Northern North America (1684–1827 CE); Empires Contested, Nations Born, Frontiers Pushed

Geography & Environmental Context

Northern North America includes the modern United States and Canada, excluding the West Indies. It is divided into three subregions:

• Northeastern North America: east of 110°W, from New England and the Maritimes through the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay to Virginia, the Carolinas, most of Georgia, and the Mississippi Valley above Little Egypt.

• Northwestern North America: west of 110°W, from Alaska and the Yukon to the Pacific Northwest and northern California north of the Gulf line.

• Gulf and Western North America: the wedge south of the Montana diagonal, encompassing the plantation South, the Mississippi Valley below Illinois’ Little Egypt, the Plains, the Southwest, and California south of the Oregon border.

Together, these lands embraced a mosaic of boreal forest, prairie, Appalachian highlands, arid plains, subtropical deltas, and Pacific fjords. Each subregion developed distinct lifeways, but all were drawn into the same imperial rivalries and revolutionary transformations.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

The Little Ice Age persisted into the 18th century, bringing harsh winters to the northeast, erratic salmon and root harvests in the northwest, and drought cycles to the Southwest. Hurricanes battered the Gulf coast, while floods shaped the Mississippi delta. Resource pressures mounted: beaver populations declined from overtrapping, forests receded around port towns and plantations, and horse herds spread across the Plains.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Indigenous nations maintained diverse economies: maize horticulture in the northeast and southeast, bison hunting on the Plains, salmon fisheries along Pacific rivers, and seal and whale hunting in the Arctic.

• Colonial settlements took different forms: French Canada and Louisiana, Spanish missions in the Southwest and California, British seaboard colonies, and Russian posts in Alaska.

• The United States, born of revolution, expanded westward into Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Ohio Valley, while Loyalists and Acadians reshaped Canada’s demography.

Technology & Material Culture

Indigenous technologies — birchbark canoes, snowshoes, horse gear, cedar plankhouses, irrigation systems — persisted alongside European imports: muskets, iron tools, plows, mills, sailing ships, and missions. Hybrid cultures emerged, such as Métis in the fur trade, African-descended Gullah in the Carolinas, and Spanish-Indian ranching lifeways in the Southwest.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Rivers: the St. Lawrence, Great Lakes, Mississippi, and Columbia were arteries of commerce and war.

• Maritime networks: Atlantic ports linked to Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa; Gulf and Pacific ports tied into global markets.

• Overland corridors: mission trails, fur brigades, and horse trade networks tied regions together.

• Migration: enslaved Africans carried to the South, European immigrants to the seaboard and interior, Loyalist refugees to Canada, and Indigenous nations displaced westward.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

Indigenous diplomacy — wampum belts, council fires, potlatch ceremonies, and Green Corn rituals — remained central. European religions spread: Catholicism in French and Spanish zones, Protestantism in the British colonies, syncretic traditions among African and Native peoples. Symbols of sovereignty proliferated: forts, flags, treaties, missions, and plantations marked territorial claims.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

Indigenous nations diversified subsistence, shifting to fur trapping, mounted bison hunting, or blending ritual with Catholic observance. Colonists adapted to hurricanes, droughts, and floods with new architecture, irrigation, and crop rotations. Food storage, trade alliances, and hybrid practices allowed resilience in a volatile climate.

Political & Military Shocks

• Imperial wars: Nine Years’ War, Queen Anne’s War, and the Seven Years’ War reshaped borders and alliances.

• Revolutions: The American Revolution created the United States; the Haitian Revolution reverberated through the Gulf; Indigenous uprisings, from Tecumseh’s confederacy to Pueblo resistance, challenged colonial regimes.

• Territorial transfers: Louisiana Purchase (1803), Florida cession (1821), Russian America consolidations in Alaska.

• War of 1812: Britain and the U.S. contested Great Lakes and Gulf coasts, leaving Native confederacies weakened.

Transition

Between 1684 and 1827, Northern North America was transformed from a patchwork of Indigenous nations and rival empires into a continental stage of settler republics, expanding frontiers, and Indigenous dispossession. The fur trade, cod fisheries, plantations, and salmon runs tied its subregions into global markets, while revolution and war redrew its maps. By 1827, the United States was pushing across Appalachia, Canada remained in Britain’s orbit, Russian America and Spanish missions dotted the Pacific, and Native nations, though battered, continued to anchor economies and cultures from the Arctic to the Gulf.

The Mexican War for Independence had severed the control that Spain had exercised on its North American territories in 1821 and the new country of Mexico had been formed from much of the lands that had comprised New Spain, including Spanish Texas.

The 1824 Constitution of Mexico had joined Texas with Coahuila to form the state of Coahuila y Tejas.

The Congress had allowed Texas the option of forming its own state "'as soon as it feels capable of doing so.'"

