Peter N. Herndon
In Virginia, the first colony, very tense relationships existed between the English colonists and the Indian confederacy headed by Powhatan, whose daughter, Pocahontas, became an intermediary between Englishmen and Native Americans. Upon the arrival of Lord De La Warr in 1610, war was declared against the surrounding native peoples, who signed a peace treaty in 1614. It was sealed by the interracial marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas, who died in England three years later while preparing to return to Virginia. In 1622 the Indians, who were continually harassed by whites greedy for land and whose numbers were dwindling because of disease, had had enough and began striking back, killing over 300 settlers, including John Rolfe. In the Second Anglo-Powhatan War, the Indians made one final futile attempt at driving the Virginians out. The punitive peace terms denied any further attempt at assimilating Indians into the white culture or allowing them to exist peacefully side-by-side with the whites. The Chesapeake Indians were banished from their land and were formally separated from white settlement areas, a forerunner of the modern reservation system. By 1669, only two thousand Indians remained in Virginia and by 1685, the Powhatans were considered by the English to be extinct. (Bailey, pages 19-20)
The Powhatans, like Native Americans in other locations, had been the victims of several factors, each of them beginning with the letter D: Disease, Disorganization and Disposability.
(DISEASE) 'they were extremely susceptible to European-imported maladies. Epidemics of smallpox and measles raced mercilessly through their villages.
(DISORGANIZATION) The Powhatans also…lacked the unity with which to make effective opposition to the relatively well-organized and militarily disciplined whites.
(DISPOSABILITY) Finally … they provided no reliable labor source and, after the Virginians began growing their own food crops, had no valuable commodities to offer in commerce. They therefore could be disposed of without harm to the colonial economy. Indeed the Indian presence frustrated the colonists' desire for a local commodity the Europeans desperately wanted: land.' (Quoted in Bailey, page 29)
Not all policies toward Native Americans were as systematically cruel as De La Warr's in Jamestown. During the early period of colonization, whites and Indians lived in scattered settlements that were, for the most part, peaceful. In New England missionaries offered the Indians the opportunity to settle into "praying towns" where they were encouraged to pray to the Christian God. Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, and William Penn in Pennsylvania both fought the barbaric ways the Indians were often treated. Williams was an advocate of humane treatment when it was unpopular to be so. During the bloody Pequot War of 1636, he had the courage to write:
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'Boast not proud English of thy birth and blood,
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Thy brother Indian is by birth as good.
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Of one blood God made him, and thee, and all,
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As wise, as fair, as strong, as personal.'
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(Quoted in Bordewich, page 36)
Indians were often cruel to their enemies. Although it is often claimed that the whites invented scalping as evidence of having killed an Indian, words for ceremonial scalping (as well as other forms of dismemberment) existed in many Indian languages prior to the white man's arrival. Also, there were many strictly Indian wars among cultures such as the Iroquois who fought the Hurons, and the Navahos who colonized the Hopis. The Sioux on the Great Plains ruthlessly put down and subjugated smaller groups who dared oppose their empire building. It was the norm for members of each tribe to consider themselves "the People" and everyone else something less. For example, the Catawbas of South Carolina considered other natives to be "dogs" or "snakes" and white colonists "Nothings." The name "Comanche" comes from a Ute nickname which means "those who are always against us." Apache comes from the Pueblo word for "enemy." (Bordewich, pages 36-37)