DBQ1 Native America
QUESTION
To what extent did European and Indian attitudes toward each other change between 1607 and 1700?
Use the documents and your knowledge of the period between 1607 and 1700 in constructing
your response.
Document A
Speech by Powhatan, as recorded by John Smith, 1609
Why will you take by force what you may obtain by love? Why will you destroy us who
supply you with food? What can you get by war? . . . We are unarmed, and willing to
give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner. . . .
I am not so simple as not to know it is better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live
quietly with my women and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and being
their friend, trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them. . . .
Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may die in the
same manner.
Document B
John Rolfe on his decision to marry Pocahontas, in a letter to Sir Thomas Dale,
governor of Virginia, 1614
Let therefore this my well advised protestation . . . condemn me herein, if my chiefest intent and purpose
be not, to strive with all my power of body and mind, in the undertaking of so mighty a matter, no way led
(so far forth as man’s weakness may permit) with the unbridled desire of carnal affection: but for the good
of this plantation, for the honour of our country, for the glory of God, for my own salvation, and for the
converting to the true knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, an unbelieving creature, namely Pokahuntas. . . .
Shall I be of so untoward a disposition, as to refuse to lead the blind into the right way? Shall I be so
unnatural, as not to give bread to the hungry? or uncharitable, as not to cover the naked? Shall I despise to
actuate these pious duties of a Christian? Shall the base fears of displeasing the world, overpower and
withhold me from revealing unto man these spiritual works of the Lord, which in my meditations and
prayers, I have daily made known unto him? God forbid. . . .
Now if the vulgar sort, who square all men’s actions by the base rule of their own filthiness, shall tax or
taunt me in this my godly labour: let them know, it is not any hungry appetite, to gorge my self with
incontinency; sure (if I would, and were so sensually inclined) I might satisfy such desire, though not
without a seared conscience, yet with Christians more pleasing to the eye, and less fearful in the offence
unlawfully committed.
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DBQ1 Native America
Document C
A Wicomesse Indian to the governor of Maryland, 1633
Since that you are heere strangers and come into our Countrey, you should rather
confine yourselves to the Customes of our Countrey, than impose yours upon us.
Document D
Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, in A Key into the Language of America, 1643
Roger Williams was the founder of Rhode Island. His book A Key into the Language of
America is the first study of an Indian language, the Narragansett language.
I once traveled to an island of the wildest in our parts, where in the night an Indian (as he
said) had a vision or dream of the sun (whom they worship for a god) darting a beam into
his breast which he conceived to be the messenger of his death: this poor native called his
friends and neighbors, and prepared some little refreshing for them, but himself was kept
waking and fasting in great humiliations and invocations for ten days and nights; I was
alone (having traveled from my bark, the wind being contrary) and little could I speak to
them to their understandings especially because of the change of their dialect or manner
of speech from our neighbors: yet so much (through the help of God) I did speak, of the
true and living only wise God, of the creation: of man, and his fall from God, etc. that at
parting many burst forth, “Oh when will you come again, to bring us some more news of
this God?” . . .
Nature knows no difference between Europe and Americans in blood, birth, bodies, etc.
God having of one blood made all mankind, Acts 17, and all by nature being children of
wrath, Ephes, 2.
More particularly:
Boast not proud English, of thy birth and blood
Thy brother Indian is by birth as good.
Of one blood God made him, and thee, and all.
As wise, as fair, as strong, as personal.
By nature, wraith’s his portion, thine, no more
Till grace his soul and thine in Christ restore.
Make sure thy second birth, else thou shalt see
Heaven ope to Indians wild, but shut to thee.
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DBQ1 Native America
Document E
Dutch missionary John Megapolensis on the Mohawks (Iroquois), 1644
Credit: Ebenezer Hazard, Historical Collections (Philadelphia, 1792), 1, 520-526.
