Native Americans were hunter gatherers and lived off the land. They were very conservative people and would make sure absolutely nothing was put to waste. Native Americans were able to adapt to different environments due to their creativity of how to live off of Mother Nature. They were able to find ways to live in places ranging from deserts to forests to alongside oceans. They were unquestionably great hunters and effective farmers. The Indians unquestionably had much better diets than the Europeans and were far less likely to ever face starvation or hunger. It is recorded that the first Europeans to ever arrive at America often commented on the Indians massive size, which was probably due to their better diets. Each tribe built their own towns and traded over far distances with other …show more content…
These were the people that were met with European explorers when their ships landed in America. Before the Europeans came along, the Natives would rarely ever die from any type of disease, however as the Europeans came to North America, they brought immense changes to Native American tribes. The Europeans carried a number of new diseases that the Natives were in no way accustomed to. Some of these diseases include the bubonic plague, cholera, typhus, tuberculosis, smallpox, influenza, measles, and the chicken pox. Sometimes the illnesses spread through direct contact with the colonists while other times as they were trading with one
Each of them brought their own customs, culture and values and integrated them into society. Native Americans, however, were known as savages because the government saw them as uncivilized and uncontrollable. Although the United States claims, it is a free country and states in the First Amendment that you may believe in any religion you want without persecution, but it did not give that right to the Natives. Instead, the government was trying to convert the Native Americans religion to Catholic or Christian. Many people came to America to escape religious persecution.
The clash between the Native Americans and the colonists did not start off tumultuous. In the early days of the exploration and settlement of the New World they lived in peace. The Indians taught them how to farm and live off the land. In a strange land the colonists made an ally. However, the subsequent turn of events was inevitable. Perhaps the chaos that ensued could have been postponed but there was never going to be a peaceful cohabitation between the colonists and the indigenous people. There were so many vast differences between the religious views and ultimate goals of the two groups. The Native Americans had established trade relationships with various tribes, they had their own religions, and their way of life was a stark contrast to that of the colonists. The worldview of the respective peoples was foreign to the other and the idea of a holistic and unbiased approach to the life of others was foreign.
The European influences to the Native Americans were Europeans carried the new diseases to the Indians. “Europeans were used to these diseases, but Indian people had no resistance to them. Sometimes the illnesses spread through direct contact with colonists. Other times, they were transmitted as Indians traded with one another. The result of this contact with European germs was horrible. Sometimes whole villages perished in a short time” (Kincheloe). Slave trade was another influence to American Indians. Europeans soon realized that they could provide commercial goods such as tools and weapons to some American Indian tribes that would bring them other Indians captured in tribal wars, and these captured Indians were bought and sold as slaves. Therefore, “slavery led to warfare among tribes and too much hardship. Many tribes had to move to escape the slave trade, which destroyed some tribes completely. In time, the practice of enslaving Native peoples ended. However, it had greatly affected American Indians of the South and the Southwest” (Kinchloe). Lastly, Europeans change Native America and African’ roots. Native Americans
The Columbian exchange was the widespread transfer of various products such as animals, plants, and culture between the Americas and Europe. Though most likely unintentional, the byproduct that had the largest impact from this exchange between the old and new world was communicable diseases. Europeans and other immigrants brought a host of diseases with them to America, which killed as much as ninety percent of the native population. Epidemics ravaged both native and nonnative populations of the new world destroying civilizations. The source of these epidemics were due to low resistance, poor sanitation, and inadequate medical knowledge- “more die of the practitioner than of the natural course of the disease (Duffy).” These diseases of the new world posed a serious
Native Americans and Europeans were the begging of the new world. Their differences are more than similarities, whether by the religion, culture, race, and gender. Native Americans and European spoke two different languages, and lived in two different ways. The reason why Native Americans were called Indians, because when Columbus landed in America he thought that he was in India, so he called them Indians. Native American were nomadic people, some of them were hunter and some were farmers. Europeans were much more developed than Native Americans, and had more skills. Also, there were differences in holding positions between Native American women and European women. The cultural differences led to a bloody bottle
Imported diseases were more devastating to Native Americans. These diseases like measles, typhoid, cholera, and Small Pox were new to Native Americans, and they had not built up any internal immunities or created any medicine to prevent or
During the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Europeans started to come over to the new world, they discovered a society of Indians that was strikingly different to their own. To understand how different, one must first compare and contrast some of the very important differences between them, such as how the Europeans considered the Indians to be extremely primitive and basic, while, considering themselves civilized. The Europeans considered that they were model societies, and they thought that the Indians society and culture should be changed to be very similar to their own.
