How and why were most colonists cruel to the Indians?
1 Answer
They were not.
Explanation:
First of all, most of the tribes along the east coast, excepting some in Virginia, helped colonists survive as they gained a foothold in America. Were it not for the Wampanoag and other tribes the Pilgrims would almost certainly have perished entirely during their first winter or near to it.
The tribes of the Northeast were relatively small in number. It is suspected that Europeans in some earlier century brought with them a disease which decimated those tribes, so they, for the most part, were no threat to the settlers. There was the odd incursion with the natives but that was mostly the exception.
The statement that "most colonists were cruel" is simply not true. The first cruelty of any magnitude did not happen until the Federal Government, at President Jackson's direction, moved the entire Cherokee Nation from their home in Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina to Oklahoma. This is known as "the trail of tears." He did this under the authority of the "Indian Removal Act" of 1830. But by the 1830s we were no longer colonists.
