Colonial and Native American Interactions Vocabulary

Flashcards covering key vocabulary terms, concepts, and primary perspectives regarding early interactions between English colonists and American Indian tribes.

Diplomacy

The process of working with another group through communication and negotiation to avoid conflict or reach an agreement.

Trade

The exchange of goods or resources between people or groups, such as colonists exchanging metal tools and weapons for animal furs and food.

Alliance

An agreement between two groups to work together for a shared purpose, such as mutual protection, trade, or military support.

Agriculture

The growing of crops and raising of food.

Cultural Exchange

The sharing of ideas, customs, knowledge, technology, or ways of life between different cultures.

Communal

Shared by all members of a community for the common good.

Enclosure

The process of sealing off land with fences or walls to claim it as private property.

Sovereignty

The authority of a state or people to govern themselves.

Three Sisters

The Indigenous agricultural combination of corn, beans, and squash taught to English colonists to help them grow food in North America.

Powhatan Confederacy

A powerful alliance of about 30 Algonquian-speaking tribes in Virginia that initially managed a tense relationship with Jamestown settlers.

Wampanoag

An Indigenous nation in New England that engaged in trade and diplomacy with the Pilgrims at Plymouth and taught them agricultural survival skills.

Great Dyings

Waves of Old World disease epidemics (such as smallpox, measles, and influenza) that killed up to 90% of a tribe's population post-contact.

Mourning Wars

Inter-tribal conflicts and long-standing hostilities caused or heightened as tribes competed for hunting grounds to supply beaver and deer skins for European trade.

Waste Land

The English colonial view defining uncultivated land without fences or permanent farms as unimproved territory available for private acquisition.

Improved Land

The English legal perspective that common land becomes private property when an individual labors upon it by building houses, planting orchards, and enclosing fields.

Estimated Population Impact of Disease Chart

A bar chart illustrating the estimated decline in Indigenous population from 100% pre-contact down to 10% post-epidemic following contact with European diseases.