Several centuries ago, different indigenous nations were hanging out in what's now called North and South America. Then the Spanish rolled up and were like "You go, indigenous people, you just keep on keepin' on." 

Just kidding. Actually, they totally disrupted everything, stole huge amounts of land, spread deadly diseases, exploited all the natural resources, and enslaved the surviving indigenous people.

So, we have the Spanish and the indigenous people, but you'll notice that what you're reading is in English, not in Cherokee and Spanish.

Why are we writing in English then? Because the English colonized the territory that is now the eastern United States. English speakers eventually dominated both indigenous people and Spanish speakers in what is now the U.S. And the English impact spread beyond language. English culture, law, religion, and technology have all left their mark on the American way of life.

While the English got a rocky start in establishing colonies (Roanoke, uh, disappeared...), their second colony, Jamestown, squeaked by. After 80% of Jamestownians died of starvation, American Indian attacks, disease, and other top-ten worst ways to die, the colony finally stopped croaking and figured things out. Jamestown's residents discovered they could make money by selling a plant used in Native-American religious practices to Europeans—tobacco. 

But while Virginia colonists moved to America to strike it rich from tobacco and other cash crops, other colonists had more respectable reasons for moving. The colonists in New England moved to escape religious persecution.

In the early 1620s, the King of England, James I, wanted his country to be religiously united, both for religious reasons, as James I was a devout Anglican (Church of England dude), and for political reasons, because James I wanted to prevent different religions from dividing his people. He was a class-A "my way or the highway" kind of guy.

As a result, James I persecuted all religious groups except the Church of England. So, religious minorities, the Puritans and the Pilgrims, felt oppressed by more chilled-out Christians and organized voyages across the sea. These travelers found a land radically different from the society they left behind. The New World represented a fresh slate, an ocean away from the sins and corruption of the Old World and a chance to start anew, to build a society from the ground up on firmly pious principles.

We hear they're the best building materials.

In their first half century on the new continent, the English settlers learned from, interacted with, and battled against the indigenous nations of the Americas, and not necessarily in that order. The settlers also developed the institutions for which they would be forever remembered: the town meeting, the Congregational church, the hardscrabble farming life of New Englanders, and the Protestant work ethic, all of which influenced the character and composition of the subsequent American society.

However, for early English settlers, one thing that was just as important as hard work was making other people do hard work. 

We'll look at how New England's white settlers multiplied in number, transformed the landscape with their imported customs, tools, and livestock, and spread westward as land became increasingly coveted. We'll also take a gander at the region's Native Americans, who sought redress from the colonial government, and the early country's forgotten slavery, indentured servitude.

What can the seemingly distant and obscure facts of life in colonial New England—a land of Indian wars and witch trials, proto-capitalists and Puritans— possibly have to do with your 21st-century life? What can that far-off place teach us about our own times?

A lot. Or at least that's what Nathaniel Hawthorne (one of our greatest novelists) and Arthur Miller (one of our greatest playwrights) thought. Each looked at aspects of society in colonial New England and found a story with myriad implications for their own generations.

When Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter in 1850 and set the story in 17th-century New England, he described a specific, long-lost time and place even while capturing a universal truth about the complex interplay of morality, guilt, and social condemnation. His protagonist, the adulteress Hester Prynne, was too individualistic to completely internalize the public scorn heaped upon her by the conformist society of Puritan New England, symbolized by the scarlet "A" branded onto her chest.

Even today, Hawthorne's work reminds us that every society has its mavericks, who suffer the stigma of being unorthodox or independent thinkers. And while the Puritans seemed to be very homogenous on the surface, when you get a closer look, you might find that they harbored serious internal divisions.

When Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, a play about the late-17th-century Salem witch trials, he was actually telling a parable about the paranoia of his own society in 1953. Joseph McCarthy was vigorously pursuing communists both real and imaginary in controversial hearings that were often compared to witch hunts. So, Miller utilized historical research he'd conducted as a college student to write The Crucible as a parable of McCarthyism: a tale of paranoia, rampant accusations, and unfounded condemnations. It has been his most frequently-produced play.

Both Hawthorne and Miller composed fictional works based on real events during the colonial era in New England. Both understood some of the broader themes we can draw from history. Both made that history their own. 

So, here is the history itself, facts and all. Interpret away. You're in good company.