Conflict Between Native Americans And British Settlers

The Pequot war was a bloody conflict that demonstrated the hatred and distrust between the the Puritans and the Pequot Tribe. Both sides were deeply suspicious of each other” (10). The Puritans viewed the Native Americans as “godless savages” (19) while the Native Americans viewed the Puritans as invaders. Rather than trying to coexist, the English firmly believed “there would be no assimilation of Indian culture” (24) which lead to even more tensions that eventually manifested in the form of the Pequot war.

When thinking about relevant theories to the Native American conflict, there are a few that can be applied in a few different ways to help explain the various aspects of this conflict. Three of the theories discussed in this course – primordialist theory, social construction theory, and psychological theories - contain aspects that are applicable to this Native American conflict, while other theories do a poor job of explaining the conflict. On the other hand, one theory from this course – instrumentalism – is not useful in explaining the conflict.

The relationship between the English and the Native Americans in 1600 to 1700 is one of the most fluctuating and the most profound relationships in American history. On the one side of the picture, the harmony between Wampanoag and Puritans even inspires them to celebrate “first Thanksgiving”; while, by contrast, the conflicts between the Pequots and the English urge them to antagonize each other, and even wage a war. In addition, the mystery of why the European settlers, including English, become the dominant power in American world, instead of the indigenous people, or Indians, can be solved from the examination of the relationship. In a variety of ways, the relationship drastically alters how people think about and relate to the aborigines. Politically, the relationship changes to establish the supremacy of the English; the English intends to obtain the land and rules over it. Socially, the relationship changes to present the majority of the English settlers; the dominating population is mostly the English settlers. Economically, the relationship changes to obtain the benefit of the English settlers; they gain profit from the massive resource in America. Therefore, the relationship does, in fact, change to foreshadow the discordance of the two groups of people.

By the early 1600s both the French and the English had established colonies in North America; the French had New France in Canada and the English had colonies in New England and the Chesapeake Region. These colonies were very different but they shared a few similarities. One aspect they had in common, was that the territories they claimed had already been inhabited by Native Americans for centuries. The European settlers’ relationship with the American Indian’s was in constant turmoil, and between the arrival of the colonists to 1760 there were many instances of cooperation, conflict and compromise between the two groups.

In West of the Revolution, Saunt explores eight notable moments of interaction, and often first contact, between “old world” colonial powers and indigenous peoples in North America that were occurring simultaneously with the English colonists’ declarations of independence and armed revolt. By providing the reader with a broader perspective of what was happening throughout America in 1776, Saunt illustrates that our collective understanding of what constituted America at that time tends to be remarkably limited and that colonial struggles were multi-faceted, depicted here in a series of snapshots of our land’s history that challenge, complicate, and clarify our conception of what America was. What emerges from this mosaic is a pattern of European national, economic, and religious interests, arrogant and ignorant in equal measure, infiltrating into native lands with consequent uneasy alliances and outright hostilities

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).

Peter Silver’s thesis in Our Savage Neighbors explains that The French and Indian War was the primary cause of the change in social and political standings in the Mid-Atlantic colonies. Silver argues that Europe’s disunity in times of war further influenced the split within the American people and the American natives both culturally and politically. Silver claims that the shift in competitive governmental and economic attitude between the French and the British forced the existing native peoples to become casualties in Europe’s battle for territory. Since the Native American people were not considered a say in their land being taken out from under them, they retaliated from a place of self-defense and fear of their conquerors; consequently,

To better understand the conflict between the Europeans and the Native Americans, one must closely examine the state of Europe’s economy at the time. Europe struggled with difficult conditions. This included poverty, violence and diseases like typhus, smallpox, influenza and measles. There were widespread famines which caused the prices of products to vary and made life very difficult in Europe. Street crimes and violence were prevalent in cities: “Other eruption of bizarre torture, murder, and ritual cannibalism were not uncommon”.2 Europeans

Clashes between the Native Americans and early Euro-American settlers were inevitable. These two groups of people were different in a number of ways ranging from language, culture, and spiritual way-of-life. Where we see these people groups ultimately at odds is in their beliefs relating to land.

