CHAPTER 1: Relations Between Indians and Colonists
I have seen two generations of my people
die. . . Why will you destroy us?
- POWHATAN, Algonquin
The colonists who began settling on the east coast of North America in the early seventeenth century came to America for various reasons, the most common of which was either to get rich or to seek religious freedom. Relations betweens Indians and the first colonists differed from place to place depending on various circumstances. Relations between the Indians and colonists in Jamestown were generally not very good and, as a result, the Jamestown settlement did not do very well. Relations between the Indians and colonists in Plymouth were markedly better, generally because there were very few Indians left after an epidemic swept New England, as a result of Champlain's visit to the region, shortly before the Pilgrims arrived. Many students think of Plymouth when they think of the first settlement in America. Perhaps this is because textbooks give brief treatment to Jamestown and considerable coverage to Plymouth, casting the Pilgrims as this country's founders. Textbooks downplay Jamestown because it was a disaster and almost did not survive. The 105 men who sailed into the Chesapeake Bay in 1607 were English "gentlemen" seeking gold, who had never worked a day in their lives. They depended on food sent from England, or expected the local Powhatan Indians to provide them food, and as a result more than half of the colony did not survive the first year. This was a pattern in early Indian-European relations, initiated by Columbus, as A History of US: Making Thirteen Colonies points out: "Columbus and his men sat around waiting for the Indians to feed them. At first the Indians did that, but then they said something like "Get your own food." The explorers didn't know how, and they began to starve" (77).
The Jamestown colonists survived because of John Smith, who not only forced the colonists to work but treated the Indians with respect. Then in 1609, after Smith was wounded and had to return to England, the colony almost died out again during a period called "The Starving Time," after which only about 60 colonists remained. They were saved by the arrival of more colonists, and eventually became prosperous because of the tobacco trade they established. By 1622, the settlement had grown to 1,200, only to be diminished again by a third of its population in the Great Massacre, in which the Indians attacked the settlement. In 1699, after the settlement was almost destroyed again in a fire, the colonists moved the Virginia capital seven miles away to Williamsburg.
Most textbooks give a very simplified version of the story, such as A More Perfect Union:
On May 14, 1607, native inhabitants of what is now Virginia saw the first permanent European settlers heave their boats up onto the beaches of Jamestown Island. These colonists had come seeking economic gain. However, the settlement they founded, Jamestown, sat in marshy land that was not only poor farmland but was also a breeding ground for malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
As a result of malnutrition and disease, only 32 of the original 105 settlers at Jamestown survived the first seven months. To make matters worse, relations with surrounding American Indians quickly deteriorated, often as a result of harsh treatment by the new white settlers. Almost the entire colony perished in "the starving time" during the winter of 1609-1610.
During the next twenty years, the Jamestown settlers scratched out a living for themselves, endured hostile Indian attacks, and struggled with deadly diseases. By the 1630s, they had established a successful colony, where tobacco provided enough cash return to keep the settlement going. (23)
Even in the textbooks that offer more details, little more is said about relations between the colonists and Indians at Jamestown. This is because relations between the Indians and the colonists were particularly unsavory. In 1623, the British indulged in the first use of chemical warfare in the colonies when negotiating a treaty with Indians, which only A History of US: Making Thirteen Colonies portrays:
An Englishman named William Tucker arranges a powwow with the Pamunkey Indians. He tells them he wants to sign a peace treaty. The Indians give him corn and sign the treaty. Then Tucker suggests they all celebrate by drinking wine. He doesn't tell them that he has poisoned the wine: 200 Indians die. (38)
