds to make his journey, Christopher Columbus sets out on three ships, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, to find a westward passage to the Indies under the auspices of Queen Isabella I of Spain.
• August 4, 1964 The bodies of missing civil rights workers Michael H. Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James E. Chaney were found buried in an earthen dam in Nashoba County, Mississippi. Schwerner and Goodman were Jewish-Americans from Pelham and New York City respectively and Chaney was a Black from Meridian, Mississippi. The three civil rights workers had disappeared from Philadelphia, Mississippi, on June 21, 1964, not long after they had been held for six hours in the Neshoba County, Mississippi jail on charges of speeding. Their burned car was discovered on June 23rd, prompting a search by the FBI for the three young men. Their story became the basis for the movie Mississippi Burning, starring Gene Hackman, Willem Defoe and Frances McDormand in 1988. In 2005, on the forty-first anniversary of the crime, Edgar Ray Killen (80) an ordained Baptist minister, was found guilty of three counts of manslaughter.
• August 5, 1689 At dawn on August 5, 1689, 1,500 Iroquois warriors attacked. Men, women, and children - no one was spared. André Michel, his wife Françoise Nadereau, their daughters Gertrude, Andrée and Petronille were all killed. 24 colonists in total were killed, more than 70 were taken prisoner, and 56 of the 77 houses were razed. In his History of Canada, the superior of the Sulpicians of Montreal, François Vachon de Belmont, described the horror: “After this total victory, the unhappy band of prisoners was subjected to all the rage which the cruellest vengeance could inspire in these savages. They were taken to the far side of Lake St. Louis by the victorious army, which shouted ninety times while crossing to indicate the number of prisoners or scalps they had taken, saying, we have been tricked, Ononthio, we will trick you as well. Once they had landed, they lit fires, planted stakes in the ground, burned five Frenchmen, roasted six children, and grilled some others on the coals and ate them.” Later, a few prisoners managed to escape, and some were released in prisoner exchanges. Others were adopted by the Iroquois, among them Marguerite Barbary, born that year, and her sister Françoise. In all, forty-two habitants of Lachine were never heard from again.
• August 6, 1861 First Confiscation Act nullifies owners' claims to fugitive slaves who had been employed in the Confederate war effort.
• August 8,1508 First European colony and oldest known European settlement in United States territory is founded at Caparra, Puerto Rico, by Ponce de León. It becomes the first capital of the island with Ponce de León as its governor. Caparra would be abandoned in 1521.
• August 9, 1610 Tired of waiting for a response from Powhatan, Lord De la Warr sent Percy with 70 men to attack the Paspahegh capital, burning the houses and cutting down their cornfields. They killed 65 to 75, and captured one of Wowinchopunk's wives and her children. Returning downstream, the English threw the children overboard, and shot out “their Braynes in the water”. The queen was stabbed to death in Jamestown. The Paspahegh never recover from this attack, and abandon their town. This attack, and the offense of killing royal women and children, ignites the First Anglo-Powhatan War.
• August 10, 1680 On August 10, 1680, Tewa, Tiwa, and other Keresan-speaking pueblos, and even the non-pueblo Apaches simultaneously rose up against the Spanish. The Zuni, Hopi and Acoma were a day late. In Santa Fe, Governor Otermin marshaled the city’s resources to defend the capital. Pueblo warriors destroyed all of the Spanish settlements in the province by August 13th and converged on the capital. Otermin sent heavily armed relief parties to escort stranded colonists to the relative safety of Santa Fe. Almost a thousand people sought sanctuary in the Governor’s Palace by August 15th, surrounded by an army of 2500 Indian warriors. The Spaniards had no water and limited food. In the meantime, over one thousand Spanish survivors from the Rio Abajo, under the command of Lt. Governor Alonso Garcia, had gathered in Isleta, seventy miles south of Santa Fe. However, neither group was aware of the other.
• August 10-21, 1680 Pueblo Rebellion of indigenous Pueblo people against Spanish colony of Santa Fe kills four hundred and forces remaining two thousand from their land. It would take twelve years before the Spanish attempted to recolonize.
• August 10 – October 6, 1703 In August, Vaudreuil sent Alexandre Leneuf de La Vallière de Beaubassin, an Acadian marine officer, to sack English settlements along the coast of Maine. Beaubassin divided his forces into small, fast-moving teams that operated independently and with no instructions other than to lay waste to everything in their grasp. Samuel Drake, New England’s nineteenth-century chronicler of its Indian wars, called the first week of what would become a two-month-long Franco-Indian campaign of destruction, the “Six Terrible Days.” His “Diary of Depredations” filled pages. One war party killed and captured thirty-nine settlers at Wells. Another burned to the ground the fishing station at Cape Porpoise. Winter Harbor held out for several days before surrendering to Frenchmen who carried a false flag of truce. At Saco Fort, the French and Indians killed eleven defenders and took twenty prisoners. At Spurwick, Indians killed or captured twenty-two members of the Jordan family. The siege at Scarborough was lifted only after militia from further down the coast miraculously appeared. More disasters, however, were in store for the English following that sole bright turn of events. The small community at Perpooduck Point near Falmouth (now Portland) suffered, per capita, the most. Nine families regularly lived there. In August 1703, the men were off working in the forests cutting timber. The Indians “inhumanely butchered” twenty-five children and women, one of whom, “being big with Child, they knockt her on the head, and ript open her Womb, cutting one part of the Child out; a Spectacle of horrible Barbarity.” All told, French and Indian raiders destroyed settlements along more than forty-five miles of the seaboard. Drake did not exaggerate when he lamented, “Maine had nearly received her death-blow.” Vaudreuil had, for his autumn 1703 operations, purposely left New York untouched. The latter’s leaders were reluctant to become embroiled in another war with Canada, especially with the Mohawks adamant that they intended to hold fast to the Grand Settlement for fear that an Anglo-French conflict might morph into an internecine struggle with their mission-dwelling cousins at Kanawake.
• August 12, 1676 The Indian War, King Philip's War, between the Confederation of New England tribes and the colonists in New England ends.
