Hardships In A Hard Land Essay

Native American’s greeted the new colonists in a friendly, welcoming manner from the start. The new colonists considered this a sign of weakness, stating how easy it would be to dominate the native people. When Columbus arrived, there were 12-15 million Native Americans in the Americas, in 1890 there was under 250,000, with 98% of the population gone. With the belief in Manifest Destiny, the colonists forced the Native American’s off their own land, farther and farther from where they originated from, and eventually onto reservations, removing them from their way of life and their culture. During the transition from their homeland to reservations, many of the Native American’s died due to disease, cold, hunger, and the hardships of travel. Along with the annexation, the colonists demanded assimilation.

When the colonists began to arrive in America they were surprised to find that the land was already occupied by various Natives. Because the lives of 16th century Natives was very different from what

The Indians were well adapted to the land, therefore they were able to use swamps to their advantage and also use the same swamp to the colonist’s disadvantage. Indians who frequently migrated and had no special meaning for their personal equity, never placed an identity to it. Unlike the Indians, the colonists believed their property was meaningful. Lepore explains that religion contributed a major part to the colonist idea of their own, “the colonists’ sense of predestination…, their natural affinity with the land, and their cultural proclivity to conflate property with identity, all combined to produce this oneness of bodies and mind.” The colonist viewed the Indians as savages due to the misunderstanding values of land, property, and equity. In addition, the colonists, who were mostly Puritans believed the war was God punishing them for the failure of the colonists to convert the Indians to Christianity. On the other hand, the Indians had other spiritual faith that collides with the colonist religious

America — a land known for its ideals of freedom and new opportunities, a nation built under the idea that every man and women is created equal. However, the definition of what makes a person an American is entirely different from what it is that makes up America, itself. J.Hector St. John Crevecoeur, author of Letters from an American Farmer (1782), exposes what he believes makes an American. However, when compared to the standards of what makes an American in today’s world, it seems that becoming an American then was much simpler then, than it is today. The definition of an American is always evolving due to the influences of our changing nation. During a simpler time, Crevecoeur defined an American as someone of European

Native Americans were somehow powerful and had everything that English colonists wanted. They were seeking wealth and they had the answers in Jamestown. When tobacco start growing, the English colony became powerful and expanded their colony over Jamestown peninsula. Powhatan Indians were disappointed when English did not maintain a trading way with them. In 1622 Native Americans took a step forward by attacking the colony. They killed 347 colonists. As it is stated on the second chapter of the book, The American Yawp, “The colonist retaliated and revisited the massacres upon Indian settlements many times over. The Massacre freed the colonist to drive the Indians off their land.” Once the English colony gained power, they forgot about the people who kept them alive, they forgot about Native Americans. English colonists were so ungrateful and blind because they had one goal in mind, and that was to be wealthy. They didn't care how they would gain wealth. The only thing that mattered to them was gaining

The Chesapeake also had its own obstacle brought about by nature. Diseases such as dysentery, malaria, and typhoid struck hard, cutting off numerous years of life expectancy for the people of the Chesapeake. Since health is a major concern for a developing colony, disease in a colony tends to eat at the morale of a town. This was demonstrated in the Chesapeake where disease cost many colonists their lives, especially women, leaving many men frustrate with little hope for having families. This harsh reality along with the arduous voyage decreased the amount of women and children who immigrated to the region (Doc C,F). Unlike their Southern counterparts, New England was healthier and not ravaged by disease. The cleaner conditions increased the colonists’ life expectancy by several years. Because of the thriving conditions of the New England society, many English emigrants emigrated with their entire family, as exemplified in Document B, “Joseph Hull…Agnes Hull, his wife…Joan Hull, his daughter…Joseph Hull, his son”. Unlike most Chesapeake children who would be lucky if they lived to see both their parents, the New

Many forms of diseases that colonists encountered were never seen before and had no known remedies during colonization. As a result many colonists had little to no immunity when being in contact with an infected individual. The most common way to cure an individual of a disease at the time was a medical procedure called bloodletting. At the time, bloodletting was deemed effective however it did little to nothing to actually help the patient. However, approaching the matter with a positive outlook on diseases, diseases helped build immunity among the colonists and with this pushed the colonists to develop medicine to combat these illnesses. Through experience, colonists were able to broaden their knowledge about diseases and better prepare themselves in the upcoming future. When discussing diseases in colonial America there are two that are predominantly the most important, Yellow Fever and

