The Name of War

The Indians kill hundreds of colonists—many of them with grisly torture—mutilate cattle, burn entire towns, and leave “a landscape of ashes, of farms laid waste, of corpses without heads" (72). Many settlers perish defending their homes. The destruction removes much of the Englishness of the landscape along with the colonists’ sense of themselves as English.

The European belief in property and ownership contrasts with the Indian nomadic approach. Settlers develop the acres on which they live and farm—chopping down trees, planting crops, and building fences and buildings—while the Indians simply visit these regions, tapping the resources and moving on. Thus, colonists believe the Indians forfeit the land to the settlers who build on it.

The sudden destruction of so much of their property stuns the settlers, as these possessions form a part of their identity. In reckoning the losses, many reports make careful lists of the number of structures lost and then a quick estimate of the dead. Some accounts include the Indian dead as losses since they can no longer be employed as labor.

Stripped of its buildings, the land appears naked to the colonists, while they, too, feel naked, with their settlements torn away like clothing.