CENTRAL MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY

Modern Native American History:

Native American History in the United States – HST 323

Spring 2021
Instructor Kendal Brown, Department of History

STUDY GUIDE 2
** Study guide for Chapters 4-7

The Planting of English America

I. England’s Imperial Stirrings
i. North America in 1600 was largely unclaimed, though the
Spanish has so much control in Central and South America.
ii. Spain had only set up Santa Fe, while France had founded
Quebec and Britain had founded Jamestown.
iii. In the 1500s, Britain failed to effectively colonize due to internal
conflicts.
1. King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church in
the 1530s and launched the English Protestant
Reformation.
2. After Elizabeth I became queen, Britain became
basically Protestant, and a rivalry with Catholic Spain
intensified.
3. In Ireland, the Catholics sought Spain’s help in revolting
against England, but the English crushed the uprising with
brutal atrocity, and developed an attitude of sneering
contempt for natives.
II. Elizabeth Energizes England
i. After Francis Drake pirated Spanish ships for gold then
circumnavigated the globe, Elizabeth I knighted him on his
ship. Obviously, this reward angered the Spanish who sought
revenge.
ii. Meanwhile, English attempts at colonization in the New World
failed embarrassingly. Notable of these failures was Sir Walter
Raleigh and the Roanoke Island Colony, better known as
“The Lost Colony.”
iii. Seeking to get their revenge, Spain attacked Britain but lost in
the Spanish Armada’s defeat of 1588. This opened the door
for Britain to cross the Atlantic. They swarmed to America and
took over the lead in colonization and power.
 1. Victory also fueled England to new heights due to…
a. Strong government/popular monarch, more religious
unity, a sense of nationalism
b. Golden age of literature (Shakespeare)
c. Beginning of British dominance at sea (which lasts
until U.S. tops them, around 1900)
iv. Britain and Spain finally signed a peace treaty in 1604.
III. England on the Eve of the Empire
i. In the 1500s, Britain’s population was mushrooming.
ii. New policy of enclosure (fencing in land) for farming. This
meant there was less or no land for the poor.
iii. The woolen districts fell upon hard times economically. This
meant the workers lost jobs.
iv. Tradition of primogeniture = 1st born son inherits ALL father’s
land. Therefore, younger sons of rich folk (who couldn’t inherit
money) tried their luck with fortunes elsewhere, like America.
v. By the 1600s, the joint-stock company was perfected
(investors put money into the company with hopes for a good
return), being a forerunner of today’s corporations.
IV. England Plants the Jamestown Seedling
i. In 1606, the Virginia Company received a charter from King
James I to make a settlement in the New World.
 1. Such joint-stock companies usually did not exist long,
as stockholders invested hopes to form the company,
turn a profit, and then quickly sell for profit a few years
later.
ii. The charter of the Virginia Company guaranteed settlers the
same rights as Englishmen in Britain.
iii. On May 24, 1607, about 100 English settlers disembarked from
their ship and founded Jamestown.
1. Forty colonists had perished during the voyage.
2. Problems emerged including (a) the swampy site of
Jamestown meant poor drinking water and mosquitoes
causing malaria and yellow fever. (b) men wasted time
looking for gold rather than doing useful tasks (digging
wells, building shelter, planting crops), (c) there were
zero women on the initial ship.
3. It didn’t help that a supply ship shipwrecked in the
Bahamas in 1609 either.
iv. Luckily, in 1608, a Captain John Smith took over control and
whipped the colonists into shape.
1. At one point, he was kidnapped by local Indians and
forced into a mock execution by the chief Powhatan and
had been “saved” by Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas.
2. The act was meant to show that Powhatan wanted
peaceful relations with the colonists.
3. John Smith’s main contribution was that he gave order
and discipline, highlighted by his “no work, no food”
policy.
v. Colonists had to eat cats, dogs, rats, even other people. One
