Through the use of ethnohistorical data, the Saponi and Nottoway Indians of seventeenth-century Virginia are analyzed in terms of basic, or group, personality and acculturation history. Through a reconstruction of the contrasting reactions of these communities to eighteenth-century English activity, a test for the motivating influence of personality and history on this behavior is made. It is determined that the Saponi and Nottoway shared similar basic personalities, but that they experienced different seventeenth-century histories. By the eighteenth century, the behavior patterns of each community were consistent with the different levels of acculturation attained by each community as a result of their different histories. It is concluded that in the case of the Nottoway and. Saponi, acculturation history served as the primary motivational factor in their different reactions to eighteenth-century English activity. Personality became a factor only as a result of the stress placed upon it by acculturation.