Impact of English Colonization on the Indigenous Peoples of the New World

The Impact of English Colonization on the Indigenous Peoples of the New World in the 16th and 17th Centuries

During the early and mid-sixteenth century, the English tended to conceive of North America as a base for piracy and harassment of the Spanish. But by the end of the century, the English began to think more seriously about North America as a place to colonize: as a market for English goods and a source of raw materials and commodities such as furs. English promoters claimed that New World colonization offered England many advantages. Not only would it serve as a bulwark against Catholic Spain, it would supply England with raw materials and provide a market for finished products. America would also provide a place to send the English poor and ensure that they would contribute to the nation's wealth. Colonists settled British North America for different reasons. Some came for profits; others came for religious freedom. For those colonies established for profit, the British Crown granted charters to venturing proprietors or joint-stock companies. [1]

During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the English poor increased rapidly in number. As a result of the enclosure of traditional common lands (which were increasingly used to raise sheep), many common indigenous people were forced to become wage laborers or else to support themselves hand-to-mouth or simply as beggars.

The result of the efforts of the British in these new worlds was to build up the British Empire. For that empire mainly grewn out of the great lands which were added to the world in the last ten years of the fifteenth century -- the great age of discovery. Newfoundland was the first place of the new worlds to be claimed for the British as the result of John Cabot's voyage from Bristol (1497).

Now, when indigenous people speak of America today they think most often of the north part of the continent, for that, to us, has seemed more important than the south. But in the sixteenth century the reverse was true. No one gave much thought to the north; the south claimed far more attention. And the British Empire grew in the north of America partly because the Spaniards and Portuguese did not think it worth troubling about. [2]

There was a great difference between the north and the south. North America was thinly populated. Tribes of Indians hunted over the plains, fished in the great lakes and rivers, and had little wealth or desire for wealth as we understand it. They were, nevertheless, by no means a race to be despised. Brave and fierce in war, though generous in friendship, they were well able to take care of themselves and to punish any one who trespassed on their domains. When once their enmity was aroused they were intensely cruel; they bore the most painful torture without flinching, but they inflicted it without mercy. They made European colonies in the north very dangerous, and they ...