By 1671, Indian nations in many parts of North America were responding to the impact of the invading European nations. Motivated largely by greed—the desire to gain and accumulate wealth in the form of precious metals, arable lands, slaves, and furs and hides, the Europeans and their colonies expanded, often creating conflicts both with and among the American Indian nations that they encountered. They sometimes justified their actions as being mandated by their religion.
In his book Laboring in the Fields of the Lord: Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians, Archaeologist Jerald Milanich describes the reasons for the European expansion:
“The driving force behind these initiatives was a desire for wealth: precious stones or metals, fertile lands suitable for productive plantations, human populations to be sold into slavery, and animals and plants that could be hunted or harvested and exported.”
In their conquest of the Americas, it was very important for the Europeans to see Indians as savage hunters and gatherers who did not develop or use the land. According to Frances Mossiker, in Pocahontas: The Life and the Legend:
“The charge that the Indian was a nomadic hunter was untrue as concerned the Atlantic seaboard tribes: these were, clearly, sedentary people, agriculturalists as well and hunters and fisherman, with game preserves and fishing grounds adjacent to their cultivated fields.”
Historian Alan Taylor, in his book The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution, notes that the Iroquois used their land extensively rather than intensively:
“To colonial eyes, the Iroquois peoples wasted their land by keeping a wilderness; but the Indians exploited their domain in ways that the colonists did not understand.”
Prior to the establishment of English colonies in North America, the primary English experience with colonialization had been their invasion, conquest, and occupation of Ireland. The English therefore brought their Irish experience to America and treated Indians in a manner similar to the way in which they had treated the Irish. While the Spanish debated about the moral and legal rights of the Indians, the English had no interest in Indian rights: Indian people were simply inconvenient occupants of land desired by the English.
With regard to the English colonists, historian Frances Jennings, in his book The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire, reports:
“From their day of first arrival, every single colonial desired and worked to expand English rule over more territory and more people.”
The English viewed the land as vacant, thus available to be re-created into a new English countryside. Historian Frances Jennings writes:
“Myth has it that Englishmen arrived in America to create colonies on ‘free land’ as though the land’s previous occupants and possessors had not existed, let alone had social and political institutions of property.”
English colonization of the Americas was in part a response to demographic changes in England. Farming was declining, and the cities were growing at a rate that resulted in high unemployment. Colonization was thus a solution to the unemployment problem: it was a way of getting rid of unwanted people, often labeled as “rogues,” “vagabonds,” and “beggars.”
The French, unlike the English and the Spanish, saw Indians as trading partners. The French saw that their best opportunity for economic gain was to be found in the fur trade in which their Native American trading partners would retain their autonomy and provide them with furs. The French explorers quickly established trading relations with the Native nations. From the beginning, the French were willing to learn from their Indian trading partners. In his chapter in North American Exploration. Volume 2: A Continent Defined, Conrad Heidenreich writes:
“The French obtained geographical information from natives, hired them as guides, traveled with natives, lived among them, and learned from them.”
The French learned Indian languages, intermarried with them, and learned and adopted Indian ways. Even the French Christian missionaries learned the Indian languages. The French colonial policy encouraged intermarriage with the Indians and the exchange of children to be raised in the other’s society.
Briefly described below are some of the events of 1671.
In Rhode Island, the Sogkonate Indian nation under the leadership of Awashonks, the sister of Tokamona, broke away from the Wampanoag Confederacy. Awashonks claimed that the 1659 Freemen’s Purchase made by Massasoit and others was invalid as the land they sold was Sogkonate land. The Plymouth Colony Government argued that the purchase was made in good faith when the Skogkonate were a part of the Wampanoag Confederacy. The colonial government sent a hundred troops to the area to hold the land. In their book Manitou: The Sacred Landscape of New England’s Native Civilizations, James Mavor Jr and Bryon Dix report:
“This threat brought about an agreement before violence erupted: Awashonks recognized the Freemen’s Purchase and Plymouth Colony recognized the Sogkonates as an independent tribe.”
In Connecticut, the English magistrates asked the Mohegan sachems Uncas and Owaneco to allow the Reverend James Fitch to preach among them. They sent gifts to Uncas to encourage him to allow Fitch to preach. Fitch spoke Mohegan and the sachems to not object.
In Connecticut, John Mason drew up a deed which conferred a large tract of land to the Mohegan Indian nation. These Sequestered Lands were to be inalienable by grant or sale.
In Connecticut, Mohegan sachem Uncas complained to colonial officials about the damage done to Indian crops by the English horses. According to historian Michael Oberg, in his biography Uncas: First of the Mohegans:
“As they roamed the countryside, feeding on Mohegan corn, they also consumed forage that had sustained deer and other game animals.”
In Massachusetts, the English colonial government, having been informed by Christian Indians that King Philip (Metacom) of the Wampanoag Indian nation was enlisting other tribes to resist further English expansion, invited him to a council. Metacom listened to the English accusations, signed an agreement to give up all Wampanoag firearms, promised to pay a tribute of 100 pounds per year, and left before dinner. The Wampanoag guns were not surrendered.
In Virginia, a group of English explorers with Penecute, an Appomattox Indian guide, set out from Fort Henry. They visited the Hanathaskies at their island village in the Stauton River. They next encountered the Tutelo and hire a local guide.
English explorers in Virginia encountered a small group of Siouan-speaking Indians culturally related to the Monacans west of the Blue Ridge.
In Virginia, the Stono Indian nation has now been reduced to just a few bands who are robbing English plantations to obtain food. The English governor set a reward for their capture and shipped the captives to the West Indies as slaves.
French officials met with delegates from 17 Indian nations at Sault Sainte-Marie and informed them that the King of France is taking possession of their land. Ke-ch-ne-zuh-yauh, the head of the Crane Clan, was recognized as the principal chief of the Ojibwa and he was given a gold medal as the badge of his rank.
In Illinois, some Potawatomis accompanied French traders to negotiations with the Miamis at Chicago.
In Michigan, a general peace was established between the Iroquois and the Wyandot. The Wyandot, who were under attack by the Sioux, moved back to Michilimackinac. Anthropologist Elizabeth Tooker, in her chapter on the Wyandots in Handbook of North American Indians, reports:
“The move to Michilimackinac brought the Wyandots not only closer to the French trading posts on the Saint Lawrence, but also closer to the English on the Hudson River and their Iroquois allies. As a result, the Wyandots were drawn more fully into the complicated game being played in the Northeast for control of the fur trade.”
Indians 101
Twice each week this series presents American Indian topics. More about American Indian histories in the 1600s:
Indians 101: American Indians 400 years ago, 1621
Indians 101: American Indians 400 years ago, 1620
Indians 101: Canadian First Nations 350 years ago, 1670
Indians 101: American Indians 350 Years Ago, 1669
Indians 101: Jesuit Relations in New France, 1632-1635
Indians 101: The Dutch, the Indians, and Fort Orange
Indians 101: Grey Lock's War
Indians 101: 17th Century Books About Indians