By 1620, the European invasion of North America was well underway with the establishment of a number of permanent colonies. The mythology which would later evolve saw the European colonists taming a wilderness—a land filled with wild animals and wild Indians. In reality, few colonists were equipped to deal with a true wilderness and most colonies survived because of surplus crops provided to them by the Indians who had been farming the area for many centuries.
Archaeologist Jerald Milanich, in his book Laboring in the Fields of the Lord: Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians, describes the reasons for the European expansion:
“The driving force behind these initiatives was a desire for wealth: precious stones or metals, fertile lands suitable for productive plantations, human populations to be sold into slavery, and animals and plants that could be hunted or harvested and exported.”
Grave Robbing
The Pilgrims arrived in what is now Massachusetts and they while they saw few people, they found evidence of many Indian graves. In some instances, the Pilgrims opened the graves and stole the grave goods which they found. In one instance, for example, the Pilgrims stole two bearskins from the fresh grave of the mother of Massachusett leader Chickataubut.
In finding a place that looks like a grave covered with wooden boards, the Pilgrims dug and found several layers of household goods and personal possessions. They also found two bundles. In the smaller bundle they found the bones of a young child wrapped in beads and accompanied by a small bow. In the larger bundle they found the bones of a man. The man’s skull still had fine yellow hair, and with the burial were a knife, a needle, and some metal items. Historian William Cronon, in his book Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, reports:
“A blond European sailor, shipwrecked or abandoned on the Massachusetts coast, had lived as an Indian, had perhaps fathered an Indian child, and had been buried in an Indian grave.”
In another instance, the Pilgrims stumbled into a Nauset graveyard where they found baskets of corn which had been left as gifts for the deceased. As the Pilgrims were gathering this bounty for themselves, they were interrupted by a group of angry Nauset warriors. The Pilgrims retreated back to the Mayflower empty-handed.
Later Pequot writer William Apess summarized the beginnings of colonization in New England this way:
“the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, and without asking liberty from anyone they possessed themselves a portion of the country, and built themselves houses, and then made a treaty, and commanded [the Indians] to accede to it.”
Indians Ignored
In Massachusetts, the charter forming the Council of New England stated that the aim of the company was the planting, ruling, ordering, and governing of the region. The chief function of the Council was to make land grants to its members and others. In their introduction to American Beginnings: Exploration, Culture, and Cartography in the Land of Norumbega, Edwin Churchill and Emerson Baker note:
“The charter completely ignored the existence of a native population that already occupied the land.”
Spain and the Pueblos
The King of Spain required that each New Mexico Indian Pueblo choose a governor, lieutenant governor, and other officials by popular vote. Silver-headed canes were given to each governor as a symbol of his office and authority.
Under the new rules, elections of local officials were to take place without the interference or presence of civil authorities or the Franciscans.
Regarding the welfare of the Pueblo Indians, the new rules stated that the Indians were not to be used as burden bearers. In addition, Indians who lived outside of the boundaries of an encomienda (land grant) were to be paid for their labor. So that the Indians could fulfill their Christian duties, the law required the friars to visit each pueblo on Christian feast days.
In response to complaints from the pueblos that their crops had been damaged by colonists’ stock, the new law also decreed that no stock were to be pastured within three leagues of a pueblo.
The new law also mandated that Indians were not to have their hair cut for minor offenses. Anthropologist Carroll Riley, in Rio del Norte: People of the Upper Rio Grande From Earliest Times to the Pueblo Revolt, notes:
“Long hair in certain situations had and has ceremonial meaning for Pueblo men, and it seems that the missionaries were using every excuse to clip the heads of their new parishioners.”
In New Mexico, Dominican missionary Father Gerónimo de Zárate Salmerón visited Acoma pueblo and reported that he pacified them for one season.
Tribes
On the southern Plains, the Plains Apache now had horses and were expanding their territories.
In Utah, the Navajo were now occupying a site in White Canyon in present-day San Juan County.
Peyote
The Catholic Inquisition in New Spain declared that the use of peyote “is an act of superstition condemned as opposed to the purity and integrity of our Holy Catholic Faith.”
Peyote is a small, spineless cactus which grows in a limited area in northern Mexico and southern Texas. The tops of the cactus, called “buttons”, are extremely bitter in taste and often induce vomiting, but they do have psychedelic properties. Peyote is often used as a sacrament in Indian religious ceremonies.
Indians 101
Twice each week Indians 101 explores different American Indian topics. More about American Indian history from this series:
Indians 101: 400 years ago, 1619
Indians 101: Four Centuries Ago (1618)
Indians 101: American Indians in 1617
Indians 101: American Indians in 1616
Indians 101: American Indians in 1615
Indians 101: The Pueblo Revolt of 1680
Indians 101: Jamestown and the Indians, the First Decade
Indians 101: New Sweden and the Indians