48 thoughts on “Mayflower blog”

1. hannahvoigt August 13, 2011 at 4:10 pm

   It is easy to see both sides of this argument, in which I mean that the Native Americans were getting goods from the French, Dutch, and English that were made of iron and were vastly superior to things made out of wood and stone. However the White settlers were well aware of the worth of the property they were buying and probably should have offered more on page 171 it is stated that their descendants later insisted that they ‘did not possess one foot of land in this colony but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors (I will say I would have gotten defensive if someone accused my family of being cheap). I imagine as tensions were heating up between the Natives and the settlers that Philips actions would have been viewed differently than at the time of the original sale. I believe the Natives were outmatched and had no alternatives then to sell their land, unfortunately it was inevitable that the Native Americans would succumb to the greed and overwhelming numbers of the Europeans. As my dad put it “they Native Americans should have shot Christopher Columbus when he first stepped off the boat”. If a purchase of land similar to this had taken place in modern times, anyone would have taken the iron pot, beads, cloth, and moose skins that the Native Americans were originally offered. (in case you missed the joke I was referring to the struggle that comes with getting a good price for a house up for sale)
2. Fred Ayres August 16, 2011 at 7:17 pm

   I, for one, will never come to understand the sale and purchase of land. Simply because someone has money, an army, or chooses to plant a flag, the land becomes theirs. It’s senseless to me.

   I do believe that the Pilgrims were getting criminally low prices for Massasoit’s land. The prices could never be justified simply because of the cost it took to clear the land and make it more suitable for living. The Pilgrims and the other Puritans to follow were outsiders; foreigners. This was not their land and they held no entitlement to it, not that the Indians did, either. This is where we reach an impasse. What right do the Indians have to sell the land? They’ve already become enamored by English goods and have sacrificed their beloved beaver in order to pay for them. “The Indians… had come to regard expensive Western goods as an essential part of their lives.” (p. 206). I suppose it’s greed on both sides. As Roger Williams and William Bradford agreed, God land had polluted the minds of the good Puritans, and now, a lust for possessions had destroyed the Indians.

   King Philip took this lust to a whole new level. He sold off his remaining lands at vastly overpriced fees in order to feed his greed for more Western goods. Eventually, Philip came to realize that “… losing land had [had] he most direct impact on the well-being of his people.” (p. 207). In the months leading up to the war of his namesake, he sold off land at increasingly higher and higher prices in order to finance his army. The Indians were left with no other choice. The English would’ve taken the land, by force, might I add, anyway. Since Philip had sold the land and gotten reciprocated for it, at least his army now had a fighting chance to win the land back.
3. Nathan Willey August 25, 2011 at 2:56 pm

   I believe that there was a good and bad side to the trade. While the Native Americans agreed to the purchase, I have trouble believing that the Native Americans would have a full understanding of the worth of their money seeing as the Pilgrims had not been there very long. On the other hand, the land was cleared and the Natives needed the supplies that the Pilgrims could supply. Because of this, they were probably ready to trade the land for a cheap price anyway. Philip then took this unfair behavior to an entirely new level when he kept sending more English settlers. There were far too many of them coming and settling in the new world so the English were Forced to expand which was not at all fair to the Native Americans. With more and more English coming every single day, soon they would be pushed off the face of America. There was a lust for land going on and both sides were culprits. The English were constantly sending more and more people over to America and the Native Americans were selling them land only to start a pre-emptive war in 1675 to stop the spread of the English. In the end, I feel that the Englishmen were taking advantage of the Native Americans in one way or another but in the beginning the Natives were accepting of this. Then the problem started when the Native Americans changed their minds and started the war.
4. Jenny Richter August 26, 2011 at 3:54 pm

   What the author means is that if you were to take the retail value of the English goods the Indians received, it would total a great deal less than what the land was worth. However, to the Natives, iron pots or hatchets or knives from the English weren’t common goods that you could pick up at your local trading post in bulk quantities. It would be like finding diamonds at your grocery store, it was a valuable rarity. The English felt that the land should be cheap because it was entirely wild and undeveloped and they had to do a lot of work (costing big bucks in human resources) in order to make the land farmable. However, this still didn’t make the costs breakeven, the land was worth much more than the colonists paid, and they knew it, too. “… in at least one instance, lands bought from the Indians were subsequently resold at a 500 percent profit” (171). If 500 percent profit for flipping land isn’t criminal, then I don’t know what is. They even pretended that they were doing land sales in the Indians’ best interests, too. “By maintaining control over the buying and selling of Indian land, the colony hoped to ensure clear titles while protecting the Natives from unscrupulous individuals who might use alcohol and even violence to part them from their property” (170). Honestly though, the English were getting the bigger half of the wishbone because they managed to buy the land dirt cheap and it was sold exclusively to them. And when Philip was selling his land, he was practically giving it away. The guy really didn’t know how to get his money’s worth. In a way, though, it did push the Natives to war because they were selling the land from beneath themselves. The only other thing to do would’ve been to give up all of their land and move somewhere else, which would’ve left them worse off than ever before.
5. Larry Geist August 26, 2011 at 10:01 pm

   The English were getting land at criminal prices. They knew that the Indians and Massasoit wanted. “Whether it was iron hoes and kettles, blankets, liquor, or guns, the english had what the Pokanokets wanted. There would be some good years ahead…But as the beavers and other fur-bearing animals grew scarce, the only thing the Indians had to sell the english was their land. (p.169)

   The English knew what they were doing, they had the Indians agree not to sell or give away any of their land without consent of government. While the pilgrims said that they had not owned any land not gained fairly, the Indians were getting shoved out of their own lands, because “by monopolizing the purchace of Indian lands, Plymouth officials kept the prices they paid artifically low. Instead of selling to the highest bidder, Massasoit was forced to sell his land to the colonial government – and thus was unable to establish what we would call today a fair market price” (p. 171)

   Unfortunatly, since the few spoke for the many, Massasoit was only working for his own personal profit and relationship with the English. “We have been taught to think of Massasoit as a benevolent and wise leader who maintained a half century of peace in New England. This is, of course, how the English saw it. But many of the Indians who lived in the region undoubtedly had a very different attitude toward a leader whose personal prosperity depended on the systematic dismantling of their homeland.” (172)

   I suppose both sides are at fault, the English for monopolizing the Indians, and Massasoit for getting greedy and giving away everything for English material goods, even at the cost of his own people.
6. Saul Levin August 27, 2011 at 3:41 pm

   The English were already a more advanced/industrialized people than the natives in America during the 17th century. Although both the English and the natives wanted what they considered valuable that the others had and it seemed fair the English were actually getting ahead of the game; the Indians were starting to use industrial European goods when the English had already used them enough to know that land was even more valuable at that point in time. When Philip was selling of native land rapidly the prices were not criminally low, he was getting better money than most Indians did and it cannot be said that the sales were unfair if Philip was planning on killing or scaring off the person he sold the land too anyways.

