This study will compare and contrast British-Indian relations with Spanish-Indian relations from pre-contact to 1830. The study will focus on North American Indians, and will concentrate specifically on the question of how Indians resisted or accepted the authority which the British and/or the Spanish attempted to impose upon them. The thesis of the study will be the argument that the differences between the way the English and Spanish treated the Indians were not nearly as numerous as the similarities, and that the basis of these similarities was the exploitation of the Indians by both European nationalities. The Indians did not respond in significantly different ways to either group, and in the great majority of the encounters between the Indians and the Europeans the Indians were ultimately forced to submit to the stronger force of the Europeans.
The sources consulted for this study, including Wright, note that the pre-contact context for the imminent encounters between the Indians and the British and Spanish was such that tremendous misconceptions were inevitable on the part of both the "aborigines" and the Europeans. The Europeans were expecting to find savages of the most primitive and dangerous sort, and these preconceptions colored their encounters with the Indians when they finally met them.
On the other hand, the Indians to some degree expected nothing less than gods if and when they encountered beings coming to their land on ships. In fact, Wright writes that "Raleigh's failure at Roanoke Island at least made local Indians realize that Europeans were not gods," although he adds that "For well over half a century before Raleigh's time, North Carolina aborigines had had numerous contacts with Europeans; when English colonists eventually arrived, natives were not awestruck by large ships with billowy sails and bearded foreigners" (Wright, 1981, pp. 28-29).
In many cases, says Wright, the Spanish beat the Engli...