New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America

“The clash of Indians and Europeans is often depicted as one between hunters and farmers, but in the Potomac Valley, as in many other places, it was precisely the similarities between the two groups’ subsistence cycles and farming techniques that made the competition for the best lands so deadly and made the outcome so catastrophic for Native peoples.”

Europeans and Indigenous Americans developed similar qualities no matter where they came into contact. Life in the Potomac Valley—for example Maryland and Virginia—posed unique challenges. Indigenous Americans helped colonists learn how to grow tobacco, and Chesapeake planters prospered as a result. Tobacco dictated everything, especially in colonial Virginia, where a few emigrant landowners grew wealthy and nearly replicated the English aristocracy in America. Cultivating tobacco required a great deal of labor, which first took the form of indentured servants and later African slaves. Most of all, tobacco depleted the soil; planters always needed more land. The combination of these factors–Virginia’s opulence, surging population, and especially tobacco’s soil-exhausting quality—intensified pressure on Virginia’s Native tribes. Had those tribes consisted of nomadic hunters rather than agriculturalists who valued the land for many of the same reasons Europeans did, the Virginians’ push westward might not have produced such deadly conflict.

“The Indians who rescued Cartier’s crew lived in Hochelaga, a town of about fifty bark longhouses and 3,500 people. It stood at the foot of a mountain, which Cartier named Mont Royal, from which the modern city of Montreal derives its name. When the ice broke, Cartier returned down the St. Lawrence to Stadaconna, the Indian town located on the site of present-day Quebec City. The valley between these two major towns was lined with populous villages, extensive cornfields, and rich orchards. Some seventy years later, another Frenchman, Samuel de Champlain, traveled the same route. The towns were abandoned, the fields were overgrown, and the Indians were gone. Scholars still debate the mystery of their disappearance.”

Chapter 2 opens with the story of French explorer Jacques Cartier, whose ships got stuck in the ice along the St. Lawrence River for five months in the winter of 1535-36. While they were stranded, many members of Cartier’s crew developed scurvy, and several dozen died. The crew was saved, however, when local Indigenous Americans used “bark and leaves of a certain tree” to brew a liquid that cured the afflicted (25). Samuel de Champlain’s discovery that by the early-17th century all Indigenous villages and people had vanished suggests that post-contact disease might have ravaged those communities. This quotation supports the “Catastrophic” part of the theme, Resilience Amidst Catastrophic Change. Cartier’s description of Indigenous medicinal skills later inspired a British surgeon to experiment with lime juice as a cure for scurvy, which supports the book’s theme, Indigenous Influence on European-American Society.

“From the moment Europeans set foot in America, hundreds of thousands of Indian people were doomed to die in one of the greatest biological catastrophes in human history.”

More than any other single factor, Indigenous Americans’ lack of immunity against European diseases led to their eventual displacement. The death of untold hundreds of thousands—or more—from imported disease has few parallels in human experience. Indigenous Americans still managed to survive, to build new societies, and in some places to hold the balance of power between rival Europeans—all of which suggests that without the biological catastrophe colonial American history would have unfolded in a very different way. This quotation is part of the book’s theme, Resilience Amidst Catastrophic Change.

“Colonialism created conditions in which disease spread, and epidemics abetted colonialism, shattering Indian power and rendering depleted and divided populations more vulnerable to subordination and dependence. Yet instances of deliberate germ warfare such as happened at Fort Pitt seem to have been rare. In fact, Europeans frequently provided what help and comfort they could in a world of escalating sickness.”

During Pontiac’s Rebellion of 1763, soldiers inside Fort Pitt gave Indigenous Americans blankets believed to be infected with smallpox. This dastardly-yet-ineffective method of biological warfare lingers in popular memory, but Calloway cites it as an exception in a world where humanity and cooperation prevailed as a general rule. As a reminder of the biological nightmare that decimated Native populations, it explores the theme Resilience Amidst Catastrophic Change.

“Nowhere in North America did Indians and Europeans fight each other all the time.”

The lingering popular image of Europeans and Indigenous Americans in constant conflict does not square with the historical record. For the colonial period, it would be more accurate to say that Europeans often fought other Europeans while both sides enlisted Native allies, or that Indigenous Americans often fought other Indigenous Americans while playing Europeans off against one another. This quotation supports the theme Ahistorical Dichotomies, where simplistic narratives that cast Europeans as evil conquerors of an idyllic society or Indigenous Americans as savages are false. As an implied reminder that Europeans and Indigenous Americans did a good deal more than fight one another, it also supports the theme Indigenous Influence on European-American Society.

“Archaeologists excavating eighteenth-century sites in the eastern United States often find it difficult to determine whether a settlement was Indian or European on the basis of the materials unearthed.”