• August 13, 1676 On August 11, a Wabanaki attack on Falmouth resulted in 34 settlers being killed or captured. On August 13, the Wabanaki attacked Richard Hammond's fortified house in present-day Woolwich, killing fourteen, while two escaped. The following day, they raided the best fortified settlement in the region, the trading post of Thomas Clarke and Thomas Lake near Woolwich on Arrosic Island, killing Thomas Lake and others while Sylvanus Davis escaped. (Major Waldron arrived the following February and found Lake's body frozen and sent it to Boston to be buried. He also removed two cannon.) Several weeks later, on September 2, the Wabanaki secured a garrison on Jewells Island in Casco Bay. The Wabanaki also attacked a settlement at Sheepscot River at Merrymeeting Bay. William Phips rescued local settlers by bringing them on board his ship, forgoing his cargo of lumber. Although he was financially ruined (the Wabanaki having destroyed the shipyard and his intended cargo), he was seen as a hero in Boston. On September 7, 1676, Richard Waldon tricked 200 Wabanaki who believed they were meeting with him to establish a peace. They were disarmed without any deaths on either side. Seven or eight, accused of killing Englishmen, were hanged, and the rest were sold into slavery. On September 24 and 25, the Wabanaki raided Wells twice, killing a total of three people. Also on September 25, they raided York, Maine, killing 40 people. On October 12, 1676, at present-day Scarborough (formerly Black Point), led by Chief Mog, the Wabanaki laid siege to the garrison, which was immediately abandoned by the colonists. Waldron gave the order to seize all the Wabanaki “of the East” who had been raiding the New England villages along the border with Acadia. On November 9, 1676, American militiamen stopped at Machias and took nine Wabanaki captive. They sailed to Cape Sable Island (Nova Scotia) and 17 members of Mi’kmaq families were taken captive, including the local chief and his wife. They were taken as slaves and sold to the Portuguese in the Azores.
• August 13, 2003 Scientists are blaming global warming for falling fish harvests in Africa's Lake Tanganyika, threatening the diets of several poor nations.
• August 14, 1559 Spanish explorer Tristan de Luna entered Pensacola Bay, Florida. 1,500 Spanish settlers sailed from Vera Cruz to found a settlement on Pensacola Bay in Florida, but were repulsed by hostile Indians. The location of the Spanish settlement founded in the area of Pensacola, Fl., remained a mystery until 2016 when amateur archaeologist Tom Garner stumbled upon some shards of 16th century Spanish pottery.
• August 14, 1791 Haitian slaves, led by voodoo priest Boukman Dutty, gathered to plan a revolution.
• August 14, 1908 A race war broke out in Springfield, Illinois. Angry over reports that a black man had sexually assaulted a white woman, a white mob wanted to take a recently arrested suspect from the city jail and kill him. Most blacks had fled the city, but as the mob swept through the area, they captured and lynched a black barber, Scott Burton, who had stayed behind to protect his home. Rioting continued the next day leaving a total of two blacks and 5 whites dead and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property destroyed. Some 4,000 state militiamen were required to quell the riot, which helped inspire the creation of the NAACP the following year.
• August 17, 1585 Roanoke Island colony is founded by an expedition organized by Sir Walter Raleigh (Raleigh never visited North America himself) during his attempt to colonize the area of Virginia and North Carolina. The colony fails. (See July 27, 1587)
• August 18, 1590 John White's return trip to the Roanoke Island Colony finds no signs of the colonists, beyond the words CROATOAN and CRO carved into tree trunks. The fate of its people is unknown to this date, and is often referred to as the “Lost Colony of Roanoke Island.”
• August 21, 1993 Philippine opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., ending a self-imposed exile in the United States, was shot dead moments after stepping off a plane at Manila International Airport. Fabian Ver (d.1998 at 78), leader of the Philippine army, was among 20 men later charged in the murder of Aquino. Ver fled to Hawaii in 1986 along with Marcos.
• August 21, 1998 Samuel Bowers, a 73-year-old former Ku Klux Klan leader, was convicted in Hattiesburg, Miss., of ordering a 1966 firebombing that killed civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer. Bowers died in prison in November 2006 at age 82.
• August 22, 1862 In New Orleans, General Benjamin F. Butler incorporates into Union forces several “Native Guard” units composed of free-black soldiers; soon thereafter he begins recruiting both free-black and ex-slave men for additional regiments.
• August 22, 1654 Jewish settlement in the American colonies begins with the arrival of twenty-three settlers from Brazil in New Amsterdam.
• August 24, 1724 In August 1724, a force of 208 soldiers (which would split into 2 units under the commands of captains Johnson Harmon and Jeremiah Moulton left Fort Richmond (now Richmond) in 17 whaleboats up the Kennebec. At Taconic Falls (now Winslow), 40 men were left to guard the boats as the troops continued on foot. On the 21st the Rangers killed Chief Bomoseen, fatally wounded his daughter and took his wife captive. On August 22, 1724, Captains Jeremiah Moulton and Johnson Harmon led 200 rangers to the main Abenaki village on the Kennebec River, Norridgewock, Maine, to kill Father Sébastien Râle and destroy the settlement. On the 23rd, there were 160 Abenaki, many who were killed as they tried to escape. The Rangers fired about canoes filled with families. Harmon noted that at least 50 bodies went down stream before the rangers could retrieve them for their scalps. At least 31 chose to fight, which allowed the others to escape. Most of the defenders were killed. Lieut. Richard Jaques killed Rale in the opening moments of the battle, Chief Mog was killed, and the rangers massacred nearly two dozen women and children. The English had casualties of two militiamen and one Nauset. Harmon destroyed the Abenaki farms, and those who had escaped were forced to abandon their village and moved northward to the Abenaki village of St Francois (Odanak, Quebec). Many of the Indians were routed, leaving 26 warriors dead and 14 wounded. Harmon's son-in-law, Lieutenant Richard Jaques, scalped Fr. Rale. Chief Wissememet was also killed. Rale's body was mutilated, and his scalp redeemed in Boston with those of the other dead. The Boston authorities gave a reward for the scalps, and Harmon was promoted. Thereafter, the French and Indians claimed that the missionary died “a martyr” at the foot of a large cross set in the central square, drawing the soldiers' attention to himself to save his parishioners. The English militia claimed that he was “a bloody incendiary” shot in a cabin while reloading his flintlock. A Mohawk named Christian, who accompanied the troops, slipped back after they had departed and set the village and church ablaze.
• August 25, 1862 After having withheld its permission for months, the War Department authorizes recruitment of black soldiers in the South Carolina Sea Islands.
