Native American tribes often did rebel against European settlers. In some instances, they could do serious damage, such as when the Powhatan tribe wiped out a quarter of the entire population of Jamestown in a single day over a long-standing dispute with the colonists. In the long term, however, the advantage rested with the colonists, who had superior arms to the indigenous peoples, allowing them to subdue any native uprisings, no matter how long it took.

Over time, the colonists greatly expanded their territory at the expense of the natives, making deeper and deeper incursions into ancestral hunting lands that had formed an essential part of tribal heritage for thousands for years. This made it more and more difficult for Native-Americans to organize any kind of concerted resistance against the colonists. They were becoming too widely dispersed to be able to come together and form a unified military force.

The best that they could do under the circumstances was to form themselves into isolated raiding parties that would stage sporadic attacks against European settlements. But this did little to change the overall power dynamic. If anything, it actually consolidated the colonists' increasing hold on America, making them all the more determined to use their superior military power to hold on to and add to the vast territorial wealth they'd already taken from the native population.