2.5 APUSH

NATIVE AMERICAN & EUROPEAN INTERACTIONS (1607-1754)

BROAD INTERACTIONS

  • Relations between colonists and Native Americans revolved around trade, exchange, alliances, and warfare.
  • Trade:
    • A key part of colonist-native relations, especially on the western borderlands.
    • Furs and crops were traded for manufactured European products like guns, iron goods, and alcohol.
    • Trade relationships were constantly changing.
  • Disease:
    • Trade interactions exposed Native Americans to European diseases like smallpox.
    • Diseases decimated indigenous populations on the eastern seaboard, facilitating westward migration of colonists.
  • Assimilation:
    • Some English colonies attempted (mostly unsuccessfully) to assimilate Native Americans.
      • Puritan praying towns in New England aimed to convert local Native Americans to a Puritan model of Christianity.
  • Conflicting Worldviews:
    • Most English colonists viewed Native Americans as inferior people who could be pushed off their land.
    • The two groups had conflicting views on land ownership, gender roles, religion, and nature.

NEW ENGLAND—KING PHILIP'S WAR

  • Pequot War (1637): Violence continued into the 1640s.
  • New England Confederation:
    • Formed by Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven as a military alliance for mutual protection against American Indians, the Dutch, and the French.
    • Dissolved in 1684 when King James II exerted control over the region.
    • Established a precedent for unified colonial action.
  • King Philip’s War (Metacom’s War) (1675-1676):
    • The New England Confederation helped colonists win this war.
    • The root cause of the conflict was westward encroachment onto Native American lands by New England colonists.
    • Metacom, chief of the Wampanoag (known to the colonists as King Philip), united New England tribes against the colonists.
    • The war was brutal and culminated in a victory for the colonists.
      • Metacom's head was publicly displayed after beheading.
    • Significance: End of Native American independence and resistance in New England.
  • Population of the New England Colonies, 1620-1770
    • White
    • Black
    • Native American

VIRGINIA—BACON'S REBELLION

  • As farmers pushed into the western frontier, they experienced attacks by Native Americans defending their territory.
  • Context: Same year, 1676, as King Philip's War, conflict broke out in the Virginia colony.
  • Royal governor, Sir William Berkeley, did little to address farmers’ grievances because he wanted to maintain peaceful trade relationships with the tribes on the frontier and not start a war.
  • Laws passed in the House of Burgesses benefitted Berkeley and tidewater planters.
  • Bacon’s Rebellion:
    • Led by Nathaniel Bacon (1673), a recently arrived planter.
    • Supported by less wealthy western farmers, dissatisfied indentured servants, and some escaped African slaves.
    • Rebels launched raids and massacres against Native American villages on the frontier and burned Jamestown to the ground.
    • Bacon died of dysentery shortly after.
    • Governor Berkeley regrouped, crushed the rebellion, and executed twenty-three rebels.
    • While the failed Bacon’s Rebellion highlighted conflict between Native Americans and settlers on the frontier, it also demonstrated Virginia’s class tensions and resistance to royal control; it also led to more reliance on African slaves.

NEW SPAIN—PUEBLO REVOLT

  • By 1680, the Spanish colony in Santa Fe had grown to about 3,000 inhabitants (mostly mestizos).
  • The Spanish continued to use the brutal encomienda system and the casta system.
  • Roman Catholic missionaries aggressively converted Native Americans to Catholicism and attempted to eradicate Pueblo religious traditions.
  • Pueblo Revolt (1680):
    • Effort by various Pueblo Indian tribes to drive the Spanish from the region.
    • They succeeded until 1692, when the Spanish regained control.
    • While the Spanish continued assimilation efforts, they made some accommodations like permitting Pueblo land ownership and integration of Native American religious elements.
    • These accommodations led to more stability in the region.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Interactions between European rivals and American Indian populations fostered both accommodation and conflict.
  • Conflict arose between Europeans and American Indians and was rooted in competition for resources and intensified as British colonists gradually pushed westward.
  • Examples of American Indian resistance to colonizers were the Pueblo Revolt and King Philip's War.