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108 PERIOD 2 Colonial America amid Global Change: 1607–1754

“praying towns,” communities in which Puritan missionaries taught American Indi-
ans how to read the Bible, and a few American Indian students even attended Harvard
These sample pages are distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
College. Most “praying Indians,” however, continued to embrace traditional rituals and
beliefs alongside Christian practices. The efforts produced few lasting converts, and the
lack of acceptance of American Indians within Puritan society at large persisted.

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American Indians Resist
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European Intrusion

The European conflicts in North America put incredible pressure on American Indian
peoples to choose sides. Although it was increasingly difficult for native peoples in col-
onized areas to remain autonomous, American Indian nations were not simply pawns
of European powers. Some actively sought European allies against their native enemies,
and nearly all desired European trade goods like cloth, guns, and horses. Moreover,
struggles among English, French, and Spanish forces both reinforced conflicts among
American Indian peoples that existed before European settlement and created new ones.
Colonial conflicts with American Indians started almost immediately in New England
and continued with the Pequot War of 1636 to 1638. War broke out again in the 1670s,
this time with the Wampanoag Indians, in Metacom’s War (see Module 2.3). As the war
dragged on, it became increasingly brutal on both sides, and about quarter of the remain-
ing American Indian population of New England died between 1675 and 1676.
The trade in guns was especially significant in escalating conflicts among tribes
during the late seventeenth century. By then, the English were willing to trade guns for
American Indian captives sold as enslaved labor. American Indians had always taken
captives in war, but some of those captives had been adopted into the victorious nation.
This changed as the English in Carolina began exchanging guns for captives, shipping
most to Caribbean plantations. As slave trading spread, more peaceful tribes were forced
to acquire guns for self-protection, further escalating raiding by American Indian foes
and enslavement. These raids also had the effect of forcing many American Indian
nations off traditional lands.
These dynamics eventually led to two major early eighteenth-century conflicts in
Tuscarora War the Carolinas: the Tuscarora War (1711–1715), in which British, Dutch, and German
A war launched by Tuscarora colonists banded together against the Tuscarora Indians, and the Yamasee War (1715–
Indians from 1711 to 1715 1717), won by the English against a coalition of several American Indian nations.
against European settlers in Although the English victories had high costs, in terms of both lives and money, they
North Carolina and their allies opened up the interior of North America for expanded English settlement, ensuring the
from the Yamasee, Catawba,
and Cherokee nations. growth of the plantation system.
In the aftermath of both wars, the Creek emerged as a powerful new confederation,
Yamasee War and the Cherokee became the major trading partner of the British. The Yamasee nation
A war from 1715 to was seriously weakened. The Tuscarora tribe lost their lands when they signed the peace
1717 led by the Yamasee
confederation, which treaty, and many then joined the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy to the north.
intended, but failed, to Moreover, as the British gained a Cherokee alliance, their Creek and Caddo enemies
oust the British from South reacted by strengthening their alliance with the French. American Indians, however,
Carolina. still continued raids into the Carolinas into the 1720s and 1730s.

REVIEW

■ How were English and French interactions with American Indians during
this era similar, and in what ways did they differ?

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