text: 1492\n• Christopher Columbus lands in the New World.\n\n1497\n• John Cabot reaches North America.\n\n1499\n• Amerigo Vespucci explores South America. \n\n1502\n• First African slaves come to Spanish America. \n\n1504 \n• Hernando Cortez comes to the New World. \n\n1513\n• Ponce de León explores and names Florida. \n• Vasco Núñez de Balboa "Discovers" the Pacific Ocean. \n\n1521\n• Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez conquers the Aztecs of Mexico. \n\n1524\n• Giovanni da Verrazano explores the North American coast. \n\n1539 \n• Hernando de Soto explores southeastern North America. \n\n1540 \n• Francisco Coronado Explores the Southwest in search of gold, leading a three thousand–mile expedition.\n\nc.1555 \n• Tobacco is brought to Europe. \n\n1564 \n• French Huguenots attempt to settle at Port Royal, South Carolina, and then at Fort Caroline in northern Florida. \n\n1565 \n• The Spanish attack the French in Florida and settle St. Augustine. \n\n1570 \n• Dekanawida and Hiawatha establish the Iroquois Confederacy. \n\n1579 \n• Sir Francis Drake lands on the coast of California, where he is greeted by friendly Miwok Indians. \n\n1584 \n• Sir Walter Raleigh receives a charter from Elizabeth I. \n\n1585 \n• John White paints scenes of Native American life in Virginia. (See also the Indians of Virginia and Indian Fishing Methods.) \n• Raleigh's expedition establishes Roanoke Colony in what is now North Carolina. \n\n1587 \n• Virginia Dare is the first European born in North America at the Roanoke Colony. \n\n1598 \n• Juan de Onate arrives in the Southwest and establishes the colony of New Mexico, declaring all natives subjects of the Spanish monarch. The Indians of Acoma Pueblo rebel unsuccessfully, and after their defeat they are punished brutally by the Spanish. \n\n1607 \n• Captain John Smith establishes an English colony at Jamestown, Virginia. \n\n1608 \n• Samuel de Champlain establishes a fur trading post at Quebec. \n\n1609 \n• Henry Hudson discovers the Hudson River while on a voyage for the Dutch West India Company. \n• The Spanish establish Santa Fe, New Mexico. \n\n1614 \n• Pocahontas, the daughter of Chief Powhatan, marries John Rolfe, Jamestown's first tobacco farmer. \n\n1619 \n• A Dutch ship with an English captain brings the first slaves to the Jamestown colony. (See also Africans Arrive at Jamestown.) \n• The House of Burgesses, the first legislative assembly in North America, convenes in Virginia. \n\n1620 \n• The Mayflower lands at Plymouth; two Indians, Squanto and Samoset, help the Pilgrims, led by Myles Standish, survive in the wilderness. \n• The Mayflower Compact is signed in Cape Cod Harbor. \n\n1622 \n• Pamunkey chief Opechancanough, brother of Powhatan, leads a massacre of 350 settlers in Virginia. \n\n1624 \n• The Dutch build Fort Orange at Albany, New York. \n\n1625 \n• The Dutch establish New Amsterdam on Manhattan island. \n\n1626 \n• Peter Minuit buys Manhattan island from the Indians. \n• Black slaves arrive in New Amsterdam and are later exported to Connecticut (1629), Maryland (1634), and Massachusetts (1638). \n\n1628 \n• Plymouth Colony's Myles Standish breaks up Thomas Morton's Merrymount settlement near Quincy, Massachusetts. \n• Salem, Massachusetts, is founded by John Endecott and settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Company. \n\n1629 \n• The Spanish establish the first mission in Zuni territory, at Hawikuh. \n• The Dutch institute the patroon system of land grants in the Hudson River Valley. \n• John Endecott becomes governor of the newly established Puritan colony in Massachusetts. \n\n1630 \n• Boston (the Massachusetts Bay Colony) is founded by John Winthrop and approximately nine hundred Puritans. \n• John Winthrop succeeds John Endecott as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. \n\n1632 \n• Maryland Is Founded by colonists under a charter granted to Lord Baltimore. \n\n1634 \n