Introduction 

This lesson plan explores the dynamics of English-Indian relations in Virginia during the first part of the 17^th century.  It can be used when teaching specifically about the founding of the first colony at Jamestown or as part of a more general unit on the discovery and settlement of the New World.  The lesson asks students to analyze documents and drawings in order to investigate English perceptions of and experiences with the Indians who inhabited the Chesapeake region.

Objectives

1. To understand the preconceptions and expectations the English brought to their initial encounters with the Indians in Virginia. 

 2. To examine the different ways in which the colonists and Indians interacted and the underlying tensions in these encounters.

3. To explore why English settlers and Native Americans were unable to form a lasting accommodation with one another in the Chesapeake region.

Pre-Class Preparation

This lesson plan requires students to examine several documents of varying length drawn from different sources on the Internet.  For convenience, all of the documents have been collected into a single MS-WORD file, which should be printed out and distributed to students ahead of time.  Students should read the entire packet prior to coming to class.

Part 1: English Objectives

This part of the lesson should be completed by students as a homework assignment.

The English hoped to realize a variety of benefits from the establishment of a permanent colony in North America.  At the same time, they understood that any colonial venture would inevitably bring them into contact with some of the Native Americans tribes residing along the coast.  Promoters and planners of colonization were not quite sure of the reception the first English settlers would receive at the hands of the Indians.

Activity: Instruct your students to read the following documents: Richard Hakluyt’s “Discourse of Western Planting” (1584); “Instructions for the Virginia Colony” (1606); and “First Virginia Charter” (1606). 

Assignment: Ask students to prepare brief written answers to the following questions: What were the specific goals behind English efforts to establish a permanent settlement in North America?   What attention do these documents pay to the Native American inhabitants of the area selected for colonization?  Based on your assessment of the English goals, what are some of the sources of conflict you can imagine arising between the colonists and Indians?

Part 2: European Impressions of the New World

Europeans recorded their impressions of the Native Americans in words and images.   This part of the lesson looks at several different artistic representations of Indians.  The illustrations have been taken from a variety of websites and American history textbooks.  They have been organized into a PowerPoint presentation (provided on your OHTI CD-Rom) that should be shown to students in class.  Alternatively, the individual PowerPoint slides can be printed out as color transparencies for classrooms not provided with computer equipment.   The first three slides offer different views of the same image: John White's drawing of Secoton, an Indian village on the coast of North Carolina.  Completed in 1585, this illustration is one of the most valuable pictures of Native American life we have because White actually accompanied an expedition to the area and based his drawing on his firsthand observations.   Slides four through nine show a selection of maps of the region that date from the first half of the 1600s.  (Note that slides six and seven feature close-ups of sections of the map on slide five).  The illustrations adorning the maps were drawn by European artists who probably based their renderings of the Indians on the written or verbal reports provided by some of the early colonists.  Slide ten depicts a violent encounter between John Smith, the leader of the Virginia colony, and the Indian chief Opechancanough, whose brother Powhatan headed a powerful confederacy of tribes in eastern Virginia. 

Activity: Run through slides twice.  The first time tell students to focus on the information these images convey about their subjects.  The second time, instruct students to think about what these images reveal concerning the attitudes of the artists who created them.

Assignment: After students finish viewing the slides the first time, ask them to respond to the following questions: What do these drawings tell you about how Indians lived in relation to the environment?  What generalizations can you make about the social and political organization of the Indians depicted in these images?  After the second showing of the slides, ask students to comment on the following questions: What generalizations can you make as to how the artists who created these drawings perceived their subjects?  What aspects of Indian life or of Indian character do they appear most interested in portraying?  Do all of these artists share the same "image" of Native Americans or do you see some of these illustrations as presenting competing "images"?

Part 3: Early Encounters in Virginia

The final part of this lesson returns to written sources.  The first English settlers in Virginia regarded the Indians with a mixture of emotions.  Although the colonists were often suspicious, fearful, and not a little scornful of the Native Americans they encountered, they were curious and fascinated, too.  The colonists' early dealings with the Indians were also marked by an acute appreciation of their own vulnerability. The English were truly strangers in a strange land, and they understood that the survival of their enterprise depended in part on establishing good relations with their Native American neighbors.  By the second half of the 1600s, though, three wars along with frequent minor clashes had destroyed any sense of goodwill among the colonists towards the Indians.

Assignment: Ask the students to refer to the last three documents in the packet of readings.  The first two--“Observations by Master George Percy, 1607” and the excerpt from John Smith’s The Proceedings of the English Colony in Virginia (1612)--provide wonderfully detailed accounts of English dealings with the Indians during the early years of the colony, when relations between the two races were still fluid.  The final document, an excerpt from A Discourse and View of Virginia written by the colony’s royal governor William Berkley in the 1660s mentions the Indians only in passing, but his few off-hand references offer telling evidence of how English attitudes had hardened over the decades.

Activity:  Ask your students to respond to some or all of the following questions: How would you characterize the encounters between the English and the Indians as described by George Percy and John Smith in their accounts?   What expectations did the English bring to these encounters?  What can you deduce from these two documents about the Indians' policy towards the colonists?  How does William Berkley's opinion of the Indians differ from the perceptions of Percy and Smith?

Suggestions For Additional Activities  

Most of the documents, drawings, and maps featured in this lesson plan came from the website "Virtual Jamestown" (http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vcdh/jamestown/).  This site contains an excellent selection of primary source material relating to the English experience at Jamestown.  It also provides a number of very detailed and well-conceived suggestions for using the website in the classroom. 

Teachers who are interested in exploring the subject of European-Indian relations from a broader perspective can do so by taking a comparative approach.  A good selection of documents describing the views and experiences of colonists in other parts of North America can be found at the website "The American Colonist's Library: A Treasury of Primary Documents" (http://personal.pitnet.net/primarysources/).  Some suggested readings include Samuel de Champlain's "The Foundation of Quebec" (1608), Reverend Francis Higginson's "A Short and True Description [of New England]" (1629), Thomas D. Morton's "Description of the Indians in New England" (1637), and William Wood's "Impressions of New England Indians" (1639).  Students could use these readings as the basis for an exercise comparing how the English in Virginia, the Puritans in New England, and the French in the interior perceived and responded to the Indians they encountered.

This lesson has been recreated from an original site for stability reasons only. No changes in the text have been made by the webmasters of this site. The original can be located at http://history.osu.edu/HTI/Lessons/US.htm