The aim of this paper is to examine the effect that the English colonist had on the Native American in the new world. Using evidence from Camilla Townsend's book Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma I will show that the presence of the English and new technology fractured Native American culture beyond repair in the 1600s. Though the tools and weapons the English brought transposed the way the Native Americans went about their daily lives simply by having a gun or a garden ho., they overwhelmed and destroyed Native American cultures because they forced their own denomination onto the Indians while taking away their birth names and giving them new proper Christian names.
The English invaded the new world with the purpose of gaining wealth and power over the new land that had been given to them by god. If this land was bequeathed to them by their god then why did some of them acknowledge it was the Native Americans rightfully by what right or warrant we can enter in the land of these Savages, take away their rightful inheritance from them (Townsend 35)? The English knew this land to already belong to someone, but because it wasnt another nation that they thought posed a threat to them they decided to take it in their Gods name. Killing the Native Americans was not the plan but to make them work and live by and English mans standards under the rule of the King or Queen. The natives were forced to work their land for the needs of the English and had to pay taxes on their homes to the English. The English saw the Native Americans not as equal human life forms but rather as something to be extorted or in their words saved for they could then save the Indians from themselves.(Townsend 37), the Native Americans were an untapped workforce at little to no cost to them.
The English like the majority of the people in that time were very religious. This comforted them in the journey to the new world and also gave some a mission to bring the word of god to the native people.