The indigenous population of the eastern seaboard, numbering around one hundred and twenty thousand in the sixteenth century, has dwindled, either through war or disease, to less than twenty thousand by 1750 .

Surviving tribes often consolidate, as had the Mohegans with their few Pequot relatives, or change identities, as for example, the Mahicans becoming known as the Stockbridge Indians after many of the tribe settled in the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Other nations simply cease to function as social units.

The Tuscaroras, having lost a war with the Carolina settlers fought from 1711 to 1713, now move north to live among the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, becoming the Sixth.

The Appalachian Mountains divide the fourteen mainland British colonies (Nova Scotia being the non-contiguous fourteenth) from New France until the early 1750s.

The expanding colony of Virginia clashes with the French over title to the Ohio Valley, which Virginia claims  by treaty with the Iroquois Confederacy and by Royal Charter; France claims it as part of Louisiana.