English-Indian Relations free essay sample

DBQ #2 The relations between Indians and the English were variable. On one side of the spectrum, the Wampanoag and Puritans got along very well, even having the â€Å"first Thanksgiving†. On the other end, the Pequot War waged the Pequots against three English colonies. Both sides tried to assert their interests; the English used their advanced firearms to drive the Indians off their land, and also accidentally their Old World diseases helped their cause. The Indians used their knowledge of the land and agriculture to attempt to befriend the English, while when they fought they fought in collaboration with other tribes, mostly in guerilla warfare. Alas, the English diseases and weaponry utterly decimated the Indians, who were forced to move deeper and deeper inland. In the first contact between the English and Indians at Jamestown, the Indians attempted to ally with the English, but soon soured with bad governorship of the English. When John Rolfe arrived he began to help improve the relationship between the two cultures, acquiring more land for the English for crops like tobacco, which he made into an economically viable product. He improved the relations so much that he married Pocahontas, the daughter of the Powhatan chief. After he left the relations began to turn for the worse when the English began to want more and more land from the Powhatans. When the English landed at Plymouth, they were on their own for a short period of time, and didn’t fare very well, losing 45 people over the first winter. In the early spring, a Wampanoag tribesman named Samoset had the first formal contact with them. The Wampanoag were a very friendly group, and they had a member named Squanto, who had previously been a slave on an English ship, who was fluent in English. The Wampanoag really helped out the new settlers, teaching them their ways of agriculture and hunting. This assistance really helped the Puritans get on their feet and not get entirely wiped out from having no previous knowledge of farming or hunting. The two factions had the â€Å"first Thanksgiving† in the fall of 1621; which celebrated the harvest of the first crops planted by Puritan settlers. In the early years, the relations between English and Indians at Plymouth were very good, but later steadily declined for the same reasons as most other colonies’ relationships with the natives-they wanted more land. The worst Indian-English relationship was definitely that between the Pequots and Massachusetts Bay Colony. These two sides fought each other in the Pequot War fought between 1634-1638. This war originally started when an English slaver John Stone kidnapped some Pequots to be put into slavery. The Indians caught and killed him, which ignited the hostilities, along with the murder of John Oldham. The Pequots and English each carried out a few raids here and there, until 1637, when the English, with Indian allies, besieged a Pequot fort, set it on fire, and shot and killed all the survivors that were fleeing away. That day three hundred Pequot men, women, and children were killed at the hands of the English, all but entirely eliminating the Pequots and securing a quasi-peace between the two groups for a while. This war was just a small inkling of what was to come later on in the colonial days when English-Indian relations were even more strained. The English had many ways they planned to accomplish their goal of securing a lot of land from the Indians. The English planned to secure more land by forcing the Indians off of it. They would do so with their use of firearms mainly. The English rifles used in the 1600’s were very lethal, and were used to force the Indians to submit and allow the English more land. Also, although not planned to be, the Indian populations were weakened severely by the diseases brought by the English. The English who settled in the colonies were not the first Europeans the Indians came in contact with, as there had been fur traders there many years. So by the time the settlers arrived, the populations of the Indians were already weakened. Soon more than 90% of the indigenous population had been killed by the English, either in war or by disease. Many of the rest were converted to Christianity or sold into slavery once the English had control of their old lands. The English also wanted to become economically profitable with the land taken from the Indians. They farmed the plots of land they had gotten, but never for much profit. Soon John Rolfe figured out how to make tobacco a good cash crop. The only problem was Indians weren’t a stable workforce, so once slaves from Africa were cheap and available, the plantations boomed. Crops such as rice and indigo also needed slaves, and the English profited mightily of the land taken from the Indians. The Indians also attempted to keep their land, but at first they just helped the English. This proved to be part of their downfall, as they allowed English populations to be prolonged, and eventually destroy them. The English would readily take any help they could get from the Indians, as they needed help adapting to the New World. Once the English are able to stand alone in their colonies, they went and stabbed their Indian allies in the back and took their land. The Indians had no choice but to fight back. The Indians really had little weaponry to combat the English. The bow, although more mobile and faster to reload, did not have the killing power of English muskets. The Indians really had one choice, that is to band together and form huge coalitions to wage war against the English. Metacomet, known to the English as King Philip, lead one of the confederacies. He fought the New England Confederation in King Philip’s War, raiding many of the towns inhabited by Puritans. The Indians raided 52 towns, and 12 were burnt entirely to the ground. At the end, when Metacomet died, hundreds of settlers and Indians lay dead, and Metacomet’s severed head wake paraded on a pike to Plymouth. The war was set off by Metacomet’s old advisor, and Christian convert, John Sassamon, who told colonial authorities of Metacomet’s plan. Also, the Indians used sabotage, described by Edward Waterhouse, â€Å"sat down at breakfast with our peoples†¦they basely and barbarously murdered, not sparing either age or sex, man, woman, or child. † The English won this conflict because of their more advanced weaponry and the spread of disease through the Indians. The bow of the Indians was no match for the very lethal English muskets. The most important factor, however, was the spread of disease. The English had built immunity to the Old World diseases they brought to the New World, and these diseases ran roughshod all over the indigenous population. The Indians had nothing to combat these diseases with, and eventually had to give up their land. They either moved farther inland or were sold into slavery, but those Indian cultures weren’t heard from again.