The question of whether the first British settlers were free and intelligent is a highly debatable one. About the only thing I can say for sure is that they certainly felt as if they were free and intelligent. They felt that they were the people who were being oppressed by the "evil" British and that they needed to move to America to escape this persecution. However, some of their actions certainly weren"t so free. The Salem Witch Trials, for example, are some of the most heinous crimes ever committed against humans at any time. The following is an attempt to answer this question, one which will continue to be debated back and forth forever I am sure.

             One could say that the first British settlers were free and intelligent for several reasons. The first and most obvious is that they moved to this virgin land and had an opportunity to start anew like no other place they knew. It also gave them an opportunity to spread the Christian religion. As John Winthrop said in his "General Observations and Model of Christian Charity", "It willbe a service to the Churche of great consequence to carrye the Gospell into those partes of the world, and to rayse a bullwarke against the kingdom of Antichrist which the Jesuites laboiur to reare vp in all places of the worlde." This missionary work also sparked some of the people who did not follow the Church of England to go to the new world. They felt that they could create a new colony that would respect their beliefs and that they could spread them to the natives so as they would not be "savages". They saw this land as a land of opportunity and for that they certainly are intelligent, every one.

             One could also say that the first British settlers certainly weren"t free and intelligent. Probably the biggest reason is because they attempted to destroy the native culture. They tried to assimilate the culture and spread their ways of life to people who didn"t currently use them.