4-2.7

It Is Essential For Students To Know:

• Conflicts and cooperation between the Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans influenced life in America.
• At first, Native Americans helped the colonists in Virginia and Plymouth to survive the first years and taught them to plant crops that would grow in the New World, such as tobacco and corn.
• As more settlers came to take their land, the Native Americans began to resist the encroachment of the colonists.
• Many wars were fought between the colonists and the Native Americans.
• When the French moved into the Ohio River Valley to claim this land for France, the colonists and the British went to war to protect their rights to advance their colonies.
• Many Native American tribes fought on the side of the French against the colonists and the British, giving the war its American name the French and Indian War.
• In Europe, this war was called the 7 Years War because of the length of time that it was fought.
• The French had established a good working relationship with the natives with whom they traded furs. Because few French settlers came to the New World and those who came did not take much land for planting, the French did not antagonize the Native Americans as the American colonists did.
• The Native American groups hoped that a French victory would limit the expansion of the English colonies past the Appalachian Mountains.
• However, when the British and Americans won the French and Indian War and forced the French to lose control of their North American colony, the Native Americans were without an ally.
• Plantation owners considered slaves to be their property and sold slaves without warning.
• Slaves wanted to acquire their freedom from the plantation owners. Some enslaved Africans rebelled against the poor living conditions and abusive treatment by slave owners.
• However, slave revolts were unsuccessful. Some were discovered before the revolt could be carried out; others were quickly and brutally put down. The result was harsher regulation and control of the slave population.
• Such revolts also made the slave owners and the white population more fearful of their enslaved Africans.
• In order to maintain an oppressive system, Southerners used violence and intimidation. Although slaves continued to resist their captivity through work slowdowns, feigned illnesses, breaking tools and running away, few were successful in escaping the bonds of slavery.
• There was some cooperation between slaves and Native Americans. For instance, runaway slaves in South Carolina fled to Florida where they joined Native American tribes. [Seminole means runaway.] However, there were other Native American tribes that adopted the practice of slavery.