The Native American
Response
Early American Social History
Term 1, Week 7
Introduction
• How do NAms respond to whites?
• Possible responses = Violence,
Accommodation, Flight – all tried during 17thC
• Indians had no concept that more whites would
be coming, and how many there would be.
Previous encounters in N Am always been small
scale and temporary, Florida, New England,
fishermen, expeditions etc.
• Indian perspective – ‘Looking East’
• Case study of Powhatan and Narragansett
Most dominant
Indian groups
Shell gorget found near
Patawomeke werowance on the
Potomac River. Weeping eye motif
is of Mississippian design
Powhatan’s Empire
• Powhatan = paramount chief.
Empire not a confederacy,
subject tribes retained
individuality but paid tribute to
Powhatan.
• P’s control over other tribes
lessened with distance, so
immediate coastal tribes
sometimes only loosely allied
with him
• Some tribes in Chesapeake
Bay = enemies of P and
resisted his attempts to assert
control over them.
Powhatan’s
Perception
• Powhatan thought of the
English as possible ally,
little trouble, small group vs
c.10,000 Algonquin Indians.
• Contrast size of Jamestown
– never more than about
3000 before 1624 – high
death toll. How could they
be a threat?
• P liked trade relationship,
(esp for metals) got
something out of it, also
potential ally vs Siouan
tribes in Piedmont.
• Allows vassal tribes to
conduct own interaction
with English, P = gauging
Eng strength.
“Pohatan, King of Virginia’s
habit all embroidered with
shells, or Roanoke.”
As described on p. 47 of
the catalog, Museum
Tradescantianum (London,
1656). Original artifact
(four pieces of tanned
buckskin, measuring 2.33
meters long by 1.5 meters
wide) preserved in the
Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford.
Reconstruction of Indian
home
Initial Encounters
• Both sides wary of other, Jamestown heavily fortified,
Indians remained distant.
• Disputes over food supplies led to skirmishes between
whites and Indians, often involving deaths but not war.
• Skirmishes arose out of misunderstandings over
possessions (common vs private possession), leading to
accusations of theft and resultant tit-for-tat violence.
• P sent food during winter of 1607, acceptance of it, and
his mercy towards John Smith when he was captured by
P, indicated that he thought Eng were new vassal tribe in
his confederacy.
1st Anglo-Powhatan War 1609-14
• Eng tried to change that 1608 by crowning P, ie trying to
make him a vassal of James I. P resisted – cultural
misunderstanding abounded.
• Eng increasingly dependent on P for corn, but by 1609
he would only trade for guns
• Eng try to find alternative supplies, fail, desperate
measures all met by resistance from P, meets violence
with violence, by winter 1609 all Eng confined to
Jamestown, 'starving time'. Nearest P gets to destroying
Eng settlement.
• Eng ready to leave in Spring 1610, but arrival of 900 new
settlers and new governor re-established colony. Larger
numbers of troops, better weaponry and tactics mean P
less effective vs English after 1610. Eng capture
Pocahontas 1613, leads eventually to treaty in 1614, and
her marriage to John Rolfe.
Pocahontas, c.1597-1617
Daughter of Powhatan, wife of John Rolfe, 1614-7 mother of Thomas
Rolfe, Virginia Planter in 1640s.
Drift to 2nd Anglo-Powhatan War
• Indian – White rels continue to improve while
Virginia under the laws divine moral and martial,
1614-18, white settlement more under control,
disciplined, settled.
• Trade mutually beneficial but Powhatan dies
1618, succeeded by younger brother
Opechancanough, who was concerned about the
deterioration of traditional Indian culture since
1607, eg alcohol, guns etc rife throughout Native
American society.
• Most signif – land encroachment due to demands
of tobacco, pushed Powhatans from their trad
farming and hunting areas.
• Concepts of land holding v.diff, Powhatan seminomadic, but would return to lands over a number
of years, only to find them cultivated as ‘empty’
by whites.
Massacre of
1622
• Low level of violence had
always continued in frontier
areas, but famous warrior
Nemattenew was killed by
an Eng servant in Nov 1621.
• Opechancanough ordered a
co-ordinated attack on the
white settlements
throughout Virginia on
Friday, March 22nd, 1622.
• 347 people killed, out of a
total population of 1200.
• Jamestown pre-warned by
friendly tribes.
• Significance of attack changed perceptions of
whites towards Indians.
Noble savage concept
replaced with ethnic
cleansing doctrine, no
lingering sympathy for their
plight
Engraving by Matthaeus Merian (1628)
2nd Anglo-Powhatan War, 1622-32
• O expected whites to withdraw after such an
attack i.e. accept defeat – what Indian tribe
would have done
• But Eng regrouped, attacked Indian villages with
ferocity, stealing/destroying corn, puts pressure
on food supplies.
• Indians not prepared for long term war, no pool
of supplies, increasingly Eng had upper hand,
esp as more settlers arrive from England since
Indians could not replace lost warriors
• Violence continues sporadically until truce 1632,
saw Indians expelled from area nr Jamestown.
