Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms, Part VI: American Ego, contd.

Returning to the cited passage from the second paragraph of their 1775 Declaration, further evidence of Jefferson and Dickinson’s rather mythologized presentation of the colonial founding can be located in their assertion that the “wilds of America” were, “Then filled with numerous and warlike nations of barbarians.” Aside from what would now most often be referred to as a blatant example of cultural insensitivity or political incorrectness, this obvious implication of this statement – i.e. that the settlement of British America succeeded in spite of the presence of exceedingly hostile indigenous peoples – quite simply fails to correspond to the plain facts of early colonial history. Granting that war – or at least some form of armed aggression – between the residents of the colonies and their various indigenous neighbors did ultimately become an endemic condition of existence in British America, native peoples more than once saved the lives of entire communities of English settlers during moments of crisis in the opening phase of the colonial project. The founders of the Plymouth Colony, for instance, were provided with a vital source of valuable animal furs for resale in Europe by the local Wampanoag people during the early years if the coexistence in the 17^th century. Representatives of this same tribe also taught the settlers various agricultural techniques that helped increase their food production and enhanced their ability to survive New England’s harsh winters. This crucial early assistance was subsequently repaid in the 1620s when the Wampanoag requested and received the protection of the Plymouth settlers from their regional rivals the Narragansett.

The early interactions between the Powhatan Confederacy and the inhabitants of the Jamestown colony followed a similar trajectory. The newcomers, acknowledging the importance of cultivating strong local allies, sent an expedition up the James River in 1607 for the express purpose of contacting and establishing relations with the native settlements there. While the subsequent diplomatic contacts were not always entirely harmonious – given as the English settlers were to look upon the Powhatan in a rather patronizing manner – trade and cultural exchange allowed the Jamestown plantation to establish itself upon firmer footing than would otherwise have been possible during its first perilous years. The early inhabitants of Maryland found even more enthusiastic allies in the local Yaocomico people, a branch of the populous and powerful Piscataway. Not only did the Yaocomico first encountered by the Maryland colonists sell them the land upon which they founded their first settlement, St. Mary’s City, in 1634, but they also shared with them various agricultural practices and taught them where they could harvest foods like oysters and clams. As with the inhabitants of Plymouth and Jamestown, it is accordingly debatable whether or not the Maryland settlers would have survived without this assistance, isolated as they were and unfamiliar with local conditions. Indeed, far from being “warlike” or otherwise behaving in a manner that would justify the moniker of “barbarians,” the indigenous nations first encountered by early colonists of what would become British America were often quite welcoming and cooperative.  

All that being said, it bears acknowledging that in none of these instances did early bilateral cooperation lead to sustained and sustaining relationships between indigenous and migrant peoples. Between the 1630s and 1670s, for instance, the inhabitants of the Plymouth Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony pushed the bounds of their respective settlements deeper into indigenous territory, became increasingly involved in local power struggles between rival tribes, and ultimately found themselves allied to or engaged in hostilities with seemingly every local native polity in southern New England. Former enemies the Narragansett, for example, became their allies against the Pequot in the 1630s, who in turn found common cause with the English against their former patrons the Wampanoag in the 1670s. Over the course of these conflicts whole nations of indigenous peoples were devastated, scattered, or destroyed while the colonies of New England managed to shoulder their own casualties while continuing to expand apace. The early inhabitants of Jamestown proved similarly caustic to their Powhatan hosts. After fumbling through a series of disagreements over territory, control of resources, and strategic intentions over the course of the years 1608 and 1609, the starving colonists closed out 1610 in a state of war with the natives at the behest of the belligerent Lord De La Warr (1577-1618) and his long-overdue relief expedition. While that particular conflict ended in a peace settlement in 1614, subsequent Anglo-Powhatan conflicts in the 1620s, 1640s, and 1670s left the once powerful nation relegated to a series of reservations and bound by treaty to acknowledge the supremacy of the English Crown. The founding settlers of Maryland were only slightly more generous to their Yaocomico allies, managing to maintain peaceful – and mutually beneficial – relations with them through the 1650s. Thereafter, however, conflicts between the Yaocomico and the migrating Susquehannock, the further expansion of the colony’s borders, and deliberate efforts to remove the entire Piscataway nation from their ancestral homeland left them a scattered, weakened, and much reduced people.

