I am a 10th grade student at Gibbons High School. My teacher challenged me to find a virgin encounter between europeans (or whites in general) and an Indian tribe there the tribe was hostile or violent towards the Europeans. The tribe also must have had no knowledge of the whites. I have found alot of tribes that are knowen to be violent such as the Jivaro and some others that live in the amazon but i cant seem to find information about their first encounter with the europeans. Can anyone help me out or point me in the right direction?
I’m curious: was this a “general” challenge? Or was your teacher responding to a hasty claim on your part regarding the hostility of American peoples?
You are quite likely to be stuck. The initial encounters between the French and the indians of the St. Lawrence Valley, the English and the indians of Massachusetts Bay, and the Dutch at Nieuw Amsterdam were all relatively friendly. The Indians of the Caribbean and Mexico originally greeted the Spaniards without hostility and the Spaniards who wandered through Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana created nearly all the hostility that they encountered. After those initial meetings, most of the hostility was triggered by European greed or bad faith or, on occasion, because the initially friendly peoples called on the Europeans to be allies in ongoing conflicts with peoples further removed from the coasts.
The only places where there might have been initial hostility on the part of the indians would have been the English settlements of the Virginias and Carolinas (although you need to be careful when reading the histories–some conflicts blamed on the indians were, again, actually reactions to European greed).
The only other places you might try woud be the East coast of South America.
I’d use Google to search for the early histories of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Uruguay, and Argentina.
welp… this one will be very difficult to track down… but… There exists a body of evidence (here’s a starting place) indicating that the Welsh Prince Madoc landed in the Mobile, Alabama area around 1170 and settlers that came with his were supposedly driven northward along the Coosa and Alabama Rivers, settling in part near Lookout Mountain and the Chattanooga TN area…
I don’t think I’d try to push the Madoc story too hard. Even if you could get yopur teacher to buy into such silliness*, there is no evidence that the Madoc crew did not initiate the troubles by settling on other people’s lands.
Poking around on Google, it appears that the earliest settlers on Roanoke were befriended by the Croatan until the English attacked them, but that there is some evidence that the peoples under Powhatan to the North (among whom Jamestown was later founded) were not so friendly. Still, it is not clear from what I have read that Powhatan’s people were enemical to the white settlers, per se, as opposed, perhaps to equating the white settlers to allies of the Croatan with whom they were not friendly or else performing a “preemptive strike” on the English after tales of the English hostility was carried to Powhatan. I’d suggest some strong research into that situation.
(While I have always found the Madoc story amusing, I was particualrly struck, on this reading, that the Cherokee elder in the eighteenth century made the claim that the “white” enemies called themselves by the eighteenth century English term “Welsh” rather than by the twelfth century Welsh term Cymry. (I guess that Madoc and his people wanted to leave a trail and so used the words that they knew the descendants of their enemies would use to describe themselves.)
I will certainly admit that the sight I linked to is a bit hokey… but it does offer a wealth of information all in one place. Information that could be used to seek other sources. Names, dates, geographical locations of archealogical finds, the basic legend, etc. … It may or may not be fact… There is debate about whether the Madoc legend is true… but this is fascinating research… and as tomndebb mentioned finding initial hostility by natives without any foreknowledge of europeans is going to be very difficult.
Indeed, the problem is that there weren’t many encounters (other than, obviously, the very earliest) where the natives didn’t have foreknowledge of Europeans. The Americas were crisscrossed by trade networks, and word of bearded invaders with huge ships, strange animals, frightening weapons, and an odd lust for gold tended to spread fast. Even in the Croatan example, the locals had some idea what Europeans were about, since Spanish explorers had been poking around the area, and occasionally launching DeSoto-style raids, for the better part of a century.
For what it’s worth, one of the first encounters between Spaniards and Mayans occurred when a party of Spaniards were shipwrecked in Maya lands in 1511, and the Mayans killed five of them and took the rest prisoner. Of course we’ll never know how provocatively the Spaniards might have acted, or whether the Mayans had foreknowledge of Spanish killing and enslavement of natives in the Caribbean.
