4. The Pilgrims established a tradition of more or less peaceful coexistence with the Native Americans that lasted over fifty years. Why did that tradition collapse in the 1670s and what might have been done to preserve it?
Before the 1670s, there were much less Englishmen in America, and the demand for land in New England was low, and the supply was high. As time went on, though, more and more English people began migrating to New England, and the demand became high and the supply rather low. Loathe to move further from the established colonies, the English began to purchase the Indian's native homelands from them. The Indians were in need of money, (and they were at a disadvantage anyway, because they had no English money whatsoever) so they sold them the land. However, the children of the first Indians to sell land soon ran into a problem: the English were very nearly cheating them out of their land, and soon, they would have nowhere to live. Each side became angry at the other, and the conflict of King Philip's War began.
The conflict could actually have been easily avoided if each side -but particularly the English- had simply respected the boundaries of the other. If the Pilgrims hadn't been so selfish, they would have realized that they were exploiting the Indian's ignorance of the English concept of landholding, and stopped when they had what they needed, rather than what they wanted, and King Philip's War could possibly have been diverted.
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