Colonial America

by Richard Middleton, Anne Lombard

  Nevertheless they love their children dearly, in spite of . . . the fact that they are very naughty children, paying them little respect, and hardly more obedience; for unhappily in these lands the young have no respect for the old, nor are children obedient to their parents, and moreover there is no [corporal] punishment for any fault. For this reason everybody lives in complete freedom and does what he thinks fit; and parents, for failure to punish their children, are often compelled to suffer wrongdoing at their hands, sometimes being beaten and flouted to their face. This is conduct too shocking and smacks of nothing less than the brute beast. Bad example, and bad bringing up, without punishment or correction, are the causes of all this lack of decency.

  The basic social unit in most Indian nations was the clan, a kinship group which was usually organized around matrilineal lines. A man belonged to the clan of his mother, and his primary obligations were to that clan. Although a man did apparently have a kinship relationship with his father, members of his father's clan were generally not considered to be kin. Kinship obligations within the clan were the most important bonds a person had. As one recent historian has commented, “Kin taught children the ways of the world, from the secrets of making pots or arrows to the enemies of their people, from proper behavior toward one's fellow villagers to the mysterious forces controlling the universe … Kin met to celebrate a young hunter's first kill or decide on the propriety of a marriage offer. Kin avenged one when one was harmed, took care of one in sickness, and mourned one after death.”9 Clans also offered a means of minimizing conflict and increasing the political and economic effectiveness of families. In due course they facilitated a number of complementary objectives. Hospitality could be sought from someone of the same clan, no matter how distant, which was especially useful in a society where men spent so much time away from home hunting or making war.

  While clans served as a force for social cohesion, they could also provide the impetus for their members to go to war. The purpose of warfare in Eastern Woodlands societies was not to conquer territory, as in European societies, but to restore harmony and balance to a clan whose members had somehow been injured or aggrieved. Its underlying logic was related to concepts of law and crime. If a clan member was killed, the most important legal consequence was not really punishment of the guilty party (the emphasis in English law) but providing compensation for the grieving relatives. The clan had a collective obligation to avenge the death of their kinsman by taking a life for the life that had been lost. In theory the taking of the second life evened the score and ended further killing.

  War was typically, at least in part, an extension of this principle of retaliation. Native American cultures in North America usually incorporated the belief that the spirits of those who had been killed in battle could not rest until they had been avenged. Unlike soldiers in wars fought in European state-based societies, whose object was to kill as many enemies as possible and take control of territory, the task of an Indian warrior was to capture a member of an enemy tribe and bring the captive back to his clan. Particularly among Iroquoian-speaking peoples, clan members would then decide whether to adopt or enslave the captives to serve as symbolic substitutes for their lost family members (usually the fate of women and children), or to exact revenge through a ritualized execution. Executions were carried out by the entire clan, with the victim often being maimed (scalps removed, fingers cut off) before being slowly burned alive. All the while the victim was expected to prove his courage and his manhood by singing bravely and showing no fear of death. The process, as anthropologists and ethnohistorians have suggested, relieved feelings of anger and grief and restored the clan to an emotional balance so that they could return to normalcy. Wars conducted in this manner have been called “mourning wars.”

  The logic of mourning wars inhibited the scope of war making, since the point was to bring back captives to restore the dead, rather than to kill as many of the enemy as possible. War parties were usually small, while arrows and tomahawks tipped with flint or horn were only moderately lethal. Battle tactics often involved stealth and surprise attacks instead of frontal attacks or mass charges. On the other hand, war making served other functions for Indian societies besides the taking of captives, so they could result in killing for other purposes. Performing courageously in battle was an important way for young men to prove their manhood and to earn prestige and status within their clans. Taking scalps as trophies of one's success in battle was a practice in some Indian cultures (much as taking the heads or ears of defeated enemies was a practice in parts of Europe), long before Europeans began offering bounties for scalps. Moreover, war could also be a means of controlling territory to ensure game and food supplies, although Native Americans did not need to control territory in the European manner; simply depopulating an area was enough to assert their claim. Warfare to occupy territory would have resulted in needless killing on a larger scale.10

  Document 2

  The Indian method of warfare, Thomas Harriot, 1588, reprinted in Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ed., Major Problems in American Colonial History: Documents and Essays (Lexington, Mass., 1993), 13

  This document by a sixteenth-century English naturalist is based on his observations of coastal Algonquian Indians around Roanoke, Virginia. Questions to consider: What methods of fighting does he describe? What assumptions does he make about the Indians' fighting methods and their effectiveness?

  Their manner of wars amongst themselves is either by sudden surprising one another, most commonly about the dawning of the day, or moonlight, or else by ambushes or some subtle devices. Set battles are very rare, except it fall where there are many trees, where either part may have some hope of defence, after the delivery of every arrow, in leaping behind some or other.

  If there fall out any wars between us and them, what their fight is likely to be, we having advantages against them so many manner of ways, as by our discipline, our strange weapons and devices else, especially by ordinance great and small, it may easily be imagined; by the experience we have had in some places, the turning up of their heels against us in running away was their best defence.