   With the English expanding at an accelerating rate the Indians made a significant mistake. Many English goods they were interested in buying were guns and powder, which is key for war in addition to hunting. Instead of holding onto and cultivating more native land the Indians traded it for something they now thought was incredibly valuable. The problem being that now war was an option. The Indians put themselves in a position where they did not have enough land to live on or make food on and they did have nearly enough weapons to fight a war to win back land they had sold. At that point in time Philip decided to sell most of the rest of the land and get even more guns, leading to war once and for all. If only they had held onto the land they wanted in the first place.
7. Brandon Herman August 28, 2011 at 4:29 pm

   1. a) I know this isn’t a single vocab word but it would have been helpful to get a list of different tribes it was confusing at the start b) Sachem c) adventurer d) puritanical e) kietan f) brevity g) prospect

   2) I believe that the English were getting the land at criminally low prices. They say it was fair because it evened out with labor but it was not. They were trading pots for acres and acres of land they knew that they were getting the better deal than the Indians. This quote exactly proves it “lands bought from the Indians were subsequently resold at a 500 percent profit” (171). This shows that they were in fact being criminal and were making a profit of the selling of the Indian lands and were taking full advantage of the Indians.
   In my opinion i do believe that the Indians had other alternatives. They could have kept their land and stopped trade and focus on their own survival. But due to Massasoit’s greed and desire for western good he started to sell of his lands. There is a quote that shows how the Indians were unhappy with him. “Many of the Indians who lived in the region undoubltly had a different attitude toward a leader whose personal prosperity depended on the systematic dismantling of their homeland”(pg172). This quote just shows how greedy Massasoit was, and how his people disliked him. So overall in my opinion the loss of lands was criminal on both parts. The English for buying for low prices, and Massasoit for selling his homeland for greed and personal prosperity.
8. Elizabeth Benedetti August 29, 2011 at 12:20 am

   The price Massasoit was selling his land to the English was probably a little lower than it should have been. There were things too take into consideration like how the Indians valued English goods so highly and the prices the English would have to pay to clear the Native land, but I would not be surprised if the English had scammed the Native Americans for a few dollars less than their land was actually worth. The English saw themselves as the higher power like in this quote “In many ways, the Pequot War of 1637 was the Puritans’ Wessagussett: a terrifyingly brutal assault that redefined the balance of power in the region for decades to come” (Philbrick 178). The English used their power to influence a lot of the deals between them and the Native Americans and there was probably some of that involved when Massasoit sold his land for so cheap to the English.
   Once Phillip came to power, though, he would sell the Native American lands for really high prices just to feed his greed for English goods and this caused an issue for him and his people since they then had to move off their lands. It explains in this quote “Phillip had at least succeeded in getting the English to pay a decent price for his land” (207). Phillip was willing to do what he could to maintain his lifestyle, but he eventually realized he was running out of land and could not keep selling the little amount of it they had left. Phillip should have done better planning on what he could and could not sell, but his lust for money was far greater than the more important matter of keeping his land. There were not really many alternatives for the Native Americans to go to except to just fight back for their land. Pretty much all their land had been sold and they could not really afford to buy it back from the English so starting all those wars in 1675 seemed like the only real choice they had to get back their original land. They could have moved out farther west, but there were already other tribes out there and they could not just leave the land their ancestors lived on so fighting was really the choice they could go with.
9. Eleanor Chalifoux August 29, 2011 at 12:46 pm

   Looking back it seems like the English were taking advantage of the Indians. They would acquire huge amounts of land for goods such as cloth, animal skin and agricultural equipment.  In one instance, “Massasoit agreed to sell a portion of what became the township of Rehoboth. The deed reports that the sachem ‘chose out ten fathoms of beads . . . and put them in a basket, and affirmed that he was full satisfied for his lands . . . , but he stood upon it he would have a coat more’” (171). Massasoit thought that that was appropriate and obviously agreed to the terms. However, Massasoit’s “personal prosperity depended on the systematic dismantling of their homeland” (172). The English viewed Massasoit as a good leader that helped keep peace but the Indians that lived under him thought very differently. It’s also good to remember that the land had to cleared by the English and that would be an expensive job and the Indians valued goods highly so it’s more fair than it seems. In the end, in at least one instance, the English were able to sell the land for 500 percent profit. It’s hard to look back and say whether it was a fair deal or not. In the end, King Philip started to sell his land at very high prices. He did this to get more of the coveted Western goods. He also sold off his land to help finance his army. If he hadn’t sold it it would have been taken from him by the English so he would have been without it anyway.
10. Brittany Kashat August 29, 2011 at 7:57 pm

    I think the Indians were ripped off when it came to buying land. The Pilgrims barely paid anything for the lands that they bought. I don’t think that it was justified just because the land had to be cleared. Today when you buy a house, you have to work hard for it to look nice and be suitable for living, but that doesn’t mean you get to buy it for a very cheap price. The Pilgrims might’ve thought it was justifiable just because they gave the Indians lots of their goods that the Indians treasured, however, I don’t think land for goods is very fair. Maybe the Indians didn’t know how much their land was actually worth and thought that they were getting a good deal, but in today’s terms, I don’t think it was a fair deal at all. The Native Americans could’ve made a lot more money with their lands, but the Pilgrims took care of that. “This may have been true as far as it went, but in at least one instance, lands bought from the Indians were subsequently resold at a 500 percent profit” (171). The Pilgrims paid very little for these lands AND they resold some of them, receiving a 500% profit in the process. Basically the Pilgrims made bank while the Indians didn’t have a clue what was going on, until Philip came along. When Philip became sachem, there were way too many Pilgrims at Plymouth that they made Philip sign unfair treaties to ensure the buying of more lands. “In the months that followed, the colony required that the Indians from Cape Cod to Nemasket sign documents reaffirming their loyalty to Plymouth” (217). Because the Pilgrims had the Indians’ loyalty, they were able to keep buying land without retaliation (or so they thought). This forced the Indians to go to war to stop English overexpansion. I really don’t think that the Indians had any alternatives other than war.
11. Mallory Moss August 30, 2011 at 9:55 am

    I believe that when the English first began acquiring land in exchange for English goods, the business was fair. The Indians wanted the goods and the English wanted the land. Plymouth authorities had to approve the transactions to make sure the Indians weren’t getting ripped off. When the Plymouth authorities began paying for the Indian land, the Philbrick points out that the transaction was probably fair. “Certainly, the Pilgrims felt they were paying a fair price, and their decedents later insisted that they ‘did not possess one foot of land in this colony but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors’” (171).
    However, like many things in the business world, things began to shift. As the colony became more and more populated, the value of land rose. The Indians could not sell their land on the open market and could not take advantage of the rise in value. As the author points out, “…in at least one instance, lands bought by the Indians were subsequently resold at a 500 percent profit” (171).
    It is a fundamental of economics that land is worth what a willing buyer will pay to a willing seller. The more buyers there are, the more likely it is that the price will increase. Supply and demand controls the market. As the supply of land started to decrease due to the increase in population, the price of the Indian’s land should have also increased. However, the Indians could not sell the land in the open market so the prices were artificially low. At this point, the English were really not paying a fair price for the Indian’s land.
    When the Indians started the pre-emptive war to try to stop English expansion, they probably should have attempted a peaceful resolution. War is never a good option as it needlessly costs lives and drains resources.
12. Alexandre Rochaix August 30, 2011 at 11:58 pm

