chapter 11
Whites, Indians, and Land
Y
our coming is...to invade my people, and possess my
Country.” Those words from an Indian “emperor” whom
the colonists knew as the Powhatan in 1609, just two years after the found-
ing of Jamestown, might have been said by any Indian from then until the
end of the nineteenth century. As the frontier moved westward, each newly
exposed group learned anew the meaning of the arrival of whites. Only
rarely were Indians given respite from settlers’ relentless push into their
lands, and only rarely could the Indian peoples coordinate their activities
to defend themselves.
Those Indians who met the Spaniards in La Florida and in the
American southwest,Nueva Andalucia,had a different tale to tell: the rela-
tively few Spaniards who came among them sought not to expel them but
to incorporate them into a limited version of Spanish society. Unlike the
English settlers, Spaniards did not intend to farm the land themselves.
Rather, they wanted to “reduce” the Indians to urban life, destroy their
beliefs, and demolish their culture. It was thus not land but subversion that
caused the Apalachee and Timucua of La Florida to begin what would
become a sequence of revolts that gained in intensity later in the southwest
among the Pueblo people.
The French were no more colonists than the Spaniards. They never
amounted to more than a fraction of the numbers of the English settlers.
Land was not an important objective of their rule. Rather, they were traders.
To trade successfully and even to defend themselves from the Iroquois,
whom they made into enemies almost from their entry into the Saint
Lawrence, the French needed Indian allies. They therefore sent French
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