The Native Americans: Christopher Columbus Vs. Hariot

The Native Americans For at least fifteen thousand years before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and Thomas Hariot, Native Americans had occupied the vastness of North America undisturbed by outside invaders (Shi 2015 pg. 9). Throughout the years leading up to Columbus’s voyage to the “New World” (the Americas) and Hariot’s journey across the sea, the Indians had encountered and adapted to many diverse continents; due to global warming, climatic and environmental diversity throughout the lands (2015). Making the Native Americans culture, religion, and use of tools and technology very strange to that of Columbus’s and Hariot’s more advanced culture and economy, when they first came into contact with the Native Americans. To start with,

There is one difference between Columbus’s and Hariot’s encounter with the Native Americans. Columbus believed the natives had no religion or gods because the only thing he saw on the island besides the natives themselves were parrots, no other animals or beasts (Document 1). Moreover, in the morning of Columbus’s second arrival to the Americas, the natives came running to the boats calling out to the Europeans, and giving thanks to God (Document 1). Whereas, Hariot on the other hand believed the natives already had a religion of their own that was far from the truth, but at the same time could be more easily reformed and converted to Christianity (Document 2). The natives from Roanoke “believed in many gods, which they called Mantoac. They affirmed that when he created the world, he first made the other principal gods, in order to use them in the creation and government to follow” (Document 2). Hariot concluded that “in time they will find our kinds of knowledge and crafts accomplish everything with more speed and perfection than do theirs” (Document 2). At the very end of their journey to the Americas, Columbus and Hariot viewed these natives on the whole to be a very friendly, simple race with delicate bodies (Document 1). They thought of the natives as people that were less intelligent and human than they were

When Columbus and Hariot first came into contact with these natives, they seemed different (even strange) at times because they lived almost completely naked. For a long period of time, the Native Americans lives had to change as they adapted too many different environments. As a matter of fact, the American Indians were very creative. They were able to found ways on to how to live in deserts, forests, along the oceans, and on grassy prairies. The Natives people were great hunters and productive farmers, for they built towns and traded over large distances with other tribes. The Native Americans also believed they were one with nature, and that the gods of land and water controlled what they got if they didn’t sacrifice and worship them. The Europeans however, viewed the natives to be a region inhabited by salvages, who did not how to live. They believed the natives had no laws, no religion, no property (for they all shared it), no kingdom or king because they have no system of government. All these two explorers saw was new land, with plants, and animals to be discovered. As well as, new people with fascinating lifeways that Europeans have never seen before, that would soon be conquered and governor to help personal ambitions, like the Spanish monarchs who also wanted to strengthen their legal claim on the New World, in case the Portugal’s decided to send ships across the Atlantic and eventually become a