Contact between Native Americans and Europeans brought changes to Native American societies. One change was that the Native American population decreased quickly due to disease and warfare. Native Americans weren’t immune to European diseases like small pox and the flu. Another change was that Native Americans were forced into slavery through the encomienda system. The encomienda system was created by the Spanish to control and regulate Native American labor and behavior while colonizing the Americas. Native Americans resisted change by fighting back. During King Phillip’s War, Native Americans united against Puritan settlers. They destroyed over 50 villages and forced settlers to flee for safety.
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Show MoreDisagreement between the Europeans and the Natives and the enslavement of Native people helped to wipe out the population. Document 5 illustrates the fighting that occurred between the Natives and European. Most times the cause of this fighting was that Europeans were taking over land that was not rightfully theirs. The Natives often lost these battles because their weapons and tactics were not as advanced as the Europeans. Therefore, the large amount of deaths in battles made a change in the Native’s population. To add, when the Europeans first arrived to the Americas they established a new economic system called the encomienda system. The encomienda system was a system of forced labor which Native Americans worked on Spanish-owned estates. Document 4 explains how the system was to work, “the Indians should work on the Christians’ building, mind the gold, till the fields, and produce food for the Christian’s.” This system benefited the Europeans immensely. On the other hand, many Native’s working were treated very poorly and faced brutal punishment and labor. The enslavement of Native people was another cause of the great decrease in population. The disappearance of Native people lead to the disappearance of their customs, beliefs, and way of
From the time when the Europeans first met the Native Americans, to the time after the American Revolution, the Native Americans had to endure inhumane pain and suffering. According to my resources, the original population of Native Americans was over 10 million during the 15th century. Surely over millions of people should be able to defend themselves from outside invaders. However, that wasn’t possible for them. By 1900, only 300,000 of the population remain. Around the time the Natives encountered the Europeans, they suffered from diseases and bloodshed. Later on they were forced by the Spaniards to convert a new religion, Christianity.
Native Americans have had a long history of resistance to the social and cultural assimilation into white culture. By employing various creative strategies, Native Americans have attempted to cope with the changes stemming from the European colonial movement into the Americas. There are fundamental differences in world views and cultural and social orders between Indians and Europeans, which contributed to conservatism in Native American cultures. In this paper, two aspects of such cultural and institutional differences of Native American societies will be examined: holistic Native American beliefs versus dualistic world views and harmony versus domination. These two aspects are important in terms of explaining changes (or lack thereof) in Native American societies because they suggest that the Native American world view is more cyclical and its components are interlinked, while Western societies have a clear demarcation between cultural elements, such as religion, kinship, and morality. However, there are certain limitations to the theoretical frameworks that explain conservatism in Indian cultures because these theories are oriented around the Western world view and were developed based on the Western terms; therefore, indigenous population was not taken into account when these theories were developed.
Throughout our country’s history there have been several groups who have fared less that great. Every minority group was treated unfairly, Indians were uprooted and had no control, I can’t imagine for a second being a soldier in combat, women struggled for basic rights, and many people fell victim to the changing ways of our economy, losing their jobs and fighting to survive. It seems wrong to pick one group over another, as if to say some people who were treated horribly or who faced mounting obstacles didn’t actually have it as bad as another group. But throughout all the years we’ve studied, one group that stood out to me who were dealt a horrible fate were Native Americans living in the west during the 19th century. When Americans began to expand westward, Indians unwillingly had their lives flipped upside down and changed drastically. After years of displacement, they were being forced to live in certain areas and follow certain rules, or risk their lives.
Native Americans did not engage with Americans successfully, because they viewed things from a different perspective. In “Shawnee Chief Tecumseh Recounts the Misdeeds of Whites and Calls for Indian Unity, 1810”, 1Native Americans were shown to have trusted the American people at first, but they then began to think the Americans were hypocritical. This was because they promised to be friendly and told them that if white people try to attack them, as long as Native Americans held up the flags which would be given to them by the White people, they would be safe from all danger. However, an Indian chief named Moluntha stood with the American flag in front of him, and an American officer cut off his head; this American officer was never punished. 1Tecumseh’s account shows that the Americans’ tactic in order to deal with the Americans was saying that everyone should have equal rights in the land and it could be used by anyone. For example, if Tecumseh had the chance to meet the governor, the governor would say that the land is meant for everyone. He would only say: ….“sir, you may return to your own country”1….” According to the Native Americans, no chief is allowed to sell his land, because everyone has the right to use the land. In contrast, American people never respected the Native Americans, and they wa...
