ABSTRACT
Racial attitudes in America have their origins in the culture of Elizabethan England, for it was in the closing decades of the sixteenth century that the English people, who were on the verge of creating an overseas empire in North America and the Caribbean, began to come into frequent contact with peoples whose culture, religion, and color was markedly different from their own. Englishmen did not arrive at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, or at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, with minds barren of images and preconceptions of the native occupiers of the land. Land was the key to English settlement after 1620. It was logical to assume in these circumstances that the Indian would not willingly give up the ground that sustained him, even if the English offered to purchase land, as they did in most cases. In New England, despite the many differences in motives and means of colonization, attitudes evolved in much the same manner.
