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On October 12, 1492, an Italian merchant by the name of Christopher Columbus landed on an island in the New World. With him he brought three ships and a small crew of Spaniards. After exploring other islands, Columbus came one that he called Hispaniola; here, they found seemingly primitive and naϊve natives that they immediately began to take advantage of. However, little did they know that this first meeting would bring exploration of South and Central America that would wreak havok among the Natives. Throughout the period of European Expansion, Natives were ripped from their home and forced to work day in and day out.
Before Christopher Columbus had arrived the birth-place of the Arawak was the Bahamas. The Bahamas had very few riches but had many spices Columbus had ordered for at least 3 ships to sail. Ferdinand and Isabella had paid the costs of the voyage for Columbus. Christopher was also promised 10% of profits if Gold or spices was brought back. Columbus then ruins the lives of people when he finds Gold when he meets the Arawak`s.
The Columbian Exchange between the new world and the old world significantly change people’s lives. After 1492, Europeans brought in horses to America which changes the nomadic Native American groups’ living from riding on buffalos to horses. This interchange also change the diet of the rest of the world with foods such as corns (maize), potatoes which are major diet for European nowadays. Besides all the animals from old world to the new world, Spanish also brought in the diseases that Native Americans were not immune of, such as smallpox which led to a large amount of Native Americans’ deaths.
From colonial times until the end of the Indian Wars in 1890, the people in America went through a series of unfair and unfortunate events. Mainly for the Indians which are also called the first peoples. These events could have been handled with much more consideration for the Indians. There are many times when the Americans went too far including the Removal Act of 1830, the Reservation System, and the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.
Christopher Columbus was an explorer and navigator born in 1451 in Genoa, Italy. When Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Spain in 1492, he hoped to reach eastern Asia. He thought he had reached Asia when he landed on an island in the Caribbean Sea. In fact he had opened up to Europeans a new world with two continents—North America and South America—and many islands.
Before the Spanish ship that changed it all, which arrived in the “New World” in 1492, thriving organized communities of native people had centuries of history on the land. That ship, skippered by Christopher Columbus, altered the course of both Native American and European history. 1492 sparked the fire of cultural diffusion in the New World which profoundly impacted the Native American peoples and the European settlers. Prior to European contact, Native Americans lived as hunter-gatherers, living and traveling in groups of typically less than 300 people. These Native Americans spoke over 400 languages and practiced a myriad of different religions (The American Pageant).
The Europeans were able to conquer the Americas because even though it was by “accident,” they were still more prepared for what was to come. Jared Diamond calls the European “accidental conquerors.” Diamond calls his theory geographical luck and concludes that the only way the Europeans were able to dominate the Americas was because of the way the ocean patterns happened to flow. The geographical wind patterns caused the ships to sail towards the Incas and the Aztecs and when the Europeans arrived they tried to conquer the Aztecs and Incas, they succeed for a number of reasons. One reason that they were able to conquer the Americas was because of their technological advances.
A repeated flow of immigrants provided settlers to develop communities along the Atlantic coast; pioneers pushed the expansion of the United States westward, and laborers for U.S industrialization in the North and agriculturalization in the South. Together, these immigrants built one of the most diverse nations in the world. By 1790, the U.S population primarily consisted of English, but also included Dutch, French, German, Irish, Scottish, and Spanish descent; Native Americans did not count. During the 1800s, Europe experienced a drastic decline in their population when the potato famine brought in 1,029,486 Irish and 976,072 Germans to the United States. The immigrant population continued to grow during the 1870s when people began coming
According to an Oregon population graph which showed the population of Native Americans and non-Indians, the Native American population dropped drastically between the years 1805 and 1841, while the non-Indian population increased greatly between the years 1841 and 1870. The vast amount of Americans moving Westward resulted in many Native Americans dying. An extensive part of Native American deaths were a result of the new diseases that Americans brought while traveling through American Indian territory. Due to the fact that many of the Native Americans had never experienced these
Between 1870 and 1900, an estimated 25 million immigrants had made their way to the United States. This era, titled the Gilded Age, played an extremely important role in the shaping of American society. The United States saw great economic growth and social changes; however, as the name suggested, the Gilded Ages hid a profound number of problems. During this period of urbanization, the publicizing of wealth and prosperity hid the high rates of poverty, crime, and corruption. European immigrants who had come to the United States in search of jobs and new opportunities had fallen into poverty as well as poor working and living conditions.
Native Americans flourished in North America, but over time white settlers came and started invading their territory. Native Americans were constantly being thrown and pushed off their land. Sorrowfully this continued as the Americans looked for new opportunities and land in the West. When the whites came to the west, it changed the Native American’s lives forever. The Native Americans had to adapt to the whites, which was difficult for them.
The American Revolution lasted six years and the impacts of it were everlasting(Schultz, 2010). The effects were felt by every group of people in North America and many worldwide. Even though George Washington had all of his troops vaccinated against smallpox, the colonists were not so fortunate and as a results some estimates are that as many as one hundred and thirty thousand people died from this dreaded disease. This loss of life combined with the divisions among the colonies into those loyal to Britain and those who wanted freedom would forever change the way of life for the colonists.
Throughout the 19th century Native Americans were treated far less than respectful by the United States’ government. This was the time when the United States wanted to expand and grow rapidly as a land, and to achieve this goal, the Native Americans were “pushed” westward. It was a memorable and tricky time in the Natives’ history, and the US government made many treatments with the Native Americans, making big changes on the Indian nation. Native Americans wanted to live peacefully with the white men, but the result of treatments and agreements was not quite peaceful. This precedent of mistreatment of minorities began with Andrew Jackson’s indian removal policies to the tribes of Oklahoma (specifically the Cherokee indians) in 1829 because of the lack of respect given to the indians during the removal laws.
This resulted from the arrival of the Spaniards in 1492. In only 100 years, the Native American population was only about 750,000; 24 million less than the original 25,000,000 plus. Christopher Columbus had an incredibly negative impact on the world because he enslaved the Native Americans, didn’t help the kind Natives when they got infected by diseases that the Spaniards had brought to America, and killed off most of the Native American population. The tactics he chose to use were violent and destructive by the standards back then and now prove he was a not a hero but a
He claimed that there had to have been around 90 to 112 million natives there before Columbus; this meant that there would have been more people living in the Americas than in Europe at the time. With all of the new claims being made, many people have been choosing a side to debate over. It is the high counters verses the low counters; Dobyn’s revised figure of 18 million is debated against Douglas H. Ubelaker’s estimates of 1.8 million natives. For the time being, no definitive data exists. 3.