    From the way i see it, the english fairly obtained their lands but with sly and shrewd business tactics. Since they had a monopoly, it was true they were getting cheap prices, but if the Indians didnt want to sell thei lands they didnt have to. But the Indians needed money to buy the materials that they were missing or else they would not have survived. The Indians may have been “robbed”:“This may have been true as far as it went, but in at least one instance, lands bought from the Indians were subsequently resold at a 500 percent profit” (171), but the Pilgrims were just better at exploiting relations and Indian need. Phillip was the sachem who worked at regulating better prices, but who stupidly sold too much, so he lost valuable grounds which he could have negotiated for more. Although Plynouth monopolized the lands, the Indians did make a terrible priority on flintlocks and gunpowder, which werent renewable resources, while land defnitily gave returns every year. I understand that war was inevitable because greed from both sides and growing pilgrim populations was going to force them into Indian lands, because it had to be one or the other. One problem though was the Puritans belief of expansion of their religion, which got many traditional Indians angry, although they did succeed at many conversions. The final reason was both sides that decided to see things black and white, by judging Indians as one side and the English as the other: “Some were killed on their way back from the prayerhouse.” p. 238.
13. Claire Fisher August 31, 2011 at 11:08 am

    I think that from the point of view of the Indians these were fair deals; I don’t think that they would have any way of knowing that the English paid more for land. They would simply think that they were being paid an acceptable price. I think that from the point of view of the English that these were unfair prices. I think they knew that they were ripping the Indians off, but didn’t want to admit it. This was shown especially when the English resold the land for much more money. It says in the book “This may have been true as far as it went, but in at least one instance, lands bought from the Indians were subsequently resold at a 500 percent profit.”(171) I think the same went for Philip in the 1670s. Philip needed money and he sold the land, and I think at this point he knew that he was being paid not enough, but didn’t have a choice because there was nobody else around to buy the land. I don’t think that the Indians had other alternatives to war. I think that they were pushed too far by the colonists and had to stand up for themselves. In the book it says that Philip didn’t really want to go to war, at least not before he planned to, but his warriors wanted to go to war and he had no choice but to lead them into war. The book says “Since his foray out to Nantucket a decade before, he [Philip] had developed a talent for inviting conflict, then finding creative, if often humiliating, ways to avoid the final, potentially catastrophic confrontation. But by June 1675, his own warriors were about to call his bluff and demand that they go to war.” (224) I think that in that sense Philip had no choice but to go to war.
14. Autumn Palmer August 31, 2011 at 4:46 pm

    I think what Philbrick is trying to do here, is reason for both the Indians and the English. Seeing both sides of view makes each side seem less wrong and both more right. I think the English were getting the land at the right price. I don’t know the entire math, but when you factor in something like the high price of clearing land, it has to equal out. If the Indians wanted expensive English goods however, shouldn’t they have sold the land at a higher price so that they could afford such goods? I think that later, when Philip sold of his land, he sold it for a criminally low price. There were many English settlers that needed land, though there was not much the Indians were willing to give. The land was therefore valued at much more and Philip got a cheap price for it. Philip did not realize what he was doing when he sold off almost all of his land. At one point it is said that he was almost completely surrounded by European settlements and his only sanctuary was when “he looked east across Mount Hope Bay to Pocasset…the homeland pf Weetamoo…” (206). I honestly don’t think the Indians had another options though. The English were so land hungry that if Philip had not sold it to them, I have no doubt that they would have taken it by force. I think Philip tried to do the right thing, but he was pushed to the edge of his territory, literally, and he was right to want it back.
15. Molly Sovran August 31, 2011 at 8:46 pm

    From the Authors point of view, he is saying that it wasn’t fair for the Indians at all. Even though they sold all their land away for a high price, they probably sold the land a little lower than it should have been. Even though the English goods were thought of so highly and the prices the English would have to pay to clear the Native land would have met perfectly. Then, I think I would not be surprised if the English had sold the Native Americans less money than their land was worth. The English used their power to enforce a lot of the deals between them and the Native Americans. Some of these deals would have involved Massasoit. Once Phillip came to power, though, he would sell the Native American lands for really high prices just to feed his greed for English goods and this caused an issue for him and his people since they then had to move off their lands. Phillip was willing to do what he could to maintain his lifestyle, but he eventually realized he was running out of land and could not keep selling the little amount of it they had left. Then when he decided to fight the English, he sold everything, just to get money to buy even more English weapons to defeat him in the war. There were not really many alternatives for the Native Americans to go to except to just fight back for their land. Pretty much all their land had been sold and they could not really afford to buy it back from the English so starting all those wars in 1675 seemed like the only real choice they had to get back their original land. There was no other option for the English people.
16. Emily Kakos August 31, 2011 at 9:54 pm

    I think that I have a biased opinion in answering this question. I believe that the Indians were cheated out of their land and they got way too little goods for it. Reading about the goods they got for so many acres of land made me a little sad. On the other hand, the Indians were pretty stupid to make those deals. Land is forever and those goods could easily be broken or replaced by something better. Maybe they didn’t realize that fact because it did say that the sachems had a different way of distributing the land but they should have still cleared up any confusion they might have had before basically selling their souls. It’s highly unlikely that the Indians understood completely what they were doing when they sold the land and they definitely didn’t realize its worth. The more I read this book, the more I dislike the pilgrims and puritans. They took advantage and killed at any opportunity. They didn’t follow any sort of G-dly teachings because they were really evil towards the Indians. I feel like if the Indians hadn’t stupidly sold off their land then war might/could have easily been avoided for a little while. Unfortunately there would have been little the Indians could have done to avoid it completely because the settlers and the rest of the world would have come in soon enough, killed them all, and taken all the land by force anyway. The Indians didn’t stand a chance and the Settlers knew it and did everything they could to get what they wanted.
17. Kaylee Brown September 1, 2011 at 12:30 pm

    I think that the prices the Europeans were getting were very, very low and it wasn’t actually fair to the Indians. I think this because the Europeans knew it was better land than the Indians did so really the Pilgrims were taking advantage of the Native American’s. “In reality, the system cut the Indians out of the emerging New England real estate market” (171). From the European’s point of view, they were looking to profit off the land. Which they did by 500%. They monopolized the whole real estate market, while taking advantage of the Native American’s. They needed more and more room for expansion and thats ultimately why Massasoit started giving the land. Apparently, from Massasoit’s point of view, the Indian’s were “okay” with this. However, most of them did not like their supposedly “benevolent and wise leader” (172). From the Indian’s point of view, he cared more about his own prosperity than about his tribe. Which meant they weren’t even really playing for the same team. He would sell off their homeland for his own wealth, meanwhile the Native Americans we’re being deprived of everything they had for english goods that they didn’t know how to use sometimes. This is where Massasoit’s greed was really bad and made a large impact on his people. It takes two to tango, but someone has to ask the other to dance. The Europeans definitely started this with their over expansion and monopolizing of the market, but Massasoit’s greed also soon took over.
18. willy thompson September 1, 2011 at 2:50 pm

    The English did get the land at a criminally low price. The English traded many industrial goods that the Indians were not able to obtain for the land, even though the land was necessary to use the goods they were receiving. The English knew that their goods fascinated the Indians, and they may have over-hyped what they were trading to the Indians to make it seem like they were getting the bad deal. The Indians did not understand the immense value that their home land held, so they took whatever the English offered and went on their way. When Philip sold his land off to the English, he sold it at a fairly decent price, unlike what his father had done. Philip was just “adapting to the inevitable forces of change” (p. 207). Philip knew that his people wanted to go to war, but he didn’t have the supplies to fight the English. They barely had enough land to survive on, and when the lust for war became too great, he sold all his land to buy guns to fight the English. The English were constantly flooding into the New World, and the Indians had no point but to try and fight for the land that their fathers had so ignorantly given up. Philip also had a young, ambitious group of warriors who were willing to fight for their land back and lay down their lives doing it. The Indians that were pushed out of their land could have ventured further back into the midwest, but they only knew how to live on the land that the ENlgish had recently bought from them.
19. Katie Donnellon September 3, 2011 at 1:29 am

