Native American Impact

Grade school and even beginning level college history classes have taught early American exploration from a largely one sided view of the conflict between early explorers and Native Americans. The traditional image of the Native Americans as the sole victims, is an oversimplification of the conflict that existed between early explorers, settlers and Native Americans. Through the readings from Columbus, Bradford and some selected Native American writings, the traditional view of the Native American victim will be challenged and a broader view of the conflict will be presented.

The Native Americans are a prime example of the repression, poverty, and discrimination many minority groups have had to endure throughout the years. The Native Americans had their own land, culture and language. They were people able to adapt well to their particular region by hunting, fishing and farming crops. Their cultures primarily rested on wise use of all natural resources available. Many historians believe there were between 6 and 10 million Native Americans living in what later became the United States before the arrival of the Europeans (Parrillo, 2011). This paper will analyze the views the Europeans had about the Natives, what came about from these views and where the Native American

All across the United States, students learn that Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and “discovered” North America. This common misconception creates a false narrative for Americans learning about Christopher Columbus’ legacy - and indeed about the country’s early post-European history. When Christopher Columbus came ashore, North America was already inhabited by hundreds of thousands of native peoples so the concept of Christopher Columbus somehow “discovering” what is now the United States of America is inaccurate. He did, however, set off a process of conquering the land and its people for the Western World. He did so through brutal tactics including forced labor, enslavement, violence, and widespread killing.

The “Pristine Myth” is the idea that the Americans in 1492 were pristine, in other words, they were very much undisturbed. This idea comes from the argument that it is the European colonizers who tainted the environment and evoked the deforestation and erosion. The myth in this is the belief that the Indians by themselves were successful in the deterioration of the landscape. Furthermore, the belief indicates that there is a possibility that the environment was actually healthier in the late 1750 than in the early 1492. In Denevan’s article, “The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americans in 1492”, he tries to demystify this myth and unmask how it has impacted the landscape development today (Denevan, 1992:370).

The Native Americans would offer the Europeans almost everything they had, which included fish and turkey to bread and the companionship of the chief’s daughter. The Europeans mistook the Native American’s generosity as evidence they were childlike. The old land in Columbus’ time was luscious and full of many different types of wildlife. Today that land is used and farmed down to provide food and tools for the Americans living here in the United States. “The land they left is different now. The white pines that towered over New England became masts for the Royal Navy's sailing ships. The redwoods that stretched from the Rockies to the Pacific exist in pockets smaller than the Indians' shrunken reservations. The hours long thunder of bison hooves no longer shakes Kansas or Nebraska, where only a few stretches of grassland remain on the prairie (pg. 6 Lord,

American history frequently centers on the issues of ethnic diversity and resource allocation. In the contemporary, we begin to see the experiences of the Native inhabitants of the Americas in contrast to European settlers and colonizers, is a prime example of this process in motion. When European settlers first arrived to the New World in the 15th century, firstly the Spanish, they brought with them a material cultural based upon an economic standard of resource exploitation, which in a sense was hostile to most of the Native peoples of the Americas. For instance, as Blackhawk notes that, Europeans built permanent settlements consisting of immovable structures, whereas many of the Great Basin peoples were semi-migratory in nature. Additionally, as Europeans claimed possession over the land, its resources, and began a process of territorial delimitation, Native peoples whose lives

It has been thought for many years that the Americas were a vastly unpopulated land until Columbus came. However new evidence disputes this previously thought notion. Archeologist, who have been studying the remains of Native American culture, have found evidence suggesting that the Indians were in the Americas for much longer and in greater numbers than what was believed. This new evidence shows us the impact the Europeans had on the New World and gives us insight into what the Americas were like before the Europeans and what they may have been had the Europeans never settled here.

Since the beginning of time mankind has fought with itself, whether it be through disagreements, disrespect, feuds, or even over the smallest of matters. For example, one of the biggest feuds in American history that just ended recently was between the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s. This just shows you how petty, ignorant, and uncivilized we as a people can become. However, the greatest and most crucial feud of all was between the entire Native American Nation and the United States of America. This war of hate and disrespect towards tribes of people and their culture is uncalled for and has left a stain that will last forever in time. We choose not to realize the great impact it had on the Native American Nation, and most of what really happened is not mentioned in the text books that we have today. Instead we focus more on the three main academics which are reading, writing, and arithmetic. Doing so has left many people clueless about the events that have occurred in the past, and I think the main reason for this is caused by the American government being embarrassed about what they did to a people who meant no harm, a culture that only lashed out due to the European American settlers drawing first blood. This is why I decided to do my essay on this topic. The truth needs to be heard, and the reasoning for all the massacres, the violation of countless treaties, and how we impacted the way of life for the Native Americans needs to be told. Why did we do this to a culture? The

