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Differences Between Europeans And Indigenous People

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Before Europeans came to North America, It was populated by many different tribes of Indigenous peoples. These tribes, for the most part had their own political, economic, and military systems that were eventually changed and manipulated because of the invading nations. In the books A land so Strange and Jacksonland, we see through the eyes of Cabeza de Vaca and Andrew Jackson exactly how Indigenous people were at the very beginning, and the changes they had to undertake. Obviously the books show us the view of the Europeans rather than the Indigenous people themselves, but in certain recollections from people like John Ross we see their viewpoints and why they did certain things. From the information presented in both these books, it’s clear …show more content…

The Spanish superiority over the Indigenous people ended when they needed to travel along the coast by creating rafts for transportation, at the cost of their weapons. The way they interacted with the Indigenous people completely changed, instead of conquering they had to rely on them to survive. Eventually the castaways became traveling healers who passed from village to village using their skills and higher knowledge to cure the sick/ wounded. Before the castaways, their ways of healing comprised of mainly praying and blowing into the sick mouths of people, which we know doesn’t really work. Now that they were helping the indians instead of conquering them, they were treated with respect and were given shelter, food, and even gifts. The castaways had a following of around 3,000- 4,000 people following them, basically treating them as a powerful god. However while all of this was happening to the castaways, the main spanish colonists led by Guzman were treating the Indigenous people just like Narvaez and his group did when they first arrived. Guzman left a trail of destruction including the great kingdom of michoacan where they tortured and executed their ruler Cazonci. In the process of these conquests, he enslaved approximately 8,000 Indigenous peoples, treating them as wealth and putting them to work as slaves. Even though Cabeza and the castaways learned a lot from the indians, nothing they say could change the direction of Guzman and his forces, basically showing the

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In “The Relación of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, 1542, Cabeza notes, “And two days later, I removed the two stitches from the Indian and he was healed. And this cure gave us a very great reputation among them [Indian Tribes] throughout the whole land” (Document C). Word quickly spread about 37-year-old castaway’s triumphant performance in the operation. Cabeza de Vaca gained trust, and gradually, an amicable relationship among the Native American groups in the vicinity. The Indians now accepted him and treated him as among themselves, providing him the necessities for

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It is shown that the respect for the Native Americans helped Cabeza, because he writes,“We were people of ill fortune and no worth... The indians were… not at all convinced… we cured the sick… (the spaniards) killed those who were well”(Document D). The Native Americans respected Cabeza, because he showed them respect. If he hadn’t shown any respect, he would have been taken as a slave or killed. The Native Americans thought the spaniards were bad people, so they would have thought the same if Cabeza had acted the

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As a slave, “he befriended his captors and was therefore allowed to serve as a trader”(Document B). The Spanish conquistador met four Indian groups along his journey, which were the Charrucos, Mariames, Yguases, and Quevenes(Document A). Also, when the Spaniards, also known as the “Christians”, contacted “Cabeza, his fellow survivors, and the Indians following him”(Document D). When the Spaniards tried to convince the Indians that Cabeza was a person they should distrust, they were “not at all convinced, saying that the Spaniards were lying”(Document D). Because Cabeza respected the Indians, they grew trust in him so they helped the Spanish soldier to survive.

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However, after reading this I found that they heavily traded with different tribes and communicated with one another. Unfortunately, when it came to the Europeans, the Native Americans weren’t so welcoming, and understandably so. The Vision

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Before Columbus arrived, Native Americans were already here in present day United States. They already had established their civilizations and the continent was filled with several hundred tribes with their own culture. However, centuries later their population massively declined due to various reasons. The decline of Native Americans was contributed to by reasons such as constant and relentless wars against them, their own illusion of a wrong prophecy and dishonest acts and treaties made to eliminate them and their culture. Americans in the mid 1800’s had imagined the west to be “virgin lands” that was awaiting the settlements of white people.

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In 1598 Juan de Oñate and his men killed nearly two thousand Native Americans from the Acama Pueblo in retaliation for the death of eleven of his men. They then cut off one foot from every one of the men of fighting age in the two hundred men, women, and children that he spared. Some Spanish conquistadors had very little respect for the lives of the Natives. To many of them they were nothing but savages inhabiting land that they felt could be put to better use. While many Spanish explorers and priests came to the Americas with the intention of “helping” the Natives, whether or not the Natives ended up better worse off, some Spanish did truly have the mission that they wanted to make the Native’s lives better.

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However, the Natives had not done anything wrong to make the Spaniards act to cruel towards them. Las Casas wrote in great detail what the Spaniards did. He wrote of the destruction and slaughter that the Spanish brought to the Natives. Las Casas wrote about indians being thrown into pits of stakes. He wrote of children being torn away from their mothers and killed.

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These differences were also smaller details under the larger ideas of barbarianism, new cultures, and the even bigger idea of inhumanity. The Spanish saw the Native Americans as slaves because they showed to be hard laborers and gave into the Spanish power. The Native Americans had a natural knack for manual tasks, so much that most Spaniards compared them to insects because both insects and Native Americans could do certain tasks that normal humans, such as high class Spaniards, could not. The Spaniards would never do such work as they believed that work was meant for slaves. When the Spanish took over the Aztec capital city, Sepúlveda remarks of how the Native Americans were “oppressed and fearful at the beginning.”

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Upon the first colonial establishments, the Europeans viewed Native Americans as uncultured, unintelligent, and uncivilized. The first colonizers found themselves ultimately superior to the perceived rudimentary cultural and societal customs that were observed. Native Americans viewed Europeans as a strictly one sided cultural mass enforcement foreign establishment, stopping at nothing to enforce their perceived superiority in all forms of cultural and societal aspects. Differences in land use, gender roles, and societal history added to the wedging and hostility between the Native Americans and European people. Upon the European's first impression of Native American culture, the first notable aspect of their "species" and society was their promising outlook as potential slave laborers.

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The cruelty which the Spaniards would make these people endure was horrific. Bartolomé de Las Casas recounts how the Spaniards used to slice the hands of the natives and send them to their chiefs, or play games which consisted of them betting on whether they could behead the natives with one blow from their

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