American Settler Colonialism: A History

by Walter L. Hixson

  Ambivalent relations—a tense mixture of trade and coexistence amid endemic guerrilla warfare and bursts of genocidal violence—characterized the early history of Virginia. The primary Indian chieftain of the region, Powhatan, presided over some 30 indigenous bands, about 7,500 Indians in total across some 80 miles between the James and Potomac rivers. The indigenes engaged in horticulture, foraging, and fishing. They lived in towns but retained the mobility to move around during the temperate months. Women were the primary growers and gatherers while men hunted, fished, and went to war.

  Powhatan initially pursued a diplomatic understanding with the European interlopers. In the famous incident of December 1607 Powhatan apparently sought to display his prowess to let live or destroy the English colonists when one of his daughters, Matoaka (Pocahontas), “saved” the English mercenary John Smith from execution. Pocahontas provided an early example of the role women often played as go-betweens in indigenous diplomacy. She also underscores colonial ambivalence, the willingness of some indigenes to adapt and to join European society, as she would marry the tobacco planter John Rolfe in 1614 and convert to Christianity.29

  The first colonials in Virginia viewed the Indians as “heathen” and “salvages,” yet became dependent upon these supposedly inferior people for the basic human necessity of life: food. This unsettling dichotomy weighed on the psyches of the settlers. “English behavior became increasingly aggressive and erratic in a situation in which the Indians, as virtually the sole source of food, held the power,” Karen Kupperman explains. The tense colonial encounter played out in violent clashes, guerrilla warfare, massacres, and mutilations, with Indians often getting the best of it. “The Indian killed as fast without, if our men stirred beyond the bounds of the blockhouse, as famine and pestilence did within,” one colonist lamented.30

  With their “Jamestown project” on the brink of collapse, the Virginia Company shifted its strategy from erecting a fortified trading post to establishing a sprawling settler colony with a viable economic foundation. Continually revivified by new shiploads of colonists, the Virginians established a profitable “tobacco monoculture” worked by indentured servants and in subsequent years by African slaves. The investors showed their determination to establish a permanent settlement 31 by sending over “maides young and uncorrupt to make wifes” for the maledominated inhabitants. By 1620 the colony had grown to nearly 1,000 people who were learning to stay alive while establishing a profitable cash crop. The next year the company dispatched 1,500 more settlers in 21 ships.31

  The rapidly expanding settler colony posed a mortal threat to the Indians, who not only saw more and more land seized for the cultivation of tobacco but also faced a European assault on their spirituality. The settlers and their sponsors in London were determined to establish a profitable colony but, rather than simply kill and remove the Indians, the ambivalent invaders sought to Christianize the heathen tribes. Moreover, their approach focused on Indian children, reasoning that they were uncorrupted and thus more receptive to conversion. In 1617 King James I directed the Anglican clergy to build “churches and schools” for the education of the “children of these barbarians in Virginia.” The Powhatans defied the English king, however, as they summarily rejected efforts to convert them.32

  Not everyone displayed ambivalence or an interest in saving indigenous souls. Just as the Spanish had fought their infidels on the Iberian Peninsula, the English arrived not far removed from the sixteenth-century dispossession and subjugation of the Irish “heathens” in the largest military conflict of the Elizabethan era. Smith was a veteran of English warfare in the Balkans against the Islamic Eurasian enemy other. He judged the American indigenes “crafty, timorous, quick of apprehension, very ingenious. Some are of disposition fearful, some bold … all Savage.” Smith likened the “treacherous” natives to “infernal hell hounds” in their style of warfare yet he and his followers would soon emulate the Indian way of war as they sought to drive the indigenes from the land desired by the settlers. In 1609 when conflict erupted in the first Anglo-Powhatan War, Smith pioneered the tradition of irregular warfare in the “New World” by burning and razing Indian homes and agricultural fields. “Inspired by Smith’s success,” John Ferling points out, “the Virginia Company institutionalized the measures he had pursued.”33

