US History - Native Americans and English Settlers

Relationship Between Native Americans and English Settlers

Introduction
- The relationship between Native Americans and English settlers is one of the worst in American history.
- First English settlers arrived in the Chesapeake area (now Virginia) in 1607.

The land was inhabited by Indian tribes unified under Chief Wahhoon Sonica, called Powhatan by the English.
Powhatan realized the English were clueless about survival but had useful guns.
He helped the English, and colony leader John Smith ordered colonists to stop stealing food from the Indians.
The relationship was mutually beneficial for a while (post-smallpox).

The Virginia Company existed to make money through trade.
Both sides traded goods they had in surplus for those they did not.
English traded iron utensils, tools, guns, and woven cloth for furs and food.
Problems arose as Indian men spent more time hunting, upsetting the gender balance.
English ideas about land use conflicted with traditional Indian ways of life.
The English fenced in land and let their pigs and cattle roam freely, damaging native crops.
European appetite for furs led to intertribal warfare with guns.

John Smith was captured by Indians and saved by Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas.
It was probably a ritual planned by Powhatan to demonstrate dominance.
Pocahontas was kidnapped by the English in 1613 and later married John Rolfe.
She converted to Christianity and went to England, where she died of disease.
After John Smith left, the English began stealing crops and committing massacres.

In 1622, a chief led a rebellion against the English due to land encroachment.
The English struck back, and the uprising failed.
After another failed uprising in 1644, the remaining Native Americans were forced onto reservations in West Virginia.
The 1622 uprising led to the Virginia Company's failure, as it never turned a profit.
Out of 6,000 colonists sponsored, only 1,200 were alive by 1644.

The Pilgrims relied on Native Americans for survival during their first winter.
Some Puritans, like Roger Williams, tried to treat the Indians fairly, but generally, it was similar to the Chesapeake.
Settlers believed Native Americans could be replaced due to improper land use.
John Winthrop preferred buying land from Indians but with the condition of submitting to English authority.
Puritans saw natives as heathens needing salvation.
They also feared colonists would "go native" due to the Native American way of life's abundance and equality.
In 1642, Massachusetts prescribed three years of hard labor for anyone living with indigenous people.
Anti-Indian propaganda existed in the form of Captivity narratives.

New England's native population lacked an overarching leader.
In 1637, conflict between the English and the Indians occurred, called the Pequot War.
After Pequots killed an English fur trader, soldiers from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Narragansett Indians attacked a Pequot village at Mystic, massacring over 500 people.
The war resulted in the massacre or enslavement of almost all Pequots.
The war opened up the Connecticut River to further settlement.
The brutality shocked even some Puritans.

In 1675, Native Americans launched their biggest attack on New England colonists in King Philip's War, led by Wampanoag chief Metacom.
The English called Metacom King Philip.
The conflict was marked by brutality on both sides and nearly ended English settlements.
Indians attacked half of the 90 towns, destroying 12.
About 1,000 of the 52,000 Europeans and 3,000 of the 20,000 Indians died in the war.
The battle of the great swamp was a massacre of Indians by the English.
King Philip was killed, and his head was placed on a stake in Plymouth Town Square.
Natives brutally killed colonists and livestock disrupting their way of life.
Some stories suggest the symbolic nature of the war.

The mystery document was the laws of war passed by the general court of Massachusetts in 1675.
The Puritans felt that their mission to be a great Christian community was a failure.
They believed God sent the Indians to burn their homes and kill them because they weren't righteous.

The war was to preserve a way of life for both the Indians and the English.
It's important to remember that American history has been cleaned up.
Native Americans have been marginalized.
It's important to know the ways they resisted colonization because it reminds us that Native Americans were people who acted in history, not just people who were acted upon by it.
The history of indigenous people on this landmass isn't separate from American history; it's an essential part of it.