A History of US is the only textbook to give Jamestown the ample coverage it warrants as the first successful European settlement in the Americas. It devotes nine chapters to Jamestown, beginning with a chapter on the Powhatan Indians and their lives before the arrival of the colonists. Hakim points out that the Indians had encountered Europeans before, when Spain had tried to establish colonies in the Chesapeake Bay area, and the Indians "knew about white men, and they did want them around" (25). She describes why the first colonists did not make good settlers:
In England gentlemen were not expected or trained to work. They lived on family money. They had time for adventure; they hoped to find riches. . . Most brought their best clothes for the trip: their puffed knee pants, their silk stockings, their feathered hats, and their gaudy blouses. (18)
Hakim devotes a chapter to most of the major aspects of the establishment of the Jamestown colony: John Smith and how he established good relations with the Powhatans; "The Starving Time" and how some historians think the Powhatans may have been trying to get rid of the growing colony by refusing to trade with them and therefore starving them; Pocahontas and her relations with the colonists; the Europeans who continued to come to the colony for various reasons; tobacco; the year of 1619 in which many significant events took place; and the "Great Massacre." In addition, although Hakim discusses relations with the Indians throughout these chapters, she presents a separate chapter devoted to the problems between the Indians and the colonists. She explains how "at first the Indians leaders tried to live in peace with the settlers," but they realized that it wouldn't work because the Europeans used up too much land. Hakim also discusses the way the colonists viewed the Indians:
There was another problem: arrogance. . . Before long, that arrogance would become racism. Some whites believed themselves better than all Indians. . . History shows that racists are troublemakers and often the worst of their own race. There were bigots and racists in early America and they made trouble. Some of them wanted to kill all the Indians. (46-47)
Hakim closes the chapter by explaining that it always came down to disputes over the land in the end:
Even when the Indians and settlers were friendly, it usually didn't last long. The newcomers wanted Indian land, and naturally the Indians did not want to give it up. Some fair-minded white leaders respected the Indians and wanted to share the land, but they were never able to control the land-hungry settlers. (46)
The settlers of Jamestown, although brave to attempt colonization in a new land, were generally lazy and vain and mistreated the people who already inhabited the land. They were "hardly the heroic founders that a great nation requires," so the textbooks emphasize the Plymouth colony (Loewen 81).
The Pilgrims came to America seeking religious freedom, and their religious views influenced the way they viewed the Indians. When the Pilgrims arrived, they found fields cleared for planting, and they believed God had provided the fields for them. They soon learned that Indians had harvested those crops, but smallpox brought by earlier European visitors had nearly wiped out New England's Indian population. "In this bay in which we live," wrote one colonist in 1622, "in former time hath lived about two thousand Indians" (Loewen 82). Then the Pilgrims claimed that it was God's will that the Indians die so the Pilgrims could survive:
John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, called the plague "miraculous." In 1634 he wrote to a friend in England: "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection. . . . " (Loewen 72)
Only two of the textbooks, America: Yesterday and Today and A History of US: Making Thirteen Colonies, mention the epidemic, even though it was common knowledge in the colonies. America: Yesterday and Today mentions the plague, but protects the image of the colonists:
Besides a good harbor, Plymouth had clean streams and fields ready to be planted. The colonists did not know it, but the Indians who had cleared these fields had died from diseases brought by Europeans fishing along the coast. (118)
In fact, the colonists did know it because they started robbing the Indians' abandoned houses on the second day after their arrival (Loewen 82).
The Indians that had survived the epidemic saved the colony from starvation. The Pilgrims arrived in December of 1620, and it was too cold to plant crops. Half of the 102 colonists did not make it through the winter. The American landscape was very different from Europe and the colonists were unfamiliar with the local plant life. Additionally, the colonists, like the Jamestown colonists, had chosen a bad site-it was cold and the ground was rocky. They were lucky that the Indians showed them how and what to cultivate. They had a successful harvest the following year, and the famous "First Thanksgiving" followed.
