Colonial History (1500s-1770s)

In 1534, Jacques Cartier claimed the Gaspésie Peninsula for the Empire. The first Imperial attempt to colonize what eventually becomes Quebec City in 1541 ended in failure after two years. So too did Roanoke Colony which was founded in 1585 but abandoned by 1590 under "mysterious" circumstances. In 1604-1606, with the support of the Wabanaki Confederacy, the colony of Acadia was established centering on Port-Royal. Samuel de Champlain was able to befriend the local Algonquian leadership and found Kébec in 1608.

The Jamestown Settlement on 1607 was nearly decimated in the winter of 1609 but friendly First Nation neighbors took pity on them and a decade later, it is thriving. The marriage of the daughter of Powhatan chief to a settler in 1614 serves as part of a treaty where the Powhatan Nation and its allies, including Vinland, agreed to recognize the colonial borders between Cape Fear and Long Island Sound.

As part of the overall peace treaty, Queen Margaret was allowed to purchase the territory between the Delmarva Peninsula and southwestern Cape Cod in 1614 with colonization fully underway by 1621, creating New Amsterdam. The Wampanoag First Nation was successfully negotiated with by ambassadors from the Empire to allow for the founding of the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Not to be outdone, the Union successfully purchased Manhattan Island from the Lenape-Delaware Nation in 1626.

The Empire successfully negotiated with the Pequot-Niantic Nation (and its neighbors) for founding the Colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1629 but things began to go badly in the entire region in the 1630s. The Pequot were traditional enemies of the Mohegan Nation. The Pequots aggressively extended their area of control at the expense of the Wampanoags to the north, the Narragansetts to the east, the Connecticut River Valley Algonquians and Mohegans to the west, and the Lenape Algonquian people of Long Island to the south. By 1636, Union had fortified their trading posts, and the Empire had built a trading fort at Saybrook. Angevins from the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies settled at the four recently established river towns of Windsor (1632), Wethersfield (1633), Hartford (1635), and Springfield (1636). War between the Pequots and virtually everyone else took place between 1336-1368 with the Pequot Nation crushed and over 700 prisoners given as "gifts" to various vampiric colonial governors to serve as slaves or food.

By then, the Yaocomaco branch of the Piscataway Indian Nation had welcomed the founding of the Imperial Maryland colony by Lord Baltimore within their tribal homelands in 1632. The Treaty of Eight Nations on 1638 (signed in what would later become Hartford) created out of the conquered Peguot lands the Connecticut territory which would allow for both Imperial and Union settlement so long as First Nation interests were not denied. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut written in 1639 to describe the democratic government of Connecticut was the first written constitution within the Western tradition. But the six First Nations which signed the treaty warned that there would be a limit to any future colonies or western expansion beyond lands currently possessed by the two vying European nations, which included the Union settlements along the Delmarva.

White diplomats were able, however, to negotiate that territory originally claimed for Roanoke could be purchased for future settlement in order to establish a colony to defend from Hispanic encrosion from Florida where the city of Augustine had been thriving since 1565. A group called the Royal Proprietors was able to buy the new charter from both the crown and the Yeopim and Roanoke Nations, with the Chowanoc rejecting any offer and the Tuscarora Nation, already allies of Hispania, failing to convince their neighbors to reject the Imperial's offer. Carolina is established in 1633 and divides seven years later into North and South Carolina. A European War between Hispania and the Empire ends in 1670 with the Angevin forced to cede right to claim any more New World territory south of the Savannah River.

In 1681, Sylvania is successfully chartered by William Penn. He paid the Lenni Lenape handsomely to vacate lands in order to build Philadelphia in 1682. Over the next 20 years, Sylvania expanded as other colonies had through the homestead system.

But it was not an easy time for Europe or the colonies because of the Thirty Years War (1700-1730) where many older monarchs were overthrown by younger vampires as part of the "Great Awakening" spearheaded by and tensions in the various colonies extremely high. Ties between different First Nation tribes and different colonies were also strained and Hispania conquering its way straight up the Savannah River and creating the colonial of Jorgeia in 1699 had not helped whatsoever. But during this time, overland trade routes with forts and towns were slowly established from the Hispanic cities of Savannah and Augusta along the Carolina-Jorgeia border all the way north to New France and the thriving cites of Ottawa, Montreal, and Kebec City.

By 1770, the white and metis populations of the Mainland colonies was nearly three million people governed by three thousand vampires equally divided between centurions and younger vampires. First Nation populations within colonial borders or in trading posts was equivalent.