  As tensions escalated over encroachments on land and cultural and spiritual conflict, Powhatan’s brother and successor Opechancanough grasped the existential, winner-take-all nature of the settler colonial encounter. In 1622 he launched a surprise exterminatory assault, killing 347 settlers, about a fourth of the colonial population. As the enraged and traumatized colonists recovered, many vowed to rid themselves of the savages once and for all. It would be “infinitely better to have no heathen among us” [emphasis added], declared Governor Francis Wyatt, “than to be at peace and league with them.” Smith concurred, “We have just cause to destroy them by all means possible.”34

  Ambivalence gave way to genocide as the Virginians now “killed every Indian they could regardless of age or sex.” Following months of warfare, the settlers summoned the indigenes for peace talks only to serve them poisoned wine and methodically butcher some 250 of them. Genocidal violence continued to boomerang upon the colonists as well as the indigenes. In 1644 Opechancanough launched a last-gasp exterminatory assault, slaughtering some 500 Euro-Americans in another surprise offensive. Now equipped with an organized militia in each county and forts all along the James River, the Virginians responded with a campaign of annihilation culminating in the execution of the nearly centenarian Opechancanough and the selling of indigenous captives into slavery.35

  The Tidewater wars ended with the total defeat and ethnic cleansing of Indians thus establishing an enduring framework for the British-American settler colonial project. Demography had overwhelmed the indigenes. The Jamestown settler colonials benefited from a ceaseless influx of new migrants and supplies. Tobacco had given the colony viability within the burgeoning Atlantic world economy. While the Indians fought to defend their homelands, the Europeans displayed boundless energy and determination in their economic drives and convictions of providential destiny to take command of colonial space.

  In what became something of an iron law of American history, virtually any effort to impede settler colonial expansion could incite civil tumult within the Euro-American communities. As the colonial administrators sought respite from Indian conflict by recognizing indigenous land holdings on the borderlands, the Henrico planter Nathaniel Bacon condemned limitations on squatting and settler expansion in deference to mere Indians. In launching his famous rebellion in 1676, Bacon declared that Virginia and British authorities had “defended and protected” the “darling Indians,” who were really “barbarous outlaws” and “delinquents,” at the expense of “his Majesty’s loyal subjects.”36 Defying Crown authority, Bacon launched search and destroy operations into Pamunkey villages and Occaneechi territory, wiping out even Indians who had refrained from resistance. As the indigenes fled into the forest, Bacon set upon Jamestown and set it aflame before dying suddenly, probably from dysentery.

  Bacon’s demise ended the rebellion, which nonetheless had underscored the determination of settlers to seize the land on their self-avowed frontiers regardless of what colonial authorities might decree. The rebellion showed that the triangulated settler colonial relationship encompassing Indians, settlers, and metropolitan authority was highly combustible.37

  Although in other respects “New England” societies bore little resemblance to those in the Chesapeake, settler colonialism and exterminatory warfare against the indigenous inhabitants animated both. Hostile perceptions of the other on both sides limited the prospects of third space accommodation. Prior to the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth on Cape Cod in 1620 sporadic exchange relations already had been established between Europeans and indigenes in what became New England. The settlers found that Indians had metal kettles, glass, and cloth items from Europe,
and one of them, a Patuxet name Squanto (Tisquantum), spoke a smattering of English as a result of his kidnapping by Europeans in previous years.

  Despite his appreciation of Squanto—perceived to be an “an instrument sent of God” to help the settlers fish and plant corn—William Bradford anticipated difficult relations in a land inhabited by “savage people, who are cruel, barbarous, and most treacherous.” Unlike the Virginians who came initially with the intent to accrue wealth, Bradford, who became the longtime governor of Plymouth Plantation, landed with the intent to settle permanently.38 Like Bradford, New England’s first Puritan emigrants meant to settle and “did not anticipate permanent peaceful coexistence with the indigenous inhabitants.” The Amerindians of the region harbored their own suspicions and thus greeted the Pilgrim and Puritan settlers with distrust. Nevertheless, Massasoit, the Wampanoag chieftain, chose coexistence with the first wave of colonists rather than to wipe them out, as he surely could have done at the outset. As settler colonialism accelerated over the next generation, the New England tribes would be devoid of such options.39

