Compare And Contrast European Views On Land And Native Americans

Native Americans believed God or what they called the Great Spirit gave the land to everyone for all to use. Native Indians would generally claim an area for their use, but the unclaimed land was free for anyone to use. They could not understand how one family or individual could own the land forever. Also Indians were not accustomed to accumulate wealth or material goods. This would make it especially hard to move around for those Nomadic & semi-nomadic tribes. Europeans on the other hand viewed owning property as a way to obtain personal independence and a form of

For years, the Native Americans lived a very solitary life with their own unique way of living, that was until the European’s showed up with their very complex way of living. Harmony with nature was a very important aspect of Native American culture. The Native people embraced nature with no intention to modify it unlike the Europeans. They simply cared more about nature and what it had to offer. The spiritual connection between the land and these Natives were distinctive from the Europeans also due to the fact that to the settlers, land meant wealth. As a European, if you owned any land you were considered a wealthy upper class human being. As a Native, no one owned the land and anyone could benefit from the land.

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.

Both had to be recognized and accepted by the other villages or communities. Since the land was a divided boundaries, Europeans had deeds for the land, records of ownership, that made it accessible to sell and buy land. Since the Indians thought of the land as free for anyone to use, nor did they have the need for money, therefore the Indians couldn’t buy land and Europeans believed that they were indigent.

Europeans came to the Americas for many different reasons. Religious freedom, adventure, gold, new opportunity, and land are a few of them. Perhaps the most serious was the different way that Europeans and Native Americans thought about land. Land was extremely important to European settlers because land meant wealth, in which they established many communities where they lived and worked. Many of the settlers in the new country could have never owned land in Europe because they were too poor. The Native Americans believed that no one could own land. They

The Native Americans sustained and took care of their home, while the Europeans pushed and pulled for more money to fall from it. This caused the land to lose a lot of its density and eventually the Europeans’ wealth as well. Things that were lost were proper farming grounds, culture of the Native Americans, and wild life. Different views of the Europeans and Native Americans caused a lot of conflict. The Europeans’ views on the Indians’ way of life became critical once they saw and felt as if their society was not controlled

In the early 1800’s, The United States and Spain had continuously argued with the Native people. The Louisiana Territory was purchased from France in the year 1803, Americans continued to push farther west for fertile land that could be used for farming. Due to overcrowding of eastern cities like New York City and Boston many settlers moved out west for a new start. It allowed for colonists to spread out and own untouched fertile land. When white settlers arrived they had realized that most of the land acquired from the territory was occupied by Native Americans for thousands of years. For decades Americans had thought that the land west of the Appalachian Mountains were unoccupied, but they were wrong. There were many tribes that had occupied this land. This included tribes like, The Choctaw, Cherokee, and The Chickasaw. In a sense, Americans had violent outbreaks with the Natives the minute the colonists’ had arrived in the United State. As the colonists’ tried to establish complete dominance and superiority over the Indians, ongoing heated debates over land ownership, and demanding requests to satisfy greed made forceful attacks between the groups unavoidable.

Before Europeans ever ventured to North America, the land had been populated by Native American nations that had their own distinct cultures and social structures. Native Americans had trade routes and established complex relationships between tribes. They were not merely heathens waiting to be civilized by the Europeans. Yet, Europeans would use those justifications to lay claim on their land.

In the time period of 1800-1850 white Americans expanded across the vast lands on the western side of the continent and regularly encountered conflict with various Indian nations. In these documents, interactions for the various Indian nations were subjected to different cultivation between each tribe per say that there were responses that filled different needs and demands. Some tribes provided benefits such as agriculture and household manufacture and produced the idea that settlements to be blended and conform into one people. Other interactions created conflict because some of our land purchases were not 100% in compliance with the constitution. Yet some Indian nations

