The Indian 's New World : The Catawba Experience

Colin Calloway carries out a captivating explanation to inform his audience that neither the Colonists of the New World nor the Native Americans were considered "monolithic." Instead, they were much more nuanced in their understanding of the multifaceted attributes of the cultural associations in the Colonial United States. Calloway surveys this intriguing story with illustrative and detailed ways that offer a pertinent starting point for any individual wanting to know more about how the European people and Native Americans cooperated or interacted with one another in America 's first years.

Have you ever heard of the Cherokee Indians? Sure you have! Just as a reminder, they are the biggest tribe, and most known of out of all the Indian tribes there has ever been in the southeast. They are very important to American History and helped shaped us to be the Americans we are today, which is clearly what I 'll be explaining in this paper. Throughout the paper, I 'll tell you everything you need to know about the Cherokee Indians and continue to relate to the thesis.

The Lakota, an Indian group of the Great Plains, established their community in the Black Hills in the late eighteenth century (9). This group is an example of an Indian community that got severely oppressed through imperialistic American actions and policy, as the Americans failed to recognize the Lakota’s sovereignty and ownership of the Black Hills. Jeffrey Ostler, author of The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground, shows that the Lakota exemplified the trends and subsequent challenges that Indians faced in America. These challenges included the plurality of groups, a shared colonial experience, dynamic change, external structural forces, and historical agency.

Chapter 7 of Alan Taylor’s American Revolutions begins by describing the tense state of affairs between American Patriots and Native Indians in 1775. Both sides feared the other and were determined not to let their enemy defeat them. The Patriots were angry with the British for seeking alliance with the Indians, compromising their “racial solidarity”, in order to gain a military advantage. The Natives believed that American independence would be the catalyst for their downfall into slavery and landlessness. The author moves on to say that this was not the case with all tribes. For example, weak bands of Indians in the Carolinas allied with Patriots and fought in their army in hopes for protection after the war. However, the reality was that

Throughout the course of history there have been numerous accounts regarding Native American and European interaction. From first contact to Indian removal, the interaction was somewhat of a roller coaster ride, leading from times of peace to mini wars and rebellions staged by the Native American tribes. The first part of this essay will briefly discuss the pre-Columbian Indian civilizations in North America and provide simple awareness of their cultures, while the second part of this essay will explore all major Native American contact leading up to, and through, the American Revolution while emphasizing the impact of Spanish, French, and English explorers and colonies on Native American culture and vice versa. The third, and final, part of this essay will explore Native American interaction after the American Revolution with emphasis on westward expansion and the Jacksonian Era leading into Indian removal. Furthermore, this essay will attempt to provide insight into aspects of Native American/European interaction that are often ignored such as: gender relations between European men and Native American women, slavery and captivity of native peoples, trade between Native Americans and European colonists, and the effects of religion on Native American tribes.

As a rule, the Native Americans are perhaps the most overlooked sector of the population of the colonies. This war completely varied their knowledge of their land and its value. “We know our lands have now become more valuable,” (Document B). No more would they be fooled by

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.

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.

West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 (2014) is Claudio Saunt’s third book. Saunt, who completed his undergraduate work at Columbia and received his PhD from Duke, has taught at the University of Georgia since 1998 and is currently the department head of American Studies and the Associate Director of the Institute of Native American Studies. His other major works are A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733-1816 (1999) and Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of the American Family (2005).

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,

“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.

Looking throughout the overwhelming events the American Revolution had on everyone involved, allows us to examine how the governments’ policies toward the Indians changed over time. It shows how the policy changes effected the Indians as well as the Americans’, their attitudes toward each other as the American’s pushed westward and the Indians resisted. Then the actions on both sides which lead up to the final removal of all Indians to west of the Mississippi in 1830’s.

The social interactions that the New England and Chesapeake colonies had between Indians and their own people were very different due to alternate motives. Documents A and H each show the steps taken in order to achieve social unity. It is obvious that the two colonies didn’t have the best relationship with the Indians, but both colonies had different approaches when it came to mending relationships. Bacon’s Rebellion was a revolt against Governor Berkeley of Virginia in 1676 that started due to Berkeley's resistance of not fighting against the Indians because of the fur trade. This showed that the Chesapeake colony would rather take a better economy as opposed to stable social interactions,

In 1607, when English settlers arrived in North America, over ten thousand Native Americans were already inhabiting Virginia. English leader, John Smith, negotiated trade terms with the Indian leader Powhatan. Powhatan was only interested in trade involving weapons, but John Smith denied any weapons on account that there was none to spare. Powhatan the denied there was any corn to spare that the English wanted. The intentions for the trade brought about many questions from both parties. Powhatan questioned Smith as to why they would need all the weapons if they had come there “all being friends;” whereas Smith was wary of Powhatan and his deep interest in their swords (Foner, VOF, Document 7). This encounter between John Smith and Powhatan displays one of the many instances of conflict between European settlers and Native Americans.

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