• August 28, 1955 Emmett Till (14), a black teenager from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle's home in Money, Miss., by white men after he had supposedly whistled at Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. Till’s beaten body was found three days later. His left eye and an ear were missing, as were most of his teeth. His nose was rushed and there was a hole in his right temple. Eyewitnesses linked Carolyn’s husband Roy Bryant and half-brother J.W. Milam to the murder. Bryant and Milam were indicted Sep 10 for a trial on Sep 19. Both were acquitted by an all-white jury. Bryant and Milan later confessed to the killing in a magazine interview. The area was a cotton-trading center where the white Citizens Councils maintained their regional headquarters. In 2004 the US Justice Dept. opened a criminal investigation into the case. In 2005 the US Senate acknowledged a share in the boy’s death.
• August 30, 1861 Invoking martial law, General John C. Frémont declares free the slaves of disloyal owners in Missouri; President Lincoln asks that he modify his order so as not to exceed congressional laws respecting emancipation.

September Events

• September 3, 1906 Joe Gans (1874-1910), born as Joseph Gant, defended his lightweight boxing title against Battling Nelson in Goldfield, Nevada. He was the first African-American World Boxing Champion, reigning continuously as World Lightweight Champion from 1902 to 1908. In 2012 William Gildea authored “The Longest Fight: In the Ring with Joe Gans, Boxing’s First African-American Champion.”
• September 9, 1675 Colonial authorities officially declared war on the Wampanoag Indians. The war soon spread to include the Abenaki, Norwottock, Pocumtuck and Agawam warriors.
• September 9, 1730 In fact, many tribes held out against the French, including those with blood ties to the Foxes, such as the Kicakapoos, Mascoutens and Winnebagos. But progressively, by 1730, each of these came to be convinced that the Fox were their enemies and even they were persuaded to join Onontio’s tribe, leaving the Fox alone and isolated in their own homeland and among their own kinspeople. Menaced and hunted in all directions, the Foxes were now surrounded by tribes loyal to Onontio. According to the Fox, “every tribe within 100 miles was in bed with the French.” But while the tribe was internally divided, they refused to accept the yoke of Onontio. Their only hope for refuge lay 800 miles to the East in the lands of the Iroquois. And so in 1730 they prepared to make a clandestine exodus and leave their Western homelands forever. To avoid the warrior tribes of the Great Lakes now allied with Onontio, the Fox took a more southerly route down the Fox and Illinois Rivers to “La Rocher” (Starved Rock). There they would cross east across the Grand Prairie of the Illinois to the Wabash River. Aapproximately 1,000 members of the Fox tribe – 350 warriors and 650 women and children – set out upon their journey. But all would not go according to plan. While camped near La Rocher, the Fox encountered a band of Cahokia and had a brief skirmish. While there were no serious casualties, the Fox captured seventeen Cahokia. Knowing the location of their village, the Fox feared the Cahokia would send runners notifying the French and allied tribes of their exodus and their location. So they approached the Cahokia to exchange their prisoners for safe passage. But unwisely, during negotiations, one angered Cahokia reached across and stabbed a Fox envoy. And while the wound was not serious, the violation in protocol was. The Fox stormed out, but not before learning that the Cahokias had already sent runners to the French and allied tribes informing them of the Fox migration. And the Kickapoos and Mascoutens and other tribes who now considered the Foxes their sworn enemies, were interested in revenge. Meanwhile, the Foxes went back to their camp at La Rocer, and several younger tribesmen, in angered retaliation to the Cahokia, tortured most of their prisoners and then burned them to death, including the son of a prominent Cahokia chief. So the Fox hastily left their camp near La Rocher and set out south along the Bloomington moraine. Cahokia scouts monitored their journey and tried to harass the Foxes along the way. And while they could not effectively threaten the far more warlike Foxes, the Cahokias knew they could slow their trek until reinforcements could arrive. While straggling across the open Illinois prairie with women, children and their elderly in tow, the Fox warriors knew they would be vulnerable to attack. So as they came to a grove of trees along the banks of the small, winding river we now know as the headwaters of the Sangamon, the war chiefs determined to settle in, construct a small defensive fort and prepare for battle with the Cahokia. The younger Fox believed that they would have little trouble routing these “servants of Onontio” as they had done in the past.
• September 9, 1739 The last major slave rebellion in the mainland colonies of English, the Stono Rebellion, begins in South Carolina
• September 11–15 By September 15, 1655, when Cornelis van Tienhoven shot a Native woman for stealing a peach, the situation was ripe for an unleashed fury. While Peter Stuyvesant, who replaced the universally despised Willem Kieft, was away from his headquarters in New Amersterdam, 500 to 600 Natives descended upon Hoboken, Pavonia, and Staten Island, attacking New Amsterdam and burned down the homes and farms of hundreds, killed 100 Dutch, and took 150 hostages. It was said it would take decades to repair the damage to the settlement. A year later, the 1655 Council documents describe the final large scale Dutch-Indian hostility. “Whoever considers only his last transaction with the savages will find, that with clouded brains filled with liquor, (van Tienhoven) was the prime cause of this massacre… he has laid the first foundation… and given the most offense by killing one of the squaws for taking some peaches. If this is true, then we wonder (why) no more mention is made of it, and (why) he has not been brought to justice as a murderer…”
• September 15, 1655 Peach Tree War begins with attack on New Amsterdam and Pavonia along Hudson (North) River by Susquehannock Indians and their allies as retaliation for the loss of New Sweden to the Dutch. Indian victory forced many Dutch settlers back to Fort Amsterdam.
• September 18, 1850 The US Congress passed the second Fugitive Slave Bill into law (the first was enacted in 1793) as part of Compromise of 1850. It allowed slave owners to reclaim slaves who had escaped to other states. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 set fines up to $1,000 for facilitating a slave’s flight. The act authorized federal commissioners to receive a $10 fee if they decided for a slaveholder, but only a $5 fee for deciding for a fugitive.
• September 21, 1638 Pequot War ends with Treaty of Hartford after three years of battles between the New England colonists and native tribes
• September 22, 1711 Unable to find refuge in Pennsylvania, the Tuscaroras took the offensive. In early September 1711 the Tuscaroras captured Baron von Graffenried, John Lawson, and two black slaves as they journeyed up the Neuse River. The Indians took their prisoners to the village of Catechna, about four miles north of present-day Grifton, in Pitt County. At Catechna, John Lawson quarreled heatedly with a Coree chief named Cor Tom. In response, the Indians tortured and killed Lawson. Graffenried was more diplomatic and lived to describe the experience in word and picture. Known for harboring black fugitives, the Tuscaroras spared the slaves. Lawson had been dead little more than a decade when William Byrd wrote, "they [the Indians] resented their wrongs a little too severely upon Mr. Lawson, who, under Colour of being Surveyor Gen'l, had encroacht too much upon their Territories, at which they were so enrag'd, that they . . . cut his throat from Ear to Ear, but at the same time releas'd the Baron de Graffenried, whom they had Seized for Company, because it appear'd plainly he had done them no Wrong."