The same year, Mexico had enacted the General Colonization Law, which enabled all heads of household, regardless of race or immigrant status, to claim land in Mexico.

Mexico has neither manpower nor funds to protect settlers from near-constant Comanche raids and it hopes that settlers can control the raids.

The government has liberalized its immigration policies, allowing for settlers from the United States to immigrate to Texas.

The first empresarial grant, which had been made under Spanish control to Moses Austin, had been passed to his son Stephen F. Austin, whose settlers, known as the Old Three Hundred, had settled along the Brazos River in 1822.

The grant had later been ratified by the Mexican government.

Twenty-three other empresarios bring settlers to the state, the majority from the United States of America.

The new state constitution for the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas, ratified on March 11, includes a phasing-out of slavery in its Article 13, which declares that "From and after the promulgation of the constitution in the capital of each district, no one shall be born a slave in the state, and after six months the introduction of slaves under any pretext shall not be permitted."

The prohibition of importing enslaved people from the United States will be lifted when Texas declares independence in 1836, and the Republic of Texas Constitution will provide specifically that Africans and "the descendants of Africans" will not be considered "citizens of the republic".

Neither the Mexican national constitution nor the 1827 constitution for the state of Coahuila y Tejas grants trial by jury and the right of bail, omissions that the Anglo-American colonists in Texas find unacceptable, as so the requirement that the mostly Protestant settlers convert to Roman Catholicism.

A petition for a land grant for two hundred and fifteen acres on the north bank of Rio Grande, just across from Paso del Norte (present day Ciudad Juárez), is approved on September 20, 1827; the first residence is built in what is present day El Paso, Texas.

Texas (known as Tejas) has been part of New Spain since the early colonial period.

In 1821 in an effort to colonize and populate Texas, the Spanish commander in Monterrey had granted a concession to a United States pioneer, Moses Austin, to settle the area under the Roman Catholic faith.

Land could be acquired for a nominal charge of US$0.25 per hectare, and soon colonists from the United States started to pour into the area.

By 1835 they outnumber the Mexicans, four to one.

Texas has no autonomous government and is politically attached to the state of Coahuila.

Most Mexicans begin to fear the incursions by North Americans and the possibility of losing Texas to the United States.

Restrictions had been placed on the future immigration of colonists from the United States, and slavery had been abolished in 1829 in the hope of discouraging United States southerners from moving into the area.

While under custody of the Texans, Santa Anna signs two treaties with the Texas government: one ends hostilities by pledging the withdrawal of Mexican troops to positions south of the Rio Bravo del Norte (Rio Grande), and the other, a secret treaty, recognizes Texan independence from Mexico.

Santa Anna's move to bring Texas under the political domination of Mexico City pushes the Texans to secede from Mexico on November 7, 1835, and to declare their independence in March 1836.

In 1835 Santa Anna marches north in the direction of San Antonio with an army of three thousand men.

He reaches San Antonio in March 1836 and learns that about one hundred and fifty armed Texans have taken refuge at an old Franciscan mission, called the Alamo

He lays siege to the mission for several days before the final attack on March 6, 1836.

The Mexican force takes the mission the next day, killing all but five of the defenders in battle (the five prisoners are later executed).

On March 23, the Texan town of Goliad is surrounded by Mexican forces, who compel the Texan commander in charge to surrender.

On express orders from Santa Anna, three hundred and sixty-five prisoners were executed.

The events at the Alamo and at Goliad stir strong anti-Mexican sentiment in the United States.

Volunteer fighters pour into Texas to stage a decisive blow against Santa Anna.

The Mexican commander in chief and his army are ambushed and roundly defeated near the San Jacinto River by a force commanded by Sam Houston on April 21.

Santa Anna, who had fled the scene of the battle, is captured by the Texans two days later.

The nationalist and authoritarian style of the new centralist regime soon brings it into conflict with the loosely governed lands of Mexico's northern frontier.

Santa Anna's efforts to exert central authority over the English-speaking settlements in the northern state of Coahuila-Tejas eventually collide with the growing assertiveness of the frontier population that described itself as Texan.

Stephen F. Austin and the settlers in Texas had backed Santa Anna in his bid for power and, though disturbed by Santa Anna’s turn, now seek to capitalize on it.

Austin therefore travels to Mexico City in July 1833 with a petition asking for separate statehood from Coahuila, a better judicial system, and the repeal of the April 6 law that had caused the first Anahuac and Velasco Disturbances (1832), among other things.

After meeting with Farías, Austin’s requests are all approved except for separate statehood, which requires a population of eighty thousand before it can be granted, and Texas has only thirty thousand.

Despondent over not getting Texas separated from Coahuila, Austin writes an angry letter to a friend, which seems to encourage rebellion.

Mexican officials intercept the letter, and Austin is arrested for sedition.

He will spend eighteen months in prison.