MMW 13 Chapter Reading: Before 1607
31 May 2018
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The way that people have studied the history of America by focusing only on the English
settlements in Jamestown and New England leaves out the very important roles of the French
and Spanish settlements that popped up at about the same time. It’s hard to figure out the
political structures and customs of the natives from European accounts because they often
described their practices and especially the roles of their leaders in European terms which may
not have been accurate to what the position actually entailed or the way it was seen by the
people who lived under these rulers and structures. They often drew the indigenous “kingdoms”
as being small islands, implying that the ruler’s influence didn’t extend beyond them despite
current archaeological evidence that this wasn’t the case.
The different objectives of settlement affected relations between different groups of
Europeans and the native peoples they encountered. The French generally had the best
relations with the native people because their objective was to hunt and trade furs. In order for
this to happen, they had to maintain good relations with the indigenous communities so that
they would have people to trade and hunt with. The objective of only being there for trade also
made it so that French permanent settlements didn’t arrive in the areas they settled until much
later in their history in the region and the settlements that they did build were built alongside
native settlements and were not meant to displace them. The English on the other hand had the
objective of replacing the natives with their own people. They were primarily fishermen and as
such cut into the business of the native people in the area. They built their settlements with the
intention of being the only people to settle there and this cause a lot of hostility between them
and the native peoples as well as a lot of displacement of native people. The Spaniards wanted
to subjugate the native people and use them for labor as well as take their land. This
incorporated native people into society, but it did so very differently from the French and English
models. In the French model, the natives were about equal to the Frenchmen and the English
model was made so as to minimize the amount of contact with native people as much as
possible (to create a little England in a foreign land). The Spanish model incorporated native
peoples into its society, but as second class citizens. So while at first the natives might have
been happy to help the Spaniards, they definitely weren’t happy with them in the end.
There were a lot of large civilizations that either died out or were weakened on the North
American continent by the time the Europeans got to them. This inspired a lot of awe in the
Europeans, but they often attributed the structures to different peoples and disregarded the role
of the peoples they encountered in the building of those structures.
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Document Summary
They often drew the indigenous kingdoms as being small islands, implying that the ruler"s influence didn"t extend beyond them despite current archaeological evidence that this wasn"t the case. The different objectives of settlement affected relations between different groups of. The french generally had the best relations with the native people because their objective was to hunt and trade furs. In order for this to happen, they had to maintain good relations with the indigenous communities so that they would have people to trade and hunt with. The english on the other hand had the objective of replacing the natives with their own people. They were primarily fishermen and as such cut into the business of the native people in the area. They built their settlements with the intention of being the only people to settle there and this cause a lot of hostility between them and the native peoples as well as a lot of displacement of native people.