The diseases the Europeans brought with them affected the indigenous negatively because it killed a large portion of the population in a painful way. The Natives had very little diseases before the Europeans invaded their land. Unlike people in the Old World, the Natives did not farm cattle or pigs and did not live near the animals they did have. They never had the opportunity to develop immunities to diseases that the cattle and Europeans carried when they came upon their shores. The diseases spread quickly and attacked the indigenous in gruesome ways. Smallpox caused sores to erupt on their skins that were so painful that an Aztec account states that “[the sick] could only lie on their beds like corpses” (Document 4). The pain would not

Crops from the New World were also brought to Europe. Because of the surplus in crops, the Indians gave the Europeans a lot of crops in exchange for manufactured goods, which negatively impacted the Indians because they would run out of crops eventually (Doc. 7). With manufactured goods, the Europeans brought smallpox, influenza, typhus, measles, malaria, diphtheria, and whooping cough. The Indians taught the colonial men about tobacco and cocaine, therefore both parties suffered health issues. Over the course of a decade the population of the Indians declined from over 25 millions to just about 1 million people (Doc.

As colonists from Britain began to enter the New World in the 1600’s, they colonized much of the eastern border of Northern America in the New World, and invaded the lands of the Native Americans, striving to drive them out of the area. The British felt superior to the Native, looking down upon them as ‘savage-like’ and uncivilized. They tried to ‘civilize’ the Natives, but the inevitable result of Native and colonist interactions was the decimation of Native populations due to conflict, disease, and other such factors. These interactions with Natives were not simply an obstacle in the path of the colonists; rather they had great influence on the colonists’ lifestyles, including language. Even though the colonists held their belief in superiority,

Loker is emphasizing that the early settlers had no knowledge of medicine and as a result, the majority of the settlers suffered and died. Up until the late 1700s, Europeans traveled to America to escape epidemics such as small pox, cholera, and influenza just to name a few. As a result, these diseases were spread to America and led to the death of a number of new settlers. From the late 1700s to the mid-1800s, more and more was learned about medicine, health, and sanitation and resulted better living conditions for

During American colonial times, the native peoples of the new world clashed often with the English settlers who encroached upon their lifestyle. Many horror stories and clichés arose about the natives from the settlers. As one might read in Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative, often these disputes would turn to violence. To maintain the process of the extermination of the natives alongside Christian moral beliefs, one of the main tenets of colonial life was the belief that the natives were “savages”; that they were morally and mentally inferior to the English that settled there. As is the case with many societies, certain voices of dissent began to spin. These voices questioned the assertions

Beginning with the newly founded nation: America, many colonial people encountered illnesses they have never been subjected to.

The new English settlers wanted to reshape the Indian society and culture. The “ settlers spread over the land, threatened Indians’ ways of life “(Foner 56). The settlers were changing the agriculture and hunting techniques that the Indian people used to have. Some of the Indian people did not agree with them and a group of Indians confronted settlers in Chesapeake. The Indians stated “ you should rather conform yourselves to the customs of our country , than impose yours on us “ (Foner 56). Settlers were changing drastically the lives of the Indian people. The Englishmen arrived in Jamestown with “ epidemics that decimated Indians populations”(Foner 56). The Indians traded goods with the settlers and the settlers did the same. But the settlers were also spreading the diseases that they had brought from Europe. The Indians had never been exposed to diseases , their immune system was weak and the disease were more powerful than them and killed many Indians. The Indian people thought that the English settlers were just interested in establishing a trading post but “ once it became clear that the English were interested in establishing a permanent and constantly expanding colony... conflict with local Indians was inevitable” (Foner 59). The Indians attacked Virginian settlers which resulted in a massacre for Indians . Thus after many fights the settlers won and continued their expansion in America and they formed

A child with no imagination is like an Earth without wildlife. Cold, boring, and desolate. Dickens cleverly names the three sub books in Hard Times Sowing, Reaping, and Garnering. As Galatians 6:7 reads, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. Whatever a man sows, he will reap in return.” Dickens alludes to the bible and general farming terms in the titles of the three books to condemn the education system of the 19th Century Victorian era and furthermore foreshadow the plot of the books.