• September 22, 1862 Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln; it announces that all slaves in those states or portions of states still in rebellion as of January 1, 1863, will be declared free, pledges monetary aid for slave states not in rebellion that adopt either immediate or gradual emancipation, and reiterates support for the colonization of freed slaves outside the United States.
• September 24, 1493 Columbus began his second trip to the American colonies with seventeen ships and 1,200 men. These men were meant to colonize the land found and claimed during the journey beyond the few left in the Americas after the first voyage. He would arrive in the New World again on November 3, 1493 and explore more of the islands in the Caribbean, including the lands of Puerto Rico and today's Dominican Republic.
• September 25, 1690 The first newspaper issue in the United States publishes in Boston, the Public Occurrences. It was suppressed after its initial issue and the publication of a regular newspaper would not begin again until 1704.

October Events

• October 1, 1991 President Bush strongly condemned the military coup in Haiti, suspending U.S. economic and military aid and demanding the immediate return to power of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
• October 2, 1991 Ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide asked the Organization of American States in Washington to send a delegation to his homeland to demand that the newly installed military junta surrender power immediately.
• October 3, 1863 War Department orders full-scale recruitment of black soldiers in Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee, with compensation to loyal owners.
• October 4, 1705 Virginia Slave Code passed in the Virginia House of Burgesses.
• October 11, 1862 Confederate Congress exempts from conscription one white man on each plantation with twenty or more slaves.
• October 12, 1492 Rodrigo de Triana, a crew member of the Pinta, sights the land of the Americas in the Bahamas. This was the first of four voyages Christopher Columbus would make under the patent of the Spanish and Isabella I of Castile. It began the period of Spanish colonization of the New World. Columbus called the Bahamian site, San Salvador. He would also explore the islands of Cuba and Haiti on this trip, but not the continent of North America itself.
• October 15, 1966 The Black Panthers wrote their Ten Point Program at the Office of Economic Development Corp. in Oakland, Ca. It called for adequate housing, jobs, education and an end to police brutality. The Black Panther Party was founded by Merritt College students Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. In 2006 Flores A. Forbes authored “Will You Die With Me: My Life and the Black Panther Party.”
• October 16, 1755 The year was 1755. The month was October. The relations between the little settlement along the creek and the Indians at Shamokin ( now Sunbury) had lived in peaceful coexistence up till this point. A group of Delaware raiders from the town of Kittannaning arrived at this little settlement on October 16th. Their arrival ended the peaceful state of affairs in the area. The entire population was killed or carried off, one person was wounded and managed to escape and alert the countryside. 14 people were slain and scalped, 11 were taken into captivity. Others in the area came upon the site and reported “We found thirteen, who are men and elderly women, and one child, two weeks old, the rest being young women and children, we supposed to be carried away. The house, (where we suppose they finish their murder) we found burned up, the man of it, named Jacob King, a Swisser, laying just by it. He lay on his back, barbarously burned, and two tomahawks sticking out of his forehead; one of them newly marked W.D.” John Harris who founded Harris' Ferry ( future Harrisburg) took a party of 40 men upriver to investigate the situation and find out the intentions of the Indians at Sunbury. They stopped at the site of the massacre. After they ensured all was done for the remains they moved upriver to Sunbury. Before arriving at the Indian Village, something warned them the town was no longer friendly. However north of the Massacre site, they were ambushed by a large part of Indian warriors. Seven of his men were killed, and five one drowned during the withdraw. The prisoners of the raid were most likely taken back to the village of Kittannaning where the famous Delaware War leaders . This group also was responseable for the Le Roy Massacre new New Berlin. Of the survivors of the massacre two girls were taken who would later be freed in a counter raid. Marie le Roy and Barbara Leningerwere both 12 when they were captured. They wrote of the experience later after they were freed and returned to the colonies. “Early in the morning of the 16th of October, 1755, while le Roy’s [the father of Marie] hired man went out to fetch the cows, we heard the Indians shooting six times. Soon after, eight of them came to the house, and killed Barbara (Marie) leRoy’s father with tomahawks. Her brother defended himself desperately for a time, but was at last overpowered. The Indians did not kill him, but took him prisoner, together with Marie le Roy and a little girl who was staying with the family. Thereupon they plundered the homestead, and set it on fire. Into this fire they laid the body of the murdered father, feet foremost, until it was half consumed. The upper half was lying on the ground, with the two tomahawks with which they had killed him, sticking in his head. Then they kindled the fire, not far from the house. While sitting around it, a neighbor of le Roy, named Bastian, happened to pass by on horseback. He was immediately shot down and scalped. Two of the Indians now went to the house of Barbara Leininger, where they found her father, her brother, and her sister Regina. Her mother had gone to the mill. They demanded rum, but there was none in the house. They then called for tobacco, which was given them. Having filled and smoked a pipe, they said: “We are Alleghany Indians and your enemies. You must all die!” Thereupon they shot the father, tomahawked her brother, who was twenty years of age, took Barbara and her sister Regina prisoners, and conveyed them into the forest for about a mile. Soon they were joined by other Indians, with Marie le Roy and the little girl. Not long after, several of the Indians led the prisoners to the top of a high hill, near the two plantations. Toward the evening the rest of the savages returned with six fresh and bloody scalps, which they threw at the feet of the poor captives, saying that they had a good hunt that da1.” Thus the murdered settlers passed into the annals of history. However as often happens in places of tragic death and violence, some did not pass quietly into that good night.
