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| Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore (1637-1715) Lord Proprietor of Maryland |
January, 1678 - Governor of Albemarle Thomas Eastchurch dies in
Jamestown, Virginia.
Arrived last december in
Virginia, sailing from the island of Nevis where he had married a rich widow, he had been prevented to reach Albemarle on the grounds that the settlers had rebelled further
to abuses committed by the acting governor Thomas Miller. He had then required from
the rebels to lay down their arms and release Miller before starting
negotiations, even threatening to raise an army if he was not heard. But the anti-proprietors
had formally opposed any discussion, considering that Thomas Miller should
first be tried for his crimes. The authorities of Virginia had anyway opposed
his request for help before his death occurs.
March 28, 1678 - Attending a meeting of the Committee of the Lords of Trade
and Plantations, William Stoughton and Peter Bulkley announce to have obtained
a copy of Edward Randolph's report the contents of which are only an indictment
against Massachusetts they hope to publicly denounce with the aim of obtaining
a new investigation.
Randolph defended his report castigating
the dubious methods used by Stoughton and Bulkley and insisted that he had attended
a session of the General Court of Massachusetts in which it was demanded an
oath of allegiance.
April, 1678 - Willam Leete keeps his position as governor of
Connecticut.
April 12, 1678 - the Treaty of Casco signed at Fort Loyal between the
representatives of Massachusetts and the Penobscot chiefs (sagamores) ends
nearly two years of conflict in the province of Maine. The Native Americans recognize
the English sovereignty and the settlers are allowed to re-occupy their lands for
a fee.
Nicholas Shapleigh, Captain
Champermoon and Captain Fryer of Portsmouth had been appointed by the
government of Massachusetts to negotiate a peace agreement with Squando and all
the sagamores of the tribes on the Androscoggin and Kennebec rivers.
This treaty aimed at restoring
the friendly relations that prevailed in the region between Indians and English
before the outbreak of King Philip’s War. It was accordingly concluded that all
the prisoners would be released without ransom and that the Indian families
would each receive a peck of corn per year, in exchange for the transfer of
their lands to the settlers. Only Major Philips from Saco, as he was considered
a major landowner, saw his yearly contribution amount to a bushel.
Avril 1678 – Timothy Biggs, a council man of Albermarle arrives in
London to report the Lords Proprietors of Carolina about Culpeper’s Rebellion.
Timothy Biggs – A merchant living
in Boston in 1665, he had moved to Charles Town, North Carolina where he had
become member of Parliament in 1672. A quaker, owner of Perminquans Precinct since
his marriage with the widow of George Catchmaid, he had helped George Durant to
make recognize his planter's rights before joining the party of Thomas
Eastchurch and Thomas Miller thanks to whom he had become deputy of the Earl of
Craven. Appointed deputy collector of customs by Miller in summer 1677 after the latter was back from London, he had been imprisoned a few months later, accused of
murder. He had however succeeded in escaping, making his way to Virginia from where
he had been able to take ship to England.
This first decision marked
Edward Randolph's victory against all the efforts of both Boston agents, Peter
Bulkley and William Stoughton. These had, for a time, thought to win the game
but by imposing their own oath of allegiance and minting their own currency, regarded
as two essentially royal prerogatives, the authorities of Massachusetts would
soon lose the arm-wrestling engaged for thirteen years against Charles II.
May 6, 1678 - Traveling to London, Boston merchant John Usher takes
over, with the support of Massachusetts,
rights on Maine held by the heirs of Sir Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason in
the amount of £ 1250.
He had been actually appointed by
the Massachusetts government which hoped, by this, to silence the accusations
of usurpation of which it was accused for many years. Eager to respect the
terms of the Charter originally granted to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, The General
Court of Boston set out a provincial administration with a president and two
legislative councils (a permanent 8-member council and an assembly of elected representatives).
Deputy governor of Massachusetts Thomas Danforth was appointed president of Maine and went to settle with a
guard of 40 soldiers at Fort Loyal, south of the Casco Bay.
Thomas Danforth (Framlingham,
Sufflok, 1622 - Cambridge (MA) 1699) - Arrived in New England in 1634
with his father Nicholas and his younger brother Samuel, he quickly acquired a
big influence in public affairs and served from 1659 as assistant to the
governor of Massachusetts Bay.
His brother Samuel Danforth
(Framlingham, Sufflok, 1626 - Roxbury (MA), 1674) was ordained minister of the church
of Roxbury in 1650. He was especially interested in astronomy and published
" An Astronomical Description of the Comet of 1664 " in which he
endeavored to show that the appearance of a comet was linked to the divine laws and announced future misfortunes.
