Editing Virginia (section)

===Colony===
{{Main|Colony of Virginia}}
Several European expeditions, including a [[Ajacán Mission|group of Spanish Jesuits]], explored the [[Chesapeake Bay]] during the 16th century.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Glanville, Jim|url=http://www.holstonia.net/files/Conquistadors2.pdf|title=16th Century Spanish Invasions of Southwest Virginia|type=Reprint|journal=Historical Society of Western Virginia Journal|volume=XVII|issue=1|pages=34–42|year=2009|access-date=January 27, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131212092301/http://www.holstonia.net/files/Conquistadors2.pdf|archive-date=December 12, 2013|url-status=live}}</ref> To help counter [[Spanish West Indies|Spain's colonies in the Caribbean]], Queen [[Elizabeth I of England]] supported [[Walter Raleigh]]'s 1584 expedition to the [[East Coast of the United States|Atlantic coast of North America]].{{sfn|Wallenstein|2007|pp=8–9}}{{sfn|Moran|2007|p=8}} The name "Virginia" was used by Captain [[Arthur Barlowe]] in the expedition's report, and may have been suggested by Raleigh or Elizabeth (perhaps noting her status as the "Virgin Queen" or that they viewed the land as being untouched) or related to an [[Algonquin language|Algonquin]] phrase, ''Wingandacoa'' or ''Windgancon'', or leader's name, [[Wingina]], as heard by the expedition.{{sfn|Stewart|2008|p=22}}<ref>{{cite news |url= https://www.pilotonline.com/history/article_bae82fca-f03f-5c5e-8770-89e925406801.html |title= What's in a name? |first= Elisabeth |last= Hulette |newspaper= The Virginian-Pilot |date= March 19, 2012 |access-date= June 30, 2021}}</ref> The name initially applied to the entire coastal region from [[South Carolina]] in the south to [[Maine]] in the north, along with the island of [[Bermuda]].{{sfn|Vollmann|2002|pp=695–696}} [[Roanoke Colony|Raleigh's colony]] failed, but the potential financial and strategic gains still captivated many English policymakers. In 1606, [[James I of England|King James I]] issued a [[First Virginia Charter|charter for a new colony]] to the [[London Company|Virginia Company of London]]. The group financed an expedition under [[Christopher Newport]] that established a settlement named [[Jamestown, Virginia|Jamestown]] in 1607.{{sfn|Conlin|2009|pp=30–31}}

Though more settlers soon joined, many were ill-prepared for the dangers of the new settlement. As the colony's president, [[John Smith (explorer)|John Smith]] secured food for the colonists from nearby tribes, but after he left in 1609, this trade stopped and a [[Anglo-Powhatan Wars|series of ambush-style killings]] between colonists and natives under [[Powhatan (Native American leader)|Chief Powhatan]] and [[Opechancanough|his brother]] began, resulting in [[Starving Time (Jamestown)|mass starvation in the colony]] that winter.<ref>{{harvnb|Hoffer|2006|p=132}}; {{harvnb|Grizzard|Smith|2007|pp=128–133}}</ref> By the end of the colony's first fourteen years, over eighty percent of the roughly eight thousand settlers transported there had died.{{sfn|Heinemann|Kolp|Parent|Shade|2007|pp=30}} [[Tobacco in the American Colonies|Demand for exported tobacco]], however, fueled the need for more workers.{{sfn|Wallenstein|2007|p=22}} Starting in 1618, the [[headright]] system tried to solve this by granting colonists farmland for their help attracting [[indentured servant]]s.{{sfn|Hashaw|2007|pp=76–77, 239–240}} Enslaved Africans [[First Africans in Virginia|were first sold in Virginia]] in 1619. Though other Africans arrived as indentured servants and could be freed after four to seven years, the basis for [[History of slavery in Virginia|lifelong slavery]] was developed in legal cases like those of [[John Punch (slave)|John Punch]] in 1640 and [[John Casor]] in 1655.<ref>{{Cite news |url= https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/horrible-fate-john-casor-180962352/ |title= The Horrible Fate of John Casor, The First Black Man to be Declared Slave for Life in America |first= Kat |last= Eschner |magazine= Smithsonian Magazine |date= March 8, 2017 |access-date= June 5, 2020}}</ref> Laws passed in Jamestown defined slavery as [[Race (human categorization)|race-based]] in 1661, as [[Partus sequitur ventrem|inherited maternally]] in 1662, and as enforceable by death in 1669.{{sfn|Hashaw|2007|pp=211–215}}