• October 18, 1540 De Soto and Tascalusa left Atahachi on October 12th, and they arrived in Mabila on the morning of the 18th. According to the chronicles, de Soto led the way into the small town of Mabila with 40 horsemen, a guard of crossbowmen and halberdiers, a cook, a friar and several slaves and porters bearing the supplies and booty collected by the Spanish since they arrived in Florida in 1539. The rear guard lagged far behind, rummaging the countryside for more booty and supplies. Mabila was a small village tucked inside a strongly fortified palisade, with bastions at the corners. Two gates led into the center of the town, where a plaza was surrounded by the houses of the most important people. De Soto decided to bring his collected booty and stay himself within the palisade, rather than camp outside its walls. After some festivities, a battle broke out when one of the conquistadors responded to a principal Indian's refusal to run an errand by cutting his arm off. A great roar resounded, and people hidden inside the houses around the plaza began shooting arrows at the Spanish. The Spanish fled the palisade, mounted their horses and encircled the town, and for the next two days and nights, a fierce battle was played out. When it was over, say the chroniclers, at least 2,500 Mississippians were dead (the chroniclers estimate up to 7,500), 20 Spanish were killed and over 250 wounded, and all of their collected booty had been burned with the town. After the battle, the Spanish stayed in the area for a month to heal, and lacking supplies and a place to stay, they turned north to look for both. They turned north, despite de Soto's recent knowledge that there were ships waiting for him at a harbor to the south. Apparently, de Soto felt leaving the expedition after the battle would mean personal failure: no supplies, no booty, stories of fierce warriors rather than easily subjugated people. Arguably, the battle at Mabila was a turning point for the expedition, which was to end and not well, after de Soto died in 1542.
• October 24, 1698 French soldier Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville leads expedition to Gulf of Mexico to defend border of New France and establish the three capitals of Biloxi, Mobile, and New Orleans with additional New France settlements established in Mississippi and Louisiana.
• October 27, 1975 In Oakland, Ca., police made a traffic stop on Black Panther leader Huey Newton (d.1989). In a gun battle Newton was wounded and police officer John Frey was killed. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter but the conviction was overturned. Gene McKinney (d.2000 at 58) and Newton had driven out for takeout feed following a Black Panther Party fundraiser when they were pulled over. McKinney commandeered a passing car to get Newton to a hospital.
• October 28, 1636 Harvard College is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the first college to be established in North America.
• October 28, 1991 President Bush imposed trade sanctions against Haiti to pressure its new leaders to restore ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. Bush ordered home all nonessential US government employees and their dependents.
• October 31, 1539 The Spanish initiated the mass slaughters of Indians in North America, beginning with Hernando de Soto in 1539, but they continued unabated (with the English, Dutch, French and Americans also inflicting large-scale massacres) until the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890. After defeating resisting Timucuan warriors, Hernando de Soto had 200 executed, in the first large-scale massacre by Europeans on what became American soil.

November Events

• November 1781 British Capt. Luke Collingwood, commander of the slave ship Zong, in the face of endemic dysentery that had already killed 7 crewmen and 60 of 470 slaves, ordered his crew to throw sick slaves overboard in order to claim insurance money at the end of the voyage. Over 100 slaves were cast overboard. In 2007 Marcus Rediker authored “The Slave Ship,” an account of this and the slave trade from 1700-1808.
• November 1841 Freed African survivors of the slave ship Amistad returned to Sierra Leone, Africa. Abolitionists had raised money to help the freed slaves of the Amistad return home. When Cinque, the leader of the revolt, reached home, he found that his family had been captured and sold into slavery.
• November 5, 1968 Shirley Chisholm (1924-2004) of Brooklyn, New York, became the first black woman elected to serve in the US House of Representatives.
• November 8, 1860 Abraham Lincoln elected president.
• November 8, 1864 Abraham Lincoln is re-elected president, defeating George B. McClellant.
• November 10, 1702 Siege of St. Augustine, one of the first conflicts of Queen Anne's War, the second of four French and Indian Wars between New France and the English colonists, this time including New Spain on the side of France.
• November 11, 1620 The Puritan expedition which left England for the New World on September 6, reaches Cape Cod near Provincetown, not their original destination of Virginia. They explore the coastline for an appropriate settlement location.
• November 12, 1779 A group of 20 slaves who had fought in the war submitted a petition to the New Hampshire General Assembly, while the war was still being fought. Lawmakers decided the time was not right. 6 of the slaves were later freed. In 2013 a state Senate committee recommended that the state posthumously emancipate 14 of the slaves who died in bondage. On June 7, 2013, they were granted posthumous emancipation when Gov. Maggie Hassan signed a largely symbolic bill that supporters hope will encourage future generations to pursue social justice.
• November 20, 1695 Zumbi, a Brazilian leader of a hundred-year-old rebel slave group, was killed in an ambush in Palmares. He was later honored by a National Day of Black Consciousness.
• November 20, 1751 On November 20, 1751, O’odham rebels made a coordinated attack on Spanish missions and settlements. The Spanish were caught completely unaware. Groups of a thousand Indians attacked missions with arrows and fire. Missions at Arivaca, Sonoita, Guevavi, and others were attacked, and the conquerors were in retreat. Churches were burned, and more than 100 people were killed. Sonora Governor Parrilla assembled his troops and marched north. Two hundred soldiers were prepared to battle with 3,000 O’odham warriors in the Baboquivari Mountains. The Baboquivaris was a sacred and familiar place to the rebels, and military leaders understood their disadvantage. Jesuit missionaries, led by the hated Father Keller, argued for immediate military action, but negotiating feelers were extended. Luis sent word that if Keller were sent away, he would surrender. Father Keller was ordered to leave, and Luis gave himself up, blaming Jesuit land theft and brutality for the uprising. Instead of responding to the O’odham grievances, the Spaniards began constructing a military presidio at Tubac, and a new governor had Luis Oacpicagigua arrested. He died in prison. Resistance and raiding continued, but there were no more battles. Though a new fort was established in the Santa Cruz Valley in June 1752, the troops spent their time hunting down pockets of rebels who had created a hideout in the center of sacred O’odham country. Eventually, the rebellion would end, and life would continue in the missions. The Pima Revolt led to the abandonment of many European settlements for several decades. Political intrigues in Spain led to the expulsion of Jesuit priests from New Spain in 1767, with Franciscan missionaries replacing them. Disease continued to claim native lives, killing an estimated half of the O’odham population. Revolts against enslavement, rape, and abuse were not limited to the Southwest. Further west, missions were attacked at San Diego, San Luis Obispo, and San Juan Bautista in the 1700s and Santa Barbara in 1824.
• November 26, 2003 The UN Children's Fund warned that AIDS has already orphaned more than 11 million African children under the age of 15, and “the worst is yet to come.”
• November 27, 1871 Ku Klux Klan trials began in Federal District Court in Columbia, SC.
