Prelude to Revolutions

Captain William Kidd sailed under a Letter of Marque from the Governor of New York that gave him the authority to capture any Pirate he ran into. After seeing the profit potentials he turned Pirate himself in the end of the 17th Century.

The slaves were held on ship in dark holds placed on wooden shelves measuring 6 feet long by 16 inches wide by 30 inches high. A goal was to cram as many slaves aboard as possible.

Samuel Davies, Presbyterian minister, attempted to teach slaves to read. No white person in colonial American history was as successful as Davies in teaching literacy among slaves in the South.

The Comanche bands would raid the Apache camps taking horses, women and children.

A Lipan Apache on the trail, upper Rio Grande.

For bounty, settlers would receive L50 for every adult cherokee skalp.

A 1794 drawing of the Russian fur trading settlement on Kodiak.

Grigorii Shelikhov, in 1784, led 130 Russians to Kodiak Island for the first settlement east of Siberia.