fellow wrote of eating “powdered wife.”
vi. Finally, in 1610, a relief party headed by Lord De La Warr
arrived to alleviate the suffering.
vii. By 1625, out of an original overall total of 8,000 would-be
settlers, only 1,200 had survived.
V. Cultural Clash in the Chesapeake
i. At first, Powhatan possibly considered the new colonists
potential allies and tried to be friendly with them, but as time
passed and colonists raided Indian food supplies, relations
deteriorated and eventually, war occurred.
ii. The First Anglo-Powhatan War ended in 1614 with a peace
settlement sealed by the marriage of Pocahontas to colonist
John Rolfe. Rolfe & Pocahontas nurtured a favorable flavor of
sweet tobacco.
iii. Eight years later, in 1622, the Indians struck again with a series
of attacks that left 347 settlers, including John Rolfe, dead.
iv. The Second Anglo-Powhatan War began in 1644, ended in
1646, and effectively banished the Chesapeake Indians from
their ancestral lands.
v. After the settlers began to grow their own food, the Indians
 were useless, and were therefore banished.
VI. The Indians’ New World
i. The arrival of Europeans set a series of vast changes into motion
for the Native Americans.
1. Horses were brought by the Spaniards to transform Indian
lifestyles—especially the Sioux who’d become expert at
buffalo hunting while horseback.
2. Disease was the largest change to come to the New World.
a. Indians were biological pathogens to fight white
diseases.
b. Tribes were shattered; for example, the Catawba
nation emerged in the Carolina piedmont as
remnants of broken tribes from all along the east
coast.
3. Native Americans lusted for firearms, obtained them, and
violence increased against whites and other Indians.
ii. All told, European arrival rocked the institutions of Indian life
and sent their lives reeling.
VII. Virginia: Child of Tobacco
i. Jamestown’s gold is found  tobacco
1. Rolfe’s sweet tobacco was sought as a cash crop by
Europe. Jamestown had found its gold.
2. Tobacco created a greed for land, since it heavily depleted
the soil and ruined the land.
ii. Representative self-government was born in Virginia, when in
1619, settlers created the House of Burgesses, a committee
to work out local issues. This set America on a self-rule
pathway.
iii. The first African Americans to arrive in America also came in
1619. It’s unclear if they were slaves or indentured servants.
VIII. Maryland: Catholic Haven
i. Religious Diversity
1. Founded in 1634 by Lord Baltimore, Maryland was the
second plantation colony and the fourth overall colony to
be formed.
2. It was founded to be a place for persecuted Catholics to
find refuge, a safe haven.
3. Lord Baltimore gave huge estates to his Catholic
relatives, but the poorer people who settled there where
mostly Protestant, creating friction.
ii. However, Maryland prospered with tobacco.
 iii. It had a lot of indentured servants.
1. Only in the later years of the 1600s (in Maryland and
Virginia) did Black slavery begin to become popular.
iv. Maryland’s statute, the Act of Toleration, guaranteed
religious toleration to all Christians, but decreed the death
penalty to Jews and atheists and others who didn’t believe in
the divinity of Jesus Christ.
IX. The West Indies: Way Station to Mainland America
i. As the British were colonizing Virginia, they were also
settling into the West Indies (Spain’s declining power opened
the door).
ii. By mid-1600s, England had secured claim to several West Indies
islands, including Jamaica in 1655.
iii. They grew lots of sugar on brutal plantations there.
iv. Thousands of African slaves were needed to operate sugar
plantations. At first, Indians were intended to be used, but
disease killed an estimated 90% of all Native Americans. So,
Africans were brought in.
v. To control so many slaves, “codes” were set up that defined
the legal status of slaves and the rights of the masters. They
were typically strict and exacted severe punishments for
offenders.
X. Colonizing the Carolinas
i. In England, King Charles I had been beheaded. Oliver Cromwell
had ruled for ten very strict years before tired Englishmen
restored Charles II to the throne in “The Restoration.” (After
