Native American Relations With Puritan Settlers

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Most people think European-Indian relations were solely based on war. This might be true for many of the tribes and Europeans, but it was not the case for the Puritans and Indians living in Massachusetts. These English and Indians lived together peacefully for several years and helped each other survive. The Puritans and Indians had a good relationship for the most part, but they did have issues.

The first time these two groups met was mostly about curiosity. For the first few weeks after the English landed, the Indians and Puritans hid from each other. The English; however, were looking for the Indians. The Indians and Puritans were amazed by the size of each other. They showed little admiration for one another, and they fought over stability of power when it started to favor the English. The power shifted when more Puritans began to arrive in Massachusetts. The Indians were stunned with the size of the English and they were healthy looking. They were also pleased to see the English arrive. The Puritans thought the Indians were very helpful to strangers and nice to anyone they met. Within the years between 1620 and 1637, the Puritans lived close to one another and studied the Indians and their traditions. The English watched the Indians with dismay, awe, and confusion. This time of curiosity ended with the Pequot War. This war happened because settlers decided to live on Pequot lands and the Pequot Indians resisted the intrusion. The English won the war and sold the surviving Pequot Indians into slavery, so they would not have to deal with them again. After the defeat of the most powerful tribe in the region to 1675, the Puritans were in control. The Puritan administration made the laws for the English and Indians to ...

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Jeynes, William. American Educational History: School, Society, and the Common Good. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2007.

Simmons, William S. “Conversion from Indian to Puritan,” The New England Quarterly 52 no. 2 (1979): 10.2307/364839.

Sokolow, Jayme A. The Great Encounter: Native Peoples and European Settlers in the Americas, 1492-1800. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2003.

Thomas, G.E. “Puritans, Indians, and the Concept of Race,” The New England Quarterly 48 no.1 (1975): 10.2307/364910.

Vaughan, Alden T. New England Frontier Puritans and Indians, 1620-1675. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1965.

Vaughan Alden T., ed. The Puritan Tradition in America, 1620-1730. Dartmouth: UPNE, 1972.

Vaughan, Alden T. and Edward W. Clark, ed. Puritans Among the Indians: Accounts of Captivity and Redemption, 1676-1724. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981.

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