    The prices are fair from the English’s view because the Indians accepted the exchange. To the English it seemed like a small price but the Indians placed a high value on the English goods. Massasoit was also selling the land not in the interest of his people but for himself. “But many of the Indians who lived in the region undoubtedly had a very different attitude toward a leader whose personal prosperity depended on the systematic dismantling of their homeland” (172). The English thought that only allowing the buying and selling of Indian land through the courts would make it easier for everyone. The Indians couldn’t be taken advantage of and there would always be a record of who owned the land. However to the Indians it was unfair because they could only sell their land to the court but then the English could sell it to the highest bidder for a huge profit. “By monopolizing the purchase on Indian lands, Plymouth officials kept the prices they paid artificially low. Instead of selling to the highest bidder, Massasoit was forced to sell his land to the colonial government and thus was unable to establish what we would call today a fair market price” (171). Overall the Indians were cheated out of a lot of money that they could have been making if they were allowed to sell their land to the highest bidder. I think that the Indians had no choice to take back the land by force because they had only a small part of it left.
20. Lenny Gross September 3, 2011 at 12:43 pm

    Before supposedly witnessing the murder, he had been forced to give up his coat to Tobias to pay off a g*mbling debt. Even though there was only one witness, and a DUBIOUS witness at that, all eighteen members of the jury found Tobias and his accomplices guilty. (222)
    doubtful; marked by or occasioning doubt:
    The trial had been a TRAVESTY of justice- and an insulting challenge to the authority of the Pokanoket leader. (223)
    a literary or artistic burlesque of a serious work or subject, characterized by grotesque or ludicrous incongruity of style, treatment, or subject matter.
    Indians armed with FLINTLOCKS brought in more games and fur to English trading posts. (188)
    an outmoded gunlock in which a piece of flint striking against steel produces sparks that ignite the priming.
    “What, will you love Englishmen still?” mocked the Indians, who EXULTANTLY feasted on roasted cattle while Rowlandson and the others were given nothing to eat. (290)
    highly elated; jubilant; triumphant.
    There was a POWWOW who stood his ground and aimed an arrow at Standish. (152)
    (amoung North American Indians) a ceremony, especially one accompanied by magic, feasting, and dancing, performed for the cure of disease, success in a hunt, etc.
    a council or conference of or with Indians.
    Before their departure, Massaoit took Hobbamock aside and had some words with the trusted PNIESE. (146)
    ?
    Their sufferings had become UNENDURABLE. (147)
    unbearable; not tolerable.
    I believe that the Indians we’re receiveing the proper industrial goods to have the ability to give their land away at lower prices. The Indians we’re in need of the foreign goods that had recently swept across the land, and they only way to obtain those goods was to sell their land and goods at extremely low prices. The Indian’s intelligence was observed when they made it seem like the land was cheaper when actually, they were gaining just as much as the Englishman we’re obtaining. In the 1675 during a large English expansion, the Indian’s nearly ran out of land to sell and brought their people into a near war scenario. I believe that in studying Indian’s during APUSH and in their future attempts to not make war, they had not had any success, I believe that war would’ve been the only solution because of the greedy Englishman mind set. They wouldn’t have stopped unless they were stopped by force. The indian’s had very little to offer to the Englishman, they were on a power struggle, a quest for more land and goods from other cultures and places. They only we’re going to stop if they were forced too. The Indians had no other choice but to pre-engage into a war type attitude or else they would’ve suffered the wrath of the Englishmans greed.
21. Alex Cooper September 3, 2011 at 10:52 pm

    This can be seen from two completely different views. The English and the Indians. It could appear that the English were getting their land for a very low price when you consider what they got, but on the other hand, the Indians were getting all of the resources and tools that they needed. “In 1650, he sold 196 square miles of what became modern Bridgewater for seven coats, nine hatchets, eight hoes, twenty-nine knives, four moose skins, and ten and a half yards of cotton.”(p171) The Indians attached a high value to the English goods and thought that the transactions were fair enough. Also, the Pilgrims thought that they in turn were giving a fair amount of materials to repay for the land, but it was their descendants who later on claimed that they ‘did not possess one foot of land in this colony but what was obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors.’ In my opinion, I think that the English were getting the land for ‘criminally’ low prices because “lands bought from the Indians were subsequently resold at a 500 percent profit.”(p171) The English had to have known that they weren’t doing the right thing by selling them at such higher prices then what they bought the land for, but they still got away with it. I don’t think the Indians had any other alternatives than to be pushed into a pre-emptive was in 1675 to stop the English expansion. There was just too many people and not enough land, so the Indians seemed to have no other choice but to start war in order to try and get some of their land back.
22. Erick Dagenais September 4, 2011 at 2:20 pm

    I believe that the Indians thought they were making a good deal with the Pilgrims, but the Pilgrims were actually taking advantage of them. The Indians didn’t really need the land though, and could make use out of the supplies that the Pilgrims brought over from England. They didn’t think that there would be a large population of the English settled in America. However, when Philip called for more English immigrants, the course of things changed. There were many more Pilgrims coming over and not enough land for them to settle on. This caused the Indians to be forced off their own land and the English to further expand. It was as if someone came into your house and kicked you out so that they could live there. Also, they then took the land and resold it at a whopping 500% profit rate. This led to the war in 1675 where the Indians were pushing to stop English expansion. Both sides were to blame however. The English kept moving in, and the Indians kept selling their land. What the Indians should have done is keep their land and not sell it to the English. They should have stopped the English early on when the Indians had numbers and could control the English. Instead, the Indians just lived with it and decided to deal with it later on, when it became too late. Of course, if all of this hadn’t happened, America would have never been founded and none of us would be living in this country.
23. Cameron Crawford-Mook September 4, 2011 at 6:35 pm

    In that passage, Philbrick is arguing that the English actually did pay a fair price for the land they purchased, because of the high value Native Americans placed on English goods, and because a vast amount of work was required to clear the land to prepare it for farming. However, I think this argument has a serious flaw in that the English desperately wanted the land. When you desperately want something, ethics tend to get thrown out the window and it becomes easy to justify behavior that perhaps shouldn’t be justified. The Pilgrims’ descendants claimed that they “did not posses one foot of land in this colony but what was fairly obtained by the honest purchase of the Indian proprietors” (171), but they seem to forget that some people turned around and sold the property for 500 percent profit (171). The book also mentions how the Pilgrims had a monopoly on the system, and the Native Americans weren’t able to establish a “fair market price” for the land (171). However, it is refreshing to read that instead of just continuing to seize the land, the residents of Plymouth were willing to be persuaded by Roger Williams that it was only fair to purchase the land.
    Another interesting topic for discussion in the land issue was the will of the tribe. The book strongly implies that Massasoit and Phillip sold off the Pokanoket’s land without taking into consideration that they were dismantling their homeland and the displeasure that it would create with their people. A primary reason Phillip’s young warriors were so willing to go to war was because they wanted their land back.
24. Chris Robbe September 4, 2011 at 8:51 pm