Intermingling between Europeans and Indigenous Americans resulted in the blending of cultures to such a degree that in some places they became indistinguishable. This quote highlights the degree to which multiple cultures informed one another, and how the mutual historical exchange of technology, materials, and goods transcends stereotypical notions of Eurocentric influence on Indigenous populations.

“Many conflicts between Indians and backcountry settlers occurred because they were so much alike and competed for the same forest resources, rather than because they were so alien to each other.”

Calloway applies the argument from Quotation #2—that similar farming techniques made the competition for land so deadly between Europeans and Indigenous Americans—to a broader context. When Europeans and Indigenous Americans encountered one another, they became more similar to one another. Amalgamation occurred most frequently on the frontier, where Europeans had little choice but to adopt Indigenous habits and practices.

“As European colonists living in or near Indian country pulled on Indian moccasins, leggings, and hunting shirts, Indian people living near colonial settlements acquired shirts and jackets, trousers and shoes.”

This passage provides fashion-specific examples to illustrate cultural blending. It also supports how Indigenous Americans impacted European culture. The outward expression of identity, i.e. choices of dress, reflects both the tasks and activities of the people living in these communities as well as how they hoped to be perceived by members of different cultural groups.

“Christians, too, believed in visions, but missionaries insisted that Indian people follow the injunctions of the Bible, not the messages in their dreams. In the new religious climate created by European invasion, many Indian people read the Bible and attended church services, but many continued to dream as well.”

Christian missionaries exhibited a proselytizing seal for which Indigenous Americans had no equivalent. Indigenous spirituality, meanwhile, seems to have made little impact on Europeans. Some Indigenous Americans converted to Christianity, and others rejected it altogether. Many appear to have taken elements of Christianity that they found most meaningful and incorporated them into their existing system of beliefs.

“Depending on time and place, circumstance and individual experience, one could provide examples to support any or all views of missionaries and their work. Indians were a deeply spiritual people, but Europeans in those times, whatever we think of their assumptions and actions, were also spiritual, the products of powerful religious movements that enjoined them to go out and convert others.”

Calloway observes that the once-exalted reputation of Christian missionaries in the colonial period has suffered in recent decades, as scholars and the broader public have grown more skeptical of missionaries’ motives. In the modern world, colonial America’s proselytizing Christians often appear as agents of imperialism and cultural genocide.

“By the end of the sixteenth century, the powerful chiefdoms of the Southeast had collapsed under the hammerblows of Spanish invasion and imported disease. Never again did European invaders confront massed Indian armies such as challenged de Soto’s entrada.”

Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto’s 1539 invasion of Florida and subsequent expedition through the present-day American Southeast decimated Indigenous populations through war and disease. Along the way, de Soto and his troops encountered chiefs who could field large armies of warriors. These warriors were capable of engaging the Spaniards in pitched battles such as the October 1540 Battle of Mabila, in which several hundred Spaniards and several thousand Indigenous warriors died. Indigenous Americans learned from this experience, however, that massed armies and large-scale engagements did not work to their advantage, so they developed other and more subtle ways of fighting. As an illustration of adaptation to new military conditions, this quotation supports the theme Resilience Amidst Catastrophic Change.

“It would be wrong to think of ferocity in war as a European import. Archaeological evidence suggests that warfare in America was both commonplace and brutal long before Europeans arrived.”

Adherents to the discovery-and-civilization narrative accuse Indigenous warriors of peculiar savagery. Conquest-of-paradise types, on the other hand, blame genocidal Europeans for colonial-era atrocities. Both contain elements of truth, but neither conveys the full story. This quotation, therefore, supports the theme Ahistorical Dichotomies.

“The diplomacy of early America melded Indian and European practices and protocols and often involved Indian chiefs wearing uniform coats and medals given to them by European allies, negotiating with European emissaries who smoked the calumet and spoke on wampum belts while mixed-blood or other bicultural individuals translated their words.”

While conducting diplomacy, most Indigenous and European leaders made sincere efforts to dress and behave in a diplomatic fashion. The presence of wampum belts, peace pipes, and mixed-blood interpreters on such occasions reveals the broader Indigenous influence, supporting the theme “Indigenous Influence on European-American Society.”

“The conquest of America is often portrayed as a simple story of racial conflict, in which white invaders fought and defeated the Indians. That conveys the broad outlines of what happened but obscures and distorts historical reality.”

Given Calloway’s broad focus on cultural amalgamation, no simplified narrative of conflict, racial or otherwise, will fit his interpretation. This passage might be the clearest statement of the theme Ahistorical Dichotomies.

“The new world created by the interaction of Europeans and Indians produced many individuals capable of fulfilling such roles. Many captives, former captives, and children of mixed marriages found a valuable niche in Indian-white relations, since they, and sometimes they alone, had the experience, expertise, and contacts in both worlds to act as intermediaries and communicators.”