The First Thanksgiving is one of the biggest myths in American History. America: Yesterday and Today presents the typical account:
The Pilgrims gathered their first harvest in the fall of 1621. They wanted to thank God for this good harvest in their new home. They invited their Indian friends to a feast of wild turkey, goose, squash, and corn. The Indians contributed deer meat. Today, on Thanksgiving Day, Americans honor this Pilgrim celebration. (119-20)
The Pilgrims did not introduce the tradition. Eastern Indians had observed autumnal harvest celebrations for centuries. A History of US: Making Thirteen Colonies is the only textbook to admit this in its account:
In 1621, after the first harvest, the Pilgrims invite their Indian friends to a three-day feast of Thanksgiving. It is not the first Thanksgiving in America, but it is special. The Indians bring five deer; the settlers provide turkeys and other good foods. In one year they have accomplished much. (56)
A History of US also does not invoke the image of God in its account. The Pilgrims did think God-and not the Indians-was responsible for their successful harvest, but the other textbooks do not question this. Like America: Yesterday and Today, America: The People and the Dream promotes this view: "As a way of rejoicing and showing their gratitude to God, the Pilgrims held a special feast of Thanksgiving" (80). This image of Thanksgiving promotes ethnocentrism, the idea that "we" provided for the Indians and that God was on "our" side. "Thanksgiving is the occasion on which we give thanks to God as a nation for the blessings that He hath bestowed upon us," says James Loewen. "More than any other celebration, more even than such overtly patriotic holidays as Independence Day and Memorial Day, Thanksgiving celebrates our ethnocentrism" (85). Living in the Americas adds religious imperialism to its account when it states that, not only the Pilgrims, but present day Americans thank God: "Thanksgiving Day is one of our best loved holidays. Each year, on the fourth Thursday in November, Americans thank God because we live in a free country (75). What if the plague had not decimated the Indian population and the colonists had found those Indian villages inhabited by the Indians, or what if the Indians had not helped the colonists through that first harsh winter? American history most certainly would have been very different. The problem does not lie in the celebration of Thanksgiving itself, but the fact that God is thanked and not the Indians.
Hakim is the only one to point out the irony of these accounts in A History of US: Making Thirteen Colonies. She includes a cartoon by a contemporary Native American artist in which two Indians are pointing to a Pilgrim and one Indian says, "These people are starving. They need food. . . " and the other Indian responds, "Sure, invite them over, we'll feed them real Indian food. Roast turkey and all the trimmings. Pumpkin pie and corn and potatoes, etc. . . Maybe someday they'll repay our kindness and generosity" (45).
The textbooks promote the feel-good history of Squanto and Massasoit's helpfulness and the spirit of the colonists' hard work, and omit the less savory facts about the Massachusetts settlement. The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history, as James Loewen explains:
The Pilgrims' courage in setting forth in the late fall to make their way on a continent new to them remains unsurpassed. In their first year the Pilgrims, like the Indians, suffered from diseases . . . half of them died. It was not immoral for the Pilgrims to have taken over Patuxet. They did not cause the plague and were as baffled as to its origin as the stricken Indian villagers. Massasoit was happy that the Pilgrims were using the bay, for the Patuxet, being dead, had no more need for the site. Pilgrim-Indian relations started reasonably positively. Plymouth, unlike many other colonies, usually paid the Indians for the land it took. In some instances Europeans settled in Indian towns because the Indians had invited them. . . . (88)
The antidote to feel-good history is truthful, straight-forward history that presents the good, the bad, and the controversy. Letting go of the romanticized view of Thanksgiving and teaching students about the issues of the era will make students more thoughtful and tolerant of Indian cultures.
