Comparing Pilgrims Contribution To America's History

“ We give food to starving settlers so that they can survive the winter, settlers end up taking all the good land and let the natives starve to death.” Two hundred years before the Puritans arrived in America the European settlers came over to America accidently. Christopher Columbus was trying to find a new route to India, but landed on an Island we now know as America. When Christopher Columbus landed on the island, strange, unknown, people came up to him. He called them Indians because he thought he had landed in India. While getting to learn more about Columbus the Indians learn they have different values than the European settlers and the Puritans, once they arrive two hundred years later. Getting to know the European settlers and the Puritans, the Indians realized their outlooks on Faith, Loyalty, And Laws are vastly different and similar.

In the 17th century, the Native Americans had been living peacefully in their own little world, until suddenly, the British come upon this land. Little did the British know, tribes of natives already lived there. The countenance of the Native Americans did not go over very well. There was tension between the English and the Native Americans. For example, they fought over the land of the “New World”. As expected, the Natives were fearful and angry when foreigners showed up and proposed new religious beliefs. The British and the Native Americans’ relationship changed due to those coming over for religious freedom and economic prosperity.

The Indians were well adapted to the land, therefore they were able to use swamps to their advantage and also use the same swamp to the colonist’s disadvantage. Indians who frequently migrated and had no special meaning for their personal equity, never placed an identity to it. Unlike the Indians, the colonists believed their property was meaningful. Lepore explains that religion contributed a major part to the colonist idea of their own, “the colonists’ sense of predestination…, their natural affinity with the land, and their cultural proclivity to conflate property with identity, all combined to produce this oneness of bodies and mind.” The colonist viewed the Indians as savages due to the misunderstanding values of land, property, and equity. In addition, the colonists, who were mostly Puritans believed the war was God punishing them for the failure of the colonists to convert the Indians to Christianity. On the other hand, the Indians had other spiritual faith that collides with the colonist religious

When examining early American history it is commonplace, besides in higher academia, to avoid the nuances of native and colonizer relations. The narrative becomes one of defeat wherein the only interaction to occur is one of native American’s constant loss to white colonizers. It is not to say that the European colonizers didn’t commit genocide, destroy the land and fabric of countless cultures, but rather when looking at history it is important to take a bottom’s up approach to storytelling. We must examine in what ways the native Americans fought English colonization, not just through war, but also through the legal system that was established after the area was colonized.

The history of the United States with regards to its native population is inaccurate and assumes that the history of this country began when the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock (Richter, pp. 4-5). With regards to the native people’s

Europeans tore through America in the 1700s and destroyed the lives of Native Americans, and yet their culture remained principled with a high level of respect and honor. This is shown in a meeting that was held by the six nations of the Iroquois, where Chief Red Jacket gave a speech on the Native Americans view on missionary stations that the Europeans wanted to set up. Red Jacket explained their past with the first settlers, “We gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison in return” (1). These first Europeans set the tone for how these new colonist treated the natives. They took what they wanted and left a trail of death and destruction in their path. However, the natives acted in return with upstanding respect and treated these missionaries

The arrival of the ‘foreigners’, as referred to by the Native Americans, turned a new stone in Native American diplomacy. No longer did they have to only deal with neighboring tribes, as they were forced to endeavor into politics with strangers who were looking to take their land. The first relationship between the pilgrims and the Native Americans began with the Wampanoag tribe. The relations between the two groups paved the view that the pilgrims had towards the Indians. The decently friendly relationship that stood between the two groups was short lived as the pilgrims felt that the indians were getting in the way of their expansion; and shortly after the friendship ceased to exist (Bell, 37).

When the first European colonists arrived in 1620 on land in the New World, a disaster was forming. Arriving in what is known today as Massachusetts on The Mayflower, the settlers didn’t have enough experience surviving cold, harsh winters causing almost half of the settlers to die that had arrived on The Mayflower. This had changed in 1621 with the help of the Native people. The American Indians had started teaching the English people how to do many things including harvesting and growing crops. This help from the Native’s had led to the first Thanksgiving between the two groups. These two societies, however, didn’t remain friends. The English settlers had kicked off the American Indians of their own land and tried to make them convert to Christianity. The English settlers had also brought diseases from Europe causing many Indians to get very sick and even some die.

