How Did The Native Americans Contribute To The Death Of The Puritans

Values are defined as the importance or preciousness of something. A long time ago, around the early 16 century the puritans came to the America they live with the Native Americans and had a set of values they both believed in and lived by. One may not expect to find many similarities between both of these groups, but there are many. The Native Americans were not very different than the Puritans. Native Americans valued many things like religion, family, and the concept of things being balanced. Specifically, they strongly appreciated their family. Puritans similar to the Native Americans, the Puritans were more civilized and valued family, life, religion.

In early 1600's, Puritans followed the Pilgrims to America then they landed in Massachusetts bay. The Puritans started the colony because they wanted to escape religious persecution. The only religion was the Puritans.In the early 1600's of, Massachusetts there was only one Indian tribe,and that was the Wampanoag. Puritans tried to purify the Anglican church because they wanted to make services simpler and taking ranks of authority

The moment when Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas was the beginning of the interactions between American Indians and European colonists. These very first interactions were mostly positive due to the the generosity of the Indians but turned violent when the Europeans began to mistreat, kidnap, enslave, and kill the American Indians. Actions taken by the American Indians and European Colonists, especially actions of violence, during the 1600s caused the relationship between the two parties to be negative and conflicting in New England and Chesapeake.

Religion played a very important role in both Puritan and Native American society, though their ideologies differed greatly. The puritans were very religious and it mattered more of

Religion played a very important role in both Native American and Puritan society, though their idea’s differed greatly. The puritans were very religious people, and it mattered more of what God thought of them more than anything and what everyone else thought didn’t matter as much. While the Puritans were the very religious ones, the Native Americans cared more about viewing people for who they were as people than their religious beliefs. Although the Native Americans had their own religious beliefs, the Puritans also thought that the Native Americans needed to “prove themselves worthy”, of their religious beliefs. The Puritans did not believe that the Native Americans had any kind of regulation on their own lives. It was very

From the very first interaction, the social and political relations between the Native Americans and the Europeans had begun with much tension. Many Europeans came to the Americas with the intention of discovery. However, when it became apparent that these new lands were inhibited the motives changed, and then the natives were colonized, abused, and in many cases killed. From then and throughout the impending periods of time, the relations between the natives and the Europeans had a few points of mutual peacefulness, but were overall negative.

Later on, as more colonists came to the new world, even more Indians were killed. When missionaries tried to convert the Indians, there were miscommunications over the teachings, which lead to even more deaths. When pictures of Mary and other religious symbols were given to the Native Americans, they buried them so as to ask God for a good harvest. The colonists interpreted this as denying the Christian faith, and therefore burned the Indians at the stake, so as to purify their souls. The actions of the missionaries and other colonists were so evil that when an Indian was being burned at the stake, he “asked the Franciscan friar if Christians all went to Heaven. When told that they did, [the Indian] said he would prefer to go to Hell.” The horrible atrocities that the European settlers brought upon the Indians were awful. It decimated the population, leaving less than one tenth of the Indians living compared to the amount before Columbus found America.

Imagine a person bought something that the person valued. The person was the owner of the product and took good care of it.Then, all of a sudden, a stranger comes and takes that product and declares it “discovered”. Now since the stranger “discovered” it, the product now has to be shared among them. This is similar to what happened to Native Americans in North America. Native Americans owned and lived in North America for several thousand years. Then, all of a sudden, European explorers came to North America and claimed the land “discovered”. Europeans started moving into the land and later, started sharing the land. Encounters between Europeans and Native Americans in the colonial era led to the exchange of diseases with Native Americans,

The fascination with Native Americans has been a constant with outsiders since explorers first “discovered” the New World. The biggest surge in this fascination came in the mid-19th century when the Indian Wars were starting to come to an end and the belief that Native Americans were disappearing, walking into the sunset never to be seen again. This led to an increase in the collecting of anything Native American, from artifacts to stories to portraits. The inevitable outcome of this was that Native Americans, who were never considered very highly to begin with, where now moved into a category of scientific interest to be study. This scientific interest in Native Americans is what many museums and other institutions based their collections and exhibits on and is one of the issues that many Native Americans have with how both their people and their culture were, and to some extent still are, represented in these places.

Beginning in the Sixteenth Century, Europeans sought to escape religious and class persecution by engaging on a journey to the New World. However, they were unaware that this “New World” was already inhabited by many groups of Native Americans, who had been established on the continent for thousands of years. At first, the two ethnic groups lived in relative peace. The colonists of Jamestown survived due to Powhatan’s tribe teaching them how to cultivate the land. However, things took a twisted turn as the colonists grew greedy. Due to cultural differences, there was stark tension between the Indian groups and European settlers in New England prior to 1750, which tremendously influenced early political means, social life, and the economy.

They welcomed the natives, and willingly started trading with them. They wanted to turn these uncivilized people into civilized Christians. While some Native tribes embraced the English culture, some resisted the colonists’ attempts to change them. Their refusal to conform to European culture, made Europeans angry. Consequently, hostilities soon broke out between the two groups such as the Massacre at Pequot village (Doc 3). This violence of these confrontations with the Native Americans caused a shift in English attitudes towards different races. While, their failure to make the Native Americans part of their culture, caused them to associate all people of color with negative characteristics, some, such as Nathaniel Bacon, who led a rebellion against the Native Americans as he felt that they had to suppressed, felt a sense of .guilt, as they realized that many times they had held innocent Native Americans accountable for the deeds of another (Doc

In the seventeenth century, many Puritans began to settle in New England. The Puritans lived a harsh religious life, being very strict in accordance to the Bible. They believed that Satan lived on earth with them, and influenced weak people, turning them into witches and wizards. The Puritans punished these witches strictly by death, but the evidence had to be solid. In Salem, a Puritan city in Massachusetts, many witchcraft trials were held in a 15 week period, leading to the accusations and deaths of more than 100 men and women. The Salem Witch Trial Hysteria of 1692 was caused by the existing social conflict of the time, influenced by the religious conditions and triggered by medical problems from a contaminated harvest.

“They were traumatized with several diseases (like chickenpox and measles, which were brought, by the settlers)”(Document-Impact of colonization on Native Americans). The natives bodies had never met these diseases before so they couldn’t fight off the illness, just Smallpox alone killed 24 million natives(Impact of Colonization on Native Americans”-Document). The Europeans later enslaved the natives to work on the farms or just to be a servant. Harsh treatment also contributed to the death of many Native Americans. There were many missions that were set up that were trying to convert native Americans over to Catholicism, but when the natives kept practicing their own religion they would get punished such as being whipped and harshly treated(DN-Life in the colonies).

Indians from this point began to be dehumanized even further. Due to the color of their skin they were associated with the Devil. The settlers believed that Indians must be removed in order to progress in the settling of our land. ?God was making room for the colonists and hath hereby cleared our title to this place? (Takaki, 40). The early Puritans believed that they were meant to spread their religion and beliefs across the entire land.

Puritanism was a religious movement that began in the late sixteenth century. The puritans were a group of reformed protestants who sought to “purify” the Church of England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, puritanism was not just a historical movement, it was a lifestyle that the puritans brought to New England. Puritanism can be defined by predestination, calling, covenant, Protestant ethic, and conversion.