"Considering that virtually none of the standard fare surrounding Thanksgiving contains an ounce of authenticity, historical accuracy, or cross-cultural perception, why is it so apparently ingrained?" asks Michael Dorris, of the Native Studies department at Dartmouth college. "Is it so necessary to the American psyche to perpetually exploit and debase its victims in order to justify its history?" (Dorris 12) Dorris' young son came home from school with a Thanksgiving picture in which the caption read: "They served pumpkins and turkeys and squash; the Indians had never seen such a feast!" Dorris explains, "It must somehow be communicated to educators that no information about Native peoples is truly preferable to a reiteration of the same old stereotypes, particularly in the early years" (Dorris 13). The following is an excerpt from a letter that the author of Anti-Bias Curriculum sent home to the parents at her school, offered in her book as an example of addressing this issue:
Dear Parents,
As a part of our anti-bias curriculum, we are taking a careful look at how we talk about and celebrate Thanksgiving with the children. As some of you may already realize, most of the images of Native Americans found on Thanksgiving cards, decorations, school ditto sheets, etc. are very stereotypic. They are typically inaccurate distortions and rarely show people within any context of daily or real life. Often they are based on a "composite" inaccurate White vision of Native American lifestyles and traditions. Therefore, most of the visual impact of Thanksgiving serves to teach or reinforce children's misinformation and stereotypic thinking about Native Americans and lays a foundation for the later development of prejudice and racism.
Moreover, the "story" of Thanksgiving is almost always told from one side, that of the Europeans who came to America (i.e., Pilgrims). Rarely is it told from the perspective of the people who were already here. Consequently, the vital contribution of the Northeast Native American peoples who contributed to the initial survival of the Pilgrims is typically downplayed or ignored. To many Native American peoples today, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning because it is a reminder that in return for their help, knowledge, and tolerance of original European settlers, they were "repaid" with theft of their land and the genocide of their people.
Therefore, with these considerations in mind, Thanksgiving becomes a more complicated holiday than we previously thought. What then do we propose to do? We are NOT suggesting that we stop celebrating Thanksgiving. Rather we will spend time helping children understand that, first, Thanksgiving means different things and is celebrated in different ways in different families; second, some families do not celebrate it at all and why; and third, that greeting cards and decorations may be unfair and not true images of Native American peoples and those unfair pictures hurt the feelings of those people who are Native Americans.
What we do about Thanksgiving is also a part of a larger curriculum effort to help children learn accurate information about Native Americans of the past and present. Given the pervasive and terrible distortions of Native American life presented in the media and in many children's books, young children's typical conceptions of Native Americans are not only false but are also a foundation for later full-blown racism. . . . (Derman-Sparks 99)
After covering Thanksgiving, most of the textbooks do cover relations between the Indians and other colonial groups, such as the Puritans and the Quakers. Most of the textbooks discuss Roger Williams and explain that one of the reasons the Puritans kicked him out of the colony was his protests against pilfering Indian lands. They also go on to discuss William Penn's policy of tolerance and equal treatment of all people, including the Indians. Just as it is important for textbooks to discuss the appalling treatment the Indians received at the hands of the colonists, it is equally important to point out that there were colonists who respected the Indians and tried to share the land instead of usurp it. The problem lies in those textbooks that still discuss only the good side of the colonists and conceal or downplay the bad side, as has been the norm for most of history. "The whites told only one side," said Yellow Wolf of the Nez Percés. "Told it to please themselves. Told much that is not true. Only his own best deeds, only the worst deeds of the Indians, has the white man told" (Brown 316).
Although the Indians had been weakened in numbers from disease, they did not step back and allow the colonists to seize their lands. Contact between Europeans and Indians followed a perpetual pattern. First contact was generally peaceable as the Indians were hospitable people, but as soon as they realized the Europeans intended to steal their land instead of share it, the good relations dissolved. Two major wars were fought between the colonists and the New England Indians in the seventeenth century, the Pequot War (1637) and King Phillips War (1675-76). These wars resulted in embittered defeat for the Indians and the end of organized resistance in the region. The 1622 Jamestown Massacre and one other fiercely fought war in Virginia, in 1644, had already led to the decline of Indian political power in Virginia. Although the colonists did not win easily, the Indians were too weakened by disease to prevail. Indians continued to fight off colonists who were continually encroaching on their lands. Again, the Indians suffered terrible defeats, in wars such as the Tuscarora War (1711-12), which decimated the North Carolina Indian population, and the Yamassee War of 1715 which virtually wiped out the South Carolina Yamassees (Hirschfelder and de Montano 3-6).