• November 27, 1997 In Denver five skinheads beat up a 26-year-old black woman who was shopping at a 7-Eleven. All 5 were captured and arraigned in court.
• November 29, 1729 On the morning of November 29, 1729, they made their move and attacked the French fort and other living quarters, killing 230 white men but sparing women and enslaved Africans. This revolt was a major blow to the fortunes of the French and helped contribute to the collapse of the Company of the Indies, which had a contract with the French monarchy to economically exploit the territory. The Europeans later waged a retaliatory campaign against the Natchez using Choctaw (aka Chahta or Chata) and African forces (an alliance they later regretted fostering). The fighting went on for several years, forcing the Natchez eventually to seek refuge among the Chickasaw, then the Creeks and, finally, the Cherokees before disappearing as a distinct people by the mid-1730s. In the meantime, the French repossessed the Natchez lands, which remained under white control thereafter. A hundred years later, the town named Natchez had become a major trading center for enslaved Africans working in the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta.

December Events

• December 1993 Wars were in Serbia, Algeria, S. Africa, Morocco, Haiti, Israel, and elsewhere.
• December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks (42), a seamstress and secretary of the Montgomery NAACP, was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, as she sat in a section of a bus just behind the area reserved for whites. She refused to move to the back the bus, to accommodate a white male passenger, as ordered by driver James F. Blake (d.2002 at 89) and defied the South’s segregationist laws. This prompted the Dec. 5 bus boycott, a year-long boycott of the buses by blacks, and launched the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Virginia Durr (d.1999 at 95) helped a black civil rights leader bail Parks out of jail. In 1985 Durr wrote her memoir: “Outside the Magic Circle.” In 1999 Pres. Clinton authorized a Congressional Gold Medal for Rosa Parks.
• December 4, 1729 The first of December 1729, the Sieur Bunel, an employee of the Company [of the Indies], and the two men known as Captain and La Pierre arrived at the bluff at four o’clock in the morning. They told me that the Natchez had struck the French on the 28th of November, and they believed the French had been completely defeated, because not a single habitant was prepared for the attack, even though they had all been warned two days before the Massacre. Such was the name that must be given to this affair. The Indian women of the Kolly concession were warned by other women of their nation, who bemoaned the impending the death of the Frenchmen--they alerted their masters, and the Sieur de Longraye. M. de Kolly went immediately to the fort to give notice to M. de Chepar, the Commandant of the post, who called him deluded and treated his warning with ridicule, regarding it as a product of fear. Other habitants also went to the fort to give notice of the rumor to the Sieur Chepar, who became so angry at them that he called them cowards and traitors, and also threatened them with prison or some other harsh treatment. It was on the 25th or 26th of November that this rumor spread in that place there. The 27th, which was a Sunday, M. de Kolly spoke to M. de Chepar coming out of Mass of what was being said among the habitants about the plan of the Natchez, of which he must be well informed. The Sieur de Longraye insisted on the matter. The two of them drew a laugh from the Commandant, in the presence of all the habitants, who made up jokes about the news; they set up Madame Desnoyers as the Queen of the Indians, they set around her several princesses. In short the morning passed in laughter. Everyone acted as if he was not afraid, and was safe in his home. But M. de la Loire, knowing the Indians well, believed the rumors, and took arms from the magazine. The evening of the same day seven or eight habitants again made the journey to the Commandant’s house. They told him that the Natchez were set upon assassinating all the Frenchmen, and that it was time to assemble all the habitants and put them in a state of defense. This sage advice should have led him to take every necessary precaution to secure his post against all such threats, and should have forced him to complete this process by spreading notice of all the warnings. Far from doing that, he regarded these men as seditious, as mutinous scoundrels, and he had them put in irons. A moment later the chief of that nation, perceiving something in this activity that he had seen among the French, carried to the commandant some fifty chickens, so as to remove any suspicion. The latter received the gift warmly, seeing it as a sign of his friendship. He let it be known to all that he was the master of the Indians, who would never dare undertake anything against the French, so much was he feared and loved. The barbarian, more subtle than he was, had distracted him by this present, and by knowing well his logic and his avarice, had found the way to blind him. The Sieur Macé, an officer in the garrison, also warned Chepar and was immediately placed under arrest. After that he ordered that the guards be stationed, more as a joke and a whim than for security. Upon seeing this Nicolas de la Tour and Nicolas Le Blond also went to warn Chepar, and he put them in irons. Toward ten o’clock at night the Sieurs Bailly, Ricard, Bourbeaux, and Ducoder, as well as the interpreter [Poulain, or du Parc?] went to the village to see what was happening. They asked the Indians if they wanted to kill us as was being claimed, and they insisted they did not. In truth they did want to arrest and kill them, but altered their plan on the advice of a few of the most experienced who said that if they killed these men then, it would betray their plot. So the Natchez left them alone and they were received according to custom. They asked the Indian women to have a dance that night to which the women replied that the really beautiful dance would be tomorrow night. It seems that these gentlemen had no other desire than for the pleasure of the Indian women’s favors, and believed these women could never rebel against the French. In posing such a question to the Indians these men must have been completely deprived of common sense; did they really think that the Indians would reveal something that they had kept secret under penalty of death? Passion blinded them, and if on the other hand infernal Passion had seen fit to shorten their lives by one night, this would have been a good thing for the post, for it would have prevented the complete loss of the settlement. It must be also that they were really blind to not sense some significance in the words of the Indian women at that moment, particularly after all the rumors that were spreading around. The Indians did not begin anything that night, because they had seen some movements among our men. When daybreak came and they saw the post was again calm, they resolved to all attack at the same hour, and that the first gunshot would serve as a signal to all. The Sieur Chepar at mid-morning had all the habitants who were in irons set free. He said to them that if anyone else came to him with similar talk, he would seize them, and he ridiculed several men for all that had been said on this topic. At seven o’clock in the morning an habitant named Navarre came to the post in a great hurry to warn the commandant that all the Natchez were gathering to attack the French. When he found two men who told him that they had just been released from irons, on account of making similar warnings, he was forced to reverse his course and look for some way to save himself, for fear that he might be subject to the same punishment as the others and would be killed while he was in irons. At nine o’clock in the morning, the commandant saw a large number of Indians coming, carrying presents, the Grand Chef in the lead, holding the calumet