In the 16th and 17th century, the Americas was being explored by Spain, Britain, and other countries. Many of these countries set up colonies in the Americas where Native Americans were living. Europeans moved into colonization of the Americas and brought changes to the land and its people. Europeans traded, hunted to warfare and personal property. As Europeans established their colonies, their societies also became segmented and divided along religious and racial lines. Most people in the societies were not free. They labored long hours as servants or slaves to produce wealth for others. As more Europeans came to settle the land in the Americas, their presence had a tremendous effect on the native peoples who were living in the Americas. The Native peoples’ life in the Americas provided lots for the Europeans to use. They traded cattle, chickens, horses, pigs, sheep, sugarcane, and wheat, for chocolate, pineapple, potatoes, pumpkins/squash, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and tobacco. The diets of the Natives and Europeans widened as different food types was being traded. The Natives were very open to the Europeans as they came into their land and communicated with the Natives. Over time, the landscape changed as more European communities increased. The Europeans held on to their idea of land ownership while the Natives idea of the land was for the person that need it. Also, the Europeans hoped to change the Natives to Christianity but also trick them into being slaves for the

Native Americans and Europeans, specifically from England, had totally different social systems. These social systems were greatly affected by gender and the political economy. The Native Americans heavily emphasized reciprocity and the value of friendships, thus binding people together and creating lasting relationships. Europeans on the other hand were more focused on acts of trade and the free market economy. Since Europeans relied on a free market economy, owning land was a great way to contribute and show this. Land was very scarce and it showed others the amount of wealth and prestige one had. Since land in Europe was nowhere in sight, many people immigrated to North America in hopes to acquire land thus making them rich and move up in status. The class system was very much alive and defined in Europe. Men had all the power in the world because patriarchy prevailed during this time. However, the Native Americans had a completely different philosophy. Owning property or land never existed within this social system. The Natives did not value wealth or riches but rather friendships and respect. The biggest difference between the two groups was the focal points of the family. European families, towns, and governments revolved around men. Men dominated the household by controlling every aspect of the home and his wife. They represented their family and confined their wives at home. Native Americans had no social system but they greatly respected their female elders. It was

The Cherokees used that land as the main focal point. For instance, "The land on which we stand we have received as an inheritance from our fathers, who possessed it from time immemorial, as a gift from our common Father in Heaven. We have already said, that, when the white man came to the shores of America, our ancestors were found in peaceable possession of this very land. They bequeathed it to us as their children, and we have sacredly kept it, as containing the remains of our beloved men. This right of inheritance we have never ceded, nor ever forfeited." The Cherokee insisted that they inherited this land from their ancestors; therefore, the Cherokee argued for the right to sustain their inherited lands without any conflict The Americans were so overwhelmed with the lust for gold that they ignored the most basic right of the

The native Indians surrounding New England were very closely related in culture but lacked political unity. Most of the tribes were subdivided into many bands. Each of these bands would wage wars against each other although causing few casualties the defeated were humiliated and had to pay tribute to the winner. These Indians were much less demanding from nature as they moved between locations as seasons passed. As the New England colonists saw this they appointed themselves to judge how much land they needed as they took the rest. The Indians did not understand how this working expecting it to be an agreement to share the land although shocked when they were arrested for trespassing. As the colonists kept cutting down the trees creating land

Throughout United States history, various Native American tribes responded differently to the European colonization process. The various ways that the Native American tribes responded to the Europeans coming to their land resulted in different outcomes for each of the tribes as well. When the Europeans first came to America, they did not know how to interact with the various Native American groups that were spread out all over the United States, and the Native Americans also did not know how to respond to the new settlers trying to take over their land.

From the conflict in non-physical it leads to the conflict in physical aspect. To the Native Americans, land is something that they have to respect. On the contrast, the European considered land as a tool to enrich them. As a result, tribes lost massive amounts of land to the U. S. Government, for which they were often neither paid nor compensated. “By 1820, they had lost claim to over half of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Most Native Americans and some whites thought that the government's relations with Native Americans were marked by dishonesty, corruption, and deception. By 1838, almost all native villages in Michigan had been abandoned.”