AMIND 140: Week 5 Lecture Notes

Slide 1: Welcome back, everyone! Last week, we discussed the historical development of the “Culture of Conquest,” and we read about the controversy surrounding Christopher Columbus and Columbus Day. We’ll be building off of these ideas with this week’s discussion of early American colonization, from the eastern seaboard to the west coast in California, and the development of early misrepresentations of Native Americans along the way.

Slide 2: As we discussed last week, the Spanish were among the first Europeans to settle in the Americas; however, the British established the first permanent settlement in Jamestown. The Jamestown settlement was established by the Virginia Company of London in 1607. The Virginia Company was an English joint stock company established in 1606 by royal charter by King James I with the sole purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America. The Jamestown settlement followed several earlier failed attempts like the “Lost Colony of Roanoke,” for example. The Roanoke Colony was an attempt by Queen Elizabeth I to establish a permanent settlement in 1580s, but the colonists disappeared after their last shipment of supplies from England, and there has been no conclusive evidence as to what happened to those colonists.

Slide 3: The Jamestown Settlement was established on the land of the Powhatan Confederacy, made up of at least 30 Algonquin-speaking Native American tribes occupying the coast of Virginia, Chesapeake Bay, and southern Maryland. The Confederacy was formed by the powerful chief Powhatan of the Powhatan tribe. Some of the other major Indian tribes in the Confederacy besides the Powhatan were the Arrohatek, the Appamattuck, the Chickahominy, and others. The tribes of the Confederacy made up over 200 settlements in the region, gave mutual military support, and paid taxes in the form of goods (like food, animal furs, copper, and pearls) to Powhatan. Since Jamestown was in the Powhatan lands, the confederacy was greatly affected by the arrival of the British. From the very start, the relationship between the settlers and the tribes was very strained. The settlers depended on the tribes for survival: food, resources, and knowledge of the land. Slowly, desperate settlers began stealing food from the tribes and encouraging the livestock to eat the tribes’ crops, which, of course, increased the already existing tensions. Both the settlers and the Powhatan Confederate tribes began reacting to each other with violence around 1608, and the war culminated with the capture of Jamestown Settlement’s Captain John Smith.

Slide 4: Speaking of John Smith, you may be familiar with the story of Pocahontas from this time period as well. Pocahontas has been portrayed through art starting from the early 1600s through modern-times. Many of you may have learned about Pocahontas through the Disney film. The plot goes that Pocahontas, the beautiful daughter of Chief Powhatan, saves the handsome English adventurer John Smith from execution when the relationship between the English colonists and the Native American “savages” go bad. Pocahontas starts a romantic relationship with Smith, and the two almost sail away together to Britain in the end. You may be surprised to learn that this story is a myth, and that the true history is much darker. Pocahontas, whose real name is Matoaka, never actually had a relationship with John Smith. She was actually taken as a prisoner by the Jamestown colonists during a social visit at the young age of 17, and she was held hostage for over a year. Matoaka did encounter John Smith, but nothing romantic happened between them. Instead, another colonist, John Rolfe, showed interest in Matoaka, and as a condition of her release from being held hostage was forced to marry him. Matoaka became “Rebecca Rolfe” and was taken to England in 1616. Before she could return to Virginia, she died in England at age 21. So why have we heard a much different story of Pocahontas than what actually happened? Scholars on Pocahontas have argued that the myth was created to portray Pocahontas as an example of a “civilized savage,” to romanticize coming to the “New World,” and/or to set the tone for standards of desired white settler/Indian relations. Whatever the reason, it is clear that the single story we hear of “Pocahontas” isn’t how the history unfolded.

Slide 5: The second successful English colonial venture was known as the “Plymouth Colony,” which was in modern-day Massachusetts from 1620-1691. Plymouth Colony was founded by a group of 102 religious separatists, also known as “Pilgrims,” who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean aboard the Mayflower ship. The Plymouth Colony had a much different start from the Jamestown Settlement, which was established through a private charter. After the first successful settlement by the Pilgrims, Puritans (English Reformed Protestants who sought to “purify” the Church of England from most Roman Catholic practices) started coming to the area by the thousands, led by John Winthrop. The Puritans settled in what became known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony in modern-day Salem and Boston. Ultimately, the colonies combined by 1689-1691 to form the Province of Massachusetts.

Slide 6: The lands who the settlers were invading was that of the Pequot tribe, and upon initial contact between the two groups, smallpox spread from English ships to the Pequot fishing villages. Smallpox greatly reduced the Pequot population where the Plymouth colony would occupy; however, over the next 16 years, the Pequots recovered and became a “barrier” to the English settlers by actively resisting the English setters taking their homelands, which we will discuss in more detail next week.

Slide 7: An important figure in the initial marketing of the Plymouth Colony to future colonists and in the beginning of a history of misrepresentation of Native peoples was William Bradford, a key signatory of the Mayflower Compact while aboard the Mayflower in 1620 and served as Plymouth Colony governor for five terms. Bradford’s journal, which later was published as “Of Plymouth Plantation,” recounted happenings in Plymouth Colony from the settlers’ perspective from 1620-1657.

Slide 8: Here are a few excerpts from Bradford’s journal, “Of Plymouth Plantation.” Keep in mind that his journal was originally intended to document the experiences of the colonists, but it was later published and circulated among readers in Europe. Notice the descriptions of the Native Americans and the environment. You may notice connections to our previous discussions of portraying indigenous peoples as “primitive” and “savage,” and portraying the environment as a “pristine wilderness.” How might early colonial writings like Bradford’s journal contributed to the mindset and stereotypes surrounding Native Americans and serve as an example of the Danger of a Single Story?”

Slide 9: On the same note of the “Danger of a Single Story,” we will also be learning about how California Missions are typically taught, and how this perspective is vastly different than the perspective of California Natives. So while the English were establishing settlements on the eastern seaboard of what would later become the United States, the Spanish were claiming territories in present-day Mexico and California. Back in 1542, Spain claimed California as a territory, but Spaniards didn’t start occupying California until the 1700s. The Mission Era in California lasted from 1769 until about 1833, and 21 missions were built along the coastline of California. The first mission was built in 1769, which was Mission San Diego de Alcala.

Slide 10: The goals of the missions were to not only expand Spanish territory, but to also spread Catholicism. While the mission era influenced California art, culture, architecture throughout the region, it also impacted California Natives negatively. California Natives were forced to abandon their homes, lands, languages, and cultures and embrace Spanish language, culture, and religion. On top of bringing their culture and religion, Spaniards also brought diseases that killed thousands of Native peoples, dropping the population drastically during this time period. Some scholars have actually compared the missions to being like “concentration camps,” as Natives were used as forced labor to build the missions and they also faced a range of violence and abuses against them. In this week’s Module materials, we’ll be digging deeper into the “single story” of how the California Missions are typically talked about, compared to Native American perspectives of the Missions from modern-day accounts. Lastly, we’ll learn about the 1775 Kumeyaay Mission Revolt at Mission San Diego and “decolonizing” modern-day mission projects. Continue thinking about connections of how early misrepresentations influence lasting ideologies and the “Danger of a Single Story.”