See also: 1610s in Canada, other events of the 1620s, 1630s in Canada and the list of 'years in Canada'.

Events

• 1620: Pilgrims from England arrive in Plymouth.
• 1621: Dutch West India Company chartered, expands up the Hudson and Delaware rivers.
• 1621: James VII of Scotland grants Acadia to Sir William Alexander who renames it New Scotland (Nova Scotia)
• 1622-1646: Powhattan Confederacy Wars, Chesapeake Bay area. Source of phoney Pocahontas tale by English Capt. John Smith, after Pocahontas's death (married to John Rolfe, she died in England). John Rolfe Jr., after growing up in England, returns to Virginia, claims his grandfather's land, kills or enslaves his mother's relatives. Has one child (female) by an upper-class white woman, proudly "dies an Englishman". Colony's racist laws about Indians make a "Pocahontas Exception" for the English descendants of Rolfe, which in 1924 is re-enacted by the U.S. Virginia State legislature, in racist laws about Indians and Blacks. English Countess Mountbatten and other rich white people are among the descendants of the unfortunate Powhattan girl, so the "one drop of inferior-race blood" statutes make this Pocahontas Exception just for them. These racist laws -- and the Pocahontas Exception (also racist) -- remained in force in Virginia until overturned in the Supreme Court decision Loving vs. Virginia, 1969. This wasn't in the Disney cartoon.
• 1624: Dutch settlers found Fort Orange (Albany, New York) in New Netherlands.
• 1625: French settlements in the West Indies begin, exporting sugar and tobacco, and emigration to Canada is encouraged among traders and fishermen.
• 1625: The Franciscan friars are replaced by the heroic priests of the richer, better-organized Society of Jesus. Jesuits begin missionary work among the Indians in the Quebec area. Jean de Brébeuf founds missions in Huronia, near Georgian Bay.
• 1626: Peter Minuit, governor of New Netherland, buys Manhattan Island for 60 guilders worth of beads from the Canarsie Indians. (Dutch later have to pay Manhattan Indians, actual occupants of the island.) Dutch policy is land payments to Indians, neutrality in Indian conflicts relating to French-English struggle.
• 1627: Cardinal Richelieu, chief adviser to Louis XIII, organizes a joint-stock company, the Company of One Hundred Associates (a.k.a. the Company of New France), to establish a French Empire in North America. It is given a fur monopoly and title to all lands claimed by New France (April 29). In exchange, they are to establish a French colony of 4000 by 1643, which they fail to do.
• 1628: Olivier Le Jeune, an 8-year-old boy from Madagascar, arrives in Quebec. He is the first recorded slave purchase in New France. Le Jeune is probably the first person of African origin to live most of his life in Canada.
• 1629: Quebec (the city) captured by an English fleet led by the adventurer David Kirke on July 19. (He also captured Port Royal the year before.)