The great “American Dream” is the idea that in America, every citizen, despite social and financial standing, should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and wealth through hard work, determination, and initiative (Oxford Dictionary). After all, this is precisely what America was founded upon: the Founding Fathers took it upon themselves to turn what had been English colonies into a new nation in which its citizens could live according to law far more suitable than the law of the English tyrants. However, before America became the America of today’s world, or even 1776’s world, there were a number of hurdles the early colonists had to overcome, particularly those in the first permanent English settlement of Jamestown. Before settlement,
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The relationship between the early colonists and the natives was certainly tense. The starving colonists often times stole food from the natives, and Lord De La Warr eventually declared war on the natives, officially known as the First Anglo-Powhatan War. His troops raided native villages, burned houses, and torched crops, until a peace settlement ended the war, sealing the marriage between Pocahontas and John Rolfe, the English colonist who smuggled tobacco into the New World. Relationships were still fragile, however, and eventually the natives led a series of attacks on the colonists leaving over 300 dead, including John Rolfe, leading to years of a perpetual war on the natives in an attempt to drive them westward. As for the plantation colonies, strenuous relations with the natives persisted. Because these colonies were continuously expanding, and their excessive tobacco growing moved colonists westward, the colonists experienced interminable confrontation with the natives. It is clear that the settlers should have learned that they would be the most successful in their endeavors when relations with the natives were benevolent, but they did not always abide to this philosophy. Perhaps the great flaw in the “American Dream” is that it had not always been reached in the most ethical of
The relationship between the early colonists and the natives was certainly tense. The starving colonists often times stole food from the natives, and Lord De La Warr eventually declared war on the natives, officially known as the First Anglo-Powhatan War. His troops raided native villages, burned houses, and torched crops, until a peace settlement ended the war, sealing the marriage between Pocahontas and John Rolfe, the English colonist who smuggled tobacco into the New World. Relationships were still fragile, however, and eventually the natives led a series of attacks on the colonists leaving over 300 dead, including John Rolfe, leading to years of a perpetual war on the natives in an attempt to drive them westward. As for the plantation colonies, strenuous relations with the natives persisted. Because these colonies were continuously expanding, and their excessive tobacco growing moved colonists westward, the colonists experienced interminable confrontation with the natives. It is clear that the settlers should have learned that they would be the most successful in their endeavors when relations with the natives were benevolent, but they did not always abide to this philosophy. Perhaps the great flaw in the “American Dream” is that it had not always been reached in the most ethical of