7-2 Project Two_ Research Paper

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Apr 3, 2024

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7-2 Project Two: Research Paper Ethan De St Jeor HIS-314 Throughout their entire time interacting with each other, both the Europeans and Native Americans contributed to each other, but so too did they fight viciously in order to maintain their own cultures and way of life. Their interactions saw the exchange of foods, new religion, and new games as the two cultures collided. However, sure enough as the two groups introduced new ideas and beliefs, so too did the two cultures clash, a battle we clearly see through events like the Indian Removal Acts and indigenous people having European cultural ideas pushed onto them, even with these people being forcefully relocated off their original home lands. These tensions and friction, inevitably, led to conflicts, confrontation, and even war. But just as surely as war came, so too did peace; peaceful exchange of both ideas and goods grew as trade deals formed between Natives and settlers, such as the famous fur trade. It was inevitable that the European colonists would make contact with the Native American people sooner rather than later. With over 7 million indigenous people living in North America, many different European groups made contact with the native population separately, and each would react differently still; French settlers would form closer, more mutual relations

with the indigenous people in an attempt to be more harmonious with the tribes. In comparison, the Spanish held a conqueror’s mindset, seeking to dominate the land and drive the Native Americans from their native lands by force. The English colonists would fall in the middle of these two; while they did not come as brutal conqueror’s like the Spanish, neither did they attempt a more friendly relationship like the French. After their arrival, the European colonists had a heavy demand for a variety of goods and valuables that the indigenous people could provide much more easily than the Europeans could otherwise source. Foremost among these desired items were furs, with the fur trade becoming a wildly lucrative trading business between Native Americans and the settler traders would exchange furs for a variety of things including blankets, guns,knives, beads, whiskey, and tobacco amongst other trading goods. 1 It is no surprise that furs were in such heavy demand; the settlers required furs for a great many necessary items, such as shoes, hats, and belts. This deal was largely mutually beneficial; as needed as furs were by the settlers, the Native Americans saw a need in items such as guns to better fend off other tribes, as well as even other European colonists. Even still, there were some settlements that were able to form much closer bonds with the indigenous people than other colonies. The French in particular sought to create a strong relationship with the indigenous people, in particular in the forming of strong trade between the two groups. The French had a high demand for beaver belts, in particular for the use in belts, while the Native Americans had a long history of skills in hunting and skinning beavers for these furs. Because of this, French traders would establish trade routes for their ships in order to collect these furs, with intent on selling them to local hat makers. In exchange for these furs, the Native Americans would receive iron 1 Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis,Commerce by a Frozen Sea: Native Americans and theEuropean Fur Trade(Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).

tools, blankets, or even things as innocuous of glass beads from the French. The willingness of the indigenous people to engage in trade with the Europeans allowed them to establish a fur trade business from the Americas. 2 It wasn’t just goods and products that were exchanged with contact between these groups; just as much as physical items exchanged hands, so too did ideas exchange minds. The Europeans would learn from indigenous styles of war and other strategies. Not long after, Britain and France would begin to butt heads over North America, the European powers coming to blows over trading rights and ownership of territory in North America as both warred for complete control of the continent. This was of little surprise, as the two held a deep-seated rivalry in Europe, having taken part in many different wars between the two that would finally result in Napoleon Bonaparte losing. It was no surprise that these conflicts would bleed over to North America, with both sides employing Native Americans to their aid. Ultimately these battles would end in 1763 with the defeat of the French, with the event coming to be known as the French and Indian War. This was by no means the first war that the Indigenous people had seen, nor taken part in, there were a great many violent battles that had occurred, most predominantly in the competing drive to control both more territory and the fur trade itself. The Native Americs would grow wary of the Europeans, fearing that they wished to further expand their dominion over the lands. These fears, shared by both the colonists and the natives, were not just about territory; friction between the groups would also grow over control of the fur trade. These conflicts would be unusually potent in driving up tensions among Europeans, which in turn made everyone 2 Tony Seybert, “Slavery and Native Americans in British North America and the United States: 1600 to 1865,” mms library, accessed February 21, 2024, https://mmslibrary.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/slavery- and-native-americans-in-british-north-america-and-the-united-states.pdf.

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