When the English landed in the Chesapeake Bay area, they were vulnerable. They needed cooperation from the Native Americans for any chance to survival. However, they made no effort to understand how Algonkian society, the local Native American tribe, functioned. The English assumed that Algonkian society was structured in the same way as their own, a patrilineal society with a similar political structure. The Algonkian realized early on that the English played by unfamiliar rules, preparing them for surprises. Conversely, the English expected the native Americans the play by English rules, namely under English rule. Both parties lacked the necessary understanding of each other’s sociopolitical structure, and this led to a disastrous relationship.
One key moment that embodies this idea is the English decision to capture Pocahontas. Inspired by Spanish success with kidnapping, The English wanted to disrupt Algonkian society by kidnapping someone in line to inherit the chiefdom, and assumed that this would mean any Powhaton’s offspring. However, the English were mistaken. They assumed that Algonkian …show more content…
The Virginia Company, who made the decision to kidnap, was modeling themselves after the Spanish and their experience. The Spanish encountered a very different sociopolitical landscape in South America than what the English found in North America. In South America, there were societies more similar to the European sociopolitical structure, meaning that certain establishments, such as the paying of taxes, infrastructure, and large empires, were present. The Virginia Company then attempted to translate that situation to Virginia, which plainly did not work. That is not to say that kidnapping the right person would have been in effective, as kidnapping was a common political tactic by the Algonkian, just that the choice was informed from the wrong