  Another key aspect of Eastern Woodlands societies that had began to develop by 1300 was a highly participatory and egalitarian type of political organization, quite unlike the hierarchical political organizations of European monarchies. Decisions about war, peace, and diplomatic alliances provided the main subject of political deliberation among Eastern Woodlands people, whose decisions were mostly made at a local level within each individual village or town. A village was usually led by a chief or head man, who had generally inherited the position, though leadership ability was also essential. Succession among the Algonquian peoples was largely through the female line, passing from a woman's eldest son through the younger brothers to the sisters and then the heirs of the eldest sister. Other peoples allowed women an expanded role in the selection process. For example, among the Iroquois it was village women who chose the chief (though he was always a male.) While chiefs periodically deliberated together in a tribal council with other village chiefs, it was understood that each clan or village made its own decisions and was not bound by the will of the others. Indeed, a chief 's authority within his own village was quite limited. Decision making was highly democratic and chiefs led by persuasion rather than by command. Essentially the only way to make a binding political decision (such as a treaty) was to ensure that the men involved had all agreed to it. Although women did not generally participate in deliberations about war and peace, among many peoples the older women in a clan could call upon the young male warriors to avenge a death and thus could exercise considerable influence in war-making councils.

  4 Eastern Woodlands Societies in Transition, 1300–1500

  These patterns of social life had become fairly well established in Eastern Woodlands societies when they were disrupted by the same phenomenon that was transforming the societies of the Mississippi Valley: climate change. The Little Ice Age, beginn
ing around 1300 ce, was a period of global cooling that would last through the eighteenth century. Temperatures dropped: spring arrived later, and winter frosts came earlier, shortening the growing season and making harvests unpredictable. For people who had become dependent on agriculture, even a small change in the climate could be devastating. The consequences were especially severe in the north, where growing seasons became shorter than were needed to produce enough food to sustain a village.

  To survive, people in the Eastern Woodlands began to migrate, usually to more fertile land at lower altitudes and lower latitudes where they could continue to support themselves through farming. As they moved, clans invariably crossed boundaries and encroached on the claims of other clans. People became more territorial; increased competition for the best land resulted in more frequent warfare between peoples. War, of course, caused death and grieving, and given the logic of the mourning war these new deaths produced pressure for still more warfare. Occasional skirmishes gave way to frequent raids, which then required retaliation, in a destructive cycle that had the potential to destroy entire societies. The increased frequency of warfare became a new challenge to which people would be forced to adapt.

  Figure 6 The Algonquian Indian village of Pomeiock, Gibbs Creek, North Carolina, with protective stockade. Sketch from observations made by English expedition under John White in 1585. Archaeologists have found that stockaded villages became more common in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, presumably in response to the increased likelihood of enemy raids. © World History Archive/Alamy.

  One way in which Indian peoples coped was by developing more intricate trading relationships with other clans or tribes. Trade meant something different for Native Americans than it did for Europeans. The exchange of goods was part of a gift culture rather than the operation of a commercial market; it provided an important mechanism for building trust and friendship, in addition to acquiring goods. Among Native Americans status was measured by the ability to give rather than to possess. In this context, trade was actually a form of mutual gift-giving, which had the effect of raising the status of each of the givers and allowing each of them to feel magnanimous. Gift-giving ceremonies played an important role when an alliance was being formed or a treaty agreed to because they helped to bolster mutual feelings of goodwill. Gifts were also important when treaties were renewed or reconfirmed; good feelings made it likely that an amicable relationship would continue.11

  As trade and alliances became more important, people's work priorities may have changed somewhat, as they spent more of their time producing objects that were highly prized in trade, like ceramics or ornaments made from copper and shell beads. Some people may have stepped up their production of food so as to have a valuable commodity to trade for other goods. For example, according to the Franciscan monk Pierre Sagard, who visited the Great Lakes in the 1630s, the Huron sowed enough corn for two or three years, “either for fear that some bad season may visit them or else in order to trade it to other nations for furs and other things.”

  Another adaptation for many clans in the Eastern Woodlands was to develop more consolidated forms of political authority. The best example – and quite probably the first – was the Iroquois Great League of Peace, or the Iroquois Five Nations. After having made war upon one another for many years, village and tribal leaders in five separate Iroquoian-speaking tribes (also called nations) reached an agreement in approximately 1450 to stop the bloodshed. After reaching this accord the warriors of the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida, and Seneca nations regarded one another as members of the same people, and stopped waging war against each other. Members of the Iroquois League now held annual meetings to renew their bonds of friendship, and killing between members effectively ceased. However, the League did not end Iroquois war-making against other groups. The culture of warfare had become too entrenched, and young men continued to feel pressure to go to war in order to prove their manhood. Having agreed to avoid war with one another, the members of the League instead turned their aggressions against neighboring peoples. In time the confederacy became a powerful alliance that allowed its members to call upon other members to help them against their enemies.

