America History of pre-1650

1500-1549  

• 1512: Spanish Laws of Burgos forbid enslavement of Indians and advocate Christian conversion.
• 1514: Bartolome de las Casas petitions Spanish crown on behalf of Native Americans   
• 1519-1521 Cortes's conquest of Aztecs in Mexico.  
• 1528-1536 A member of the Narvaez expedition, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is shipwrecked first near Tampa Bay and later on Galveston Island off the coast of what is now Texas. After six years spent among the Indians of the region, he and his companions travel westward across Texas and Mexico.   
• 1540-1542 Seeking gold first in the city of Cibola, reportedly larger and richer than Mexico City, and then in Quivera, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado leads an expeditionary force through the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, with much loss of life among the area's native peoples. He returns to Mexico City in 1542 and dies in 1544.   
• 1542 Urged on by Bartolome de las Casas and others, Carlos V enacts the "New Laws"  designed to end the encomienda system that enslaves native people.

1550-1599 

• 1584: Sir Walter Ralegh sends a reconnaissance fleet under Captains Amadas and Barlow to the future Croatoan Sound, North Carolina.  Based on their glowing account, he sends out a colonizing expedition the next year of 100 men who settle on Roanoke Island, among them artist John White and surveyor Thomas Harriot. Sir Francis Drake later takes the colonists back to England at their request.
• 1587: Ralegh sends out a fresh colony of 117 men, women, and children in three ships, with John White as governor.   
• 1590: White returns to find that settlers have disappeared, leaving "Croatoan" carved on a tree  
• 1598: Don Juan Oñate establishes the colony of New Mexico by taking over a pueblo, which he renames San Juan, near modern-day Santa Fe. In retaliation for an attack on the settlement, he destroys the Acoma pueblo, killing 800 and capturing 500. 

1600-1619  

• 1607: Establishment of Jamestown   
• 1608 Colony of Quebec is established.  
• 1610. Santa Fe is established as the new capital of New Mexico, with Pedro de Peralta as the governor of the new colony.

 1620-1629

• 1621 First Thanksgiving, at Plymouth.
• 1628 (May 1) Thomas Morton and colonists at Merrymount dance around a maypole and celebrate May Day, upsetting the Plymouth Pilgrims. In June, Capt. Miles Standish is sent to eradicate the settlement and Morton is sent back to England. 
• 1630-43: English Puritans immigrate to Massachusetts Bay Colony
  

1630-1639  

• 1630 Population: 3,000 colonists in Virginia; 300 at Plymouth.  During 1630-1640, another 16,000 colonists will arrive.
• 1636 Founding of Providence, R. I. by Roger Williams, who establishes Rhode Island as a place of religious toleration.

1636-1637. Pequot War.

• July 1636. The murder in 1634 of Capt. John Stone, a disreputable English seaman and merchant, and of trader John Oldham on 20 July 1636, reportedly by Pequots, leads to reprisals against Pequot settlements. This marks the beginning of the Pequot War, although the conflict is not officially so designated until 1637.
• 24 August 1636. After Massachusetts Governor Henry Vane commissions John Endicott to assemble a force of 90 men to seek out Block Island tribe of Pequots and demand their surrender,  Endicott destroys the Block Island settlement. In retaliation, the Pequots attack Fort Saybrook and its commander Lieutenant Lion Gardiner. 

1637 Pequot War. Roger Williams helps to convince the Narragansetts, traditional enemies of the Pequots, to join the New Englanders' side of the conflict.

• 20 January.  Boston clergyman John Wheelwright preaches a sermon supporting the ideas of Anne Hutchinson and her followers and is thereby sentenced to banishment on 12 November. Anne Hutchinson is sentenced to banishment at the same time.
• 26 May.The burning of the Pequot fort by Capt. John Mason and his forces at Fort Mystic, Connecticut, kills 300-700 men, women, and children.
• 28 July. Most of the remaining Pequots are killed near New Haven, Connecticut, by combined forces from Massachusetts and Connecticut.
• To prevent the re-election of Governor Vane, who is sympathetic to Anne Hutchinson and her ideas, John Winthrop moves the voting to Newtown and thus is himself elected Governor of the colony.
• December. Under the leadership of Peter Minuit, a group of Swedish colonists establishes a settlement called  New Sweden on the Delaware River.

1640-1649  

• 1630-50 William Bradford begins writing Of Plymouth Plantation (pub. 1856) 
• 1643 Anne Hutchinson and family murdered by Native Americans near Eastchester, Long Island (N. Y.) 
• 1646 Robert Child and others protest the intolerance of Massachusetts Puritans toward those of other faiths; in response, Governor John Winthrop and others justify their policies and banish Child.  At the Synod of 1646 in Boston, John Cotton and others draft a document published in 1648 as the Cambridge Platform, which codifies and defines New England Congregationalism.