Native Americans before contact with Europeans were set in their ways and were fairly advanced people. There is evidence to suggest that people, such as the Anasazi were living in large city like areas but had to disperse due to long droughts and disease spreading among them. The dispersed people formed various tribes and continued to live relativity simple lives in areas that were so culturally diverse it is mind boggling, especially in the California area. There were around “40,000 Californians, who spoke 50 different languages belonging to at least six language families.”(text, 13) But after the Europeans come tribes are wiped out or forced to integrate with one another due to sickness or war depopulating the tribes, causing a less

Contact between the Native Americans, Africans and Europeans impacted the world and course of history. Predating the arrival of the Europeans, different Native American groups were scattered across the continent, each population, political, economic, and religious beliefs differing. Each group was heavily influenced by the environment and ecosystem they lived in. There was a great amount of gold in Africa, creating a source of power and large amounts of international interest. Three large empires formed from the Sudanic civilization, which was ruled by kings and princes and formed their own traditional monotheism. These king and princes were thought of divine and believed to be able to communicate with spirits. Men would have many wives, women

Charles C. Mann’s seminar and the summer readings changed the way I viewed Native American society before the Europeans arrived in the New World. I knew some of the native tribes were advanced such as the Aztecs and Incas, but I did not think they were very developed yet because of how easy the Spanish were able to knock their empires down. However, I know realize how advanced the Native Americans actually were. In some ways, they were more advanced than the Europeans. For example, the natives in Tenochtitlan had created their own artificial floating gardens, large canals for trading, and advanced irrigation systems. These innovations even surpassed some of the Europeans at the time.

By studying the history of Native Americans, we can understand some of their characteristics, qualities, and perspectives regarding America’s landscape. Many of these still persist today in either the original or a mutated form. The Native American quality of living unsustainably persists today in various forms because it is difficult to notice an unsustainable lifestyle. John Steinbeck, Barry Lopez, and Scott Momaday in The Log From the Sea of Cortez, The American Geographies, and The Way to Rainy Mountain describe this effect.

1491 is a 2005 Non-Fiction novel in which Mann examines the timeline of the Americas, from the arrival of humans, to the creating of the United States. This text is not only about North America, and spend just as much time examining Meso-American society. The title explains Mann’s main theme of the novel, to make “New Revelations” about the first Americans. There are two important takeaways from this novel. One being that the Native Americans were not going to be colonized without a

The effect of European settlement on Native Americans was devastating, on account of, the Europeans only wanted land and would accomplish this task by any means necessary. Despite the icy landscapes and coastlines, the Native Americans journeyed from Asia on foot or by boat to at different times and over thousands of year, making them the first to inhabit North American (Kincheloe, 2007). With this notion, the Native Americans never imagined how the European’s lifestyle would impact their lives drastically. First, the European brought diseases causing the Native Americans to become ill, due to, lacking immunity from the diseases and illness. Thus, the diseases eliminated many Native Americans.

In modern America, we often take for granted the natural world that surrounds us and the American culture which is built upon it. For many of us, we give little thought to the food sources that sustain and natural habitats that surround us because when viewed for what they are, most people assume that they have “simply existed” since the country was founded. However, the documentary ‘America Before Columbus’ provided this writer an extremely interesting record of how the America we know came to exist. In the documentary, one of the most interesting discussions centered on the fact that it was not merely the arrival of conquistadors and colonists that irrevocably changed the landscape of the Americas, but that it was also the coined term known as the “Columbian Exchange” that afforded these travelers the ability to proliferate so successfully. The basic definition of the Columbian exchange is one that defines the importation of European flora and fauna. It could also loosely represent other imports, both intended and unintended, such as tools, implements, and even disease. Armed with this definition, it takes little imagination to envision how differently the Americas might have developed had any significant amount of the native European flora, fauna, or other unintended import not been conveyed to the Americas through the Columbian Exchange. Beyond the arrival of explorers, settlers, and colonists to the New World, the breadth of what the Columbian Exchange represented to