<P> The Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded by the owners of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which included investors in the failed Dorchester Company that had established a short - lived settlement on Cape Ann in 1623 . The colony began in 1628 and was the company's second attempt at colonization . It was successful, with about 20,000 people migrating to New England in the 1630s . The population was strongly Puritan, and its governance was dominated by a small group of leaders who were strongly influenced by Puritan religious leaders . Its governors were elected, and the electorate were limited to freemen who had been examined for their religious views and formally admitted to the local church . As a consequence, the colonial leadership exhibited intolerance to other religious views, including Anglican, Quaker, and Baptist theologies . </P> <P> The colonists initially had good relationships with the local Indian populations, but frictions developed that ultimately led to the Pequot War (1636--38) and then to King Philip's War (1675--78), after which most of the Indians in southern New England made peace treaties with the colonists (apart from the Pequot tribe, whose survivors largely merged with the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes after the Pequot War). </P> <P> The colony was economically successful, engaging in trade with England and the West Indies . A shortage of hard currency in the colony prompted it to establish a mint in 1652 . Political differences with England after the English Restoration led to the revocation of the colonial charter in 1684 . King James II established the Dominion of New England in 1686 to bring all of the New England colonies under firmer crown control . The dominion collapsed after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 deposed James, and the colony reverted to rule under the revoked charter until the charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay was issued in 1691, which combined the Massachusetts Bay territories with those of the Plymouth Colony and proprietary holdings on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard . Sir William Phips arrived in 1692 bearing the charter and formally took charge of the new province . The political and economic dominance of New England by the modern state of Massachusetts was made possible in part by the early dominance in these spheres by the Massachusetts Bay colonists . </P> <P> Prior to the arrival of European colonists on the eastern shore of New England, the area around Massachusetts Bay was the territory of several Algonquian - speaking tribes, including the Massachusett, Nauset, and Wampanoag . The Pennacooks occupied the Merrimack River valley to the north, and the Nipmuc, Pocumtuc, and Mahican occupied the western lands of Massachusetts, although some of those tribes were under tribute to the Mohawks, who were expanding aggressively from upstate New York . The total Indian population in 1620 has been estimated to be 7,000 . This number was significantly larger as late as 1616; in later years, contemporaneous chroniclers interviewed Indians who described a major pestilence that killed as many as two - thirds of the population . The land use patterns of the Indians included plots cleared for agricultural purposes and woodland territories for hunting game . Land divisions between the tribes were well understood . </P>

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