QUESTION To what extent did European and Indian attitudes toward each other change between 1607 and 1700? Use the documents and your knowledge of the period between 1607 and 1700 in constructing your response. Document A Speech by Powhatan, as recorded by John Smith, 1609 Why will you take by force what you may obtain by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war?... We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner.... I am not so simple as not to know it is better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my women and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and being their friend, trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them.... Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may die in the same manner. PAGE 1
Document B Pocahontas, 1616, engraving, Simon Van De Passe Credits: Simon Van De Passe, 1616, Pocahontas, National Portrait Gallery (Accession Number: NPG.77.43). PAGE 2
Document C An example of Indian and English tobacco pipes around 1620 PAGE 3
Document D Come over and help us pleads the American Indian on the 1629 Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony PAGE 4
Document E Thomas Morton on New England Indians in New English Canaan, 1637 Of their Reverence, and Respect to Age. It is a thing to be admired... that a Nation yet uncivilized should more respect age than some nations civilized, since there are so many precepts both of divine and humane writers extant to instruct more Civil Nations: in that particular, wherein they excel, the younger are always obedient unto the elder people, and at their commands in every respect without grumbling; in all councels, (as therein they are circumspect to do their actions by advise and councell, and not rashly or inconsiderately) the younger mens opinion shall be heard, but the old mens opinion and councell embraced and followed. Of their Trafficke and Trade One With Another. Although these people have not the use of navigation, whereby they may trafficke as other nations, that are civilized, use to doe, yet doe they barter for such commodities as they have, and have a kinde of beads instead of money, to buy withall such things as they want, which they call Wampampeak [wampum]: and it is of two sorts, the one is white, the other is of a violet coloure. These are made of the shells of fish. The white with them is as silver with us; the other as our gould: and for these beads they buy and sell, not only amongst themselves, but even with us. We have used to sell them any of our commodities for this Wampumpeak, because we know we can have beaver againe of them for it: and these beads are currant [currency] in all the parts of New England, from one end of the coast to the other.... That the Salvages live a contended life. A Gentleman and a traveller, that had been in the parts of New England for a time, when he returned againe, in his discourse of the Country, wondered, (as he said,) that the natives of the land lived so poorly in so rich a Country, like to our Beggars in England. Surely that Gentleman had not time or leisure while he was there truly to informe himself of the state of that Country, and the happy life the Salvages would leade were they once brought to Christianity.... If our beggars of England should, with so much ease as they, furnish themselves with food at all seasons, there would not be so many starved in the streets, neither would so many gaoles [jails] be stuffed, or gallouses [gallows] furnished with poore wretches, as I have seen them.... According to humane reason, guided only by the light of nature, these people leades the more happy and freer life, being void of care, which torments the mindes of so many Christians: They are not delighted in baubles, but in usefull things. PAGE 5
Document F A Huron Indian to Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf, 1635 During the 1600s and 1700s Jesuit missionaries traveled to America in an effort to convert Native Americans to Christianity. Although some were successful, others, as this document demonstrates, were not able to supercede Native American religious practices. You tell us fine stories, and there is nothing in what you say that may not be true; but that is good for you who come across the seas. Do you not see that, as we inhabit a world so different from yours, there must be another heaven for us, and another road to reach it? Document G A French Jesuit missionary, 1642 To make a Christian out of a Barbarian is not the work of a day.... A great step is gained when one has learned to know those with whom he has to deal; has penetrated their thoughts; has adapted himself to their language, their customs, and their manner of living; and when necessary, has been a Barbarian with them, in order to win them over to Jesus Christ. PAGE 6
Document H A brass plaque presented by Massachusetts Bay to chiefs of tribes who aided the colony during the King Philip s War, 1676 PAGE 7
Document I The Deerfield Massacre of 1704, in which Indians and French allies attacked and burned the settlement. Document J Benjamin Franklin on the Iroquois League, in a letter to James Parker, 1751 In this letter, Benjamin Franklin, whose famous statement Join or Die later galvanized colonial union and the fight for independence from the British, states that his inspiration for this came from the six tribes of the Iroquois Nation, for whom union was also advantageous. It would be a strange thing if Six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such an union, and be able to execute it in such a manner as that it has subsisted ages and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies, to whom it is more necessary and must be more advantageous, and who cannot be supposed to want an equal understanding of their interests. PAGE 8