May, 1678 - John Leverett is reelected governor of Massachusetts for the
seventh consecutive year.
May, 1678 - Thomas Delavall is elected mayor of New York for the second
time (He had previously held this post in 1671/72)
The city of New York then had 384
houses. It is under this term that wheat flour began to be sieved.
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| Josiah Winslow (1628-1680) Governor of Plymouth |
The Committee decided that very
day, with the approval of the king, to appoint Edward Randolph Customs Collector
of New England.
This decision raised strong but
fruitless protests from William Stoughton and Peter Bulkley.
June 3rd, 1678 - Josiah Winslow is reelected governor of Plymouth.
June 19, 1678 - Benedict Arnold, the governor of Rhode Island dies in office
in Newport at the age of 62. He is succeeded by William Coddington.
Arrived at Providence at Roger
Williams's request, he had quickly come into conflict with Samuel Gorton,
his quick-tempered neighbor settled like him along the Pawtuxet River. Having
learned the native language, he served then repeatedly as interpreter during land
transactions with Narragansett. Based with his family in Newport from 1651, he subsequently
held official positions until becoming president of the colony of Rhode Island
from 1657 to 1660 and then in 1662. Appointed first governor in 1663 after the Royal
Charter granted by King Charles II, he managed simultaneously his own
business in a sometimes debated way. Besides his interests in the West Indies and
after building a territorial fortune in Rhode Island, he was in
particular accused of selling ammunitions and liquors to the Indians despite
the ban.
It spread in the manner of a
medieval disease. No family was spared.
August 7, 1678 - French traveler René Robert Cavelier de La Salle leaves Fort Conti near
Niagara Falls aboard the Griffon, a 45-ton ship he has just built with his fellow
Henri de Tonti to explore the Great Lakes and sail down the Mississippi River. He is accompanied with thirty men including Jesuit Fathers Louis Hennepin,
Zenobé Membré and Gabriel de la Ribourde.
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| Henri de Tonti (1649-1704) |
August 3rd, 1678 - A party of Indians attacks Daniel Cunningham’s farm at
Trent Hall, near Mechanicsville, Maryland. He and his brother are killed while
his wife is struck by a tomahawk.
She was found alive four days
later despite how serious was her injury. She had time to report she had been
assaulted by four Piscataway Indians among whom Wassettas, before dying on
August 9.
August 19, 1678 – Piscataway Indians represented by their chief Nicotaghsen,
the interpreter Ouquintimo, Chotike and several other leaders meet Thomas Notley, the governor
of Maryland and members of the provincial council about the murder
of the Cunningham family.
It was recalled to the Indians that
the treaty signed twelve years earlier stated their commitment to deliver the
murderers of settlers to the English authorities. These defended on the grounds
that they had no idea of those responsible for the crime. They held to
highlight the importance they attached to their friendship with the English and
announced that they would do their own investigation among young warriors.
Piscataway - this Indian nation settled for a long time in the lower Potomac
valley (their first signs of dwellings dating back almost 10 000 years) was among
the first to intensively develop corn and beans growing in addition to hunting
and traditional food picking.
Around 1400, the population of
the region grew considerably because of the inflow of Algonquians and Iroquois,
pushed southward by small ice age. This caused a series of destructive wars contributing to the enhancement of the Piscataway social order based on a
strongly hierarchical organization.
When the first European settlers
arrived in Virginia, the Piscataways (called Moyaons by John Smith,
referring to the village where lived their leader, the Tayac), estimated at
about 2500, were closely related to Nacotchank and Doeg nations. Their regional dominance then convinced the rival tribes to ally with the newcomers to
balance powers. This strategy worked for a time with the Virginia Company but the Piscataways took advantage of the creation of Maryland to ally with this new
colony. Tayac Chitimachen converted to Christianity in 1634 and one of his
daughters became Giles Brent’s wife.
This alliance did not however prove
beneficial to Piscataways who, after transmitting to the settlers their methods
to improve corn and tobacco growing, were to face the damage caused their livestock
and their appetite for farmland. It was even compromised when the authorities
of Maryland authorized the Susquehannocks, hated by the Piscataways, to come and
settle in the province after their defeat against the Five Nations. This
situation was actually only passing and Susquehannocks, involved in a series of
bloody raids along the Potomac, were hounded out of the colony in 1676.
Piscataways found there an opportunity to settle their accounts with this
traditional foe.
August 27, 1677 - The Piscataway representatives have another meeting with governor Thomas
Notley to inform him that they could not identify the murderers of Cunningham.
