In reading the Book, The Unredeemed Captive, By John Demos, I found that the relations between the Native Americans, the French and the English were different than I had anticipated. These people groups had many differences in their cultures and also had varying religious, military and family views. The two communities I will be addressing are the British Colony at Deerfield and the Native American and French colony at Kahnawake. Kahnawake was made up of Indians, from different tribes such as the Huron, Iroquois, and Mohawk, to name a few. But not only Indians, they were also in coexistence with the French, as Kahnawake was, a Catholic mission. Because of this, Demos showed how there was a sharing of religion among the Indians and French …show more content…
In Deerfield, women were naturally submissive, that being Part of the Puritan belief. Also, women did not have much power and they did not work in the fields, they were housewives. Lineage was through the male and if a man should die, his estate did not go to his widow, just a small portion. Women in Deerfield were not seen as strong. Husbands and wives all lived together with their children, and at times, with close relatives. There is a much different family system in Kahnawake. In Kahnawake, “the husband and wife did not leave their family and lodge to set up a family and residence apart.” (143) In fact, husbands and wives did not live together at all and furthermore, “the children born of these marriages… are counted as being of the wife’s lodge and family, not the husband’s.” (143) In Kahnawake, women had the power. Lineage was in reference to women, not men. Children did not know their father’s house. In Deerfield, children knew their fathers and they were active in their lives, but in Kahnawake, the father’s, to me, were more absent. Women worked in the fields. They were strong and strength, as well as courage, in the face of pain, was greatly …show more content…
The Kahnawake, as I mentioned before, were Roman Catholics and further, the Indians in Kahnawake also implemented some of their native religious practices into their practice of the Catholic faith., such as having shamans, having charms and fetishes, divination by dreams, round dances, etc…Despite this, the Kahnawake were seen as very devote to prayer and practicing of the Catholic religion as shown by Demos, “To all this, insisted the Jesuits, the Indians responded with extraordinary devotion, so much that visitors from the outside were sometimes moved to tears.” (153) In contrast, Deerfield was Puritan. Puritan was considered the purified church, the right way and if you were “rebaptized” as Catholic there was this idea that you needed to be “redeemed.” Throughout the entire book, redemption is prayed for. Affliction, massacre and people taken captive during the war were considered either punishment form angering God or testing of your faith. Being Puritan was considered the way to
Jamestown vs. Plymouth There were several differences and similarities between the first two settlements in the New World, Jamestown and Plymouth. This paper will make note of a few of the highlights. The chief difference between the two civilizations was their reason for coming and their key similarity was the poor relationship with their native neighbors. Starting off with the main difference, each settlement came here with a different goal in mind.
This article’s title is “Inseparable Companions” and Irreconcilable Enemies: The Hurons and Odawas of French Detroit, 1701-38 and its author is Andrew Sturtevant. The thesis in this article is the sentence, “The Hurons ' and Odawas ' simmering hostility and eventual conflict demonstrate that native groups survived the Iroquois onslaught and that their interaction profoundly shaped the region”. In this article, Sturtevant is arguing that the Huron and Odawa are distinct nations with different culture and that because of the differences they had many disagreements, not simply because of the colonialism by the French. Sturtevant uses direct quotes from primary sources to show that the distinct nations fought because of their own differences,
In the 1992, book A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 Gregory Evans Dowd takes an academic approach to Eastern Native American history. Dowd follows the same study identity and cultural transformations by focusing on two Eastern Native ideologies known as nativist and accommodationists. Elaborating on the outlooks, he argues that the monograph does not tell “history from the Indian point of view” and does not focus on a “single Indian outlook.” Advancing his argument the author states that his monograph provides historians with the many perspectives surrounding the Native American history in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds.
In the Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion, John Williams was concerned with both cultural and the religious differentiations. Williams was Puritan and viewed foreign religion, Catholicism, as a danger of his viciousness captors. Williams’s captivity was a ruthless journey of constant abuse and pressure to transform him by the Jesuits and his master into the Indian’s culture. He was bought by the French and upon his arrival to St. Francis, Jesuit tried to force him into Catholicism. Williams battle those and wanted to rescue his children and others from the French Catholic beliefs and the violent cultural ways of the Indians.
Throughout the seventeenth century, conflict between Europeans and Native Americans was rampant and constant. As more and more Europeans migrated to America, violence became increasingly consistent. This seemingly institutionalized pattern of conflict begs a question: Was conflict between Europeans and Native Americans inevitable? Kevin Kenny and Cynthia J. Van Zandt take opposing sides on the issue. Kevin Kenny asserts that William Penn’s vision for cordial relations with local Native Americans was destined for failure due to European colonists’ demands for privately owned land.
