By the time of early European colonization attempts, there were over 30,000 Native Americans in Massachusetts living amongst a variety of tribes belonging to the Algonquin language group. Some of the most well known tribes were the Wampanoag, Pequot, Nipmuck, and the Massachuset. They lived in small bands and had no supreme chief.
Unfortunately, the Europeans would bring with them diseases that the Native Americans had no immunity against, resulting in large deadly epidemics. The Native population continued to suffer from disease and warfare throughout the remainder of the 17th century. Nearly ninety percent of the Native population were killed during that period.
When English immigrants set sail for the New World in the early seventeenth century, many of them believed that they would be settling what Pilgrim William Bradford called “a vast and unpeopled country.” But when they arrived in America, they found a developed region with a large population of Native Americans.
Different tribes spoke different languages, had their own political structures, and had developed distinct cultures. Cultural misunderstandings and intolerance plagued Native-European relations, hampering negotiations and sometimes leading to violent confrontations.
The Puritans began to arrive in 1629, and their religion affected their attitudes toward Native Americans. They considered Native Americans inferior because of their primitive lifestyle, but many thought they could be converted to Christianity.
The natives found Puritan conversion practices coercive and culturally insensitive. Accepting Christianity usually involved giving up their language, severing kinship ties with other Natives who had not been saved, and abandoning their traditional homes.
When the first British settlers tried to establish a small settlement on Roanoke Island, they were not the first settlers of the New World Decades earlier both the Spanish and the French had claimed chunks of North American for their respective countries, and England was ready to compete for land and riches. Although the British were new to this New World, colonization of other lands was not a foreign concept to them (see empiricism). When the British landed in North Carolina, they knew virtually nothing about the native people and had little desire to understand their culture. But the leaders of the Roanoke party did know that they needed the local people if they were going to survive in their new land. This set the tone for all British attempts at colonization.
Therefore,in the earliest days of New World settlement, relations between the natives and the newcomers were friendly. Native American culture valued trade as a means of binding two tribes and increasing general cooperation, so the tribes provided food, clothing, and shelter for the dependent settlers in exchange for metal tools like knives and hatchets. The Native Americans also traded knowledge; they taught the settlers to be self-sufficient.
As the European settlements began to grow and encroach on more and more Indian lands, relations became more strained. Cultural differences became more insurmountable as British dependence decreased. Large numbers of Native Americans died from European diseases such as small pox and influenza against which they had no immunity. Not known for their appreciation of indigenous cultures in developing British lands , the English followed the lead of the Spanish and French settlers before them and began to demonize the natives in an attempt to excuse their own behaviors (enslaving tribes, stealing land, taking their women as concubines, and over-hunting game).
Interestingly enough, the British ignored their role in the diseases that were decimating entire tribes and instead chose to view the deaths of the Native Americans as a sign of divine disfavor. According to John Winthrop, God was killing Indians and their supporters to ensure "our title to this place." And as the "instruments of Providence, divinely appointed to claim the New World from its godless peoples," the colonists felt it was their duty to destroy the "godless savage." In the words of Captain John Underhill, "We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings" -- he refers to the massacre of 500 Pequot men, women, and children at a village along the Mystic River.
SOURCES
1- Puritan Utopian Visions—PDF File.Interactions between Native Americans and European Settlers
2-“Native American Relations & Puritan Settlers.” American Literature-ENG. 265. http://www4.ncsu.edu/~wdlloyd/native_american_relations.htm. Web. Accessed 3/3/2018.
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