In 1643, Dutch minister John Megapolensis became the town’s first pastor at Fort
Orange (near Albany). As pastor he was not allowed to farm or trade, but received
support from the town, while diligently performing his duties, which included teaching
the Indians about Christ.
The Women are obliged to prepare the Land, to mow, to plant, and do every
Thing; the Men do nothing except hunting, fishing, and going to War against their
Enemies: they treat their Enemies with great Cruelty in Time of War, for they
first bite off the Nails of the Fingers of their Captives, and cut off some joints, and
sometimes the whole of the Fingers; after that the Captives are obliged to sing and
dance before them . . ., and finally they roast them before a slow Fire for some
Days, and eat them. . . . Though they are very cruel to their Enemies, they are very
friendly to us: we are under no Apprehensions from them. . . .
They are entire Strangers to all Religion, but they have a Tharonhijouaagon,
(which others also call Athzoockkuatoriaho) i.e. a Genius which they put in the
Place of God, but they do not worship or present Offerings to him: they worship
and present Offerings to the Devil whom they call Otskon or Airekuoni. . . . They
have otherwise no Religion: when we pray they laugh at us; some of them despise
it entirely, and some when we tell them what we do when we pray, stand
astonished. When we have a Sermon, sometimes ten or twelve of them, more or
less, will attend, each having a long Tobacco Pipe, made by himself, in his Month,
and will stand a while and look, and afterwards ask me what I was doing and what
I wanted, that I stood there alone and made so many Words, and none of the rest
might speak? I tell them I admonished the Christians, that they must not steal, . . .
get drunk, or commit Murder, and that they too ought not to do these Things, and
that I intend after a while to preach to them. . . . They say I do well in teaching the
Christians, but immediately add Diatennon jawij Assyreoni hagiouisk, that is, why
do so many Christians do these Things. They call us Assyreoni, that is, ClothMakers, or Charistooni, that is, Iron-Workers, because our People first brought
Cloth and Iron among them...
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Document F
Edward Randolph’s report of King Philip’s War in New England, 1675
Various are the reports and conjectures of the causes of the present Indian warre [sic].
Some impute it to an imprudent zeal in the magistrates of Boston to christianize those
heathen before they were civilized and enjoining them the strict observation of their
laws. . . . [T]he people, on the other side, for lucre and gain, entice and provoke the
Indians to the breach thereof, especially to drunkenness, to which those people are so
generally addicted that they will strip themselves to their skin to have their fill of rum
and brandy. . . .
Some believe there have been vagrant and jesuitical priests, who have made it their
business, for some years past, to go from Sachem to Sachem, to exasperate the Indians
against the English and to bring them into a confederacy, and that they were promised
supplies from France and other parts to extirpate the English nation out of the
continent of America. . . .
But the government of the Massachusetts . . . [has] contributed much to their
misfortunes, for they first taught the Indians the use of arms, and admitted them to be
present at all their musters and trainings, and shewed [sic] them how to handle, mend
and fix their muskets, and have been furnished with all sorts of arms by permission of
the government.
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DBQ1 Native America
Document G
A brass plaque presented by Massachusetts Bay to chiefs of tribes who aided the colony during the
King Philip’s War, 1676
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Document H
The London-based Lords Proprietor of Carolina rebuking colonists for arming Indians and paying
them to capture other Indians for slave trade, 1683
Covetousness of your gunns, Powder, and Shott and other European commodities
[have caused Indians] to ravish the wife from the Husband, Kill the father to get the
Child and to burne and Destroy the habitations of these poore people into whose
Country wee were Ch[e]arefully received by them, cherished and supplied when wee
were weake, or at least never have done us hurt; and after wee have set them on worke
to doe all these horrid, wicked things to get slaves to sell [to] the dealers in Indians
[you] call it humanity to buy them and thereby keep them from being murdered.
Document I
The Deerfield Massacre of 1704, in which Indians and French allies attacked and burned
the settlement.
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