ABSTRACT
The English soldiers who commanded the expeditions that first invaded the Americas held complicated notions about the differences between themselves and members of Indigenous populations. These complicated ways of thinking about Indigenous peoples were influenced by several lines of thought and belief. In Ireland, the process of medieval conquest led to the development of a social group known as the old English—noble families dispatched from the center to settle and rule in Ireland—which had experienced a form of “cultural declension.” The process of civilizing the Gaelic people was thought to be an administrative one, as much as it was a military or cultural one. Ralegh and the other planners involved in making the powers listed in his letters patent real dispatched an expedition of settlement to the Chesapeake region in the following year.