Native americans were affected by all kinds of diseases the europeans brought. Many natives died because their immune system did not know how to fight off the diseases, because they were never exposed to them till now. Their population decreased dramatically. Also the europeans brought animals causing the natives to make more money off trade. Europeans did land from the natives though. Overall trade and disease impacted natives the most.
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 worst. 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.
During the early 17th and 18th century, indigenous Native American tribes, English colonists, and West Africans were scattered across the Potomac Region of the United States. Native Americans of the Potomac region lived in villages, particularly Nacotchtanke and Nameroughquena. The Indians relied on agriculture as a means of survival—they grew crops, hunted animals, and caught fish, using their own technology. After settling in Jamestown, Virginia, English colonists were desperate to discover “instant wealth” by searching for gold and participating in the trans-Atlantic trade. Soon the Europeans would learn to earn a living through interactions with the indigenous peoples, who showed them that farming, manufacturing, and trading was the ideal path to follow. Initially, West Africans arrived in the Potomac region as indentured servants to work on tobacco plantations, but were later subjected to slavery, a cruel institution prejudiced towards people with darker skin tones and different ethnic backgrounds. The settlements in the early 17th and 18th century sparked an economic relief for European colonists, who manipulated the knowledge of the Native Americans and labor of
Even though they did not have all that the Africans and Europeans did, the Native American societies were always changing, sophisticated, and extensive. The Native Americans extended all over North America, but they still connected with each other, they continued to trade, they exchanged ideas, and even though they had competition with each other they still helped each other survive, because survival was the key component for all of the tribes, if one tribe died
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
In regard to the policy towards Native American in the 19th century, Americans agreed on the movement of Natives in the East to the West for white development. This however was a slow process and by the early 1930s, Georgia began to be agitated by this gruelling process. Upset with the federal government for not removing cherokee Natives from their state, Georgia took matters into their own . However despite this attempt Chief Justice John Marshall of U.S supreme court ruled in 1832 that a state's laws could not be applied to Native Americans and therefore denied to give Georgia the power to remove Cherokees from their land. Nonetheless, President Jackson had opposed the Worcester v. Georgia ruling and believed that John Marshall's decision
The Indians were markedly impacted by the new arrival of the Europeans in various ways. For one, the Europeans brought about great sickness and disease, wiping out entire tribes in some situations. When Fernando Cortez faced the resistant Aztecs, he managed to triumph in their conquest due to the epidemic of small pox they brought to and spread among the Natives. This encounter was just one of many where the Europeans caused millions of Indian fatalities through illness such as typhus, mumps, influenza, and chicken pox on the indigenous people who lacked an immunity to these diseases.
what to expect or what they may encounter but they all had one common motive in
When the Europeans made contact things started to change tremendously for American Indian tribes. The Europeans brought with them something that the indians could not fight against: disease. These diseases were called Smallpox, influenza, and measles. Unlike the Europeans the Natives Americans had no immunity to fight off these diseases. Soon these diseases started to spread killing 90% of the Indian population. In addition, to diseases the Indians soon began to adapt and depend on the Europeans. The Indians became interested in the things that the colonist could provide and used new materials and products everyday. Their desire for European goods changed the ancient trading patters and soon their simple hunting for food became less important
In the 1500s European explorers came to the "New World¨ which is now known as North America. They met new people in the New World. People who spoke languages they had never heard and had different lifestyles that the Europeans had never seen. Today we call those people American Indians. Although some European settlers were friendly with Native Americans, others were not and conflicts between them increased. Also, permanent European settlements in America eventually led to disease. Europeans also placed greater demands upon the native populations, including expecting them to convert to other religions. European settlers had overwhelmingly negative consequences for Native Americans.