Blog 4

For this week’s prompt, there were some fun talking points, mainly about Native American relations with early English settlers, both in now present-day Virginia and Massachusetts. The settlement at Jamestown came first, which was bound to fail from the beginning. The piece of land the Engish wanted to land on was incredibly problematic for many reasons. One, it was on a narrow strip of land between different bodies of water that flooded frequently. This meant the colony needed to be a fortress and semi-elevated to keep the water from encroaching on the settlement. This also meant that the colony was super reliant on food supply coming from overseas, something they could not rely on too much. Communication was almost nonexistent, so they needed to figure out a way to fend for themselves. Part of their strategy was to ally with the Native Americans, trying to get supplies from them as well as learn from them. Many believe that the Jamestown colony would have failed during the first winter if not for the help of the natives, who taught them how to hunt and farm. In Massachusetts, it was a similar story. The settlers befriended the native Wapanoamgs right away, creating a bond that ultimately resulted in the first Thanksgiving, a tradition that Americans still celebrate today. This friendship, in comparison to Jamestown, seemed to be more cooperative and friendly and also seemed to benefit both sides in comparison to the natives being taken advantage of in Virginia. In the back portion of the week, we covered some of the conflicts that settlers and Native Americans had in King Philip’s War and the Pequot War. We also looked at the painting by Benjamin West, “Penn’s Treaty,” which depicts the natives and the people of Pennslyvania negotiating a treaty with each other about the land that Penn obtained from the King of England at the time. What I find weird is that the painting was made one hundred years after the treaty was signed, and many have said it was not historically accurate at all. The depiction is a scene underneath what is known in the native culture as a famous tree but from all accounts, that isn’t really what happened. I wish white culture would get more of native history right and not flat-out lie about what is going on in the majority of their depictions of native life. I enjoyed revisiting some of this history as a part of week 4, looking forward to week 5!