Interactions between American Indians and Europeans

Rising settler populations, declining indigenous populations

In the previous chapter, you learned about the catastrophic population declines amongst indigenous populations throughout the Americas in the 16th century; tragically, the primary reason that these population declines slowed in the 17th and 18th centuries is that indigenous populations were much smaller and more concentrated in many parts of the Americas than in previous centuries. European colonizers expanded their existing settlements and increasingly sought to extend their empires further into the interior of the Americas, creating further conflict and provoking further resistance.

European colonization frequently exploited and exacerbated prior and/or ongoing indigenous conflicts; in the 16th century, Francisco Pizarro benefited from the then raging Inca civil war, while in the 18th century, the British and French armed their respective indigenous allies, the Chickasaw for the British and the Choctaw for the French, along the lower Mississippi River.

Europeans also sought to expand their trading opportunities; the increasing prevalence of muskets and pistols in native American communities not only reflected the expansion of European trading networks but also intensified conflict.

Indigenous communities increasingly found themselves squeezed into smaller and highly contested geographic areas; refugees and survivors fleeing encroaching European colonization often moved into areas claimed by other, sometimes hostile, indigenous societies.

Powhatan Wars

The first extended series of British and indigenous conflicts in North America were the Powhatan Wars in Virginia. For most Americans, the name Powhatan summons up the father of Pocahontas and the truce he temporarily arranged through her marriage to John Rolfe in 1614. Within a few years, however, war broke out again between the British colonists and the Powhatans and their allies. The Second Anglo-Powhatan War would rage on until the early 1630s and future conflicts would extend periodically all the way to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. Fears about the damage resulting from further war between the Powhatan Confederacy and Bacon’s militia, which included enslaved Africans, were paramount for the Virginia colony’s government and aristocracy.

Pequot War and Metacomet’s War

Within New England, the most important colonial and indigenous conflicts were the Pequot War (1636-1638) and Metacomet’s War (1675-1678), frequently called King Philip’s War by the colonists and many later historians. The Pequots, seeking to repel further colonial incursions into their lands, attacked the settlement of Wakefield, killing 9 colonists; in response, militias from the Massachusetts Bay Colony burned Pequot villages and nearly destroyed the remaining Pequot community.

Forty years later, the next, and last, major war between English colonists and indigenous communities in New England, Metacomet’s War, erupted after the indigenous Wampanoags, led by Metacomet, attacked several “praying town” Indians suspected of spying for the colonial authorities. The “praying towns” were often resented by many Wampanoags as the indigenous peoples who lived there were expected to convert to Christianity and to abandon indigenous customs, clothing, and languages. Colonial retaliation against Metacomet’s uprising included the burning of Wampanoag fields and villages as well as the selling of Wampanoag prisoners to enslavers in the West Indies. After the war, the surviving Wampanoags and their allies moved further west, New England’s indigenous population shrank, and English colonists subsequently confronted very limited indigenous resistance to further regional expansion.

Huron and Iroquois Confederacy Wars

Along the Great Lakes, a series of wars between the Iroquois Confederacy, then allied with the British, and the Algonquian nations, allied with the French, raged throughout much of the 17th century as indigenous societies and European traders and colonists sought to control lucrative fishing and fur, particularly beaver, resources. As the prices for beaver fur soared in European markets, and the beaver populations of the Great Lakes region consequently plummeted, these wars intensified. The Huron Confederacy, decimated by smallpox in the 1630s, frequently fought with other local tribes near Lake Ontario.

The Chickasaws and the Catawbas

As mentioned earlier, the Chickasaws and their then enemies the Choctaws clashed over lands along the Mississippi River; in the early 19th century, both the Chickasaws and the Choctaws would be among the 5 “civilized tribes” forced to cede their lands to American settlers and move to reservations in the contemporary state of Oklahoma - you will learn more about the “Trail of Tears” and the devastating impacts on these societies in Chapter 5.

The Catawba people inhabited much of the Carolinas and were allied with the British colonists, and later with the American colonists fighting for independence from the British, but would see their society ravaged by war and disease throughout the 18th century.

Pueblo Revolt

While the Spanish confronted indigenous resistance in various parts of their American empire, for the purposes of AP US History, you will primarily need to be familiar with the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in today’s New Mexico.