The roles to which Calloway refers include interpreters and cultural mediators. The second role was at least as important as the first. Skilled linguists might provide literal translations, but only those who had been immersed in both worlds could convey true cultural meaning. The presence of many such individual suggests a good deal of cultural intermixing and supports the theme Indigenous Influence on European-American Society.

“The British Indian department, contrary to popular stereotypes, was not composed of haughty redcoated officers in powdered wigs who thought it beneath their dignity to sit around a council fire talking with ‘savages.’ It employed English, Scots, Irish, German, French Canadian, Indian, and Metis people, who spent much of their lives in Indian country, often wore Indian clothing, and generally sympathized with Indian people.”

Calloway often uses phrases such as “contrary to popular stereotypes” to signal a passage that highlights commonalities and mutual sympathies among Europeans and Indigenous Americans, as opposed to conflict and prejudice. Indigenous cultures impressed themselves on a wide range of people.

“The mobility of the immigrants and their expectation of access to Indian land rendered British policies of frontier regulation unworkable, contributing to escalating Indian-white conflicts and to the alienation of colonists from the mother country that culminated in the American Revolution.”

Historical animosities between different groups of Europeans played a role in frontier conflicts. After the French and Indian War, the British government tried to prevent western expansion and colonial encroachments on tribal lands. In the middle of the 18h century, however, many of these mobile immigrants were Scotch-Irish settlers who harbored deep resentment toward the British government, which complicated British efforts to maintain treaty boundaries. Like many who preceded them, these Scotch-Irish immigrants adopted Indigenous habits and practices to survive on the frontier. This time, the presence of a British government, historically loathsome to the immigrants and hostile to their current interests, created tensions that “culminated in the American Revolution.”

“Horses increased a people’s mobility, range, and capacity to hunt and wage war. Indians traveled over vast distances, either on horseback or to acquire horses. On at least one occasion, Crow Indians from Montana raided into the desert Southwest; Indians from across the plains traveled to Santa Fe for horses; and Hidatsas raided as far west as the Rocky Mountains, which explains the presence of the Shoshone woman Sacagawea in their upper Missouri villages when Lewis and Clark arrived in 1804.”

Spain’s introduction of horses into North America transformed Indigenous communities, particularly west of the Mississippi River. Horses gave Indigenous Americans the mobility needed to adapt to conditions wrought by European invasion, supporting the theme Resilience Amidst Catastrophic Change.

“Europeans came to America to create new societies. Their invasions added new peoples to the human landscape. However, the conquest of North America was not a simple process in which Indian peoples were removed and their places taken by European and African immigrants.”

Europeans “added new peoples” to North America but did not immediately displace the ones who already lived there. This fact, amplified by the phrase “not a simple process,” supports the idea that oversimplified narratives do not adequately explain history.

“Jeffersonian philanthropists urged racial blending, to incorporate Indians into the new society, but the realities of Indian-white dealings and American Indian policy in the early republic tended to exclude rather than include Indians. Racial intermarriages did occur, but they gave rise to epithets like ‘squaw man’ and ‘half-breed,’ and families with Indian ancestry often denied that component of their heritage.”

Thomas Jefferson and others encouraged intermarriage so that European-Americans and Indigenous Americans might become one people and move west together. Popular prejudices and government policies combined to prevent this from happening, at least on a scale that may have averted the tragedies of the 19th century.

“The very proliferation of categories indicates the breakdown of efforts to keep Indians and Europeans separate and distinct.”

The categories to which Calloway refers to words invented or adapted to describe children of multiracial ancestry in Spanish America. While these terms are not in common use today and are largely considered to be offensive, the proliferation of these categories proves that Europeans and Indigenous Americans had many children together. These children, and the descendants who followed them, have impacted American society greatly.

“Intermarriage with African Americans added a complicated and often divisive strand to southeastern Indian history. Many Indians and Africans experienced enslavement together in the colonial South, and they built relationships, shared aspects of their cultures, and sometimes made families. But later in the eighteenth century, southeastern Indians, for whom age and gender had traditionally determined the seizure and treatment of captives, held increasing numbers of African slaves and adopted increasingly racial attitudes toward them.”

The incidence of slaveholding among Indigenous Americans in the Southeast, particularly among Creek and Cherokee, complicates the historical narrative (The Cherokee Nation, in fact, issued its own Emancipation Proclamation in February 1863). Since many Indigenous Americans in that region experienced enslavement themselves in the early-18th century, this passage supports how resilient they were amidst calamity.

“Ultimately, European power, European numbers, and European germs dictated that Europeans would prevail in the struggle for early America, although when and where the issue hung momentarily in the balance, European adaptation of Indian ways often helped tip the scales.”

Calloway acknowledges that irresistible forces—power, numbers, germs—enabled Europeans to emerge ascendant in North America. This emergence occurred over centuries, so it is meaningful to historians only at the highest levels of generalization. It is also a reminder of the uncertainty and future possibilities that prevailed at any given place and time.