Native Americans During The Colonization

Before the white men had moved west Native Americans occupied the land west of the Mississippi River. The Plains Indians were nomadic tribes that moved around throughout western North America. Then in the mid-1800s the east of the United States was starting to get crowded; the idea of moving west was beginning to look very entertaining. There were a lot of natural resources out west such as, precious metals, wood, In 1849 gold was discovered in California and the 1849 Gold Rush occurred. Hundreds of thousands of men moved west to pan and mine for gold. Some of the Americans moved west because they thought it was their God given right to expand throughout the entire continent; no matter who lived there already. Now the settlers were walking right through Native American territory and that angered the natives. This caused skirmishes between the two peoples. On top of that the United States government was passing all sorts of acts to isolate Native Americans. All of these things affected Native Americans. Western expansion and government affected Native Americans by depletion of resources, assimilations, and governmental actions.

Native Americans were primarily affected by westward expansion in the sense that it was the reason they not only lost their land, but they lost their culture and rights. The words of Santana, Chief of the Kiowas, are a perfect description for this, “These soldiers cut down my timber; they kill my buffalo...”.

Native Americans were affected negatively in the United States Western Expansion. The Americans stripped the Natives from their culture, land, and the buffalo. From all that Native Americans onced lived all over the West were now living on reservations. The Natives suffered at the Sand Creek massacre, which killed over 200 Native Americans. Also another battle that affected the Native Americans negatively was the Battle of Little Bighorn. The battle was over the Sioux’s right to Sioux land with Sitting Bull as the Sioux war chief and spiritual leader and George A. Cluster as the commander of U.S troops. It wasn’t just land that affected the Natives it was also their culture. Natives boys had their culture stripped away. There clothes,

America’s westward expansion really affected the lives of the Native Americans in several ways. Since Americans were wanting land for farming, ranching, and mining, it took away the Native Americans land for hunting and gathering. In general, this dramatically changed the face of American history.

Imagine a person bought something that the person valued. The person was the owner of the product and took good care of it.Then, all of a sudden, a stranger comes and takes that product and declares it “discovered”. Now since the stranger “discovered” it, the product now has to be shared among them. This is similar to what happened to Native Americans in North America. Native Americans owned and lived in North America for several thousand years. Then, all of a sudden, European explorers came to North America and claimed the land “discovered”. Europeans started moving into the land and later, started sharing the land. Encounters between Europeans and Native Americans in the colonial era led to the exchange of diseases with Native Americans,

Beginning in the Sixteenth Century, Europeans sought to escape religious and class persecution by engaging on a journey to the New World. However, they were unaware that this “New World” was already inhabited by many groups of Native Americans, who had been established on the continent for thousands of years. At first, the two ethnic groups lived in relative peace. The colonists of Jamestown survived due to Powhatan’s tribe teaching them how to cultivate the land. However, things took a twisted turn as the colonists grew greedy. Due to cultural differences, there was stark tension between the Indian groups and European settlers in New England prior to 1750, which tremendously influenced early political means, social life, and the economy.

After Europeans first encountered Native Americans they did not fully understand the religions and culture of the different tribes. The Europeans Viewed the Natives as a lesser people that needed to be forcefully assimilate to European standards.The Native Americans traditional religions were throw aside by the Europeans who valued Christianity. They were also viewed as an easy resource and were enslaved.

After the readings and discussions this week on Native Americans, the information conflicts with my previous knowledge.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed west and found himself on the shores of a new world. His mission was to secure new land for Spain. Other European countries heard of his findings, they too crossed the ocean in hopes of securing new opportunities in this newly discovered land such as fur trading and gold mining. Little did they know that a community of indigenous people had already settled in this land thousands of years before. The Europeans decided to negotiate with the natives in order to set up their own communities in the land but the Native Americans held beliefs about society and religion that were far different from their European peers. Europeans thought the Indians to be “Noble Savages, gentle and friendly, but uncivilized, brutal, and barbaric” (citation). They could not see past their own

The world’s history had a turning point in the fifteenth century. The oceans were no longer an obstacle as previously seen to reach beyond. The Europeans felt inferior to the power and wealth of the Islamic world and saw the possibility to claim power and richness by conquering the oceans. During the 15th century and the 16th century Europeans established colonies in the Americas, the so called “New World”. When Europeans arrived in the Americas, most did not even consider that the peoples they encountered had cultural and religious traditions that were different from their own; most believed indigenous communities had no culture or religion at all.

Although the natives might have never made it to modern day like customs, the impact of the European exploration and colonization on the native people was through the conversion to Christianity; death/diseases; and the exchanges and teachings towards Natives. Without all the modifications the Europeans made on the Natives, and also colonizing in the Americas we wouldn’t have mixed race population or event the today’s united states. If the European explorers never came over to the US, some generations of family in today’s time probably would have never existed. The pain, sweat, blood, and tears that led into creating the nation, we have now been crucial during those times. It was unjust and unethical for the Europeans to treat the Natives as

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.

When the Europeans came over the Atlantic ocean, and reached the shore of the wrong continent, they unknowingly changed the entire world to this current day. The English annihilated over ninety-percent of the Native American population. The Spanish wiped away an ancient religion. The Europeans changed the lives of every tribe they came into contact with. The thriving populations of the Americas had been doomed the moment European ships landed on the coast of their home.

What do the people that colonized these lands before other countries came here want to be called? Has anyone truly asked them? Instead they have been given names over the years from other people, such as Indians, which is said to have come from Columbus when he landed in America but thought he was perhaps in India (d’Errico, 2016). You have all these given names like American Indian, Native American, You have a term, American Indian, which during a census in 1995 49% preferred over being called Native American that came back with 37.35% preferred (Walbert, 2016), but these are still controversial due to the definition of native and the bad taste of the word Indian. So as I asked before, has anyone just came out and said “What do you want

European settlers had the idea that by some divine right, all land was created for them and the control of the mother country. The land that that did not occupy would not prosper without their influence and would go back to the middle ages (Fanon 51). The burden of God's good work entailed white men to impose his European religion, medicines, and civilized practices onto natives that they believed to be evil because of the plague and disease they carried. The natives were called savages or other primitive nicknames because of their underdeveloped technology and weaponry compared to the settlers (Fanon 41). Settlers consider native's aggression as evil acts against god.