  Ambivalence as embodied in trade and intercultural exchange prevailed for several relatively peaceful years until the anxiety-ridden Puritans embarked on an unprovoked war of annihilation against the Pequot Indians. The once powerful tribe had been devastated by a smallpox epidemic and was vulnerable. Never doubting their providential destiny to inherit the land, the Puritans launched a preemptive “holy war” to counter “a satanic plot to destroy Christ’s church in the wilderness.” Content with trading with the settlers, the Pequot “neither desired nor anticipated war with the Puritans,” Alfred Cave points out.40 Once the war began, however, the Mohegan and Narragansett underscored the rivalries among indigenous bands by allying with the Puritans in order to strike back at their longstanding enemies, the Pequot.

  Atrocity-filled genocidal warfare characterized New England’s first full-scale Anglo-Indian conflict. In May 1637 Massachusetts Bay and its Indian allies launched an exterminatory assault against a Pequot village on the Mystic River. Under the leadership of Captain John Mason the English fired the village and then relished “the extreme amazement of the enemy” as men, women, and children burned to death in the flames. Bradford explained that God had condemned the Indians to the “fiery oven” and their “frying in the fryer, and the streams of blood quenching the same” had exacted a “sweet victory” that brought a “great rejoicing” to the settlers. Troops using dogs hunted down survivors to carry out tortures and executions.41

  In a struggle pitting the forces of good against evil in the form of the devil’s indigenous minions, no amount of indiscriminate killing would be considered too great. “Sometimes,” Captain John Underhill rationalized, perhaps to assuage feelings of traumatic guilt within the settler community, “the scripture declareth that women and children must perish with their parents … We had sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings.” The Pequot War “cast a long shadow” as the narrative of martial triumph of providentially destined settlers over devilish and savage foes “became a vital part of the mythology of the American frontier.”42

  Ambivalent relations encompassing trade and acculturation resumed in New England after the Pequot War. More intensely than the Virginians some of the deeply devout Puritans strove to lead indigenous people to Christian salvation. From 1651 to 1674, the Rev. John Eliot established 14 “praying towns” with over 1,000 Indians in residence. He proved to be one of the rare Europeans willing to try to learn Indian languages, though at the same time he insisted that the indigenes conform to the European mode of dress, appearance, and gender roles. The missions of the early New England colleges such as Harvard and Dartmouth also encompassed an effort to Christianize Indians.43

  The Wampanoag sachem Metacomet, son of Massasoit, embodied the Indian side of colonial ambivalence and appropriation strategies. Metacomet lived among the Puritans and traded with them for years. He regularly communicated with the English (through an interpreter) and went by the European name “Philip” in a display of accommodation toward the colonizer. By this time hundreds of Wampanoag had converted to Christianity.44

  Tensions escalated over settler encroachments, mounting Indian insecurities as their spiritual and political leadership eroded, and unequal treatment (including capital punishment) accorded the indigenes in the English justice system. Ambivalence waned as the settler colonials broke off relations with Indian groups, including King Philip, and represented all the indigenes as their savage enemies. This Puritan discourse of enmity ultimately drove “thousands of once-friendly Indians into Philip’s camp.” The “English insistence on subordination and interference in Indian governance,” Jenny Hale Pulsipher explains, combined with relentless English expansion, “had convinced Philip that war was his only remaining alternative to preserve Wampanoag sovereignty.” Joined by the powerful Narragansett and other tribes, Metacomet led the resistance in what the New Englanders at the time called the Narragansett War.45

  On the eve of war in 1675 Metacomet explained that the Europeans—”these people from the unknown world”—had grown “insolent and bold,” overrunning fields and hunting grounds, breaking agreements, killing Indians, and seeking to “drive us and our children from the graves of our fathers … and enslave our women and children.” Now the spirits of those ancestors “cry out to us for revenge.” Metacomet and his followers launched an indiscriminate campaign that left a series of New England towns in smoking ruins, littered with dead and mutilated bodies. They mocked and terrorized the English, pinning them down and shouting, “Where is your O God?”46