Just as the Greeks, the Romans and any other great civilization, Native Americans had their own gods with certain values. These values are a sharp contrast to the current european expansionist mindset and give great insight into understanding Native American’s actions and behavior. These documents are about Native American culture and are written around the arrival of European settlers. These documents show the conflicts that many Native Americans had were due to many miscommunications and conflicts in values. The two Native American values that the Europeans most tread on were their very philosophy and honor, which leads to some of the most brutal acts of war and massacres.

“The Indian presence precipitated the formation of an American identity” (Axtell 992). Ostracized by numerous citizens of the United States today, this quote epitomizes Axtell’s beliefs of the Indians contributing to our society. Unfortunately, Native Americans’ roles in history are often categorized as insignificant or trivial, when in actuality the Indians contributed greatly to Colonial America, in ways the ordinary person would have never deliberated. James Axtell discusses these ways, as well as what Colonial America may have looked like without the Indians’ presence. Throughout his article, his thesis stands clear by his persistence of alteration the Native Americans had on our nation. James Axtell’s bias delightfully enhances his thesis, he provides a copious amount of evidence establishing how Native Americans contributed critically to the Colonial culture, and he considers America as exceptional – largely due to the Native Americans.

If one thing is to be respected and understood about the American Indians, it would be that their history and culture goes much further back than contemporary American history. Consequently, the relationship developed between American Indians and the United States is as unique as it is complicated. This unique relationship started because the American Indians were the first faces seen by fresh colonials from Europe. Despite this fact, the American Indians have faced cultural appropriation on a level that cannot be compared to any other ethnic group or minority. Any American who has been through kindergarten can associate Indians and Pilgrims with Thanksgiving, but how many of those Americans can tell about the Battle of Little Bighorn or the Alcatraz Proclamation? The unique relationship between the United States and American Indians has grown over time to allow for the level of appropriation that can be observed today. It is this unique relationship that has allowed the American Indian culture to be exploited because

When the Pilgrims first arrived at Plymouth in 1620, they were faced with incredible obstacles that took extreme strength and determination to overcome. Little did the Pilgrims know that it would just get harder from there, especially when the King Philip’s War began. This war, mainly fought between the two groups of the Native Americans and the Pilgrims, caused huge death tolls on each side and could easily have been prevented, or, at least, downsized, if the leaders on both sides had not been quite so proud. The King Philip’s War was the result of, and contained, racism, national loyalty and alliances, and economic interests and land greed.

In a world of startling current events that lead humanity to reflect on the past for answers, countless books are written to inform people of the world’s controversial history. Constantly, bias slithers into the writing of many authors, allowing history- without the painful truths- to be swayed by the winners. Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower follows the journey of the Pilgrims, the winners in this case, as they venture to the New World and leave a destructive trail, leading to war with the Native Americans. As in any story, especially one involving war, there are two sides, and Philbrick makes it clear what side he fights for. Philbrick depicts the Pilgrims in a positive and biased manner through the detailed and glorified portrayal, biased Pilgrim quotations, and the clear contrast he creates between the Native Americans and the Pilgrims, presenting the Native Americans negatively and the Pilgrims as heroes.

Between 1790 and 1920 it was a tough time for the Indians. During that period Native Americans were forced to convert to the European-American Culture. Their whole life changed, the way of living, religion, and especially their children’s future. It was wrong of Americans to convert natives into a different society that they saw fit and not letting them express their own culture and treating them as an unworthy society.

The concept of American national identity has been one of the founding structures that unifies the group of people that that call and consider themselves to be American. Since the “founders” of this nation settled in New England their patriotism has been celebrated. The legendary story of how the Puritan Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock seeking religious freedom is often taught to young children as a way to help them learn one of the key narratives in the formation of the nation. The story is even more glorified when linked to the greatly loved holiday of Thanksgiving, where the peaceful Pilgrims eat a peaceful meal with the friendly Indians. However, it is never told of how the friendly Indians were betrayed, used, degraded, and in many cases, defeated by the peaceful Pilgrims. During the 19th century, a time of Indian removal and other forms of structural oppression, William Apess addressed how that portion of history was neglected to be told and therefore took matters into his own hands to give the proper historical moment to Native Americans. The hidden and untold story of violence of the Pilgrims continues to this day.