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Oscar Marquez

Mr. Williamson

AP U.S History

10 October 2019

Cultural Assimilation on the Chesapeake Region

The motives regarding this informational exposition will be dedicated towards

expounding on the assimilation of native Indians into English culture, specifically analyzing the

early interactions between both cultures, the various difficulties of English settlement on the

Chesapeake region, and the establishment of Virginia as a prosperous colony for the English

nation. The article published by Gary B. Nash, ​Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early

North America​, emphasizes on intercultural relations between the natives and English colonists;

the author profoundly examines the reasons for the disputes among both cultures and the

outcomes of such interactions. From a constantly struggling settlement in the Roanoke Island

into a flourishing colony in Virginia, the development of English colonization is recorded with

profound examination.

Regarding the colonization of English settlers on the Northeastern region of the New

World, or known as the Chesapeake Region, the establishment of English presence was a

complex and lengthy process that comprised of constant instability and brutality resulting from

their problematic relationship with the native Indians and their inability to accustom to new

terrains. The incentive for English settlement was to simulate the economic prosperity that the

Spanish experienced, as a result from utilizing an entire native population as a labor force to

attain certain resources, such as gold and silver, after the Spanish colonization of the West Indies
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and Mexico. Commencing during the 1580’s, the first attempt to organize a voyage into the New

World by England was initiated by Walter Raleigh, with the support of Queen Elizabeth, as he

had arrived on Roanoke Island with six-hundred men. Following the disaster within the Roanoke

colony, in which the remaining one-hundred and ten colonists mysteriously disappeared, the

English colonists assumed that the Indian tribes had decimated the Roanoke colony, therefore, a

violent and pessimistic perspective was developing towards the native population which

influences the future interactions between the English and the natives substantially.

Initially, the voyages towards America by the Virginia Company of London, were

perceived as a business enterprise to enrich the stockholders who invested in the company,

however, the England monarch pressured colonization after realizing its potential profitability

due to an abundance of resources and commerce with the natives or foreign nations. The

stabilization of English settlements within Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, their first permanent

settlement, occurred after substantial tensions with the Powhatan Indians and the emerging

tobacco industry which allowed economic prosperity and established social order within the

Virginia colony due to its profitability. In order to recruit sufficient laborers to satisfy the

demands of the drastic growth of the tobacco plantation, the Virginia Company imposed a

contract of indentured servitude in which people from England were provided with a passage to

America, including one-hundred acres of land in exchange for several years of labor. According

to the passage, it states, “But by 1640, Virginia had grown to about 8,000 settlers. By 1662 the

population had swelled to 25,000 and the colony was shipping 7 million pounds of

tobacco.”(pg.73) As a result of the dominant tobacco economy in Virginia, the large tobacco

producers exerted a large control over the Virginia colony, as they expanded their land westward
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and they employed various servants to work in their plantation despite the oppressive conditions

that they imposed. Due to the encroachment of Indian territory by expanding English plantations,

the native Indians opposed their expansion with the destruction in their settlements, and the

English responded alike. “From 1610 to 1612, the Powhatan attacked the colonists whenever

opportunities presented themselves, and destroyed two Indian villages.”(pg. 69) Despite the

tension between the English colonists and the native Indians, there was significant cultural

exchange between the two, as the Indians experience and improvement in technologic to utilize

tools more efficiently, while the English were taught how to hunt, and grow new foods.