in the air. A less presumptuous officer would have had some suspicion of this maneuver, particularly after all the rumors that had been spreading, and would have fired a cannon to assemble everybody, which would have disrupted the plot that was in progress. The calumet the Chief was carrying had two goals. The first was in the hope of making greater surprises, because the Indians only offer the calumet as a symbol of peace and alliance. The second was in case they had not succeeded in their surprise, the calument and the presents might alleviate all suspicion of their activities. By this you can see that the Indians practice more ruses than you even imagine. In his blind ambition this officer awaited them with a sense of trust, hoping to gain a profit by this ceremony. He saw a large number of Indians disembark at the water’s edge, others go to the homes of habitants next to his fort, all with some gift, whether ducks, fish, etc. And when each was in position the first gunshot that was fired at the riverside was the signal. They attacked the fort, the galley, and all the habitants at the same moment. They killed the commandant with the blow of a tomahawk at the moment when he was examining the presents that had just been brought to him. These barbarians have recounted to our women that after having received the first blow Chepar said to them that if they would spare his life, he would give them all the goods that were in the warehouse. They had no need for him to give them the goods, for they were already in possession. They seized the galley which had no guards, no sentinel, but only the captain, and they cut his throat. They also seized the warehouse killing those inside except for the Sieur Ricard the warehouse keeper, who had time to save himself. They cut the throat of the Sieur Bailly in his bed. Finally the two concessions [Terre Blanche and St. Catherines], and all the habitants suffered at the same instant the same fate, with the exception of thirty people, workers, habitants, soldiers and boatmen among them. These barbarians after having massacred all the soldiers and all the habitants, which they accomplished in about fifteen minutes, took possession of all the goods of the Company and of the individuals. After this they rounded up all our women, children and slaves. They imposed upon our women all the greatest cruelties imaginable. They raped some, killed, massacred, and impaled others. They did all that the spirit of vengeance might suggest as the greatest cruelty to satisfy their rage and their passion for brutality. It was the Indians of the Pomme village who distinguished themselves most in their crimes, and did the most evil. The other villages treated them with less inhumanity and cruelty. This in brief is what happened at Natchez the 28th of November last year. The refugees who saved themselves, some on a piece of wood drifting along in the water, and others by land, made their way to the Tioux who had seemed to be loyal to us. In the beginning they received these poor people kindly, saying that they wanted to avenge the death of the French. After these expressions of friendship one would never have imagined that they had declared themselves opposed to us, all the more so given that the Natchez are not their friends. They had held a council, and had sent some deputies to the Natchez to see what was happening and to choose a side. The latter had received them well, and had given them presents, and the Tioux made a promise to attack us. And they stuck to this promise, for no sooner had they returned to their village than they killed four pour victims who had fled in the hope of finding some succor. From there they went to the Tunicas to kill the habitants in that place, and to engage that nation in their plot, but they did not find what they expected in that village, where the greater part declared themselves in our favor and had protected the habitants there, which forced the Tioux to return home. These barbarians, seeing that they could do nothing on that side of the river went to the Red River where they took a concession belonging to the Marquise de Mezières, and killed eighteen people who had settled in that area, after which they went back to Natchez to collect payment for their scalps. I must observe here that the Indians never kill men without also cutting off their scalps. This is the proof of their heroic deed. The day of the massacre, fourteen of the Yazoos found themselves at Natchez. They were returning from the Houmas, carrying a calumet. They appeared at first very zealous for the French, seeming to sympathize with our plight. Those who escaped from the enemy into their hands were clothed, given food and a pirogue to save themselves. But the next day it was otherwise, because they did the contrary; they burned the Frenchmen who had been so unlucky as to fall into their hands. They had been engaged to do this by the other barbarians who had told them that the Choctaw had descended the Mississippi and that there were no more French alive. Perhaps they persuaded the Yazoos with threats. It was believed that the conspiracy was widespread; we shall see the contrary in what follows. It might have become widespread if not for the indefatiguable efforts of M. Perier who found a quick antidote by assuaging the Choctaws with presents. The Yazoos, however, returned home and cut the throats of the troops and habitants of the posts. Informed only of the destruction of the post at Natchez, I left on the first of December from the bluff for New Orleans to alert Monsieur Perier of this disaster, and also to get weapons and munitions to arm the habitants in my region. I arrived at the city on the third at eleven o’clock in the morning. This same day news came of the arrival of a vessel from France. I offered my services to Monsieur Perier. I pleaded with him to employ me in this affair; I laid out for him the necessity of arming all the habitants, above all those along my side of the river who were most exposed. He told me that this was his intention. He immediately dispatched the captain Sieur Merveilleux to go to the Tunicas so as to prevent the uprising of the enemy there, and also to warn all the habitants on both banks of the river to be on their guards and to build forts. On the 4th M. Perier told me to take from the storehouse whatever I would need and to promptly return upstream to guard my settlement; he gave me orders of which a copy is attached here: “M. de Laye will take charge to assemble in his settlement as many French as he can for the purpose of going upstream, and if he foresees that there is too great a risk in guarding his settlement, he will descend with the French or with our Indian allies, so as to unite with the larger group that I will take upstream. He will also take charge, if he foresees too great a threat from the Indians in the upper colony, to bring down as much grain as he can to New Orleans. He will take special care to bring the latest news and to inform me at New Orleans. This fourth day of December 1729, Perier”
• December 5, 1955 The Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott began in an effort to overturn the city’s bus segregation law. It was organized in part by Jo Ann Robinson (1912-1992), Fred D. Grey, E.D. Nixon, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, following the Dec 1 arrest of Rosa Parks, who had refused give up her seat to a white male passenger and move to the back. Black residents chose Mr. King to head The Montgomery Improvement Association, formed to sustain the protest against segregation policies on the municipal buses.
• December 8, 1863 Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction issued by President Lincoln; it offers pardon and restoration of property (except slaves) to Confederates who take an oath of allegiance to the Union and agree to accept emancipation; it also proposes a plan by which loyal voters of a seceded state can begin the process of readmission into the Union.
• December 10, 1641 The US Age Discrimination Employment Act became public law.