    In my opinion the indians land was sold at a criminally low price. Although a lot of the territory that was sold was bought from the tribe that was recently wiped out by disease and currently had no inhabitants, the Pilgrims made a mockery of them. The Indians had never bought and sold land before, so they had no idea what the price of a couple acres was worth. “In at least one instance lands bought from the Indians were subsequently resold at a 500 % profit” (171). Massasoit sold his tribes land for pennies. Since Massasoit wasn’t used to real-estate he didn’t know that an endless stream of the English hungry for land would only increase the amount that the land could go for. In addition to not knowing how much land would go for, Plymonth put a monopoly on the land trade. “From the start, Plymouth authorities insisted that all Native land purchases must have prior court approval” (170). From the beginning of negotiations the Plymouth court forced the indians into sales that were flipped for much more than the land was initially bought for. The English kept buying from him and his son and profited immensely. After years of selling land for next to nothing, King Phillip’s people began to starve due to the inability to access hunting and fishing grounds that they held for centuries. In order to be able to maintain his wealth, Phillip had to slowly go down the slippery slope of selling land for short-term gains. The constantly shrinking land that Phillip owned forced him into a land war with the English. Phillip was forced to get back their tribal land in order to feed and clothe his tribe. The English wouldn’t simply give back his land and say that all is forgiven, so really the only option was to go to war.
25. Ophelie Ovize September 5, 2011 at 10:38 am

    In this situation, I believe that both were thinking that they were making a profit. The englishmen were getting the land they wanted easily with decent prices and the Indians were getting all the supplies and tools they needed. But The Indian did not handle the situation too well. They left the English force into their land until it was too late which led to the war of 1675, where the Indians are trying to push back the english. I feel like the english were doing the criminally actions by getting the land for such low prices and resold it at a 500 percent profit. I find that the English were completely taking advantage by doing this because they actually knew what the land was worth while the Native Americans did not know. “by monopolizing the purchase of Indian lands, Plymouth officials kept the prices they paid artificially low. Instead of selling to the highest bidder, Massasoit was forced to sell his land to the colonial government – and thus was unable to establish what we would call today a fair market price” (page 171) If you look at it more though, the english were clearing the land which was a hard work but it also benefited a bit the Indians. Massassoit did not realize the trouble that was approaching and was a leader of peace. Maybe he did know what was approaching but he felt like his people could actually still survive with it instead of rushing into conflict by declining the offers.
26. Ellen Searle September 5, 2011 at 11:49 am

    While some may argue that the Pilgrims bought the land at unfairly low prices, I believe it is also important to consider the fact that both sides believed the price to be fair. The Pilgrims refused to take land that had not been fairly purchased and if the price was unfair, the Pilgrims most likely would have not purchased the land. We must also consider the argument that the land had to be cleared and that the Indians considered English goods to be of a high value. When looking at this argument, this supports the fact that the Pilgrims paid for the land at a fair price.
27. Tharron Combs September 5, 2011 at 1:54 pm

    I think that the price that the Pilgrims purchased Massasoit’s land for was criminally low. I think that the Pilgrims took advantage of the fact that the Native Americans had no concept of the sale and purchase of land, because their ancestral belief was that land belonged to the Earth and that any land that you happened to inhabit was a gift that was meant to be taken care of for posterity, flora, and fauna. I would buy into the idea that the Pilgrims were giving the Native Americans a fair deal after ” the high cost of clearing Native land and the high value the Indians attached to English goods” (171) if it weren’t for this fact; “In at least one instance lands bought from the Indians were subsequently resold at a 500 % profit” (171). It is outrageous to believe that any domestic good could be sold at a 500% profit, even taking the costs of clearing the land and the value of English goods. There is also the fact that the Native Americans were not able to establish a fair market price for their land because the Pilgrims had monopolized the system, leaving the Native Americans no option but to sell for whatever price the Pilgrims were willing to pay. I would like to believe that the Pilgrims were perfectly moral people who wouldn’t take advantage of Massasoit and his people, but with all the evidence available, I find it hard to believe that the Pilgrims were really giving the Native Americans what the land was really worth.
28. Stepaheni Dudek September 5, 2011 at 2:23 pm

    The price the English bought Massasoit land was probably too low. Some English might have thought that they should get it for free seeing that they are the more “superior” race. Other Englishmen probably thought the Indians deserved more for giving up their land to people they barley know. And there was definitely some mind games going on, intentionally or not, for the Indians to practically give away their land. Either than they thought the English were just that much better than them or they thought they might be getting something else out of the agreement. The English were known for using their power to get more out of the Indians then necessary which is shown in this quote: “In many ways, the Pequot War of 1637 was the Puritans’ Wessagussett: a terrifyingly brutal assault that redefined the balance of power in the region for decades to come”(178). But also the Indians might have had their own plan. The clearing and the building of the English’s new land would be expensive and time consuming. Maybe the Indians sold the land to the English at a low price so the English would think they were getting a steal, but in reality they were not. Some Indians such as, Squanto and his plans to rule did have alternative motives throughout the Pilgrims settlement and could so the Indians could have been trying to take advantage of them. Personally I still think that the English were just bring mean to the Indians because they thought they had more power so they used that power to pressure the Indians to give them their land.
29. Andrew Hausman September 5, 2011 at 3:16 pm

    The process by which natives sold their land to the English was unfair, resulting in unjust prices. As Philbrick explains in the next paragraph after the one quoted, the natives had to sell their land to the colonial government, rather than whoever was willing to pay the most. When the natives did try to sell land to anyone other than the Plymouth government, such as Rhode Island settlers, their leaders were embarrassingly hauled before court for violating the treaty between the two groups. This treaty stated that the natives “’shall not give, sell, or convey any of … their lands … without the … consent of [the] government’” (Philbrick 171). Since they only dealt with one party – the government – the natives were unaware that they could’ve received much more in exchange for their land. By possessing absolute control over the purchase and selling of land, the colony insured that the prices they paid for land stayed low, while they could determine the price they sold land for. The government practiced a controlled economy and established a monopoly on the real estate market, creating a “land trust.” Plymouth practiced one of the first cases of horizontal integration and controlled all aspects of a certain part of the economy. This is ironic considering historians often point to Plymouth as one of the first steps towards the modern democracy, even though it had an economy much different than the free market that exists in the United States today. Another comparison that can be drawn to this process is the modern day practice of foreclosures. The natives were, to some effect, forced off their land, much as renters are when they fail to make payments. Plymouth colony gained property at extremely low price, as banks do. Both look to sell the land and the property is transferred to land hungry people who are willing to pay. Instead of going to war, the natives could have stopped selling their land to the English. However, they would have lost access to the English goods that they had become dependent on. Also, they were hurt by conflicts of interest by their sachems, who sold off land to increase or maintain their own personal wealth.
30. Ben Cooper September 5, 2011 at 3:53 pm

    From what I read, the Puritans took advantage of the Indians. I don’t feel like the Indians really understood the value of the land they were selling for the prices they were receiving. Since one of the only things Indians could buy with English money was English goods, and selling land was the main way Indians got money, any price no matter how low would seem reasonable to the Indians for their land. Consequently, the Indians were almost guaranteed to get ripped off when selling land.

