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Essay On Native Americans Before The Columbian Exchange

641 Words3 Pages

When the Europeans first made contact with the Native Americans, it changed the nature of the Americas and the people living there forever. The first contact and the results that followed forever changed the human population, animals, and agriculture. Native American civilization was changed by thee major causes, European disease, the Columbian Exchange, and the settlement and domination by European powers. Pre-Columbian Native Americans are vastly different to the stereotypical Native American that most think of. Before the Columbian Exchange, many of the staples of Native American life just did not exist. There were no horses, no oxen, and essentially no beasts of burdens. Native Americans had to rely almost entirely on human labor. In North America, many Native Americans lived …show more content…

The Columbian exchange vastly altered the landscape of the Americas, with the most dramatic result being disease. European diseases absolutely devastated the Native American population. Some estimates put it at ninety-percent of the Native American population being killed. This alone had a bigger impact on Native American populations than any other. The population of the Americas prior to Columbus’s arrival is estimated between twenty to one hundred million, by the time of the American Revolution, a mere ten percent remained. This had a substantial impact on the battles fought between the Europeans and the Native Americans. The European domination of the Americas is much more due to disease than European technological superiority. There were some good results of the Columbian Exchange, however, as Native Americans gained access to horses, oxen, and other beasts of burdens for the first time. This radically changed how many Native American societies operated. With horses, Native Americans were able to much more easily hunt buffalo, creating the popular imagery of Native Americans hunting buffalo on

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