[[File:The Governor's Palace -- Williamsburg (VA) September 2012.jpg|thumb|left|In 1699, after the statehouse in [[Jamestown, Virginia|Jamestown]] was destroyed by fire, the [[Colony of Virginia]]'s capitol was moved to [[Williamsburg, Virginia|Williamsburg]], where the [[College of William & Mary]] was founded six years earlier.{{sfn|Heinemann|Kolp|Parent|Shade|2007|pp=76–77}}|alt=A three-story red brick colonial-style hall and its left and right wings during summer.]]
From the colony's start, residents agitated for greater local control, and in 1619, certain male colonists began electing representatives to an assembly, later called the [[House of Burgesses]], that negotiated issues with the [[Virginia Governor's Council|governing council]] appointed by the London Company.{{sfn|Gordon|2004|p=17}} Unhappy with this arrangement, the monarchy revoked the company's charter and began directly naming [[List of colonial governors of Virginia|governors]] and Council members in 1624. In 1635, colonists arrested [[John Harvey (Virginia governor)|a governor who ignored the assembly]] and sent him back to England against his will.{{sfn|Heinemann|Kolp|Parent|Shade|2007|pp=32, 37}} [[William Berkeley (governor)|William Berkeley]] was named governor in 1642, just as the turmoil of the [[English Civil War]] and [[British Interregnum|Interregnum]] permitted the colony greater autonomy.<ref>{{cite book |last= Billings |first= Warren |title= A Little Parliament: The Virginia General Assembly in the Seventeenth Century |location= Richmond |publisher= Library of Virginia |date= 2004 |pages= 30–35 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=FQiGAAAAMAAJ |isbn= 978-0-88490-202-7}}</ref> As a supporter of the king, Berkeley welcomed other [[Virginia Cavaliers (historical)|Cavaliers]] who fled to Virginia. He surrendered to [[Roundhead|Parliamentarians]] in 1652, but after the 1660 [[Stuart Restoration|Restoration]] made him governor again, he blocked assembly elections and exacerbated the [[Class stratification|class divide]] by disenfranchising and restricting the movement of indentured servants, who made up around eighty percent of the workforce.{{sfn|Tarter|2020|pp=62}} On the colony's frontier, [[Native American tribes in Virginia|tribes]] like the [[Tutelo]] and [[Doeg people|Doeg]] were being squeezed by [[Seneca people|Seneca]] raiders from the north, leading to more confrontations with colonists. In 1676, several hundred working-class followers of [[Nathaniel Bacon (Virginia colonist)|Nathaniel Bacon]], upset by Berkeley's refusal to retaliate against the tribes, burned Jamestown.{{sfn|Heinemann|Kolp|Parent|Shade|2007|pp=51–59}}

[[Bacon's Rebellion]] forced the signing of [[Bacon's Laws]], which restored some of the colony's rights and sanctioned both attacks on native tribes and the enslavement of their people.{{sfn|Tarter|2020|pp=51–57}}<ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/lowcountry_furthrdg1.htm |title= Work, Marriage, Christianity |website= National Park Service |date= April 20, 2022 |access-date= November 11, 2024}}</ref> The [[Treaty of 1677]] further reduced the independence of the tribes that signed it, and aided the colony's assimilation of their land in the years that followed.{{sfn|Heinemann|Kolp|Parent|Shade|2007|pp=57}}{{sfn|Shefveland|2016|pp=59–62}} Colonists in the 1700s were pushing westward into the area held by the Seneca and their larger [[Iroquois|Iroquois Nation]], and in 1748, a group of wealthy speculators, backed by the British monarchy, formed the [[Ohio Company]] to start English settlement and trade in the [[Ohio Country]] west of the [[Appalachian Mountains]].{{sfn|Anderson|2000|p=23}} France, which claimed this area as part of [[New France]], viewed this as a threat, and in 1754 the [[French and Indian War]] engulfed England, France, the Iroquois, and other allied tribes on both sides. A militia from several British colonies, called the [[Virginia Regiment]], was led by Major [[George Washington]], himself one of the investors in the Ohio Company.{{sfn|Anderson|2000|pp=42–43}}