The Colonies, 1492-1750

by Reuben Gold Thwaites

5. Relations of the Indians and Colonists.

The Indians and the colonists.

The colonists from Europe met the Red Indian in a threefold capacity,—as a neighbor, as a customer and trader, and as a foe opposed to encroachments upon his hunting grounds. At first the whites were regarded by the aborigines as of supernatural origin, and hospitality, veneration, and confidence were displayed toward the new-comers. But the morality of the Europeans was soon made painfully evident to them. |Indians as foes.| When the early Spaniards, and afterwards the English, kidnapped tribesmen to sell them into slavery or to use them as captive guides for future expeditions, or even murdered the natives on slight provocation, distrust and hatred naturally succeeded the sentiment of awe. Like many savage races, like the earlier Romans, the Indian looked upon the member of every tribe with which he had not made a formal peace as a public enemy; hence he felt justified in wreaking his vengeance on the race whenever he failed to find individual offenders. He was exceptionally cruel, his mode of warfare was skulking, he could not easily be got at in the forest fastnesses which he alone knew well, and his strokes fell heaviest on women and children; so that whites came to fear and unspeakably to loathe the savage, and often added greatly to the bitterness of the struggle by retaliation in kind. The white borderers themselves were frequently brutal, reckless, and lawless; and under such conditions clashing was inevitable.

The fur-trade, and inter-tribal barter.

But the love of trade was strong among the Indians, and caused them to some extent to overcome or to conceal their antipathies. There had always existed a system of inter-tribal barter, so widespread that the first whites landing on the Atlantic coast saw Indians with copper ornaments and tools which came from the Lake Superior mines; and by the middle of the seventeenth century many articles of European make had passed inland, by means of these forest exchanges, as far as the Mississippi, in advance of the earliest white explorers. The trade with the Indians was one of the incentives to colonization. The introduction of European blankets at once revolutionized the dress of the coast tribes; and it is surprising how quickly the art of using firearms was acquired among them, and barbaric implements and utensils abandoned for those of civilized make. So rapid was this change that it was not long before the Indians became dependent on the whites for nearly every article of dress and ornament, and for tools and weapons. The white traders, who travelled through the woods visiting the tribes, exchanging these goods for furs, often cheated and robbed the Indian, taught him the use of intoxicants, bullied and browbeat him, appropriated his women, and in general introduced serious demoralization into the native camps. Trouble frequently grew out of this wretched condition of affairs. The bulk of the whites doubtless intended to treat the Indian honorably; but the forest traders were beyond the pale of law, and news of the details of their transactions seldom reached the coast settlements.

The Indian as a neighbor.

As a neighbor the Indian was difficult to deal with, whether in the negotiation of treaties of amity, or in the purchase of lands. Having but a loose system of government, there was no really responsible head, and no compact was secure from the interference of malcontents who would not be bound by treaties made by the chiefs. The English felt that the red-men were not putting the land to its full use, that much of the territory was growing up as a waste, that they were best entitled to it who could make it the most productive. On the other hand, the earlier cessions of land were made under a total misconception: the Indians supposed that the new-comers would, after a few years of occupancy, pass on and leave the tract again to the natives. There was no compromise possible between races with precisely opposite views of property in land. |The inevitable struggle for mastery.| The struggle was inevitable,—civilization against savagery. No sentimental notions could prevent it. It was in the nature of things that the weaker must give way. For a long time it was not certain that a combined effort might not drive the whites into the sea and undo the work of colonization; but in the end the savage went to the wall.

Good effect of Indian opposition on the colonists.

Taking a general view of the growth of the American nation, it is now easy to see that it was fortunate that Englishmen met in the Indian so formidable an antagonist: such fierce and untamed savages could never be held long as slaves; and thus were the American colonists of the North—the bone and sinew of the nation—saved from the temptations and the moral danger which come from contact with a numerous servile race. Again, every step of progress into the wilderness being stubbornly contested, the spirit of hardihood and bravery—so essential an element in nation-building—was fostered among the borderers; and as settlement moved westward slowly, only so fast as the pressure of population on the seaboard impelled it, the Americans were prevented from planting scattered colonies in the interior, and thus were able to present a solid front to the mother-country when, in due course of time, fostering care changed to a spirit of commercial control, and commercial control to jealous interference and menace.