3rd Anglo-Powhatan War, 1644-6
• Final phase, last throw of dice, 3rd
Powhatan war of 1644-46, Op
repeated his plan of a general attack
and succeeded in killing about 500
whites, but all in frontier areas, not
able to penetrate to Jamestown. Op
captured 1646 and killed. Effective
end of P empire, new treaty 1646
pushes frontier further back.
• Many tribes remain in tidewater area,
but now fragmented and often
surrounded by white settlement –
beginning of reservation system,
totally subordinate to Va govt.
The Chickahominy
become "New
Englishmen"
Powhatans after 1646
• Attacked by English during Bacon’s
Rebellion in 1675-6, even though nothing
to do with frontier attacks
• All tribes getting smaller due to disease
and often merge with other tribes – loss of
individual identity.
• Only two small reservations for the
Pamunkeys and Mattaponis left by 1705.
Narragansett
• Tribe based in southern New England, one of the
largest, numbering about 30,000, seems to have
escaped the epidemics that ravaged coastal tribes
between 1610-20. Mainly in contact with Dutch in
Hudson valley.
• Had little to do with Eng settlement at Plymouth in 1620,
who allied with Wampanoags, small tribe with little power
and small nos.
• Wamp. saw Eng as valuable ally vs Narragansett.
• Wamp. chief Massasoit sent Squanto as interpreter and
guide, and Plymouth colony had good rels with that tribe,
but not with all others. E.g conflict with Massachusetts
Indians.
Narragansett initial encounters
• Settlement of Mass Bay from 1630 brought new player
into region, massive impact on fur trade and wampum
trade.
• White cultural and religious attitudes towards NAms:
possible converts? Ideas of cultural superiority.
• Disease amongst Pequot (smallpox) reduced them from
13,000 to 3,000. Pequot sought help from Mass Bay vs
Narragansett, but terms were stiff regarding land and
wampum. Suspicion amongst Puritans that Pequot
preparing for war, ordered to surrender those who had
attacked Eng settlements, war ensues 1636-7, inglorious
end for Pequot, villages attacked with Narr assistance,
all killed, tribe declared dissolved.
• Narr shocked at massacre, not how N.Ams did warfare
John Mason’s Brief History of the Pequot War (1637)
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•
•
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The Captain also said, We must burn them; and immediately stepping into the
Wigwam where he had been before, brought out a Fire Brand, and putting it into the
Matts with which they were covered, set the Wigwams on Fire. Lieutenant Thomas
Bull and Nicholas Omsted beholding, came up; and when it was thoroughly kindled,
the Indians ran as Men most dreadfully Amazed.
And indeed such a dreadful Terror did the Almighty let fal upon their Spirits, that they
would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished. And
when the Fort was thoroughly Fired, Command was given, that all should fall off and
surround the Fort; which was readily attended by all; only one Arthur Smith being so
wounded that he could not move out of the Place, who was happily espied by
Lieutenant Bull, and by him rescued.
.... But God was above them, who laughed at his Enemies and the Enemies of his
People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven: Thus were the Stout Hearted spoiled,
having slept their last Sleep, and none of their Men could find their Hands: Thus did
the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies!
.... And thus in little more than one Hour's space was their impregnable Fort with
themselves utterly Destroyed, to the Number of six or seven Hundred, as some of
themselves confessed. There were only seven taken Captive and about seven
escaped.
Of the English, there were two Slain outright, and about twenty Wounded:
Narragansetts sucked in
• Narr had managed to remain indep and
free from threats because of size of
popn, and out of way location. Narr
Sachem Miantonomi close to Roger
Williams of Rhode Island.
• But gradually after Pequot war,
Maintonomi saw himself as next target.
1642 tried to gain other Indian allies, but
captured by Mohegans and turned over
to the English. Eng couldn't find any
reason to execute him themselves, so
handed him back to Mohegans who
killed him.
• By 1645 'united colonies of New Eng'
had declared war on Narr, but even
though they lost much land, they
maintained their indep by allying with
powerful Mohawk tribe and exploited
Eng internal diff to good effect.
End of Narragansett independence
• Narr eventually drawn into King Philip's war,
even though main protagonist was Wampanoag
tribe. Eng desire for Narr land, and suspicions
about sympathies with KP pushed Narr into the
war,
• Destruction of a Narr fort Dec 1675 - deaths of
about 500 Narr., eventual displacement of Narr
and most other New England Indians, many
migrated west to join Iroquois.
• Strategy of non-involvement impossible to
maintain due to numbers of whites, and geog
spread of white settlement.
Conclusions
• Was there a viable effective strategy for any NA tribe to
use?
• strategies of Powhatan (war) and Narragansett (ignore)
both failed
• Main issue was cultural problems, societies organised v
differently. Always going to be conflict • Trade – v imp, Columbian exch, introduces metal
working, weaponary etc impact on furs, traditional animal
goods esp in piedmont, western New England etc. NA
destroy their own habitat, livelihoods in bid to get
weaponry etc
• War – Euro war v diff from NA war, v intense, no sense
of sufficient damage, or proportionate response etc.