jerry pdx You dump a group of people in a strange land thousands of miles away and all you have is sailing ships to cross the seas, then expect them to survive, you don't know what could happen. Since they found no bodies or trace of violence the likeliest possibility is they simply went native, after all why should the colonists labor for king and crown when left to their own devices and they see the natives living an easier way and simpler way of life? It wasn't that extraordinarily difficult to survive as a colonist in the America's, there was plenty of food to forage for but the settlers were financed by investors who expected a return on their investment, which meant they had to establish cash crops, find gold or something else of commercial value, this meant starvation during winter because crops failed they didn't spend enough time finding and storing food to tide them through the lean season. An alternative to starvation was to join a local native tribe, if they were friendly that it, but usually in those early days most the natives were relatively peaceful and willing to adopt Europeans into their tribes. Those were the woodland Indians though, when Europeans encountered the Plains Indians, it was a different story, they were less welcoming and more warlike, that's where the stories of tortures and atrocities mostly come from. The Plains Indians might adopt white children into the tribe, though in some cases they killed them, but adults that weren't killed or tortured were always treated as slaves.
jerry pdx
ReplyDeleteYou dump a group of people in a strange land thousands of miles away and all you have is sailing ships to cross the seas, then expect them to survive, you don't know what could happen. Since they found no bodies or trace of violence the likeliest possibility is they simply went native, after all why should the colonists labor for king and crown when left to their own devices and they see the natives living an easier way and simpler way of life? It wasn't that extraordinarily difficult to survive as a colonist in the America's, there was plenty of food to forage for but the settlers were financed by investors who expected a return on their investment, which meant they had to establish cash crops, find gold or something else of commercial value, this meant starvation during winter because crops failed they didn't spend enough time finding and storing food to tide them through the lean season. An alternative to starvation was to join a local native tribe, if they were friendly that it, but usually in those early days most the natives were relatively peaceful and willing to adopt Europeans into their tribes. Those were the woodland Indians though, when Europeans encountered the Plains Indians, it was a different story, they were less welcoming and more warlike, that's where the stories of tortures and atrocities mostly come from. The Plains Indians might adopt white children into the tribe, though in some cases they killed them, but adults that weren't killed or tortured were always treated as slaves.