From the moment Jamestown was founded, John Smith and his men fought the Powhatan Chief and his people, and there were constant battles and skirmishes as time went on and the colonies expanded. Seventy years after Jamestown was founded fights with Indians on the border of Virginia continued, and since the Virginian Governor Berkeley refused to fight back, it prompted Bacon’s Rebellion. This intolerance of Natives not only kept the southerners from forming alliances with the Natives, it set them against the others in fear and prejudice that only led to more fighting. Contrastly, the first New Englanders, the Pilgrims who landed in Plymouth, made peace with the Indians. Instead of intermittent skirmishes, they were given shelter when needed and agricultural methods that would help them survive, along with important trade alliances. This help allowed the Pilgrims to survive and prosper in this new land. Though their relations with the Native Americans went south in what led up to King Philip’s War, the former cordiality with them helped the colonists lay the foundation of New England. Since they were kinder to the Natives, the colonists of New England traded information and goods and create relationships with them that helped them establish their colonies, which the Chesapeake colonists never

Although white European settlers and the native Indians had existed moderately peaceful for around 40 years pressures rose in the mid-seventh century. Conflict arose due to decline in Indian territories, population, and their cultural integrity. These differences ultimately lead to conflicts in which collectively became known as King Philip’s War. What types of complaints did the Indians have against the settlers? How were the Indians expected to survive if the settlers kept taking their land? The primary sources in this collection of source documents touch upon on what each group (Indian or white settlers) did to survive: an excerpt from a narrative written by John Easton, a second hand account written by Thomas Church, a report written to the English leaders by Edward Randolph, a petition written by an Indian named William Nahton, and an excerpt of an account from a book written by Mary Rowlandson. These documents illustrate the main causes that sparked the war between the Native Indians and the white English settlers, narratives written by both sides to find peaceful solutions, and actual accounts of people who survived the conflict. The second hand account written about Benjamin Church’s meeting with the Indian group known as the Sakonnet Indians displays that the Indians knew their only chance of survival was to fight while the report written to English leaders by Randolph suggest that the settlers who viewed the Indians as uncivilized had ultimately forced the Indians

One colony should be particularly noticed, Pennsylvania, for how unusually good they were to the indigenous population of America: William Penn openly admitted for the Indians the right to land ownership.

“Accounts of Natives of the Americas included many such enthusiastic descriptions of native people and their eagerness to receive European explorers and settlers”(Nash, 37). The Europeans main goals were to find gold and silver and to successfully trades with the Native Americans and in order to enable this they would need to befriend them and treat them as more than savages. However, some “accounts portrayed the Indians as crafty, brutal loathsome half-men, whose cannibalistic instincts were reveals”(Nash, 38) and these reports led English colonists to view Native Americans as dangerous savages with whom violence and conflict would be unavoidable. But the Englishmen, like other Europeans, viewed themselves as superior to the Native Americans before even arriving in America and meeting them firsthand and

Throughout history people have always been placed in different categories such as good versus evil, strong versus weak or civilized versus uncivilized. All of these names are based on some individual viewpoints and their perspective of how history unfolded. The occasions that occurred in New England amid the 17th century were of basic significance in the historical backdrop of the United States of America. It was the underlying time of the relations between the Native American and Anglo-Saxon human advancement and the result of the primary many years of shared contacts molded and changed the course of history for both societies. The underlying foundations of American national character

During the 1600s there was many changes in regards to the perception and actions concerning American Indians. In the aftermath of both the Pequot and King Philip’s War, there were casualties from the Indians, and the negative connotations concerning natives grew until the extreme paranoia over the violence of Indians became common thought. Through these wars we also begin to see the idea of Manifest Destiny and the frontier becoming important to the Americas, while after the wars the respect previously given to alliances concerning Indians decreased. This period is known as a time when relations changed with the collision of American and Indian cultures in a new type of environment of America as a new nation. When looking at this period in