all the turmoil Civil War, they just went back to a king.)
ii. The bloody period had interrupted colonization.
iii. Carolina was named after Charles II, and was formally created in
1670.
iv. Carolina flourished by developing close economic ties with
the West Indies, due to the port of Charleston.
v. Many original Carolina settlers had come from Barbados and
brought in the strict “Slave Codes” for ruling slaves.
vi. Interestingly, Indians as slaves in Carolina was protested, but
to no avail. Slaves were sent to the West Indies to work, as
well as New England.
vii. Rice emerged as the principle crop in Carolina.
1. African slaves were hired to work on rice plantations, due
to (a) their resistance to malaria and just as importantly,
(b) their familiarity with rice.
viii. Despite violence with Spanish and Indians, Carolina proved to be
too strong to be wiped out.
XI. The Emergence of North Carolina
i. Many newcomers to Carolina were “squatters,” people who
owned no land, usually down from Virginia.
 ii. North Carolinians developed a strong resistance to authority,
due to geographic isolation from neighbors.
iii. Two “flavors” of Carolinians developed: (a) aristocratic and
wealthier down south around Charleston and rice & indigo
plantations, and (b) strong-willed and independent-minded up
north on small tobacco farms
iv. In 1712, North and South Carolina were officially separated.
v. In 1711, when Tuscarora Indians attacked North Carolina, the
Carolinians responded by crushing the opposition, selling
hundreds to slavery and leaving the rest to wander north,
eventually becoming the Sixth Nation of the Iroquois.
XII. Late-Coming Georgia: The Buffer Colony
i. Georgia was intended to be a buffer between the British
colonies and the hostile Spanish settlements in Florida
(Spanish, Indians, runaway slaves) and the enemy French in
Louisiana.
ii. It was founded last, in 1733, by a high-minded group of
philanthropists, mainly James Oglethorpe.
iii. Named after King George II, it was also meant to be a second
chance site for wretched souls in debt.
iv. James Oglethorpe, the ablest of the founders and a dynamic
soldier-statesman, repelled Spanish attacks.
1. He saved “the Charity Colony” by his energetic leadership
and by using his own fortune to help with the colony.
v. All Christians, except Catholics, enjoyed religious toleration,
and many missionaries came to try to convert the Indians.
1. John Wesley was one of them, and he later returned to
England and founded Methodism.
vi. Georgia grew very slowly.
XIII. The Plantation Colonies
i. Slavery was found in all the plantation colonies.
ii. The growth of cities was often stunted by forests.
 iii. The establishment of schools and churches was difficult
due to people being spread out.
iv. In the South, the crops were tobacco and rice, and
some indigo in the tidewater region of SC.
v. All the plantation colonies permitted some religious
toleration.
vi. Confrontations with Native Americans were often.
XIV. Makers of America: The Iroquois
i. In what is now New York State, the Iroquois League
or Confederation was once a great power.
ii. They were made up of the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the
Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas.
iii. They vied with neighboring Indians and later French,
English, and Dutch for supremacy.
iv. The longhouse was the building block of Iroquois
society.
1. Only 25 feet wide, but over 200 feet long,
longhouses were typically occupied by a few
blood-related families (on the mother’s side).
v. The Mohawks were middlemen with European traders.
vi. The Senecas were fur suppliers.
vii. The Five Nations of the Iroquois’ rivals, the
neighboring Hurons, Eries, and Petuns, were
vanquished.
viii. Throughout the 1600s and 1700s, the Iroquois allied
with the British and French (whichever was more
beneficial).
ix. When the American Revolution broke out, the question
of with whom to side was split. Most sided with the
British, but not all.
x. Afterwards, the Iroquois were forced to reservations,
which proved to be unbearable to these proud people.
xi. An Iroquois named Handsome Lake arose to warn his
tribe’s people to mend their ways.
His teachings live today in the form of the longhouse religion.