The Great Massarce: The English and Powhatan

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The ambitiousness of the English and Powhatan to maintain a successful village shows that conflict between them is not inevitable. In around 1607, a group of English settlers traveled on a boat to Virginia looking for a better life. Once landing there, they discovered that they were taking land from a great Indian chieftain called the Powhatan. The English and the Powhatan had small conflicts that eventually led to an event called the great massacre. So was this conflict between them inevitable? There were many reasons why conflict between the English and the Powhatan was not inevitable. Those reasons include the need for land, the individual people that wanted to bring peace between the English and Powhatan, and their need to obtain resources from each other. These reasons show us that while the English and the Powhatan did fight each other to a great extent, that it could possibly have been avoided. Trade between the English and the Powhatan could have made them dependent on each other. The English had resources that the Powhatan wanted such as metal axes for cutting wood, shovels for digging up dirt, and wool blankets because the Natives lacked precious resources such as metal and wool. The English needed food to survive because they didn’t know how to gather food or resources. Since the English and Powhatan both had things that the other wanted, they would not have wanted to attack each other for fear that their needed resources wouldn’t be traded and/or given to them. The main reason the English and the Powhatan had any conflict is because they didn’t trust each other because of previous attacks/wars between them. But there were individual people who created trust such as John Smith, allowing the two groups to cooperate. Sinc... ... middle of paper ... ... in. If the English and Powhatan trusted each other (which they didn’t), then they could have cooperated. Since they had the same needs as each other, an individual or a group from either side would have eventually realized that working together to achieve their goals was a more convenient way of resolving conflict rather than attempting to wipe each other out. And because of this fact, conflict between the English and Powhatan wasn’t inevitable. Overall, it was possible for the English and Powhatan to cooperate with each other. Things such as trade between the English and Powhatan could have made both groups reliant on each other, individual people could have influenced groups of people the way John Smith did, and created a friendship between the English and Powhatan. Finally, they both needed land for similar reasons and could have helped each other by sharing it.

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