Compare And Contrast European And Native American Warfare

Germs, guns, and steel were the advantages the Europeans have over the native people. Europeans brought diseases that the natives lacked immunity to. These diseases killed about eighty percent of the natives. They also had firearms and steel weapons. Although bows and arrows were much more accurate and easier at the time, guns were still advantageous.

By 1940, Native Americans had experienced many changes and counter-changes in their legal status in the United States. Over the course of the nineteenth century, most tribes lost part or all of their ancestral lands and were forced to live on reservations. Following the American Civil War, the federal government abrogated most of the tribes’ remaining sovereignty and required communal lands to be allotted to individuals. The twentieth century also saw great changes for Native Americans, such as the Citizenship Act and the Indian New Deal. Alison R. Bernstein examines how the Second World War affected the status and lives of Native Americans in American Indians and World War II: Toward a New Era in Indian Affairs. Bernstein argues

Europeans lived a much more modern way of life than the primitive lifestyle of Native Americans. Europeans referred to themselves as “civilized” and regarded Native Americans as “savage,” “heathen,” or “barbarian.” Their interaction provoked by multiple differences led to misunderstanding and sometimes conflict. These two cultures, having been isolated from one another, exhibited an extensive variation in their ideals. Europeans and Native Americans maintained contradictory social, economic, and spiritual practices.

Beginning in the sixteenth century, Europeans made the voyage to a “new world” in order to achieve dreams of opportunity and riches. In this other world the Europeans came upon another people, which naturally led to a cultural exchange between different groups of people. Although we commonly refer to European and Indian relations as being between just two very different groups of people, it is important to recognize this is not entirely true. Although the settlers of the new world are singularly referred to as Europeans, each group of people came from a different nation and with different motives and expectations of the new world. Similarly, the Indians were neither a united group nor necessarily friendly with each other. Due to the

Europeans implemented their military might when conquering Native Americans. The European technology of weaponry included guns and cannons that were far more advanced than the typical bow and arrow and tomahawks used by Indians. Over the years, colonists used weapons along with other tactics to intimidate natives into conversion or ceding land. With the lack of advanced armament, along with modest numbers, natives were unable to defend themselves from impeding colonial attacks. The invaders were infamously renowned as “mechanical, soulless creatures that wielded diabolically ingenious tools and weapons to accomplish mad ends.”

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.

The European colonists and the Native Americans of North America had very different views on nearly everything they encountered in their lives. Living in vastly different cultures lead both groups to have two extremely different outlooks on four main topics; religious beliefs, the environment, social relations, and slavery, differences which the colonists used to their advantage when conquering the peoples of the New World.

It is no secret that Europeans and Native Americans have an intricate history of conflict and cooperation. Going all the way back to the 16th century, where it all started, their encounters were mostly unpleasant. Indians were the first ones to settle in the Americas, so they had to be creative when it came to living with all this new land. Each tribe had their own culture, beliefs, religions, ideas, and ways of living which for the most part, were not in agreement with European lifestyle. In my opinion, all of those differences are what lead the Europeans and Native Americans relationship to frequent destruction.

From the very moment that the Europeans stepped on American soil, they displayed their extraordinary military power and savage outlook towards the native peoples. Their experience with civilized society with access to plenty of firepower gives them an advantage when it comes to military attacks, and when they use this against the Native Americans, it is almost unfair. They attack the Native Americans immediately when they step foot on US soil, and kill them as if they are trophy hunting. Barry Lopez, in The Rediscovery of North America, states about the barbaric Spanish attacks on Native Americans, “The Spanish cut off the legs of children who ran from them. They poured people full of boiling soap. They made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half” (5). This quote shows how much power the colonists held over the Native American and how their doom was essentially inevitable. Killing the Native Americans was practically a hobby for the colonists at this point. The countless battles and land that they gained from the Native Americans also symbolized their power, such as when the Spaniards invaded the town of Acoma. They

To better understand the conflict between the Europeans and the Native Americans, one must closely examine the state of Europe’s economy at the time. Europe struggled with difficult conditions. This included poverty, violence and diseases like typhus, smallpox, influenza and measles. There were widespread famines which caused the prices of products to vary and made life very difficult in Europe. Street crimes and violence were prevalent in cities: “Other eruption of bizarre torture, murder, and ritual cannibalism were not uncommon”.2 Europeans

|In 1754, George Washington, a lieutenant colonel, was dispatch to the Ohio Country with an armed force to |French and Indian War Research Paper |

When European exploration led to the populating of the Americas, it was described as the event with one of the greatest ecological impacts in history. The force behind this impact was the mass movement of people and their behavior's toward their "New World". It only stands to reason that a clash would occur with the natives of these lands. One of the areas with the greatest conflict was the field of technology.

Although white European settlers and the native Indians had existed moderately peaceful for around 40 years pressures rose in the mid-seventh century. Conflict arose due to decline in Indian territories, population, and their cultural integrity. These differences ultimately lead to conflicts in which collectively became known as King Philip’s War. What types of complaints did the Indians have against the settlers? How were the Indians expected to survive if the settlers kept taking their land? The primary sources in this collection of source documents touch upon on what each group (Indian or white settlers) did to survive: an excerpt from a narrative written by John Easton, a second hand account written by Thomas Church, a report written to the English leaders by Edward Randolph, a petition written by an Indian named William Nahton, and an excerpt of an account from a book written by Mary Rowlandson. These documents illustrate the main causes that sparked the war between the Native Indians and the white English settlers, narratives written by both sides to find peaceful solutions, and actual accounts of people who survived the conflict. The second hand account written about Benjamin Church’s meeting with the Indian group known as the Sakonnet Indians displays that the Indians knew their only chance of survival was to fight while the report written to English leaders by Randolph suggest that the settlers who viewed the Indians as uncivilized had ultimately forced the Indians

As far as warfare was concerned, the Native Americans suffered great losses upon the first conflicts with the Europeans. Many Indians were armed with bows, arrows, and spears, and clad themselves in a type of leather armor. This proved ineffective against the heavy artillery of the Europeans who had thick metal armor along with guns that easily penetrated the Native Americans. Because of the disadvantages that the Native Americans held in warfare, they had to change the way that they had been fighting for centuries. The Native Americans adopted a new strategy for war that consisted of guerilla style attacks. This way, the element of surprise brought them on a somewhat more level playing field due to their technologically inferior weapons. However, over time the Indians began trading with the Europeans to get guns. This completely revolutionized warfare for the Native Americans. Never before had they been in possession of such powerful arms. This made the Native Americans much more lethal during warfare.

had sold only the right to use the land, not the land itself. They did