course material

1. Explain how the Pequot War and especially the massacre at
Explain how the Pequot War and especially the massacre at Mystic exemplified the way
Europeans and later EuroAmericans would deal with American Indians who were in the
way of white man’s expansion.Indian
view https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/native-history-it-s-memorial-
day-in-1637-the-pequot-massacre-happened-CPEC3BR9hkm5SoXp3X9uFg/Massacre at
Mystic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHpkTboaDcoPequot
War http://pequotwar.org/about/ Example (below) (I have an introduction with a thesis, a
body with paragraphs supporting the thesis, and a conclusion.My post is longer than yours
needs to be, but it has the format you need. Remember, your post for this assignment must
be at least 250 words long and have an introduction, middle and conclusion.I have
presented three ways Native Americans experienced or reacted to the Dutch and
Portuguese. Diseases, increased warfare, dependence on European trade goods. You should
always think of answering the question in concrete terms. “What three or four things can I
include to answer this question?”)Dutch & Portuguese First Cultural ContactNative
Americans received the Dutch and Portuguese with curiosity and, according to author Colin
Calloway, if not open arms, at least they welcomed them somewhat.1 This was the case
until the Dutch and Portuguese proved that they had come to the Western Hemisphere not
to befriend the Amerindians but to control them. Though the experiences of the widely
separated colonies of the Dutch and the Portuguese were drastically different, still, Native
Americans had no reason to react positively to the outcomes of their first contacts with
these two European countries.The Dutch did not survive long as colonizers of the New
World that was Amerindians’ old home. Yet in the short forty years of Dutch imperial
intrusions in North America Hudson River Valley Amerindians would demonstrate a
combination of “typical” Native American reactions to, and unique experiences with, Dutch
mercantile culture.According to Jack Campisi at State University College in New Platz, New
York, the Indigenous Peoples who first encountered Hudson in 1609 greeted him amiably.
These Amerindians, probably of the Lenape (Delaware) tribe, wished to trade with the
newcomers, and had a veritable grocery list of items to ask for in trade. The Delaware had
not encountered the Dutch before the arrival of Hudson but they had carried on a lively
trade with the French and therefore knew what to ask for in exchange for furs.2 For these
Indians the Dutch were merely a continuation of a profitable relationship with
Europeans.Though it is true that tribes on the coast had had intermittent contact with
Europeans long before Dutch attempts at colonization – contact that was limited to short

2. stays off-shore while trading with the local tribes – and this contact was welcomed by
coastal tribes, the same was not true for the tribes living inland along the Hudson River —
the Mahicanituck River to the Indigenous Peoples of the area. It is unclear who initiated the
first fight, but soon after Hudson began his exploration up the river, hostilities commenced
between Wappinger (an affiliation of tribes living along the Mahicanituck) warriors and the
Dutch sailors.3 It might have been simple misunderstandings flaring into something bigger
and darker, or it might have been born of racial distrust, as was so commonly the case in
encounters between Europeans and Indians.The experiences of Hudson River Amerindians
with the Dutch were a reflection of the same kind of experiences and reactions other tribes
were undergoing in their encounters with other Europeans. Lenape and Wappinger quickly
developed a hunger for European trade goods which meant the tribes had to craft methods
of dealing with the European propensity to lie and even commit violence to obtain what
they (the Europeans) wanted (as the furs in the immediate vicinity were depleted due to
over-trapping, the Dutch looked at Wappinger land as the next item to obtain. The resulting
“war” almost annihilated the tribe).4 Therefore, like the situation with the Hurons and the
French to the north, the Hudson River Valley became a cauldron of seething rivalries as
various tribes vied with each other to obtain the furs that would then allow them to trade
for such valued manufactured goods as firearms, which the Dutch were willing to trade for
furs. War among the many Hudson River Valley Amerindians intensified due to Dutch
contact.5 The Wappinger and the Lenape were not unusual in their interactions with
Europeans, they were just the first in their locales to experience those common
occurrences.A unique feature of Amerindian encounters with the Dutch was the Dutch
discovery of wampum. Author Ted Morgan, in his account of the Dutch colony, describes
how “having access to wampum was like owning a bank.”6 Wampum are shell beads strung
together that originally were a memory aid that recorded special events in Eastern
Woodland Indian history. When the Dutch discovered that the Amerindians used them as a
kind of currency, they adopted the wampum as a medium of exchange for furs among the
Hudson River valley tribes. At that point the tribes were not even getting manufactured
goods from the Dutch any longer, but rather, they were trading for wampum.And, of course,
the Dutch brought diseases. As unintentional as it might have been, European diseases, such
as smallpox – especially smallpox – devastated the Hudson River valley tribes. According to
R. G. Robertson in his study of the impact of smallpox on Native Americans, the fur trade
was the avenue used by the disease to travel throughout the Amerindian world, destroying
that world as it went.7 Approximately 90% of the Hudson River valley tribes were wiped
out by disease during the short life of the Dutch colony.8 This devastation, like the fur trade
itself, was not confined to the Hudson River Valley, but rather, was merely a harbinger of
what other tribes would endure when white men invaded their respective
territories.Portuguese arriving in their corner of the New World, that South American
geographic bulge known now as Brazil, encountered a semi-sedentary people who (unlike
the Lenape of the Hudson River Valley thousands of miles north) sustained themselves on
what they grew more than what they killed in the hunt. These people were the Tupi and
despite being a warlike people who engaged in intertribal fighting to acquire captives for
sacrifice and ritualistic cannibalism,9 they initially accepted the Portuguese because the

