New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick to the northeast and Quebec to the north. The Gulf of Maine and Atlantic Ocean are to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the southwest. Boston is New England's largest city and the capital of Massachusetts. Greater Boston, comprising the Boston–Worcester–Providence Combined Statistical Area, houses more than half of the region's total population. The Greater Boston area includes Worcester, Massachusetts, the second-largest city in New England; Manchester, New Hampshire, the largest city in New Hampshire; and Providence, Rhode Island, the capital of and largest city in Rhode Island. In 1620, the Pilgrims established Plymouth Colony, the second successful settlement in British America after the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia, founded in 1607. Ten years later, Puritans established Massachusetts Bay Colony north of Plymouth Colony. Over the next 126 years, people in the region fought in four French and Indian Wars until the English colonists and their Iroquois allies defeated the French and their Algonquian allies. In the late 18th century, political leaders from the New England colonies initiated resistance to Great Britain's monarchist enforced taxes without the consent of the British American colonists. Residents of Rhode Island captured and burned a British Royal Navy ship which was enforcing unpopular trade restrictions, and residents of Boston threw British tea into the harbor. Britain responded with a series of punitive laws stripping Massachusetts of self-government which the colonists called the "Intolerable Acts". These confrontations led to the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775 and the expulsion of the British authorities from the region in spring 1776. The region played a prominent role in the movement to abolish slavery in the United States, and it was the first region of the U.S. transformed by the Industrial Revolution, initially centered on the Blackstone and Merrimack river valleys. The physical geography of New England is diverse. Southeastern New England is covered by a narrow coastal plain, while the western and northern regions are dominated by the rolling hills and worn-down peaks of the northern end of the Appalachian Mountains. The Atlantic fall line lies close to the coast, which enabled numerous cities to take advantage of water power along the many rivers, such as the Connecticut River, which bisects the region from north to south. Each state is generally subdivided into small municipalities known as towns, many of which are governed by town meetings. Unincorporated areas exist only in portions of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and village-style governments common in other areas are limited to Vermont and Connecticut. New England is one of the U.S. Census Bureau's nine regional divisions and the only multi-state region with clear and consistent boundaries. It maintains a strong sense of cultural identity, although the terms of this identity are often contrasted, combining Puritanism with liberalism, agrarian life with industry, and isolation with immigration.
History
Pre-Columbian
Humans reached the current-day New England region by at least 10,500 years ago and likely earlier, occupying a recently de-glaciated environment. Pre-contact Native American groups in New England did not have market economies and physical artifacts tended to change very slowly. However, technological shifts brought agriculture and ceramics to the region prior to the arrival of European settlers in the 17th century.
Algonquian
The communities inhabiting the territory in the period of European colonization spoke a variety of the Eastern Algonquian languages. Prominent tribes included the Abenakis, Mi'kmaq, Penobscot, Pequots, Mohegans, Narragansetts, Nipmucs, Pocumtucks, and Wampanoags. Prior to the arrival of European colonists, the Western Abenakis inhabited what is now New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont, as well as parts of Quebec and western Maine. Their principal town was Norridgewock in today's Maine. The Penobscots lived along the Penobscot River in Maine. The Narragansetts and smaller tribes under their sovereignty lived in Rhode Island, west of Narragansett Bay, including Block Island. The Wampanoags occupied southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The Pocumtucks lived in Western Massachusetts, and the Mohegan and Pequot tribes lived in Connecticut. The Connecticut River Valley linked numerous tribes culturally, linguistically, and politically. As early as 1600 CE, French, Dutch, and English traders began exploring the New World, trading metal, glass, and cloth for local beaver pelts. Many Indigenous communities are still present in modern-day New England and remain within traditional territorial boundaries, including the ten federally recognized tribes spread out across the region.
European Colonial period
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