• December 15, 1675 The Jireh Bull Blockhouse (RI-926, also known as the Jireh Bull Garrison House or Jireh Bull Block House) is an historic archaeological site on Middlebridge Road in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. In 1657 a blockhouse was built on the site by Jireh Bull, son of Rhode Island Governor Henry Bull (1609-1693). The stone garrison house was burned by the Native Americans in King Philip's War on December 15, 1675, and fifteen of its defenders were massacred. The site was acquired by the Rhode Island Historical Society in 1925. On December 15, 1675, Narraganset warriors attacked the Jireh Bull Blockhouse and killed at least 15 people. 15 year-old James Eldred (1651-1687) escaped from the blockhouse and was pursued a considerable distance; he survived having a tomahawk thrown at him at close range and a hand-to-hand encounter with a Narraganset warrior. This occurred along Indian Run Brook in Wakefield-Peacedale, Rhode Island. Four days later, the Great Swamp Battle took place on the bitterly cold and stormy day of December 19, 1675. The colonial militia from Plymouth Colony, Connecticut Colony, and Massachusetts Bay Colony were led to the main Narragansett settlement in South Kingstown, Rhode Island by an Indian guide named Indian Peter.
• December 15, 1967 The US Age Discrimination Employment Act became public law.
• December 19, 1675 Led by a Native guide, Indian Peter, on December 19, 1675 on a bitterly cold storm-filled day, the main Narragansett fort in modern South Kingstown, Rhode Island was found and attacked by the colonial militia from Plymouth Colony, Connecticut Colony and Massachusetts Bay Colony. Led there by an Indian guide, the militia were able to reach the fort because an unusually cold late fall had frozen the swamp, making an assault possible. The massive fort, which occupied about 5 acres (20,000 m2) of land and was initially occupied by over a thousand Natives, was eventually overrun after a fierce fight. The Native fort was burned, its inhabitants, including women and children, killed or evicted and most of the tribe's winter stores destroyed. It is believed that about 300 natives were killed though exact figures are unknown. Many of the warriors and their families escaped into the frozen swamp; there hundreds more died from wounds combined with the harsh conditions. Facing a winter with little food and shelter, the whole surviving Narragansett tribe was forced out of the quasi-neutrality some had tried to maintain in the ongoing war and joined the fight alongside Philip. The colonists lost many of their officers in this assault and about seventy of their men were killed and nearly 150 more wounded. The dead and wounded colonial militiamen were evacuated to the settlements on Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay where they were buried or cared for by many of the Rhode Island colonists until they could return to their homes. The Great Swamp Fight was a critical blow to the Narragansett tribe from which they never fully recovered.[8] In April 1676, the Narragansett were completely defeated when their chief sachem Canonchet was captured and soon executed. On August 12, 1676 the leader of the Wampanoag sachem, Metacomet (also known as King Philip) was shot and killed by John Alderman, a Native American soldier in Benjamin Church's company. King Philip's War, one of the greatest native uprisings in New England, had failed.
• December 20, 1620 The Puritans begin to establish settlement in Plymouth. They form the Mayflower Compact, which established a government and legal structure. During the next winter, half of the colonists would perish. Site of the settlement had previously been the location of an Indian village that had been wiped out in 1617 by a plague.
• December 20, 1860 South Carolina becomes the first Southern state to secede from the Union.
• December 23, 1636 Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militias to protect itself from the Pequot Indians. Formation is regarded as the founding of the National Guard.
• December 23, 1862 Confederate President Davis issues proclamation ordering that black Union soldiers and their officers captured by Confederate troops are not to be treated as prisoners of war; instead, they are to be remanded to Confederate state authorities.
• December 25, 1957 Ramdane Abane (b.1920), Algerian Berber revolutionary leader, was assassinated in Morocco.
• December 26, 1908 Jack Johnson (1878-1946) of Texas knocked out Tommy Burns in Australia to become the 1st black world heavyweight boxing champion. He was not officially given the title until 1910 when he beat Jim Jeffries in Las Vegas. In 1913 Johnson fled the US because of trumped up charges of violating the Mann Act's stipulations against transporting white women across state lines for prostitution. Johnson held the title until 1915. In 1920 he returned to the US, was arrested and served a one year sentence in Leavenworth in Kansas, where he was appointed athletic director of the prison.
• December 27, 1512 Burgos' Laws announced by Ferdinand II of Aragon, under pressure of Catholic Church, to end exploitation of indigenous people in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Codified first laws governing behavior of Spaniards in America.
• December 27, 1794 The Portuguese slave ship Sao Jose--Paquete de Africa sank off the coast of South Africa’s Cape Town. Some 400-500 African slaves from Mozambique were on board the vessel bound for Brazil. About half of them perished. Wreckage of the ship was found in 2015.
• December 28, 1831 Samuel Sharp (1801-1832) led a slave uprising that was put down at great cost by the British. The Rebellion lasted for eight days and resulted in the death of around 186 Africans and 14 white planters or overseers. The white vengeance convicted over 750 rebel slaves, of which 138 were sentenced to death.
• December 30, 1693 Early in the morning on the twenty-eighth of December, de Vargas was aroused by a messenger who warned of an imminent attack by the native forces in Santa Fe. The governor of Pecos was sent to his pueblo for reinforcements while a squadron of Spanish soldiers approached the walls of the villa to find them manned by a force of armed warriors. Another force of Pueblos arrived to aid those on the Santa Fe walls. With most of the soldiers, de Vargas then proceeded to the walls and attempted a diplomatic solution to the crisis. The leader of the Indians, Antonio Bolsas, agreed to discuss the situation with his people and give an answer to de Vargas by evening. By early the next morning, a group of 140 reinforcements had arrived from Pecos but an answer to the governor's diplomacy had not. De Vargas began to move towards the villa and those on the walls began to shout that the whole province was against the Spanish and would kill them all, except for the friars, who would become slaves. Arrows and stones followed the insults and de Vargas cried the Santiago, urging his men into battle. The battle lasted until early the next morning--the Spanish being the victors. When the capture of Santa Fe was complete, de Vargas then divided the stores of corn, beans, and other foodstuffs among the Spanish families, and the colonists then occupied the houses vacated by the defeated natives. De Vargas had succeeded in capturing the main city of New Mexico, the old Spanish capital, and gained a solid foundation for the eventual reestablishment of Spanish hegemony over the entire region. But, as de Vargas discovered, this would prove no easy task.
• December 31, 1491 The Americas prior to European exploration saw a North American and Caribbean population of native Americans that spread across the continent at a level still debated amongst scholars. Between one million and one hundred million people are estimated to have lived in the Americas prior to Columbus.
• December 31, 1755 Teedyuscung, a Lenape Indian, led 30 Lenape Indians on a raid against English plantations along the Delaware River. Over the next few days his band killed 7 men and took 5 prisoners.