    Later, when King Philip sold land for much higher prices to fund his war, he was the one being dishonest. This is because he sold his lands at a high price with the intention of taking them back by force later. Even with King Philips dishonesty, I still think that the English were in the wrong for the war. Their exploitation of the Indians and their land understandably pushed the Indians to strike back. I don’t think there were any alternatives to the war. The only way to halt the relentless greed of the English was to wage war.
31. Samuel Kepes September 5, 2011 at 3:54 pm

    I don’t think it is fair to say that their land was sold at criminally low prices. As far as I can tell, this is one of the first times a lot of land is being sold from the Indians directly to the Pilgrims. In the book it states “the transactions were quite informal-at least when it came to determining price.”(171) So it is unfair for both sides to simply say that the Indians were being ripped off, because there was nothing to base it on. The pilgrims also said that they didn’t own “…one foot of land in this colony but what fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors.” Their ancestors are inherently offended of accusations that the land isn’t their own, and have a right to be, because they have records that show they bought the land. I think Philips move was very smart, whether he intended to sell the land or not, he forced the English to buy the land for a much higher price than his father got before, though he did tarnish his reputation by going back on what said. I don’t think the Indians had any choice when they were “pushed” into a war to stop English expansion. They knew that there was no way to stop the English. This was obvious because even when Philip tried to make a pact to stop selling of land they just bought the land for more money. Also King Philip needed money so there was nothing he could do but sell land. Though an attack on the English seems foolish, I don’t think they had any other choice.
32. Tharron Combs September 5, 2011 at 3:59 pm

    Mayflower Vocab:

    corselet (180)- a suit of light half armor or three-quarter armor of the 16th century or later.
    impetus (181)- a moving force; impulse; stimulus.
    Raison d’être (183)- reason for existence.
    peripatetic (184)- a person who walks or travels about.
    magistrate (196)- an officer of the state.
    vacillating (211)- to sway through lack of equilibrium.
    sequester (309)- To remove or set apart
33. david Bellefleur September 5, 2011 at 6:01 pm

    crystalline-pertaining to crystals or their formation.

    brevity-shortness of time or duration, the quality of expressing much in few words

    shoals- a sandbank or sand bar in the bed of a body of water, especially one that is exposed above the surface of the water at low tide.

    victuals-food supplies; provisions
    layperson-a person who is not a member of the clergy; one of the laity.

    bondslaves-a person held in bondage

    audacious-extremely bold or daring; recklessly brave; fearless: an audacious explorer.

    meddlesome-given to meddling; interfering; intrusive

    I think that the natives americans’ understanding made them believe that the pilgrims were paying a fair price, but the pilgrims actually knew that they were ripping them off. They did not understand at the time how valuable the land was. The english goods that they were attached too could never measure up to the thousands of acres that they controlled.“But many of the Indians who lived in the region undoubtedly had a very different attitude toward a leader whose personal prosperity depended on the systematic dismantling of their homeland” (172) That shows that the indian leaders were selling the land for their own personal gain, which turned out to be not that greatThis may have been true as far as it went, but in at least one instance, lands bought from the Indians were subsequently resold at a 500 percent profit” (171). This just shows that the pilgrims knew what they were doing and took a cheap opportunity to hustle the native americans’ out of something that has been theirs for hundreds of years.
34. Rachel Goldstein September 5, 2011 at 6:59 pm

    I think that the English bought the Native American’s land for criminally low prices. While the Native Americans did put a high value on English goods, a few axes and pots is not equal to miles of land. Even though the English had to clear the land themselves, it doesn’t decrease the market value that much. Massasoit could only sell his land to the colonial government, which would then resell the land at up to a 500 percent profit. The Native Americans needed money, and with “the beavers and other fur-bearing animals [growing] scarce, the only the Indians had to sell the English was their land (pg 169)”. Unfortunately, they couldn’t sell it to the highest bidder, but only to Plymouth officials. At the same time, Massasoit was selling lots of land to satisfy his desire for wealth and material objects. His people were much less thrilled with their ancestral lands being sold.
    In 1675, the Native Americans were pushed into a pre-emptive war to stop English expansion. I don’t think that they had any alternatives. The English did not see them as full human-beings so did not treat them as such. Their land was being sold. There wasn’t enough food. They couldn’t just get up and leave New England; they’d find similar problems wherever they went. And once the idea of war was planted in the younger warriors minds, Phillip found it impossible to hold them back.
35. Jake Rzeppa September 5, 2011 at 7:01 pm

    I feel that the trade of the Native land for the goods of the English was more fair then it would seem at first glance. It is true that even though the Indians were selling their land for “criminally low” prices, they were selling raw, unprocessed land, in need of weeding, deforesting and tending. Any English man looking to by land was certainly looking to build upon on it, cultivate it for farmland, and farm it to make his living on. When an Englishman would first acquire the land there was very little he could do with it. It would be even more “criminal” to force the English man to pay even more on top of what it was going to cost him to process his piece of freshly purchased Indian land. Now look at the Indian perceptive, they were trading land for the tools and commodities of the English, it was Indians themselves who so highly appraised the English goods. Early on, no one was forcing them to sell their land, and there was no way for them to predict how far the English would try to expand. Both sides felt they were being fairly compensated in the exchange. That’s not to say what happened next wasn’t criminal. “By monopolizing the purchase of Indian lands, Plymouth officials kept the prices they paid artificially low.” (171) by doing this they were cutting the Indians out of the real estate market, a market that should have been dominated by the Natives, who, at that point held almost all the land. The Indians own greed for English commodities also played a part in the “criminally” unfair transactions, even as their own commodites became more and more scarce(169) they could not help but to sell their own land to get the money they needed to buy the English goods they so badly pinned for. So, no, the prices weren’t unfair, it was what the English did with the land that was unfair, but if the Indians weren’t so greedy they might have been able to avoid it, or at least, put it off another decade or two.
36. Sarah Szekely September 5, 2011 at 7:46 pm

    I think that the English were definitely gaining the land not only at too low of a price but with unfair means. It’s true that the Natives thrived on English goods and that it seemed like a fair price, considering how much the English had to clear the land, but I think that the Indians have always lived there and yes, no one really “owns” it, but they were there first. Now I think that the English just exploited the Indians need for English goods and the Indians were willing to pay a lower price than they should because they needed the supplies. A piece of land, I think, is worth quite a lot and few goods aren’t going to cut it. English expansion was indeed growing fast and they did need more land, so they should really pay them the amount they deserve for a piece of land because I doubt they would be willing to sell their land for so little. I do admit that I thought it would be okay when Roger Willams said that they should be paid for it, but later this seems to just be thrown out the window. Now, when Phillip came into power, things just got dirty. I was appalled when I read it. They practically took the land now. I don’t think Phillip could have done anything else. He was backed into a corner and War was inevitable from the moment the land was taken unfairly and even before. I think that the English had become haughty and it wasn’t the Indians fault that they became greedy with their money. They were their first and personally I would have wanted to do something too.
37. Eli Sherman September 5, 2011 at 9:21 pm

