Which of the following best describes how the english viewed native american ties to the land?

Virginia described by Captain John Smith and engraved by William Hole, [1612] (MPG 1/284)

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In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean, unlocking what Europeans quickly came to call the ‘New World’. Columbus encountered land with around two million inhabitants that was previously unknown to Europeans. He thought he had found a new route to the East, so he mistakenly called these people ‘Indians’. Over the next few centuries, European powers colonised the Americas, seeking new land and trade opportunities. Spanish and Portuguese colonised large parts of South America, and other European colonial powers, including English explorers, focused on establishing settlements in North America.

The first permanent English settlement called Jamestown (after James I of England) was established in 1607 in Virginia, North America. These first settlers – and those who sent them – were keen to find out about the area and see what they could gain. The settlers began to explore and they soon encountered the Native people of the Chesapeake Bay region. There were many tribes living there at the time, most belonging to three major chiefdoms: the Powhatan, the Piscataway, and the Nanticoke.

This lesson uses documents that describe what happened between early English settlers and Native Americans in Virginia. Investigate how the English described this early contact. How did Native Americans react to the arrival of Europeans? Were relations friendly and, if so, how and why did they change over time?

Tasks

Background

The first English explorers to North America arrived five years after Columbus in 1497, led by the Italian Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot). However, the English did not try to establish permanent settlements in the Americas until much later.

In 1585, English colonists attempted to settle at a place called Roanoke. The settlement lasted only for a short time. After initial friendly relations, hostilities developed as settlers became increasingly reliant on Native Americans for food and fighting eventually broke out between the two groups. The local chieftain was killed by the English and the colony was eventually abandoned.

On May 14, 1607, the first lasting English settlement in North America was established. The settlement was named ‘Jamestown’ after the current King of England, James I. Captain Newport led the expedition, staying until June 22nd, when he sailed back to England for supplies. The source material in this lesson comes from the first few months of the colony (CO 1/1).

After Captain Newport left for England, 104 settlers remained with Captain John Smith placed in charge. These settlers were unprepared, and did not plant the right crops or eat the right foods. They soon encountered starvation and famine, despite stealing food from the Native Americans. In the first three years, despite new arrivals, more than 80% of the settlers died from the combined effects of famine, disease, and warfare.

Throughout the period of European colonisation, millions of Native Americans were killed, either in fighting or by outbreaks of European diseases to which their bodies had no immunity, such as smallpox. It is estimated that between 80% and 95% of the Native American population died within the first 100-150 years of European contact with the Americas.

Those settlers that survived, together with new arrivals, began to cultivate the land, growing crops such as tobacco. As more settlers arrived, more Native American land was taken, and the Native Americans began to fight back.

Teachers' notes

This lesson asks pupils to investigate the early contact between Europeans and Native Americans. Using primary source diary extracts, pupils are able to understand and appreciate the first encounters between European settlers and the indigenous people of North America. Pupils are asked to explore the different aspects of these encounters and why they may have changed.

Some may want to extend this to a comparison between later feelings and actions taken against the Native Americans, examining European stereotypes of the Native Americans, for example the ‘noble and ignoble savage’. To what extent were certain stereotypes already in place while the English settlers were writing these statements? How and why did they subsequently develop and shift?

It is important to explore also what is missing from these sources. Who wrote these journal extracts, and what might their goals be? What other sources should be consulted? It’s especially noteworthy that these sources do not take into account the perspectives of the Native Americans themselves. Why might that be?

What are the limitations in using one perspective? The National Archives code for the document is CO, which stands for Colonial Office. You could discuss with students why the National Archives holds a collection of documents under this name.

The early period covered in this lesson was followed by centuries of colonisation marked by wars, broken treaties, and discriminatory policies that decimated the indigenous North American populations and still impact Native Americans today. Since these sources only show the perspectives of the English settlers, teachers may want to bring in other sources from Native American points of view. The National Museum of the American Indian is a good place to start.

