What Was The Risk For The Americans

When the Europeans first arrived in the New World, other cultures were friendly, but as time went on tension increased and relationships between the people of different cultures decreased. An unnamed member of the Ojibwa people recounted a dream describing the Europeans. “Men of strange appearance have come across the great water…The men have long and sharp knives, and they have long black tubes which they point at birds and animals. The tubes make a smoke that rises into the air just like the smoke from our pipes. From them come fire and such terrific noise that I was frightened, even in my dream. This was a bad sign for the Natives. A new type or people were coming with better technology, horses and a threatening appearance. Resources would have to be shared, and eventually the Europeans take all of it. Despite all of this, some natives took a risk and decided to help the Europeans like in Plymouth rock and Jamestown. Sadly, this risk did not turn out well for the natives in the end.
Jamestown was the first permanent British settlement in the Americas.
Jamestown faced starvation early on because the settlers didn’t know how to find food and live in the wilderness. The Natives helped them survive by teaching them how to get food and sharing their provisions with the settlers. They were the only reason Jamestown survived before they discovered tobacco. John Smith speaks about the generosity of the Natives in General History of Virginia, “But now all our [food was gone], the [fish] gone, all helps abandoned, [and] each hour [we expected] the fury of the [natives]. . . God, the patron of all good [efforts] . . . so changed the hearts of the [natives] that they brought such plenty of their fruits and provision as no man wanted.” The natives also helped the Pilgrims and other settlers to survive. This was probably the most positive and friendly reaction with the
Europeans.
For a while, the Europeans and other cultures lived side by side with friendly and peaceful interaction. An engraving of Dutch New Amsterdam shows Native Americans living close to the Europeans with no hostility or dislike of any sort between the groups. This all changed as the Europeans got more comfortable in the New World, and started thinking that they were better than other cultures such as the Africans and Native Americans. So what did they do to repay the Native Americans for their help early on? Why they enslaved them of course! And when they ran out of Natives they decided that the Africans would be good slaves too. From Slavery to Freedom discusses how slavery originated. Virginians began to see . . . the Caribbean had already [seen], that is, that Negroes could not easily escape without being identified; that they could be disciplined, even punished, [without regrets] since they were not Christians; and that the supply [seemed to be without end]. Black labor was precisely what Virginia needed in order to speed up the clearing of the forests and the [growing] of larger and better tobacco crops. Slavery was extremely inhumane and cruel. Slave codes denied slaves basic human rights and treated them as property. Many slaves resisted or committed suicide during the middle passage because of the nightmare that lied ahead.