Just speculation here, but it seems you are unlikely to find any record of a case where the natives were hostile to the arriving europeans…because the arrivals would most likely not have survived the encounter, and so would not leave any records to be cited.
Seems like the natives would have all the advantages if such an encounter was hostile: they know the territory, defense points, places for ambushes, etc. They may have fortified shelters built. They are near their sources of supplies, weapons, additional fighters, plus supplies of food & water. Meanwhile the arrivals are isolated on a ship, and possibly a small landing area. Their supplies are limited, as is the number of fighters in their ship. It’s pretty hard to make a landing from sea when opposed – look at the losses suffered in the Allied landing at Normandy, even with much greater resources.
Plus it’s probably the natives who decide if this is hostile or not. If they want to make it hostile, they lie in wait and do a surprise attack, and probably can kill off a whole lot of the arrivals in the first minutes of a battle.
So I’d say your teacher has pulled a fast one on you here. Rather like asking for a Cavalary eyewitness account of Custer’s Last Stand!
The voyages of discovery from Europe to the Americas were pretty well documented. There are vanishingly few of them that sailed off into the west and disappeared without a trace. (And ships were crewed by professional sailors who rarely joined the landing party, so that a massacred party of explorers still would leave behind witnesses to their having arrived.) Beyond that, news of attacks tended to stay in the spoken record of the native peoples. John Smith was able to collect several (somewhat conflicting) accounts of what happened to the settlers at Roanoke and it was more a lack of interest in tracking down details 20 years after the fact than a resolute silence on the parts of the indians that left the matter as a mystery to us.
It hardly counts as a trick question. (Ever hear of Benteen and Reno?)
Thank you for all of your help. I havent been able to find a tribe but my teacher says im closer then anyone else has ever gotten. the tribe that i think might be the one are the Kraho’s. they live in south america and attacked a ranch in 1809 (that is the eairlest contact i can find) but i was only able to find one source about them. if anyone comes across information about them it would be very helpful to me. thank you
Ann Marie
One recorded encounter the Skrealings** who met the Vikings in New Foundland were violent. Whether they were provoked into this or not or not – who knows* … but according to the Viking Sagas – the only written record of the encounter – after some intial peaceful trade for no reason at all ??? – the Skraelings attacked.
*We know alot about Viking culture. On top of that we see how hard it is to come up with any other tribes firing arrows first and asking questions later. This makes the whole scenerio seem kind of unlikely as written by the Vikings.
**The tribe the Vikings met, killed and were killed by, in NF may or may not have been the Beothuk tribe. I think the weight of evidence is “may”. http://www.native-languages.org/beothuk.htm
Actually, the very first contact between Vikings and Skraalings resulted in the Vikings murdering the Skraalings in their sleep. I doubt that the tribe of the people murdered off the coast of Baffin Island could or did send word down to agitate the folks living near L’anse aux Meadows, but given the record of the Vikings, I would not bet heavily on the first attack originating among the indigenous inhabitants.
I read a diary from the Spanish expedition that came on land up the California coast and up the San Francisco peninsula, and discovered San Francisco Bay.
They were mostly sick when they reached Waddell Creek, and the Indians there gave them much-needed food. So once again we don’t find Indians that attacked on sight, sorry.
At this remove, I don’t remember any mention of any other Indians attacking this first expedition, but it’s been a long time since reading the diary.
This is a trick question and there is no way in the world it can have a factual, universally acceptable and accepted, answer. It is GD if ever I saw one.
Those who want to show Europeans were bad and Indians good like to say it was always the Europeans being the agressors and attackers or causing the attacks. If the Indians had heard about Europeans before (one assumes they had heard bad things about them) then that was enough to justify the Indians attacking them pre-emptively. This is a question which is so loaded it is impossible to get any response other than the expected one. You just define whatever the Europeans did as justification for the attack and so the attack is then justified. And even if they did nothing then what they might have done elsewhere is sufficient cause. And if ONE case could be proven it would merely be pointed out that it is the exception which proves the rule etc.