    From the English point of view, Philbrick chooses to argue that though some of their practices with regard to buying the Indian land may have been unfair, what they did was reasonable to a degree because of the effort required to utilize their purchase and because of the fact that the English were giving up products that were in very high demand in return for the Indian land. As for the Indians, Philbrick is arguing that though they gave up land that would later play a vital role in the explosion of King Philip’s War, they still gained a great deal (or so they thought at the time) of wealth when they received the goods of English factories. What Philbrick failed to assess in this passage is how the years following the bulk of Indian land sales would be different. For example, had the Indians kept their land, they would not have felt the need to arm themselves with more powerful weapons (flintlocks) in order to defend themselves in the event of war. Additionally, the English would not have been given the notion that they could continue to buy Indian land at unfair prices. They would not have sanctioned Philip as they did before the war, forcing him to sell his lands. Their ravenous hunger for more land is seen when “in the fall of 1674, Plymouth magistrates voted to annul a law prohibiting the salw of powder and shot to Indians,” (220) so that the English could have yet another bargaining chip for land. In doing so, the English ignored the fact that this was just another way for the Indians to arm themselves more surely. Instead of submitting to their desire to arm themselves, the Indians could have, and should have, did everything in their power to keep their land (if not attain more). Forcing the English to expand their land outside of New England would have allowed them to keep their land while still remaining at peace. Unfortunately for them, the actions of Philip and the trial for the murder of Sassamon ignited a flame within the Pokanokets that spurred them to arm themselves for war. A middle ground between this option and what actually happened would be to gain more in the sale of their land. This could be an assurance of peace from the English or even a greater role in diplomatic affairs throughout the New World.
38. LIZZIE DAVIDSON September 5, 2011 at 10:46 pm

    Disavowed 315- to disclaim knowledge of, connection with, or responsibility for
    Brandishing 203- to shake or wave, as a weapon; flourish:
    Ravaged 172 AND 347.- to work havoc upon
    Staunchly 173- solid or substantial in construction, dependable
    Paramours 186- an illicit lover, especially of a married person.
    Depredations 251- the act of preying upon or plundering; robbery; ravage.
    Amity 197- mutual understanding and a peaceful relationship, especially between nations; peace; accord.
    Palisade 263- a fence of pales or stakes set firmly in the ground, as for enclosure or defense.
    There’s certainly different ways of looking at the trades made there. In 1642 when Massaoit sold off a portion of land for ten fathom beads, I can’t help but think that he didn’t know what he was getting himself into. The Indians wouldn’t really know what a fair price for land was, and here the English were with all these goods that the Indians would love to have. While to us it may seem as though the Indians got completely ripped off, the goods must of seemed really nice to the Indians, who didn’t have things like them. I think where it gets sketchy is when “lands bought from the Indians were subsequently resold at a 500 percent profit” (171). There, Plymouth officials started doing serious business. Similar situations happen today though. Someone will buy land or a house even, fix it up, and sell it to someone that they know really want it and will pay big money. Massaoit couldn’t just jump on a computer and check to see if it was a fair price, so he did get taken advantage of. Many deals are like that though, with one coming out on top simply because they have the knowledge and resources. I can’t really think of another solution to war once the Indians got that far into the business deal. From the start, they definitely could of stopped and found another solution, but at that point, they would just be used more unless they went to war with the English.
39. Denny Walsh September 5, 2011 at 11:11 pm

    I think that if the English were paying for the land and the natives were willing to accept what was being offered then it is completely fair. The Indians shouldn’t have been so eager to sell off their land in the first place. The entire reason that the cost of the land was so low was because the Indians were willing to part with it for so little. Had the Indians been a little more reluctant to give away all of their land then they would have gotten better prices for it, as evidenced by King Philip’s sale of land which earned him far more than the land sales that his father had made several years earlier. The main thing is that the Indians were able to basically control the price of the land themselves because they were the ones in the advantageous selling position while the English needed the land more than anything. If the Indians chose to value English goods so highly then it isn’t the fault of the settlers for not suggesting that they pay a higher price because no thinking person should want to pay more for something they can get for less if they can do so legally. Indian land sale also did begin to become more profitable for the natives as they learned how much their land was worth. This allowed them to get more money and more European goods for what they had, which was land. As far as being “forced” into war, I think that the Indians did have an alternative, which was to either stop selling all of their land or at least refuse to sell it for such ridiculously low prices. It is clear that had they asked for more money the English would have been willing to pay it because they had no choice, but the Indians could have lived without a few of the English luxuries for a little while if it meant that they could actually get a fair price for their land. They didn’t need to go to war, they just needed to be more careful with their sale of land.
40. Calvin Greer September 6, 2011 at 2:32 am

    In the end, yes, I do believe that the price that was paid for Massasoit’s lands was criminally low and not exactly, as stated in the statement, justifiable, however, I don’t think it’s quite as bad as the numbers make of it. The biggest reason that makes this slightly fairer is how rare and valuable the English goods were to the Indians. Simple things that we overlook in our daily lives would have—and I’m sure DID once they received them in the trade—worked wonders for the Indian tribes. Metal pots and pans were ideal for boiling things over fire (must be pretty hard to find a replacement that doesn’t just burn up!), and I’m sure many of the other items assisted their living greatly. I think the side note that the land wasn’t top notch is kind of beside the point, because let’s face it, anything that spins a profit of 500 percent (page 171) shouldn’t be legal! (Unless it’s Apple stock if you bought it early!) It was highway robbery, which is just rude. The even ruder part about it is how they manipulated the Indians into thinking they were doing it to “help” them. “By maintaining control over the buying and selling of Indian land, the colony hoped to ensure clear titles while protecting the Natives from unscrupulous individuals who might use alcohol and even violence to part them from their property” ( page 170). Those guys would make a living out at flea markets with those bargaining skills! Finally, I don’t think the Indians had any other alternatives. Either they sold the land, or they were going to get it pried out of their hands somehow or another, so at least this way they got some nice goods out of it!
41. Michael Nona September 6, 2011 at 7:17 pm

    I think think that the price paid for Massasoit’s land when criminally low for several reasons. The main one is that they knew that they were screwing over the Indians. It is never fair to destroy something so precious as someone’s home, especially in the name of making a few dollars. What is worse than that is that they thought the price was justified in the end. First of all they can’t complain after making “a 500 percent profit” (171) off of the Massasoit’s land. If someone tried this nowadays they would probably end up is jail. Another thing that is important to realize is that the Indians didn’t know that they were being swindled out of their land for so little money. They didn’t know the value of the items they were being given and because of that it is unfair. That’s like someone trying to pay with items they claim have astronomical value but are actually things most people don’t give a second thought to. The pilgrims came to America in the name of religious freedom, but I don’t think that anyone’s God would condone such unfair business. They were just as bad as the people they were trying to escape. In England they were oppressed so they left, came to a land where the natives welcomed them then ended up killing many of them and stealing the land they have been living off of for centuries. If group of people tried this today they would be disowned by the people helping them and they saw the Indians as inferior so they didn’t respect them.
42. Allison Roche September 6, 2011 at 9:16 pm

    1. The English were getting the land at low prices but it wasn’t criminal because they did have to do lots of work to make land useable. The land was good and wold be valuable with time. It wasn’t the most economical land to purchase but once prepped it was definitely a good deal. The Indians had no other sound alternatives in 1675 when they were pushed into the pre-emptive war to prevent English expansion. They were being booted out of their homes and had no where to go and no desire or reason to leave. A war was the only suitable course of action. If someone decided they wanted to live in my house I wouldn’t simply look for another place to live I would at least try and fight for my home. It wasn’t right of us to just shove them out of their homes either. We should have tried to live with them peacefully and balanced. They could have had their space and we could have had ours. No need for wars or unrest :). The Indians really didn’t have any alternatives unfortunately. They couldn’t just let us take their land and ruin it.
43. Erin Lammers September 7, 2011 at 9:06 pm