  Facing increased aggression from the Iroquois Five Nations, other tribes were now forced to adapt. The Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks, for example, migrated south from the upper Susquehannock River in modern Pennsylvania and into southern Pennsylvania or Maryland in order to escape Iroquois raiders. Meanwhile, the Hurons, another group of Iroquoian speakers, formed their own confederacy so as to be able to defend themselves more effectively against the Five Nations. Many Eastern Woodlands villages came together to form chiefdoms led by a single ruler who could coordinate diplomatic policy for the entire group. The effect of these kinds of changes was in many cases to create more hierarchical political structures, with chiefs being able to demand tribute from subordinate group members. The most prominent such chief along the eastern seaboard was Wahunsonacock, chief of the Powhatan Confederacy, who at some time during the late sixteenth century extended his authority over 31 tribes in the Chesapeake region. A similar consolidation was taking place among the Piscataway and Patuxent peoples higher up the coast. These confederacies in turn often dominated smaller tribes in their respective regions, causing new tensions. The specific rivalries varied from place to place, but they existed in each region, as part of the continual competition for resources in a changing environment.

  The peoples who lived north of the Rio Grande would have no contact at all with Europeans until the sixteenth century, and sustained contact would begin only in the 1560s. Already, though, they had undergone profound historical changes. The largest civilization centers, in the Southwest and the Midwest, had collapsed. New patterns of collective life had developed. New rivalries had formed. Trade ties and alliances had been forged, governed by long-established, commonly understood norms. It was these rivalries and alliances into which Europeans would be swept when they first began to arrive on North American shores.

  5 Earliest Contacts with Europeans

  During the sixteenth century, Native Americans in North America would begin to have sporadic contacts with small groups of Europeans, as we shall see in Chapter 2. Their reactions to Europeans would be shaped by the cultural practices they had developed over the previous centuries. Native American people were generally receptive to trade if it was offered, since trade goods could be used to consolidate friendships and build alliances. An alliance with a group of Europeans could consolidate a chief 's leadership position within a newly organized confederacy, or provide a much needed shield for a smaller tribe that was struggling to retain its autonomy in the face of threats from a larger group. As individuals faced the choice of trading with a group of strangers or trying to drive them away, they would make decisions to promote the interests of their clans and tribes in a competitive political environment. The sum of their choices could well determine the fate of a party of European explorers or a group of colonists.

  When Europeans began to arrive in North America during the sixteenth century, they would in turn shape the societies of the Native Americans they encountered, although often without understanding what they were doing. Probably the Europeans' most significant impact on Native Americans during the early years was to expose them to new diseases. Native Americans had their share of diseases before contact with Europeans, including syphilis, hepatitis, encephalitis, polio, and dental caries. However, various contagious diseases including smallpox, whooping cough, chicken pox, diphtheria, influenza, scarlet fever, typhus, dysentery, cholera, measles, and yellow fever were unknown in the Western Hemisphere before 1492. For thousands of years the peoples of Africa, Asia, and Europe had exchanged pathogens – sometimes with devastating results, such as the outbreak of bubonic plague in fourteenth-century England. The long-term effect of these exchanges was constant reimmunization of the inhabitants of the Old World against a huge array of diseases. People with a natural immunity to a disease su
rvived, reproduced, and passed on their immunity to at least some of their children. No matter how devastating the epidemic, the population always recovered. But this microbiological exchange did not take place among the Native American peoples, who had been cut off from the rest of the world since 11,000 BCE.12 As a result Native American populations had no immunities to Old World pathogens.

  When Old World diseases reached the Americas, they caused what are known as “virgin soil epidemics” and devastated huge proportions of the population. The problem for the Indian peoples was that, as soon as one epidemic passed, the survivors were often afflicted by another. Even a single pathogen could devastate a community, leaving crops unattended, the game not hunted, and survivors so emotionally devastated that they sometimes even lost their will to fight against the next outbreak. After an illness, communities sometimes lost the skills and resources to remain economically viable, let alone defend themselves from external attack.

  Calculating the effects of these diseases on the peoples living north of the Rio Grande before the arrival of permanent European colonists is difficult given the paucity of the evidence. When early European explorers traveled through the Southeast they found deserted towns, devastated by what the inhabitants called a “pest.” Had they been killed by European diseases, or something else? Nobody knows. More than a century later, when English colonizers reached the Southeast, the great towns and temples once observed by the earliest Spanish explorers were gone. Had these civilizations been devastated by European diseases after the Spanish left? Again, nobody knows. Among the Eastern Woodlands peoples, historians are sure that some Indians were exposed to new diseases by the traders and occasional slavers who came sporadically to their shores before the arrival of European colonizers. For example, a devastating epidemic struck the Plymouth Bay region in the early 1600s, a few years before the arrival of the Pilgrims, which killed as much as 75 percent of the population. But historians now believe that diseases spread intermittently, affecting local populations at different times. Thus people further inland may not have been touched.