Little Ice Age
North America

Early European explorers and settlers of North America reported exceptionally severe winters. In southwestern Alaska, preexisting flexibility in foraging habits among the native people lent itself to high adaptability to the LIA. Both Europeans and indigenous peoples suffered excess mortality in Maine during the winter of 1607–1608, and extreme frost was meanwhile reported in the Jamestown, Virginia, settlement. Native Americans formed leagues in response to food shortages. The journal of Pierre de Troyes, Chevalier de Troyes, who led an expedition to James Bay in 1686, recorded that the bay was still littered with so much floating ice that he could hide behind it in his canoe on 1 July. In the winter of 1780, New York Harbor froze, which allowed people to walk from Manhattan Island to Staten Island.

The extent of mountain glaciers had been mapped by the late 19th century. In the north and the south temperate zones, Equilibrium Line Altitude (the boundaries separating zones of net accumulation from those of net ablation) were about 100 metres (330 ft) lower than they were in 1975. Southwestern Alaska experienced a tamperature nadir around 135 BP, and in south-central Alaska, mountain hemlock forests severely declined. In Glacier National Park, the last episode of glacier advance came in the late 18th and the early 19th centuries. In 1879, the famed naturalist John Muir found that Glacier Bay ice had retreated 48 miles (77 km). In Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, large temperature excursions were possibly related to changes in the strength of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation.

Because the Little Ice Age took place during the European colonization of the Americas, it discouraged many early colonists, who had expected the climate of North America to be similar to the climate of Europe at similar latitudes. They found that North America, at least in what would become Canada and the northern United States, had hotter summers and colder winters than Europe. That effect was aggravated by the Little Ice Age, and unpreparedness led to the collapse of many early European settlements in North America.

Historians agree that when colonists settled at Jamestown, it was one of the coldest periods in the last 1000 years. Drought was also a problem in North America during the Little Ice Age, and the settlers arrived in Roanoke during the largest drought of the past 800 years. Tree ring studies by the University of Arkansas discovered that many colonists arrived at the beginning of a seven-year drought. The droughts also decreased the Native American populations and led to conflict because of food scarcity. English colonists at Roanoke forced Native Americans of Ossomocomuck to share their depleted supplies with them. That led to warfare between the two groups, and Native American towns were destroyed. That cycle would repeat itself many times at Jamestown. The combination of fighting and cold weather also led to the spread of diseases. The colder weather helped the parasites brought by Europeans in mosquitoes to develop faster. That in turn led to many malaria deaths among Native Americans.

In 1642, Thomas Gorges wrote that between 1637 and 1645, colonists in Maine (then part of Massachusetts) experienced horrendous weather conditions. In June 1637, temperatures were so high that numerous European settlers died; travelers were forced to travel at night to stay cool. Gorges also wrote that the winter of 1641–1642 was “piercingly Intolerable” and that no Englishman or Native American had ever seen anything like it. He also stated that the Massachusetts Bay had frozen as far as one could see, and that horse carriages now roamed where ships used to be. He stated that the summers of 1638 and 1639 were very short, cold, and wet, which compounded food scarcity for a few years. To make matters worse, creatures like caterpillars and pigeons fed on crops and devastated harvests. Every year about which Gorges wrote featured unusual weather patterns, including high precipitation, drought, and extreme cold or heat.

Many inhabitants of North America had their own theories about the extreme weather. The colonist Ferdinando Gorges blamed the cold weather on cold ocean winds. Humphrey Gilbert tried to explain Newfoundland's icy and foggy weather by saying that the Earth drew cold vapors from the ocean and drew them west. Many others had their own theories for North America being so much colder than Europe; their observations and hypotheses offer insight on the Little Ice Age's effects in North America.
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