7. Europeans were Christian. The land was seen as a commodity, women who worked were considered to be abused. Native Americans believed in spirits, supernatural healing powers, and had religious leaders. Native Americans saw land as a common resource rather than a commodity as Europeans did.
These two pieces of evidence showed that Indians were not receptive of European religion, because they already had their own culture. Since the Europeans were seeking trade and other economic gain more than religion conversions anyway, they were not impacted by Indian resistance to Christianity. This can be seen through Document 4. ; the historical time period that this was drawn for was saturated with hostilities between powerful French colonists and peaceful Native Americans, such as the Hopi. The purpose of this image is to show how small, literally and
The narrative offers an account which can be used to describe the particularly puritan society based on the ideals of Christianity and the European culture. It offers a female perspective of the Native Americans who showed no respect to the other religious groups. The narrator makes serious observation about her captors noting the cultural differences as well as expectations from one another in the society. However, prejudice is evident throughout the text which makes the narratives unreliable in their details besides being written after the event had already happened which means that the narrator had was free to alter the events to create an account that favored her. Nonetheless, the narrative remains factually and historically useful in providing the insights into the tactics used by the Native Americans
The Black Hills War, also known as the Great Sioux War of 1876, was a series of battles fought from 1876 through 1877, between the forces of the United States and their allies (Shoshone, Pawnee, and Crow) and the Sioux (Lakota, Dakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho). Taking place under two presidencies and resulting in hundreds of casualties on both sides, The Black Hills War made great impacts that would continue to affect Natives for generations. The United State’s extensive relationship with the Native Americans has its intricacies to say the least. With the arrival of English settlers at Jamestown in 1607, there were undoubtedly uncertainties amongst the Native people as to whether or not these settlers would resemble the Spanish settlers who
Thesis: The English were a prideful group, entangled in ethnocentrism, that caused a condescending and harsh treatment of the Native Americans, while the Native Americans were actually a dynamic and superior society, which led to the resentment and strife between the groups. P1: English view of Native Americans in VA Even though the English were subordinates of the Powhatan, they disrespected him and his chiefdom due to their preconceived beliefs that they were inferior. “Although the Country people are very barbarous, yet have they amongst them such government...that would be counted very civil… [by having] a Monarchical government” (Smith 22). John Smith acknowledges the “very civil” government of the Natives but still disrespected them by calling them “very barbarous,” which
The Unredeemed Captive (1995), a non-fiction book by American author and historian John Putnam Demos, is the true story of a kidnapping that shocked colonial Massachusetts. In February 1704, during the French and Indian War, a Native war party descended on the village of Deerfield and abducted Puritan minister John Williams and his family. Although Williams was eventually released, his daughter shocked the colonials by choosing to stay with her captors, eventually marrying into the Mohawk tribe. Exploring themes of colonial politics, the complex relationship between colonists and the native population, and the religious dynamics of colonial America, The Unredeemed Captive was widely praised for its extensively researched narrative. It won the
Historians who practice historiography agree that the writings from the beginning of what is now known as the United States of America can be translated various ways. In James H. Merrell’s “The Indians’ New World,” the initial encounters and relationships between various Native American tribes and Europeans and their African American slaves are explained; based on Merrell’s argument that after the arrival of Europeans to North America in 1492, not only would the Europeans’ lives drastically change, but a new world would be created for the Native Americans’ as their communities and lifestyles slowly intertwined for better or worse. Examples of these changes include: “deadly bacteria, material riches, and [invading] alien people.” (Merrell 53)
In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Puritans, at first, established a good relationship with a Native American tribe called the Pequots. These quandaries were compounded by the Puritans' incrementing conviction that the Indians' claims were invalid, because God had bestowed
According to Foner, “They did not seek to suppress all traditional religious practices.” Frances’s kindness towards Native Americans was unlike Spain’s oppression or England’s suppression. Furthermore, Foner writes, “the French worked out a complex series of military, commercial, and diplomatic connections, the most enduring relations between Indians and settlers.” Therefore, France’s kindness towards Native Americans helped develop sustainable relationships between the two groups.
“A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson”: The Influence of Intercultural Contact on Puritan Beliefs “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” by Mary Rowlandson gives a first person perspective into the circumstances of captivity and cultural interaction and an insight to Rowlandson 's attitude towards the Indians, both before and after she was held captive. Rowlandson displays a change in her perception of "civilized" and "savage", in spite of the fact that her overall world view does not alter. It should be covered below that in the following Essay, since the author and the narrator are the same person, will not be individually distinguished. For one thing, Mary Rowlandson provides all the conventions typical of a Puritan perspective.