While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
English influence. The first English visitors to the
coast of Virginia-Carolina were well received by the Indians, whom the early
chroniclers, as Hariot, for example, describe as peaceful and amiable people.
So, too, were in the beginning the natives of the New England coast, but in 1605
Capt. Weymouth forcibly carried off five Indians, and he soon had many
imitators. The good character ascribed by Pastor Cushman in 1620 to the Indians
of Plymouth colony was forgot ten when theological zeal saw in the aborigines of
the New World "the accursed seed of Canaan," which it was the duty of good
Christians to exterminate (see Lost Ten Tribes}. When the political ambitions of
the English colonists were aroused conflicts with the Indians soon occurred, and
the former came to regard the latter as the natural enemies of the whites in the
onward march of civilization. Un like the French, they paid little attention to
the pride of the Indians, despising the heathen ways and institutions more and
more as their power grew and their land hunger increased. With a few noble
exceptions, like Roger Williams and John Eliot, the clergy of the English
colonies were not nearly so sympathetic to ward the natives as were the French
missionaries in Acadia and New France. Scotchmen, however, in the S., in the W.,
in the old provinces of Canada, and in the territories handed over to the Hudson
s Bay Company have played a conspicuous part as associates and leaders of the
Indians. Even men like Canonicus were always suspicious of their English
friends, and never really opened their hearts to them. The introduction of rum
and brandy among the Indians worked infinite damage. Some of the New Eng land
tribes, such as the Pequot, for ex ample, foreseeing perhaps the result of their
advent, were inimical to the English from the first, and the extermination of
these Indians ensued when the whites were strong enough to accomplish it. It
appears, however, that the English
colonists paid for most of the land that they took from the Indians (Thomas in
18th Rep. B. A. E., 549, 1899). English influence on tribal government
and land tenure was perceptible as early as 1641. The success of deliberately
planned educational institutions for the benefit of the Indian during the early
periods of American history does not seem to have been proportionate to the
hopes and ideals of their founders. Harvard, Dartmouth, and the College of
William and Mary all began, in whole or in part, as colleges for Indian youth,
but their graduates of aboriginal blood have been few indeed, while they are now
all high-class institutions for white men (see Education}. The royal charter of
Dartmouth College (1769) specifically states that it is to be " for the
education and instruction of youths of the Indian tribes in this land," and "for
civilizing and Christianizing the children of pagans." That of Harvard looked to
" the education of the English and Indian youth in knowledge and godliness."
Harvard had during the colonial period one Indian graduate, Caleb
Cheeshateaumuck, of whom hardly more than his name is known (see James,
English Institutions and the American Indian, 1894). The aim of the English
has ever been to transform the aborigines and lift them at once to their own
plane. When commissioners visited the Cherokee they induced these to elect an
"emperor, with whom treaties could be made. The Friends, from the time of
William Penn (1682) down to the present (see Mooney in 17th Rep. B. A. E.,
193, 1898), seem to have furnished many individuals capable, like the
Baptist Roger Williams (1636), of exercising-great personal influence over the
Indians. The Quakers still continue their work, e.g., among the eastern Cherokee
(Mooney in 19th Rep. B. A. E., 176, 1900) and the Tlingit of Alaska. The
New England Company established for the propagation of the gospel in America
(1649), whose operations were transferred to Canada in 1822, carries on at the
present time work" on the Brantford Iroquois reserve and in other parts of
Ontario, at Kuper id., Brit. Col., and elsewhere. Its Mohawk institute, near
Brantford, has had a powerful influence among the Iroquois of Ontario. The pagan
members of these Indians have recently been investigated by Boyle (Jour.
Anthrop. Inst. G. B., n. s., in, 263-273, 1900), who tells us that "all for
which Iroquois paganism is indebted to European culture" is the possession of
some ideas about God or the Great Spirit and "a few suggestions respecting
conduct, based on the Christian code of morals." The constant mingling of the
young men with their white neighbors and the going of the young women out to
service are nevertheless weakening more and more the old ideas which are doomed
" to disappear as a system long before the people die out." That they have
survived so long is remarkable.
English influence made itself felt in colonial days in the introduction of
improved weapons, tools, etc., which facilitated hunting and fishing and made
possible the manufacture with less labor and in greater abundance of ornaments,
trinkets, and other articles of trade. The supplying of the Indians with
domestic animals also took place at an early period. Spinning wheels and looms
were introduced among the Cherokee shortly before the Revolution, and in 1801
the agent re ported that at the Cherokee agency the wheel, the loom, and the
plow were in pretty general use. The intermarriage of Englishmen and Indians has
been greater all over the country than is commonly believed, and importance must
consequently be attached to the effects of such inter mingling in modifying
Indian customs and institutions. Clothing and certain ornaments, and, after
these, English beds and other furniture were adopted by many Indians in colonial
days, as is now being done by the tribes of the N. Pacific coast.
English influence on the languages of some of the aborigines has been
considerable. The word Kinjames, King James, in use among the Canadian
Abnaki, testifies to the power of English ideas in the 17th century. The
vocabularies of the eastern Algonquian tribes who have come in contact with the
English contain other loan-words. Rand's English-Micmac Dictionary (1888)
contains, among others, the following: Jak-ass; cheesawa,
'cheese'; koppee, 'coffee'; mulugech, 'milk'; gubulnol,
governor. Brinton and Anthony s Lenape-English Dictionary (1889), representing
the language of about 1825, has amel, 'hammer'; apel, 'apple';
mbil, 'beer'; mellik, 'milk'; skulin, to keep school, which
may be partly from English and partly from German. A Shawnee vocabulary of 1819
has for sugar melassa, which seems to be English molasses; and a Micmac
vocabulary of 1800 has blaakeet, blanket. The English cheese has passed
into the Nipissing dialect of Algonquian as tchis. The Chinook jargon (q.
v. ) contained 41 words of English origin in 1804, and 57 in 1863, while in
1894, out of 1,082 words (the total number is 1,402) whose origin is known,
Eells cites 570 as English. Of recent years many words of Indian origin have
been dropped, English words having taken their places."In colonial days English
doubtless had some influence on the grammatical form and sentence-construction
of Indian languages, and this influence still continues: the recent studies by
Prince and Speck of the Pequot-Mohegan (Am. Anthrop., n. s., vi, 18-45,
469-476, 1904) contain evidence of this. English influence has made itself
felt also in the languages of the N. W. Hill-Tout (Rep. Ethnol. Surv. Can.,
18, 1902) observes, concerning certain Salishan tribes, that "the spread and
use of English among the Indians is very seriously affecting the purity of the
native speech." Even the Athapascan Nahane of N. British Columbia have,
according to Morice (Trans. Canad. Inst., 529, 1903), added a few English
words to their vocabulary. See also Friederici, Indianer und
Anglo-Amerikaner, 1900; MacMahon, The Anglo-Saxon and the North American
Indian, 1876; Manypenny, Our Indian Wards, 1880. (A. F. c.)
This site
includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be
interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes
implied .
Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Frederick Webb Hodge, 1906
