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The Natives and the English - Crash Course US History #3
The English settlers who founded Jamestown in 1607 initially planned to make Native Americans work for them. They contemplated capturing the local Native American leader, as the Spanish did in Mexico and Peru. The local Native American Powhatan Confederation had more resources and proved more powerful than the settlers, however. Relations between the Confederation and the settlers were very limited until the Confederation captured Captain John Smith. After King Wahunsunacock’s daughter Pocahontas intervened to save Smith’s life and facilitate his return to Jamestown, the relationship between the English settlement and the Powhatan Confederation briefly improved.
The Colonists now planned to crown Wahunsunacock and make him a vassal of the English King James I. Accordingly, they invited him to come to Jamestown. The cautious Native American ruler refused to come, because he understood that the English might be planning a trap. Soon he prohibited his people from trading with the English colonists. After John Smith’s departure for England in the fall of 1609, as the Native American trade embargo continued, the colonists, who did not wish to work in the fields and grow their own food, found themselves with inadequate food and supplies. Most of them starved to death as a result; out of approximately 500 people, only about sixty survived the winter of 1609–1610.
After this initial difficult period, the surviving settlers realized that they needed to develop agriculture so as to become less dependent on the surrounding Native Americans. The relationship between the two communities deteriorated further after English colonists abducted Pocahontas and held her captive for a couple of years. It improved, however, when they finally released her to allow her to marry the colonist John Rolfe, a tobacco farmer, in 1614. Cooperation allowed the colonists to learn important skills from the Powhatan people. At the same time, however, the English took over more Native American land to create new tobacco plantations and expand their colony beyond Jamestown; these land grabs were a new source of constant friction between the colonists and the Powhatan Confederation, especially after the death of Wahunsunacock in 1618. This friction eventually led to open warfare. In 1622, the Native Americans attacked the English settlements and killed about a quarter of the colonists (approximately 350–400 people). In 1632, the English defeated the Powhatan Confederation.