While the Europeans were traveling to the New World, they often brought domesticated animals with them for sources of food and livestock. When animals and humans are living in close quarters together, it is very likely for exposure to germs to occur. New diseases were brought over by foreigners looking for fame and gold that killed off many of the natives in the new lands. The natives did not stand a chance against these new threats because of a lack of knowledge and supplies to cure themselves. Once the Europeans established diseases as they made land in the New World, their journey had only become easier as their competition were being wiped out from the rapid spread.
As white settlers poured across the mountains, the Cherokee tried once again to compensate themselves with territory taken by war with a neighboring tribe. This time their intended victim was the Chickasaw, but this was a mistake. Anyone who tried to take something from the Chickasaw regretted it, if he survived. After eleven years of sporadic warfare ended with a major defeat at Chickasaw Oldfields (1769), the Cherokee gave up and began to explore the possibility of new alliances to resist the whites. Both the Cherokee and Creek attended the 1770 and 1771 meetings with the Ohio tribes at Sciota but did not participate in Lord Dunnmore's War (1773-74) because the disputed territory was not theirs. On the eve of the American Revolution, the British government scrambled to appease the colonists and negotiate treaties with the Cherokee ceding land already taken from them by white settlers. To this end, all means, including outright bribery and extortion, were employed: Lochaber Treaty (1770); and the Augusta Treaty (1773) ceding 2 million acres in Georgia to pay for debts to white traders. For the same reasons as the Iroquois cession of Ohio in 1768, the Cherokee tried to protect their homeland from white settlement by selling land they did not really control. In the Watonga Treaty (1774) and the Overhill Cherokee Treaty (Sycamore Shoals) (1775), they sold all of eastern and central Kentucky to the Transylvania Land Company (Henderson Purchase).
The Effects of Colonization on the Native Americans Native Americans had inherited the land now called America and eventually their lives were destroyed due to European colonization. When the Europeans arrived and settled, they changed the Native American way of life for the worse. These changes were caused by a number of factors including disease, loss of land, attempts to export religion, and laws, which violated Native American culture. Native Americans never came in contact with diseases that developed in the Old World because they were separated from Asia, Africa, and Europe when ocean levels rose following the end of the last Ice Age. Diseases like smallpox, measles, pneumonia, influenza, and malaria were unknown to the Native Americans until the Europeans brought these diseases over time to them.
The Native Americans were more than willing to help out a stranger, whereas the English were more concerned about how much money the stranger had before helping them out. The Native Americans wouldn 't talk when other people were, and they wouldn 't answer the white 's proposal on the same day to show respect that they were actually considering it. In addition, Native Americans allowed everyone to talk in court, whereas the English yelled over each other and wouldn 't accept that they might be wrong. Many of these habits are still evident in today 's world, and it is probably the reason why the Americans were able to take over the Native
Shetler, in the book Seeds of Change: Five Hundred Years Since Columbus, supports the myth that the new world was an unspoiled paradise by stating that " Native people were transparent in the landscape, living as natural elements of the ecosphere. Their world…was a world of barely perceptible human disturbances"(Shetler 1991). Sale contends that the Indians had a benign effect and refering to them as the "Ecological Indian".(Sale 1990) These are fine examples of the new way of portraying the Native Americans as "Noble Savages". There is no question that the Europeans had a more obvious influence on the landscape than the American Indian, but the notion that the Native Americans were "transparent" or "benign" to the landscape is an absurd over exaggeration. When in fact, "twenty million indigenous people were hunting gathering, burning, tilling, and otherwise managing North America"(Anderson 1991). It is not the intention of this paper to claim the American Indians did more harm to the environment than the European Settlers, but one important notion that must be understood before proceeding is that "even though a landscape may appear green it is not in indicator of natural ecology". It is the intention of this paper to show that the Native Americans had a significant impact on the ecology of the Eastern North American Landscape, which is unknown to many scholars.
People have been living in America for countless years, even before Europeans had discovered and populated it. These people, named Native Americans or American Indians, have a unique and singular culture and lifestyle unlike any other. Native Americans were divided into several groups or tribes. Each one tribe developed an own language, housing, clothing, and other cultural aspects. As we take a look into their society’s customs we can learn additional information about the lives of these indigenous people of the United States.
The images come to my mind is the only native people in America is American Indians, all of other is immigrants. It is positive, because most people immigrants to America in the hope that to pursuing high-quality life and their children can receive better Education. Which means America is better than other country in grantee in a better future. And having more smart and skilled people coming to America, can let America be
The American Indians Between 1609 To 1865. Native Americans or American Indians, once occupied the entire region of the United States. They were composed of many different groups, who spoke hundreds of languages and dialects. The Indians from the Southwest used to live in large, terraced communities and their way of sustain was from the agriculture where they planted squash, pumpkins, beans and corn crops. Trades between neighboring tribes were common, this brought in additional goods and also some raw materials such as gems, cooper.