Colonial Life In Richard Hakluyt's Discourse Of Western Planting

Colonial life for early Americans was not what they originally anticipated. For a long time, they had to struggle to survive. When they came to America they were looking to be free from religious persecution. They wanted to be able to start a new life in this New World. They eventually created a thriving group of colonies, but their success did not come easy. Their ideals of settlement directly contrasted with the disease, death, slavery, rebellion, and inner-betrayal and rebellion that they struggled with. In seventeenth-century Virginia, land was plentiful but people were needed to work the fields. They found poor English adults who agreed to sign indentures, which stated that they would provide labor to till the fields in exchange for a passage into America. Those chosen were excited to gain entry into present-day America, because they wanted to be free of the religious persecution they faced in England, and escape the plagues and sicknesses

They wanted to be able to practice their faith however, whenever, and wherever they wanted. However, in Richard Hakluyt's Discourse of Western Planting, he stated that it was necessary for the British Empire to convert the Native Americans to Christianity. There were various approaches on how to succeed in doing this. Some were mellow, some were violent, and some were in-between. Many Native Americans refused to accept Christianity, mostly because of the examples that the only Christians they knew set. The Europeans often tried to enforce violence in order to force the acceptance of baptism. However, this violence merely provoked resistance and rejection from the Native Americans. Ironically, though they wanted to escape religious persecution, they persecuted the natives for religious reasons. Also, since they were met with so much resistance, their ideal settlement with everyone being Christian contrasted with the reality of the New