Phenomenon of Land Hunger on Pequot War, Metacom’s War, and the Trail of Tears

Midterm Essay
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Midterm Essay
The phenomenon of land hunger on the part of Anglo-American colonists characterized most conflicts with Indigenous Amerindians including the Pequot War, Metacom’s War, and the Trail of Tears. Historians and scholars agree that the colonization of America was driven by settlers’ need for more land and the abundant natural resources that came with it as well as racist beliefs about Native Americans. The settlers did not believe that native titles conferred the same land privileges as ordinary titles. Even more fundamentally, the Natives had different world views, languages, spiritual beliefs, and skin color. The settlers stoked racial hatred to justify the colonization and exploitation of indigenous populations. This essay theorizes that land hunger by European settlers underscored all conflicts with American Indians and that white racism was used to justify the extinguishment of native land rights and forceful acquisition of Indian land for the growing colonial populations.
The settlers treated indigenous rights in land as inferior to other titles and set about colonizing “unoccupied land” or lands belonging to pagans to cater to their growing colonial populations. Moreover, racial discrimination made it easy for settlers to view the Natives as pagan savages who must be removed from their lands in the name of development and Christianity (Class Text, 2023a). The themes of growing settler populations and land hunger, extinguishment of native land rights, and racial hatred precipitated conflicts between white settlers and Indigenous Americans, including the Pequot War, Metacom’s War, and the Trail of Tears. The Pequot War of 1636-1637 is widely regarded as the first sustained confrontation between the settlers and the Native Americans. This war had all three themes: the settlers believed that the Pequot tribe was a direct threat to their development and justified the massacres of entire Indian populations using doctrines of discovery and racial superiority. When the English Puritans first settled in New England, their population was quite small and despite competing with the Pequot tribe for fur trade access, the two groups lived peacefully.
However, land scarcity became a serious concern for the Puritans as more settlers immigrated to the region. The colonists needed more land to cultivate food and competition for natural resources pitted the two groups against each other. By 1633, thousands of English settlers had already settled in New England and their population severely outnumbered that of the Natives. The vast population difference was also caused by the decimation of indigenous populations by European diseases, thereby setting the stage for an unequally matched war. The colonists wanted as much land as possible and started encroaching on indigenous land: they claimed that the Pequots did not own the land and stated that they had the right to expand their settlements because the royal charter gave them the authority to develop “unoccupied lands”. Puritan apologists justified the forceful ceding of indigenous land by demonizing the Pequots as barbarous pagans who must be subjugated for the sake of civilization and Christianity. The Puritans regarded the Pequots as the physical manifestation of backwardness and evil. This self-imposed moral and religious superiority set the stage for the Pequot War when apologists asserted that the colonists had to strike first.
Although the settlers were driven by the practical need for more land, white racism played an instrumental role in justifying their military offensive against the Pequots. The settlers argued that they were under n...