    Both the English and the Native Americans have an argument, obviously, but it’s hard to say who was in the right because they each believed that they were getting a fair trade. To us, the whole transaction seems skewed, of course, because land nowadays is worth more than almost any material goods, but back then, everyone trusted that the land would never run out. I’m not entirely sure how the trees would factor into the sale, since we regard them in nearly the same way as the Pilgrims – ready to be cleared away and a pain to cut down. It wasn’t just the fact that it was white people paying for Native land, either, though, because acres went for cents on the dollar up until even this century. Since many Europeans believed themselves royalty over the Native Americans, it’s hard to say whether the Pilgrims truly believed that they paid the Natives a fair amount for their land. It undoubtedly was not, though, because the Native Americans eventually had nowhere to go; after all, you need land to build a home and a village on, and material goods can only get you so far. No, the Native Americans did not strictly have to agree to selling their land in exchange for foreign merchandise. If they’d communicated better with the other tribes, they’d have realized that a war was not necessary, and a few groups of Native Americans could have subdued, if not completely taken out, the Plymouth settlement. Honestly, Philip had to understand that he couldn’t make his family’s land stretch forever, and when it ran out, all he’d have left would be angry, unsatisfied Pilgrims who missed out on the giveaway and a wigwam full of European goods.
44. Katia Lev September 26, 2011 at 7:24 am

    The English were getting the land at criminally low prices, no matter how much they insisted that it was a fair price. Although the Indians did attach a high value to English goods, the Pilgrims probably overpriced many of their goods, knowing that the Indians held them in such a high regard. Secondly, the land had to be cleared but it was good land and good for growing crops so the fact that it had to be cleared was not such a big of a deal. I think the Indians had other alternatives at the beginning, but once there were already so many Englishmen greedy for land and money, there wasn’t really another option because the English were not going to leave without a fight. I do believe however, that the war was unnecessary and probably could have been a lot less significant had the Indians charged the real prices at the beginning.
45. indya sanders September 26, 2011 at 4:08 pm

    I think the English’s purchase was really a steal because of the damage that was ultimately caused to the Indians. The Indians really didn’t know what they were giving up and how it was going to affect them as a culture. At first it seemed like both parties (English and Indians) were going to benefit from each other. The Indians wanted to get ahead of others Indians in trading, the English wanted to learn how to live over in the New World. But little did the Indians know, the English were also thinking of ways to get ahead of everyone, by plotting to capture and enslave the Indians. By capturing and enslaving they could use the Indians as a profit and ultimately expand on the Indians territory. Yes the Indians wanted trading goods but they got some but not all because the Indians were trying to save their butts especially since they were going to war. King Phillip sold his land because of greed but regretted it afterwards. It was also damage because honestly the Indians didn’t really have an option of whether or not they could sell the land. The English, Spaniards, and other countries decided that they were going to expand by any means so the Indians could either try to get a profit or be scooted off. So if we were to put a dollar value on the damage and ask ourselves if it was the same cost I definitly say that it was not. The English killed a number of people and removed them off their land honestly changed the culture of the Indian society.
46. Ben H. October 6, 2011 at 10:29 pm

    Something interesting that I noted in the quote from the book is that Philbrick says (regarding the transactions between Massasoit and the Pilgrims), “the prices are ALMOST justifiable” (Philbrick, 171; emphasis added). How, then, in Philbrick’s mind, was it not completely justifiable?

    In my mind, the Pilgrims aren’t quite as naïve as Philbrick seems to portray them in the first portion of the book. To the natives, the payment they received in these transactions were novelties. For example, how often in the new world did you find candelabras just lying around? In the Pilgrims’ eyes, however, the goods and trinkets they gave to the natives were nothing more than that–trinkets. Cheap distractions that they could easily do without. Maybe they decided “Hey, if you can’t beat them [meaning conmen], join them.” Or maybe they figured that conning the natives was okay, since the natives weren’t white or Christian.

    Of course, one might argue that for conmen, the Pilgrims were easily conned themselves. Why? I don’t know.

    As for the next generation of Pilgrims and their insistence that they “‘did not possess one foot of land in this colony but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors’” (Philbrick, 171), it’s quite possible that their parents and grandparents, while deluding themselves into thinking their land was bought justly from the natives, managed to force the belief onto their descendants.

    Another viable option is one mentioned in our first DBQ essay of the year, in which some of the Pilgrims felt entitled to the natives’ land because they had failed to tend to or grow it, thus rendering any claim they may have had on it null and void to the Pilgrims.

    Regardless of the situation, though, I feel that the Pilgrims certainly seemed…to get the land at a STEAL.
47. Riley Landgraf 5th hour October 23, 2011 at 1:19 pm

    From the English point of view he is saying that the English got a fair price for their land. They paid a small amount for the actual land but covered the rest with the labor they had to do for preparing it to be lived on for example taking down trees. Also, the Indians coveted English goods so much the English seemed to exchange them fairly. From the Indian point of view they got a fair price for their land from their perspective but looking back they did not get a fair price. The Indians wanted English goods so badly that a small to medium size bunch of them was good enough for a few acres of land. However, looking back the Indians did not get a good price for their land compared to the value that the English put on their own goods. The English were getting the land at a very low price because the value of the goods they were giving to the Indians was small compared to the value the Indians thought they were getting. When Philip sold off his land in the 1670’s he was taking advantage of the fact that he got the land for such a low price when he need money quick he got the land for almost no debt. Philbrick says this “Phillip had at least succeeded in getting the English to pay a decent price for his land” (207) which leads me to believe that he got off pretty well when he had to sell for money. I don’t think the Indians had any other options except to go to war because they signed agreements they weren’t happy with, “In the months that followed, the colony required that the Indians from Cape Cod to Nemasket sign documents reaffirming their loyalty to Plymouth” (217). This forced them to go to war to get out of their situtation.
48. Emily Novick October 26, 2011 at 6:23 am

    I think that Philbrick actually chooses a balanced opinion from the quote you provided. He defends both sides of the argument by saying that the price was ridiculously low but also that the English had to clear the land and that the Indians really like English goods. Later the English would of course say that they had bought all of the land fair and square (get it? Square foot of land?). From the English way of looking at it, they think that the land was perfectly priced because of all the labor and trade. His next sentence describes just how cheap this land was: “This may have been true as far as it went, but in at least one instance, lands bought from the Indians were subsequently resold at a 500 percent profit.” Yeesh. I don’t know how much the Indians liked English goods or how hard the English had to work, but a 500 percent increase, that’s ridiculous! It seems to me that the English did do a little ripping off there. More than a little if I say so myself. Not only did they rip off the Indians in flat out price, but if you keep reading, they ruined the Indian’s chances of ever getting a good price. “In reality, the system cut the Indians out of the emerging New England real estate market.” I don’t think the English meant to do it on purpose, but it is their fault. They shouldn’t have been such jerk-faces and actually paid the Indians more than 1/500th percent of what it could be sold for.