What was early contact like between Europeans and Natives?

[balti]

In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean, unlocking what Europeans quickly came to call the ‘New World’. Columbus ‘found’ a land with around two million inhabitants. He thought he had found a new route to the East, so he mistakenly called these people ‘Indians’. Within a hundred years, Europeans were trying to settle in the Americas. With Spanish and Portuguese explorers in the south, English explorers focused on North America.

This lesson examines what happened between early English settlers and Native Americans in North America. Using primary source evidence you will investigate what the early contact was like. Were the Native Americans savage and vicious hosts? Were the Europeans unreasonable and unfair? Or did they all just get along fine? You need to find out what happened.

The evidence comes from 1607. This was the year that the first permanent English settlement was established in North America, known as Jamestown. These first settlers – and those who sent them – were keen to find out about the area, keen to see how they could benefit. These settlers began to explore and they soon encountered the Native people. Using the information they recorded, you are going to examine their initial thoughts and feelings.


Background
The first English explorers to North America arrived five years after Columbus in 1497, led by the Italian Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot). However the English did not try and establish permanent settlements in the ‘New World’ until much later.

In 1585, English colonists attempted to settle at a place called Roanoke. The settlement lasted only for a short time. After initial friendly relations, fighting broke out with the Native Americans when they refused demands for food from English soldiers. The colonists fled.

On May 14, 1607, the first lasting English settlement in North America was established. The settlement was named ‘Jamestown’ after the current King of England, James I. Captain Newport led the expedition, staying until June 22nd, when he sailed back to England for supplies. The source material in this Snapshot comes from the time between May and June, when Newport was in America. The report was probably written by Captain Gabriell Archer (CO 1/1).

104 settlers were left, with Captain John Smith placed in charge. These settlers were unprepared, and did not even plant the right crops or eat the right foods. They soon encountered starvation and famine, despite stealing food from the Native Americans. In the first three years, despite new arrivals, more than 80% of the settlers died – mostly from illness such as malaria. Thousands of Native Americans were also killed, either in fighting or by outbreaks of European diseases to which their bodies had no immunity.

Those settlers that survived, together with new arrivals, began to cultivate the land, growing tobacco. As more settlers arrived, more Native American hunting grounds were taken, and the Native Americans began to fight back. Any chance of peaceful relations were at an end.

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/...rth-americans/

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He took native's as slaves to Europe:

Columbus’s Account of 1492 Voyage
After his first transatlantic voyage, Christopher Columbus sent an account of his encounters in the Americas to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. Several copies of his manuscript were made for court officials, and a transcription was published in April 1493. This Latin translation was published the same year. In reporting on his trip to his sovereigns, Columbus wrote:

There I found very many islands, filled with innumerable people, and I have taken possession of them all for their Highnesses, done by proclamation and with the royal standard unfurled, and no opposition was offered to me.

Source:
Christopher Columbus (1451–1506). Epistola Christofori Colom (Letters of Christopher Columbus). Rome: Stephan Plannck, after April 29,1493. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (048.00.00, 048.00.01, 048.00.02, 048.00.03)

Columbus’s Voyage and the New World
This edition of the Columbus letter, printed in Basel in 1494, is illustrated. The five woodcuts, which supposedly illustrate Columbus’s voyage and the New World, are in fact mostly imaginary, and were probably adapted drawings of Mediterranean places. This widely published report made Columbus famous throughout Europe. It earned him the title of Admiral, secured him continued royal patronage, and enabled him to make three more trips to the Caribbean, which he firmly believed to the end was a part of Asia. Seventeen editions of the letter were published between 1493 and 1497. Only eight copies of all the editions are extant.

Source: Christopher Columbus. De Insulis nuper in Mari Indico repertis in Carolus Verardus: Historia Baetica. Basel: I.B. [Johann Bergman de Olpe], 1494. Jay I. Kislak Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (048.01.00, 048.01.01, 048.01.02, 048.01.03)


https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/explori...the-taino.html

European and Native American Interaction 1600-1800's

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During the 17th century, thousands of European immigrants arrived in North America seeking economic and religious freedom.[1] Nevertheless, this vast land was already home to an extensive population of Native Americans located throughout the continent in various tribes. Initially, the relationship between the two cultures was amicable. However, throughout the 1600-1800's, this relationship would evolve and change over time. The Native American resistance to European expansion in North American occurred due to social, economic, and political pressures.



[1] P. Scott Corbett, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd Pfannestiel, and Paul Vickery, U.S. History, Houston: OpenStax, 2017. PDF e-book, 72.

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJourn...30b311c17ec0f6