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Indians 101: American Indians and English colonists 350 years ago, 1675 [1]
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Date: 2025-01-28
The English invasion of North America during the seventeenth century was characterized by cultural misunderstandings, violence, and organized warfare.
In looking at the causes of the wars between the English Puritans and the Indians in New England, Wilcomb Washburn, in his chapter on seventeenth-century wars in the Handbook of North American Indians, writes:
“Traditional Indian tribal culture thus became a natural enemy that must be destroyed not for faults that its members may have committed but for existing as an example of a society contradicting the assumptions of Puritan society.”
Within this framework, the English viewed Indians as a kind of wild vermin to be exterminated. With regard to the English and their policies toward the Indians, historian Wilbur R. Jacobs, in his chapter on British Indian policies in the Handbook of North American Indians, writes:
“Native American people were seen as temporary owners of the North American continent rich in minerals, furs, fish, agricultural produce (maize, squash, and other food plants domesticated by Indians).”
He also says:
“Overall policy allowed no special place for the American Indian, who was regarded as a kind of nonperson.”
In their book Indian Wars, Historians Robert Utley and Wilcomb Washburn sum up the English approach to Indians by saying:
“The English showed little hesitation about attacking the Indians for whatever reason.”
Briefly described below are some of the interactions between American Indians and English colonists 350 years ago, in 1675.
Lynch Mob
In Massachusetts, a lynch mob murdered a peaceful, unsuspecting Wamesit family. In an article in the New England Quarterly, G. E. Thomas reports:
“The point illustrated by the Wamesit murders was not merely that they had been perpetrated by English ruffians with blood hatred of all Indians; the significant fact was that English juries, far from the immediate stress and emotion of war, with few exceptions, refused to find whites guilty of the most brutal and obvious crimes.”
Kennebec
In Maine, the English colonists demanded that the Kennebec Indians turn in their guns. The Indians, however, felt that this was an outrageous request as they needed the guns for hunting. The situation became more tense when some English fishermen threw one of Squando’s children into the water to see if the child could swim. The child drowned. Squando, a major sachem (chief), was upset by the action.
Emissaries from the southern New England tribes who had gone to war against the English cajoled the Maine tribes to seek retribution for the injustices which they had suffered from the English. Finally, the Maine tribes went to war and their raids decimated a number of isolated English homesteads. The English fled to garrison houses or to Massachusetts.
The Bacon Rebellion
In Maryland, Doeg warriors seized several hogs from a trader who refused to pay his debts and started what became known as the “Bacon Rebellion”. In retaliation, the Maryland colonists killed several Doegs and 14 Susquehannocks. In an attempt to prevent Susquehannock retaliation for these murders, the Maryland and Virginia Militia under the leadership Colonel John Washington (grandfather of George Washington), with more than 1,000 troops, attacked a friendly Susquehannock palisaded village located on Piscataway Creek. English forces besieged the Susquehannock fort for six weeks.
Five Susquehannock leaders approached the Militia under a white flag and were murdered. Washington was tried for murder because of this action but was not convicted.
The siege ended when the Susquehannocks and Doegs broke out of the fort, escaping to the southwest. Susquehannock warriors continued to raid settlements in Virginia and Maryland for another year.
In his chapter on seventeenth-century Indian wars in the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 15: Northeast, Wilcomb Washburn writes:
“The origins of the war have the same frustrating absurdity that mark the origin of the wars of New England in this period.”
Peace
In New York, the Mahicans and the Mohawks were traditional enemies. In his book Encyclopedia of American Indian Wars, 1492-1890, Jerry Keenan reports:
“The Mahicans were a large tribe of Algonquian-speaking Indians who originally inhabited the region along the Hudson River as far north as Lake Champlain.”
The Mohawks generally call themselves Kaniengehaga which is often translated as meaning “people of the place of the flint.” They were one of the original five Indian nations that came together to form the powerful Iroquois Confederacy. As the easternmost Iroquois nation, they were the first to encounter the European traders and to obtain guns.
In 1675, the English governor at Albany negotiated a peace between the Mohawks and the Mahicans. The Mahican Confederacy at this time included the Wappingers and the Housatonics.
More American Indian histories
Indians 101: American Indians in the Southeast 350 years ago, 1674
Indians 101: American Indians in New England 350 years ago, 1674
Indians 101: American Indians and French explorers 350 years ago, 1673
Indians 101: American Indians and Europeans 350 years ago, 1673
Indians 101: American Indians 350 years ago, 1672
Indians 101: American Indians 350 years ago, 1671
Indians 101: Canadian First Nations 350 years ago, 1670
Indians 201: American Indians and New Sweden
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