New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America

The Abenakis were a Northeastern tribe allied with New France. After King Philip’s War (1675-76), some of the defeated Wampanoags and Narragansetts fled northward and joined the Abenakis. They and their descendants raided English settlements and fought against the English in a series of wars over the next century. 

The Cherokees were the most powerful Indigenous nation in the present-day American Southeast. Like the Iroquois in the North, the Cherokees acted for the most part as English allies. To a greater degree perhaps than any other Indigenous community, the Cherokees adopted European habits. By the end of the colonial period, a number of Cherokees owned African slaves.

Like the Cherokees, the Creeks were a powerful Indigenous confederacy in the present-day American Southeast. To an even greater extent than the Cherokee, the Creeks “for a long time held the balance of power in the Southeast” between England and Spain (123). Creeks also suffered more internal divisions as a result of European invasion. Some Creeks, for instance, broke away from the larger confederacy, moved to northern Florida, built new communities, and became known as Seminoles.