Indian European Coexistance

It is when an economy is at equilibrium that it works best. The one single point where the supply and demand lines interject that keeps everyone happy and allows the economy to thrive and expand. This is something that any person who has taken an introduction course in economics learns on their first day. But what happens when a person or a group of people is thrown into an elaborate and foreign economic system with no prior knowledge or experience? The result is the complete and total abuse, disrespect, and eventual annihilation of that person or group. This is the case of the Indians at the time of the European settlement of America. Where Indian-European relations were at a constant strain in the backdrop of an epic power struggle which in the end left no chance for Indian-European coexistence in early America. The fact that the Indians had no prior dealings with the European economic system led to their unwarranted demise.

The discovery and subsequent settlement of America ushered Europe into a world economic system. New commodities, many of them imported from recently discovered lands, enriched material life. Merchants, entrepreneurs, and bankers accumulated and manipulated capital in unprecedented volume. This drive for capital did not just stay with the settlers but spread throughout the Americas at a rate that could only be surpassed by smallpox. "During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, everyone in eastern North America- masters and slaves, farmers near the coast and Indians near the mountains- became producers of raw material for foreign markets and found themselves caught up in an international economic network" (Merrell 550).

When the early explorers came to America in the sixteenth century and encountered the Native Americans on the shores of the Atlantic they entered into trade as a sign of goodwill towards each other; with the given exception of those who raided and kidnapped for the slave trade. This "goodwill" was something that the Natives could understand, as they have been doing this type of trade with their neighboring tribes for many years. "Trade among people, while common, was conducted primarily in commodities such as copper, mica, and shells, items that, exchanged with the appropriate ceremony, initiated or confirmed friendships among groups. Few, if any, villages relied on outsiders for goods essential to daily life" (Merrell 551). Yet this is not what the Europeans had in mind. The Europeans came to America for the sole reason of profit and its traders found a new market for their goods.