Settlers on the haciendas of the Spanish borderlands found themselves separated both from each other and from the Indian population. Community-minded farmers in Massachusetts organized networks of remarkably orderly, stable towns and villages, while ambitious planters in Virginia scattered their settlements across the countryside in search of ever-larger landholdings. The varying purposes and ways of living in different colonies resulted in a wide range of adaptations. Interaction with Native Americans also demanded a variety of adaptations by incorporating native practices and products.

The New World had climates they had not known, introduced them to unfamiliar but attractive new crops, and everywhere seemed to provide them an unlimited abundance of land. Yet for all their efforts to re-create Old World patterns in the New World, those who came to North America found it necessary to adapt to the different environment. They sought to establish traditional European families and to eat, drink, dress, live, and be buried at death in European ways.ДЄdaptation. European settlers displayed loyalty to their monarchs by giving important towns names such as Jamestown, Charlestown, and Williamsburg. They clustered traditional houses in the village patterns they had known in Europe, giving them familiar names such as Plymouth, Boston, and Ipswich. Colonists exchanged exotic Algonquian names of rivers, hills, and places for familiar English, German, Dutch, or Spanish ones. They drew these ideas from what they had known in the Old World, and they poured all of their energy into re-creating that manner of living in their new surroundings.

European colonists came to America with assumptions about what constituted a good house, family, farm, community, food, and entertainment. 1600-1754: Lifestyles, Social Trends, and Fashion: Overview

Scolastic newslife in the 1620s