Finally, in the mid-eighteenth century, the Indians entered the French and Indian War (1754-63) which was provoked by the struggle between the British and French to fulfill Europe's growing demand for fur. The Indians felt this was their last chance to stop the invasion, by allying themselves with Europeans who had the numbers and military power to win wars. Most tribes sided with the French, who were primarily interested in the fur trade and had therefore treated the Indians more respectfully, given their dependence on the Indians for fur. While the British were active in the fur trade as well, they were also interested in settling the land and had no problem vanquishing the Indians in order to get it. However, some Indian tribes allied themselves with the British, who were bombarding Indians with gifts in attempts to woo them to the British side (Hirschfelder and de Montano 8). When the war was over, the Indians who had allied themselves with French had been defeated, and those allied with the British stopped receiving gifts and were abandoned by the British.
By the later half of the eighteenth century, Indians all along the eastern coast were ready to revolt. The Indians were no longer in danger of losing just their lands, but their entire culture as well. The settlers were quickly destroying the land and the animals upon which the very livelihood of the Indians depended. In the next century and a half, the Indians would dedicate themselves to fighting "the Americans" in the struggle to retain their homeland.
Exploring Our Country | Living in the Americas | Living in the United States | Five Centuries in America | Liberty and Union | America! America! | The American People | America Past and Present | Our Country's History | The US: Its Past, Purpose and Promise |
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Roanoke colony | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | N | Y | Y | Y |
Jamestown settlement | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
reason for coming (gold) | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | N | N | Y | Y | N |
colonists unwilling to work | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | N | Y | Y | Y | N |
John Smith | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | N |
The Starving Time | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | N | Y | Y | N |
relations with Powhatan Indians | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | Y |
Powhatan (king) | Y | N | N | N | N | N | Y | Y | N | N |
Pocahontas | Y | Y | Y | N | N | N | Y | Y | N | N |
tobacco industry | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y |
poisoning of Indians | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N |
Jamestown Massacre | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | Y | N | N |
Plymouth settlement | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
reason for coming (religious freedom) | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
found empty crop fields | Y | N | N | N | N | N | N | Y | Y | N |
disease amongst Indians | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N |
Massasoit | Y | N | N | N | N | Y | N | N | N | N |
Samoset | Y | Y | Y | N | N | N | N | N | Y | N |
Squanto | Y | Y | Y | N | N | Y | N | N | Y | N |
help from Indians | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N |
Thanksgiving | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | N | Y | Y | Y | N |
thanks to God | N | Y | Y | N | N | N | N | N | N | N |
Roger Williams as Indian defender | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | N | N |
William Penn as Indian ally | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | N | Y | N |
Pequot War | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N |
King Phillip's War | Y | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N |
Metacom (King Phillip) | Y | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N |
America: Yesterday & Today | Exploring America's Heritage | The US: Past to Present | America Will Be | The US & Its Neighbors | The US: Its History & Neighbors | America: People & the Dream | The American Nation | A More Perfect Union | A History of US |
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Roanoke colony | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
Jamestown settlement | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
reason for coming (gold) | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | Y |
colonists unwilling to work | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y |
John Smith | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y |
The Starving Time | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | N | Y | N | Y | Y |
relations with Powhatan Indians | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | N | Y |
Powhatan (king) | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | N | Y |
Pocahontas | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y |
tobacco industry | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
poisoning of Indians | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | Y |
Jamestown Massacre | N | N | N | N | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | Y |
Plymouth settlement | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
reason for coming (religious freedom) | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
found empty crop fields | Y | N | Y | N | N | N | N | N | N | Y |
disease amongst Indians | Y | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | Y |
Massasoit | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y |
Samoset | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | Y |
Squanto | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
help from Indians | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
Thanksgiving | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
thanks to God | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | N |
Roger Williams as Indian defender | N | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | Y |
William Penn as Indian ally | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
Pequot War | N | N | N | N | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | Y |
King Phillip's War | N | N | N | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
Metacom (King Phillip) | N | N | N | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |