English Relationship with the Natives

Now was the time that the Indians felt the call to renew their own religion and devotion to the gods, and in 1680, the Pueblos rose up to stamp out the Spanish. Consequently, the Pueblos were successful in driving out the Spanish, and as they were exhausted from waging war, they did not initiate any more uprisings against Spanish rule. When Indian revolt and rebellion plagued both settlements, the two groups reacted in very different manners. Early Massachusetts Bay settler, William Wood, went on to find fault with various aspects of the Indian routine, including treatment of Indian women in society. Within weeks, the natives eliminated hundreds of Spanish from New Mexico and desecrated Spanish buildings, fields, and most importantly, churches and sacred objects. The English made no endeavor to re-establish relations between the two groups, and as the Narragansetts would see, all the astonishing opportunities and accomplishments offered by the English settlements proved to be a catastrophe. They both took advantage of the Indians, preying on their every whim. After a futile attempt at reconstructing English and Narragansett ties, Miantomi called for unification among Indians against the English. This paved the way for an upcoming era of peace and unity between Pueblos and the Spanish settlers. They played upon the beliefs of the Indians that the Spanish were gods. However, the English reacted no differently to the outlandishly different lifestyle of the natives. Whereas land and settlement was the foremost important initiative on English minds, religion and power claimed the thoughts of the Spanish. As the new political allies to the English, the Narragansetts found themselves siding with the colonists in a war against the Pequots. As several epidemics brought on by the English swept the coast of New England, the Indian population diminished and sent survivors trailing east.

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