By 1673, 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 personal 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.
Briefly described below are just some of the Indian events of 1673. Note: American Indians and French explorers in 1673 will be covered in a separate essay.
English
In Massachusetts, the Plymouth colony banned Indians from town when the court was in session. According to historian Michael Oberg, in his biography Uncas: First of the Mohegans:
“Instead of responding to the growing volume of Indian complaints and curbing the aggressiveness of the frontier population, the Pilgrims, in effect, covered their ears against the sounds of Wampanoag anger.”
In Rhode Island, the General Assembly asked two sachems to select six Indians to serve on a jury in a case involving the murder of one Indian by the member of another tribe. In an article in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Lyle Koehler reports:
‘This was the only time of record that the Rhode Island authorities intervened in any intertribal criminal matter, and it was apparently done at the request of the respective Narragansett and Niantic sachems.”
English Traders
In the Carolinas, the English settlers were very interested in establishing trade with the Indians and, unlike the Spanish traders, they readily supplied the Indians with guns. With the establishment of rice agriculture, the colonists began using slave labor, turning first to the Indians as their source of slaves and later importing them from Africa.
In the southeast, Virginia trader Abraham Wood sent James Needham and Gabriel Arthur out from Fort Henry to establish trade with the Cherokees at their capital of Chota. The English colony needed Cherokee furs, hides, beeswax, and bears’ oil which could be exported to England.
The English traders followed the Occaneechee Path, a well-known Indian trading trail which passed through Cherokee country. The two Englishmen received a friendly greeting from the Cherokee. The Englishmen noticed that the Cherokee had Spanish flintlock muskets and other European goods, a clear indication of trade with the Spanish to the south.
James Needham was killed by his guide Indian John. Gabriel Arthur remained with the Cherokee at Chota and accompanied them on raids on the Spanish settlements in Florida, on the east coast Indian communities, and on the Shawnee towns along the Ohio River.
At this time the Cherokee town of Chota was protected on one side by a high cliff and on the other three sides by 12-foot-high walls with defensive scaffolds and parapets. The Cherokees also had 150 canoes, each of which could carry 20 warriors into battle.
Christian Missionaries
During the seventeenth century, missionaries attempted to Christianize Indians and to prohibit and even punish many aspects of Indian spiritual life. In her book Pocahontas: The Life and the Legend, Frances Mossiker explains the logic of this Christian imperialism:
“God intended the savage Indians’ land for the civilized Christian Englishman, who would occupy the earth, increase and multiply, who would farm the land and make it fructify, who would give it order.”
In an article in The Progressive, Howard Zinn puts it this way:
“The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible.”
Sioux writer Charles Eastman, writing in his 1911 book The Soul of the Indian, says:
“The first missionaries, good men imbued with the narrowness of their age, branded us as pagans and devil-worshippers, and demanded of us that we abjure our false gods before bowing the knee at their sacred altar.”
In Texas, the Coahuiltecan sent a request for Christian missionaries. The Franciscans, a Catholic missionary order, sent Fray San Buenaventura and a force of ten soldiers from Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Coahuila north across the Rio Grande. When the expedition returned, it recommended that the Spanish establish three missions among the Coahuiltecan and that each mission be protected by a presidio of not less than 70 soldiers.
In Illinois, the Jesuits, another Catholic order, opened a mission among the Kaskakia.
In the Southwest, the Spanish Franciscans were convinced that Pueblo ceremonies were wrong and consequently raided the kivas and destroyed all of the ritual paraphernalia which they found. In his book American Indians and Christian Missions: Studies in Cultural Conflict, Henry Bowden reports:
“The fact that it was necessary to raid the kivas over and over again shows that the Pueblos persisted in their traditional ceremonies.”
The Franciscans, however, maintained their fight against paganism. According to Henry Bowden:
“If pagans adhered to traditional ways, the gentle sons of Saint Francis directed that they be whipped as an obstacle to pacification in this life and to their own bliss in the next.”
In New Mexico, the Tewas, a Pueblo Indian group, openly performed traditional ceremonial dances which were prohibited by Spanish Catholic authorities.
Trade
European traders brought with them a variety of manufactured goods ranging from cloth items to metal items including knives, axes, and pots. One of the items highly desired by the Indians was the gun. Many traders, however, were somewhat reluctant to provide Indians with guns lest they be used against them. For the Indians, guns were used primarily as weapons of war. In his book Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America, historian James Axtell writes:
“Guns drove fear into enemy breasts as often as balls, smashed bones and did more internal damage than razor-sharp arrowheads, and heralded the status of their owners in ways that traditional weapons never could.”
In the southeast, the Chickasaws obtained weapons of Spanish manufacture even though Spanish traders were reluctant to supply them.
Migration
The European invasion pushed many American Indians out of their traditional lands as the colonists seized more land, often waging wars to obtain more land.
In Quebec, Mohawk leader Kryn (Joseph Togouiroui) led about 40 of his people from Caughnawaga in New York to the Caughnawaga village on the Saint Lawrence where they joined the Oneida and other Iroquois tribes. There were now about 20 different tribes represented in the village.
More 17th-Century American Indian Histories
Indians 101: The English and Indian land in the 17th century
Indians 101: The Spanish and the Indians in the Seventeenth century
Indians 101: New Sweden and the Indians
Indians 101: The French and American Indians in the 17th century
Indians 101: The Dutch and American Indians in the 17th century
Indians 101: American Indians 400 years ago, 1623
Indians 101: American Indians 350 years ago, 1672
Indians 201: The Pueblo Revolt of 1680