We could do the reverse: show me a case of Europeans who had never heard of Indians before and attacked them unprovoked. You can’t do that either because I can always find a reason or a justification, even if it is the fact that those Europeans had heard stories of Indians doing terrible things. You cannot apply different standards to the different sides but that is what you see all the time: the Indians were justified in attacking because the Europeans did whatever they did and that was wrong in the eyes of the Indians but the Europeans were never justified in attacking because whatever the Indians did was not wrong. . . in the eyes of the Indians. When the Indians stole things from the Europeans that is portrayed as the result of an Indian culture where there was no private property and they were all happy to share what they had and it was the Europeans who were selfish and unsharing etc.
This is a childish and simplistic game to play. There were very bad things done by both sides and some good things done by both sides and anyone who wants to paint one side bad and the other side good is just believing his ownsimplistic view which has little to do with the much more complex reality. Again, using the same rules: show me of an unprovoked attack by Europeans who had not even heard about Indians before and just went an attacked them for the heck of it. And if you find one I’ll say it is the exception which proves the rule.
Although not european,they had some of the first contact with native americans.There was some savagery,but for the most part, little opposition to there travels.It seemed they were the more peaceful ones.The few bands that did resist were just left out of the trading and they had no choice but to join peacefully.The other tribes were getting more guns,powder,and trade goods.The book, Undaunted Courage byStephen Ambrose is a great book if you are interested in early american history and native american ways…
While I don’t have a cite, I remember reading a speculation how a misunderstanding caused tension/ provoked an attack:
The vikings invited the Indians over for a feast - hospitality being sacred in both cultures - and since cows and therefore milk played a big part in the Viking culture, they gave milk to the Indians. The Indians however lacked the enzyme, so later in the evening, the Indians got stomach-aches and assumed that the Vikings had tried to poision them, so they went and killed them in retaliation.
I guess it is a little late for Ann Marie in her 17th grade, but the primitive tribes of Andaman Nicobar apparently shoots arrows and throw spears at anything foreign that moves. Including airplanes and choppers.
I can’t be certain, but it sounded like “Indians” in the OP was about natives form the Americas, not the Andaman Islands. Although, come to think of it, the Andaman Islands are in the Indian Ocean.
OK, this is an old thread, but this poster appears to still be active. The above seems a bit ranty to me – it’s not necessary to be an apologist for one side or a hater of the other to make observations about how the encounters played out. Even if you’re right, it comes across as the sort of chip-on-the-shoulder post that I’m usually suspicious of.
I’ll grant that in a general sense, it’s true that the collision between Old World and New was more complex than the popular understanding. And I think most people would concede that Native Americans certainly had their share of normal human vices and failings. But still, it was Columbus – pretty much the only European who encountered them whom we can claim “had no prior knowledge of the Indians” – who more or less immediately thought about enslaving them because they appeared powerless to resist. That sets a bad precedent in itself for your argument that subsequent encounters were influenced by previous collisions.
I don’t think saying that means what you think it means.
Remember, it sounds trite, but the cultural difference is also a factor. In agrarian cultures with money, people have possessions. In nomadic cultures, anything you are not personally using, and especially stuff from outside your tribe, is fair game to “help yourself”. A tribe is much like a family. Many explorers’ and settlers’ complaints were about “thieving indians”. Plus, the “Indian giver” mentality - pay gifts forward - was a way to share good fortune and ensure good fortune was shared with you in return.
Settler catches someone “borrowing” something glittery and beats the crap out of him. He comes back with a tribe of his best friends. On the other side, settlers trample all over hunting grounds, help themselves to women (a sure source of violence), accept gifts but don’t share their percieved largesse, etc. Combine 2 cultures, add in the tendency to settle annoyances with violence that can escalate into full-scale war, and suddenly it’s outmanned vs. outgunned to see who wins.
IIRC Magellan was killed when he joined one side to fight the other side in a local war; except by then the locals figured out how guns worked, and did not just drop everything and run scared when the first booms went off. Up until then, the crew from uptight Iberia was on R&R for a few weeks enjoying the fact that the local women could do whatever / whomever they wanted.
