Indian Relations In Early Jamestown

Beginning in the sixteenth century, Europeans made the voyage to a “new world” in order to achieve dreams of opportunity and riches. In this other world the Europeans came upon another people, which naturally led to a cultural exchange between different groups of people. Although we commonly refer to European and Indian relations as being between just two very different groups of people, it is important to recognize this is not entirely true. Although the settlers of the new world are singularly referred to as Europeans, each group of people came from a different nation and with different motives and expectations of the new world. Similarly, the Indians were neither a united group nor necessarily friendly with each other. Due to the

This paper will argue that the Native cultures had significant differences between them, as well as differences with the European colonists. Europeans also greatly differed in their encounters with, and treatment of these Native Americans.

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.

The more southern colonies were under very different circumstances than their religious neighbors up north. Document five does show the thirsty and greedy psyche’s of the colonists on their way to the Virginia colony. This greed was fueled by the south’s land was more fertile and arable and allowed for larger amounts of cash crops and increased profits and much more monetary incentive to become a colonist rather religious incentive. After the initial crisis of the Jamestown colony, Jamestown’s population grew exponentially after large amounts of people, as seen in document four, crossed the ocean not for God but for gold. Soon the colony grew at such a rate the governor Berkeley was forced to beseech the king and parliament for more soldiers

Settlers in Jamestown died because of bad relations with the natives and unpreparedness of the land. In Document E we can see in the first three years of being in Jamestown the natives killed a 117 people out of the 424 people that arrived from England. Had the Englishmen been more peaceful and less demanding of the people the Powhatans wouldn’t feel so threatened.

When thinking about the first settlers of the United States, the Thirteen Colonies come to mind. Jamestown was honored as being the first town to successfully settle upon the newly discovered land. What most people do not know is that there was technically fourteen original colonies, and the Roanoke settlement was the first. In 1586, Queen Elizabeth I instructed a group of around one hundred and fifteen men and women to start a new life on the uncivilized land. After some time of being on the island, supplies were running short. John White and Ralph Lane, the colonists governors, sailed back to Britain to gather the necessary goods, but ran into issues when trying to return. A naval battle between Spain and Britain restricted White and Lane

Imagine that you are living in early Jamestown, watching your fellow colonist die one by one. Early Jamestown is in present day Virginia. Over half of the original 110 settlers died by December 1607. By 1611, in Jamestown, more than 80% of 500 settlers died. When English colonist arrived, they built a fort on a place they called James Island, that they later called Jamestown. Many Jamestown colonist died because of environmental issues, lack of settler skills, and their relationship with the natives.

The first business that the settlers got to after they shortly arrived in Jamestown was establishing who would be making decisions. They chose seven men to be a part of a council. Captain John Smith was included in this council. After getting settled in to Jamestown, a report was made to the King. This was done by two ships traveling all the way back to England. On the way back to Jamestown from England, more supplies were brought back and more people to become settlers of Jamestown. But in the time that the people were back in England giving a report to the King, most of the settlers back in Jamestown had become very sick and many had starved to death due to the lack of supplies and food. The indigenous people of the land where Jamestown was located tried many times to attack the settlers who were left behind.

America has come a long way since Columbus began his voyage in 1492. In “Beyond 1492: Encounter in Colonial North America,” James Axtell explains that when it comes to the Indian-European encounter, there’s more to the story than what the average person grasps. Most people know of how the Natives were mistreated and killed off by the Europeans with biological warfare and that a couple thousands of years later the Pilgrims and Natives had their first feast together known as “Thanksgiving”. However, in chapter four, Axtell’s essay describes that surprisingly, there was a “variety of ways Indians responded to the Europeans that invaded their lands in the wake of Columbus.” Axtell chronologically recapitulates the history of the Indian reactions to the European encounters up until the 1700’s and categorizes them into 5 strategies.

As late as 1691, King William III and Queen Mary II sent word that Jamestown would remain the seat of government in Virginia. However, when Lt. Governor

While trade and exchange between the two worlds was essential to the existence of both Europeans and the Native Americans, it was the unforeseen circumstances and unseen biology that inevitably doomed the population of the Native American tribes. What was a source of commerce and trade was also a source of “misunderstanding and mistrust”. (1)

“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

According to the English, Native Americans in early seventeenth century Virginia left an imprint on the New England earth. They traditionally settled near water and in small groups, and not in a larger population. They also made little benefit of their land, being never fertile. The English settlers were very taken at the fact they didn’t use the land to the best it could be used. They were tall, brown and proportionate appearance. Also the men were fewer than the women and children. The English felt the Indians had the right to use the land, but letting them have ownership of the land and having it all to themselves was not an accepted English view. The English view also had many limitations to what the natives really were like.

Examining the complex relationship between Indians and early English colonists, Karen Kupperman notes that English writers on colonization described Indian societies as viable civilizations and regarded economic prosperity in the New World as a viable option. Potential colonists saw the native peoples as potential trading partners and friendly and receptive to European settlements. This positive view, however, contrasted with other descriptions of savagery that grew out of cultural assumptions and misunderstandings about gender roles, matrilineal societies, clothing, diet, religious worship, and most critically, notions of individual property ownership and land use. The English and the Indians each viewed one another through their own frames of reference and understandings of how human societies should function. All of this contributed to the marginalization of Indians from English colonial society. In light of the conflicting nature of English-Indian relations, the decimation of the Indian population through disease, and the increasing difficulty and expense of indentured servants, the English eventually turned to African slaves for

In the early 1600’s, when the European settlers arrived in Jamestown, there were already around 15,000-25,000 Indians living around the area. The leader of the most prominent tribe in the area, Powhatan, stayed in a neutral relationship with the English in the area for the first couple of years after Jamestown following the start of the colony. During the time the Indians