Connections to the Curriculum

AQA GCSE History

Thematic study: Britain: Migration, empires and the people: c790 to the present day

Key stage 3: the development of Church, state and society in Britain 1509-1745:  the first colony in America

External links

Virtual Jamestown
A site giving a lot of information about the original settlement at Jamestown, including a 3D reconstruction of the settlement and information about the people who lived there.

We Have a Story to Tell: Native Peoples of the Chesapeake Region
A teacher’s resource provided by the National Museum of the American Indian. This guide offers contemporary Native perspectives about the historical experiences of the Native Americans of the Chesapeake, in particular, the Powhatan, Nanticoke, and Piscataway peoples.

Native Knowledge 360° Education Initiative
Native Knowledge 360° is an initiative from the National Museum of the American Indian to provide educators and students with new perspectives on Native American history and cultures.

American Indian Treaties
From The National Archives in the United States. Includes examples of and information on treaties between European settlers and Native American tribes.

The road to Jamestown
A National Archives talk on the history of Jamestown.

One of America's earliest and most enduring legends is the story of Thanksgiving: that Pilgrims who had migrated to the new Plymouth Colony from England sat down with the local Wampanoag Indians to celebrate the first successful harvest in 1621. It makes for a great story—cultures coming together and sharing the bounty of the land that would eventually become America. However, the reality of interactions between colonists and the local Native American peoples is a far more complex story of trade, cooperation, and intense conflict as the two societies merged into America.

Finding Common Ground

In the 1600s, when the first English settlers began to arrive in New England, there were about 60,000 Native Americans living in what would later become the New England colonies (Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Haven, and Rhode Island). In the first English colonies in the Northeast (as well as in Virginia), there were initial conflicts and concerns over the threat colonists posed to the Native Americans’ long-established territory. Still, colonists were able to build thriving colonies with the help of locals.

Trade was one of the first bridges between New England colonists and local Native American populations. For the colonists, it was about building the infrastructure and relationships they would need to stay and thrive in the New World. For the Native Americans, it was often about building potential alliances. After only five years, the Plymouth Colony was no longer financially dependent on England due to the roots and local economy it had built alongside the native Massachusetts peoples.

Both sides benefited from the trade and bartering system established by the native peoples and the colonists. The Native Americans provided skins, hides, food, knowledge, and other crucial materials and supplies, while the settlers traded beads and other types of currency (also known as “wampum”) in exchange for these goods.

Ideas were traded alongside physical goods, with wampum sometimes carrying religious significance as well. The first Bible printed in the New World was actually a translation into the language of the Native American people of the Algonquin, suggesting that the dialogues between the colonists and Native Americans were not just political or practical in nature, but also spiritual.

The primary religion of the New England colonies was the strict Puritan Christianity originally brought to the Massachusetts Bay colony by ships like the Mayflower, but as the colonies grew and changed, some of the colonists began to move away from that base. So too did views on the Native Americans who shared their land. A famous example of this is Roger Williams, whose rebellion against the religious powers-that-be led him to create the colony of Rhode Island. Williams held the unorthodox view that the colonists had no right to occupy land without purchasing it from the Native American peoples living there.Over time, however, relations between the now-established colonies and the local peoples deteriorated. Some of the problems were unintentionally introduced by the colonists, like smallpox and other diseases that the English settlers had unwittingly brought over on their ships. Although the colonists suffered diseases of their own early on, they were largely immune to the microbes they brought over to the New World. The local Native American populations, however, had no such immunity to diseases like smallpox, tuberculosis, measles, cholera, and the bubonic plague.Some colonial leaders, such as the Puritan minister Increase Mather, believed that the illness and decimation of the New England Native Americans was an act of God to support the colonists’ right to the land: “[A]bout this time [1631] the Indians began to be quarrelsome touching the Bounds of the Land which they had sold to the English, but God ended the Controversy by sending the Smallpox amongst the Indians.” Some colonial governments used the devastation as a way to convert the natives to Christianity, making them into “praying Indians” and moving them to “praying towns,” or reservations.

The First Indian War

The war lasted 14 months, ending in late 1676 after much of the Native American opposition had been destroyed by the colonial militias and their Native American allies. Ultimately, a treaty was signed in April 1678, ending the conflict.