Native Americans

Major dates 1492: Columbus 1607: Jamestown 1620: Mayflower (Plymouth) 1630: The Great Migration of Puritans from Great Britain to America

1490s: Great wave of European exploration of the Americas “Columbus did not discover a new world; he established contact between two worlds, both already old.” J.H. Parry’s The Spanish Seaborne Empire

Forming New Relationships The first interactions between Europeans and American Indians largely involved trade. The Europeans relied on the American Indians to teach them survival skills. In exchange, the American Indians were eager to acquire European wares.

Battling New Diseases William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony, described the horrors of smallpox on a village of American Indians: For want of bedding and linen and other helps…they fall into a lamentable condition as they lie on their hard mats, the pox breaking and mattering and running one into another, their skin cleaving by reason thereof to the mats they lie on. When they turn them, a whole side will flay off at once as it were, and they will be all of gore blood, most fearful to behold. And then being very sore, what with cold and other distempers, they die like rotten sheep (Of Plymouth Plantation).

The Demise of the Native Americans Historian Francis Jennings wrote in The Invasion of America: Europeans did not find a wilderness here; rather, however involuntarily, they made one. Jamestown, Plymouth, Salem, Boston, Providence, New Amsterdam, Philadelphia—all grew upon sites previously occupied by Indian communities. The so-called settlement of America was a resettlement, a reoccupation of a land made waste by the diseases and demoralization introduced by the newcomers.

Explorers’ Writings Francisco Vasquez de Coronado Christopher Columbus

Cabeza de Vaca: 1528 De Vaca landed on the west coast of Florida, left the ship, and moved inland. He and part of his crew did not return. They wandered for eight years. This journey became the topic of his journal, which also describes the habits of the Native Americans. De Vaca transforms from a Spanish gentleman to a new American who sympathizes with and appreciates the natives. He spent much of his time in America fighting for justice for them. De Vaca made many enemies with his humane treatment of the American Indians and was arrested on false charges and sent back to Spain in He lay in a dungeon for six years and disappeared from history after his release. He never knew that his travels had opened a new chapter in American history.

Essential Questions What effect did European settlement have on American Indians? What characteristics of the Native Americans contributed to the American spirit of that time? Of current day?

Archetype A character, plot, image, theme, or setting that occurs repeatedly in literature regardless of time or place Selling one’s soul to the devil, the trickster, the journey or quest for something better, etc.