3. Tupi believed that the Europeans had arrived in the land magically — which meant the
tribes had to be generous to these powerful new men.10 The same type of cultural
misunderstandings that had resulted in the Wappinger attacking the Dutch along the steep
banks of the river that bears Hudson’s name now benefited the Portuguese who the Tupi
identified as magical.The magic faded for the Tupi as the Portuguese began to enslave them
to work plantations while diseases brought from the European mainland began to decimate
them. The Tupi reacted by turning their already endemic warfare toward the
newcomers.11According to Kicza, in his book Resilient Cultures: America’s Native Peoples
Confront European Colonization, 1500-1800, “a religiously inspired insurgency
called santidade combined elements of Christianity and…indigenous beliefs” attracted
runaway black slaves who fought alongside the Tupi against their Portuguese
masters.12 The Portuguese were ruthless in striking back and by 1700 there were no more
Tupi on the coast of Brazil.The Dutch were not successful in their imperial designs on the
New World. Their stay was relatively short, but in that time Native Americans reacted to,
adjusted, and ultimately collapsed under the weight of the Dutch invasion of the
Mahicanituck River valley. The Portuguese stayed longer and had a more lasting impact,
destroying the coastal peoples and putting their own roots down in the jungles of Brazil. In
both cases, failure and success, the Indigenous Peoples who initially greeted these
Europeans were the great losers.1 Colin G. Calloway, First Peoples: A Documentary Survey
of American Indian History. (Boston, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008), 79.2 Jack Campisi, “The
Hudson River Valley Indians through Dutch Eyes” accessed
12/13/09 http://www.hrmm.org/halfmoon/campisi.htm#voyage3 Robert W.
Venables, American Indian History: Five Centuries of Conflict & Coexistence, Volume I:
Conquest of a Continent, 1492-1783 (Santa Fe, Clear Light Publishers, 2004), 99.4 “Native
American Tribes of the Hudson River” accessed
12/13/09 http://www.hhr.highlands.com/native.htm5 R.G. Robertson, Rotting Face;
Smallpox and the American Indian, (Caldwell, Idaho, 2001) 108-109.6 Ted
Morgan. Wilderness At Dawn: The Settling of the North American Continent, (New York,
Simon and Schuster, 1993) 154.7 Robertson, XI.8 “The Lenapes: A study of Hudson Valley
Indians,” accessed
12/13/09 http://www.ulster.net/~hrmm/halfmoon/lenape/contact.htm9Julie Buettner,
“The Tupi” http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/southamerica/tupi.html10“Portugal
in America, to 1600” Macrohistory and World Report, accessed
12/13/09 http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h17brz.html11 John E. Kicza, Resilient Cultures:
America’s Native Peoples Confront European Colonization, 1500-1800 (Upper Saddle River,
NJ, Prentice Hall, 2003) 158-159.12 Ibid.