Notwithstanding Jefferson and Dickinson’s assertion in their 1775 Declaration that the forebears of the contemporary population of British America, “Effected settlements in the distant and inhospitable wilds of America, then filled with numerous and warlike nations of barbarians [,]” the truth would seem to be far less flattering to the image of redoubtable colonists laboring against seemingly insurmountable odds. The indigenous nations first encountered in the early 17^th century by the founders of such colonies as Plymouth, Jamestown, and Maryland were certainly capable of making war, had been doing so for generations against regional rivals, and were hardly adverse – in the immediate – to the introduction of European weapons. And it also bears acknowledging that their intentions and actions during the early phase of the English colonial project were not infrequently hostile – unannounced incursions into their territory were often met with force and followed by raids that involved hostage taking and executions. Nevertheless, the customary nature of the English response to such behavior was almost always far harsher, more aggressive, and more definitive than any offered by the relevant indigenous peoples. Granting that the Wampanoag, the Powhatan, and the Yaocomico in particular were generally inclined to cooperate with the European newcomers with the intention of leveraging their presence and their technology to their own advantage against their regional rivals, they arguably never went so far as to seek the utter destruction of the settler colonies or the enslavement of their inhabitants. In this sense, recalling the generosity offered by the tribes mentioned here and the fates to which their generosity ultimately led them, it would seem fair to instead characterize Jefferson and Dickinson’s hallowed forefathers as the particularly warlike or barbarous people within the narrative of the colonial founding. Within the context in which this narrative was offered, of course, the truth was of limited worth.

The purpose of Jefferson and Dickinson’s 1775 Declaration was to demonstrate and affirm the legitimacy of the decision rendered by the united colonies to pursue and support a course of armed resistance against the British political and military representatives at that time operating in North America. Key to this objective was the sanctification of the rights and liberties for whose protection the aggrieved colonists claimed to have taken up arms. While acclaimed by the relevant text as being British in origin – as embodied by the British Constitution – to which every British subject could lay a legitimate claim, Jefferson and Dickinson also seemed keen to attribute the appropriate sense of sacredness to these rights by representing them as a form of personal inheritance bequeathed to the contemporary population of British America by the founders of the various colonies therein. It was thus not simply a matter of the colonists seeking to defend something to which all British peoples – be they Scottish, Bermudian, or Quebecois – could lay claim, but rather an attempt on their part to validate the specific hardships suffered by their forefathers in the process of forging the various colonies out of a supposedly primordial wilderness.  For the resulting sense of legacy and duty to have the appropriate effect, of course, the aforementioned hardships would need to be portrayed as having been suitably severe. A narrative of settlement characterized by mild winters, rich land, and ready support from private and public sources, for instance, would hardly have validated – let alone galvanized – the sense of urgency with which the united colonies represented their position as the ongoing Anglo-American crisis entered its most destructive phase yet.

Just so, a nuanced understanding of the relationship between the early colonists and indigenous peoples during the colonial founding would surely have failed to provide any such reassurance as to the sanctity of the Patriot cause or the moral imperative that it claimed to embody. For the evident violations of American liberties committed by British officials to acquire personal significance – indeed, for the burgeoning sense of American exceptionalism to have any value at all – the liberties being threatened required an illustrious legacy of heroic sacrifice that contemporary Americans could feel as though they were being called to validate. Clearly, an accurate retelling of the fates of peoples like the Wampanoag, the Powhatan, or the Yaocomico at the hands of the founders of Plymouth, Jamestown, or Maryland would not have served this purpose. Not only does history record the crucial aide that these nations rendered to the English migrants – effectively giving the lie to any claims of self-sufficiency – but it further attests to their eventual victimization at the hands of aggressive colonial expansion. The collective ego of the contemporary American peoples – centered on a core belief in the providential nature of the colonial project – surely had no use for these unfortunate truths. To Jefferson and Dickinson, their fellow delegates to the Continental Congress, and the millions of people they claimed to represent, America was something special. Its inhabitants were mainly British in origin, of course, and located the genesis of their rights in the history and traditions of those islands. But the experience of colonization had changed them, they often affirmed, made them into something more than another variety of British subject. The hostility of the North American environment – its climate, its wildlife, and indeed its native inhabitants – was central to this narrative, forming the backdrop of antagonism against which the great heroes of the colonial founding labored and fought. And in so laboring and fighting – in blessing the soil with their blood – they accordingly sanctified the rights to which they laid claim as British subjects to a greater degree than any person living in any other region of the British Empire could possibly understand.  

This particular conception of the rights and liberties claimed by the inhabitants of British America in 1775 – in evident defence of which these same inhabitants now found themselves at war – is undeniably an egotistical one. In addition to embracing a rather warped understanding of the mechanisms and means by which the various colonies were founded – individual initiative as opposed to a mix of labor, capital, and patronage, or via struggle against hostile indigenous peoples rather than in cooperation with or through exploitation of the same – it would seem to attribute a degree of moral superiority to the contemporary American people incapable of being claimed by any of their fellow subjects of the British Crown. Certainly, Jefferson and Dickinson asserted in the 1775 Declaration, the inhabitants of the united colonies were proud to be British, and would have loved nothing more than to continue to be so. Unfortunately, as a result of errors and transgression committed by corrupt and ambitious individuals who would claim to act with official sanction, the rights for which the founders of British America had shed blood to see established in the New World had been dangerously threatened. Claims by Parliament, successive governments, and the Crown notwithstanding, Americans understood and valued their rights better than anyone could, and knew that armed resistance to any attempts made to bring them to heel was the only valid course of action.