This answer, together with the fact that other crimes involving Indians have
just been committed in the region, is the start of a crisis foreshadowing a
potential armed conflict.
Troops were raised in Calvert,
Cecil, Kent, Baltimore and Dorchester Counties and the residents were
instructed to fire three shots at the onset of the enemy.
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| Jesuit Father Louis Hennepin (1626-1705) |
Louis Hennepin (Ath (Belgium) 1626
- 1705) - Become French in 1659 following the takeover of Spanish-occupied Bethune
by the troops of Louis XIV, he was appointed chaplain of the French armies and involved
in the siege of Maastricht then in the bloody battle of Seneffe where he met
Daniel Duluth. He was sent o New France in 1675 by the king with three other Recollets
missionaries to accompany Cavelier de La Salle. He spent the next two years to travel
around the neighboring areas and to get familiar with the Indian nations and
their languages.
Louis Hennepin was not the
first to discover Niagara Falls. Paul Ragueneau, another French missionary who
had taken the risk to go to the Onondaga, one of the five Iroquois nations engaged
in a ruthless war against Hurons, had been the first to describe their places
in 1643.
October 15, 1678 - In a letter to the Secretary of State Sir Joseph
Williamson, Governor John Leverett informs him that he pledges allegiance to
King Charles II, as well as members of the Council and the General Court of
Massachusetts.
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| Fendall coat of arms |
Convinced that this election
would cause disturbance, Governor Thomas Notley informed Josias Fendall that, following
the banishment to which he was sentenced eighteen years earlier, he was not authorized
to sit in the Maryland General Assembly.
November 1, 1678 - Having crossed Lake Erie and Lake Huron, René
Robert Cavelier de La Salle builds a fort in the mouth of St Joseph River (today
Michigan River) where he expects to be joined by Tonti, left on foot from
Niagara.
November 1, 1678 - 77 year-old William Coddington, the governor of Rhode
Island dies after only five months in office. He is suceeded by deputy governor John Cranston.
This pioneering magistrate of
the colonization of New England had arrived in America in 1630 with John
Winthrop. A member of the church of Boston under Rev. John Cotton, he chose
however to leave the Massachusetts Bay colony consequently to the banishment of Anne
Hutchinson in 1638. One of the signatories of the Portsmouth Compact, he enjoyed
the support of Roger Williams before meeting regularly in conflict with him. He
was from then on widely blamed for taking advantage of his public positions to favor
his personal interests. Skillful but vindictive politician, he was nevertheless
able to get the government of Aquidneck Island apart from Rhode Island. He became a member of the
Religious Society of Friends in 1673.
John Cranston (1625-1680) - Native of Scotland, he arrived during his
childhood in New England in the care of the London merchant Jeremiah
Clarke whose eldest girl Mary he would later marry. Chosen as a teenager
drummer of the militia of Portsmouth, he was to be renowned as a physician and surgeon.
Furthermore, he was elected to various public positions before ending up deputy
governor of Rhode Island under Nicholas Easton in 1672. Appointed commander of
the militia during King Philip's War, he actually had to the death a few months
apart of two governors of Rhode Island to be elected to lead the colony which then
had about 2000 freemen in arm-bearing age.
November 15, 1678 - the General Assembly of Maryland closes its session
by authorizing Lord Baltimore to personally meet the Piscataway to propose them
a new peace and friendship treaty.
November 20, 1678 - Henri de Tonti arrives at the mouth of the Saint Joseph River where
he finds Cavelier De La Salle.
Both men and their 14 team
members, among whom father Louis Hennepin, decided to go up the river towards
Kankakee.
December 3, 1678 - Having sailed up the St Joseph River and Kankakee River down
to the Illinois River, French explorer René Cavelier de la Salle and his men found Fort Crevecoeur (present
day Peoria, Ill.).
Are present the Emperor of Assateague, the Pokomoke, Yngoteague,
Nuswattax, Annamesse, Acquintica, and Morumsco kings and all the tribes under their
control.
It was in particular decided
- That the signatory Indians of
the treaty would consider Indian enemies of the English as their own enemies
- That they would drop their
weapons within 300 ft. of an English.
- That every English who would
kill an Indian would be sentenced to death and conversely
- That the Indians who would
kill Ababco or one of his relatives would be inflicted the same sentence as for
the murder of an English.
- That the signatories would
consider themselves responsible for crimes committed by Indians from out Maryland.
December 30, 1678 - Sir Henry Chicheley, the former colonel of the
militia, is chosen to represent on site the new governor of Virginia, Thomas
Culpeper.
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