  The ferocity of the Indian attacks traumatized the settler colonials and precipitated a boomerang of indiscriminate violence. In order to survive and ultimately to achieve victory, the English adapted to the situation by embracing the Indian style of irregular warfare, which they had previously viewed as savage and dishonorable. Under the leadership of Benjamin Church they now skulked in the woods and launched surprise hit-and-run attacks. The settler colonials bulked up enlistments through the incentive of scalp bounties, which returned five shillings for the scalp of a common Indian (often regardless of age or sex) to 100 shillings, or five pounds, offered for King Philip’s hair. From that point forward indiscriminate warfare, ranging, and scalp hunting became powerful weapons in advancing the settler colonial project.47 Whereas Indians took scalps and trophies to affirm courage and masculinity in warfare, Europeans provided marketplace incentives for the killing and mutilation of indigenous people.

  Warfare reinforced masculinity while at the same time altering women’s roles as the New England settlers fought for their lives. Both Indians and settler males referred to warfare as a quest to determine which one would “master” the other hence “what was at stake was their very manhood.” In the struggle for survival, New England women assumed unprecedented “central and supporting roles” in the traditionally male realm of warfare.48

  The English possessed superior numbers, material resources, and social cohesion that allowed them to prevail in the Narragansett War. The New England confederation eventually dispatched a 1,000-men army on a campaign to search out and annihilate the indigenous enemy. In April 1676 the English located a Narragansett fortress at the Great Swamp east of the Chippuxet River and in a reprise of the Mystic River assault put it to the torch as the Indians sat down for dinner. Some 600 Narragansett—roughly half of them non-combatants—died in the inferno. “They and their food fried together,” one Englishman exulted.49

  Several towns had been destroyed and more than 500 soldiers and some 1,000 New England civilians had been killed in King Philip’s War. Indian losses were much greater, however, following a genocidal campaign of lynching, murder, and enslavement. Metacomet, a “great, naked, dirty beast” and thus the personification of the savage Indian other, was executed, his body drawn and quartered, and his severed head hung from a pole for decades. The conclusion of the war brought “a shattering defeat for the I
ndians, who were scattered, sold into slavery, or decisively marginalized.”50

  The extreme violence of King Philip’s War made an indelible impression on the minds of the settlers, as “the fear and suspicion of Indians remaining in the colony would persist long after the fighting ended.” Indian raids and irregular warfare had so terrorized encroaching English settlements that the hatred and determination to destroy the indigenous enemy became embedded in colonial culture. With bounties being paid for Indian scalps, the fighting men made no unprofitable distinction between combatants and noncombatants. Indeed, as the incentives ran in the other direction, extirpation became “a legitimate act of war.” With the “brutish enemy” having caused so much “English bloodshed” in the war, “the rage of the people” turned even on the Christian Indians in the praying towns. As the Rev. Daniel Gookin explained, “All Indians are reckoned to be false and perfidious.”51

  King Philip’s War thus illustrated the rewards as well as the traumas of total war against the indigenous savages. In the wake of the conflict, the English increasingly viewed “all Indians who resisted English definitions of authority as enemies.” Ultimately the Narragansett War reflected “the unwillingness of the colonists to accommodate native cultures, economies, and land use” and as such presaged “most if not all of the subsequent major wars between natives and settlers during the next two centuries of American expansion.”52

  The violence threw Puritan society into a state of “hysteria” and left its leaders badly shaken. In 1679 the Puritan leader Increase Mather blamed the war on the sinfulness of the settlers and expressed the fear that Englishmen were “degenerating into beasts,” as they had “run wild into the woods” and fought the savages in “Heathenish” fashion. “We have [become] shamefully Indianized in all those abominable things,” lamented his son and fellow Puritan minister Cotton Mather. “Our Indian wars are not yet over.”53