When Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New World, he was unaware of the significance of his finding. He believed that he had found an westward route to southeast Asia, and died believing that. However, when more and more explorers made the voyage, they found that what Columbus had found was not a new route to southeast Asia, but an entirely “new” continent, with their own indigenous people. These natives were misnamed as Indians, which is a european misnomer as Columbus was among the first to interact with these natives and his belief of his accomplishment led to this mistaken understanding of who these people were. It was not long before Europeans began to make the perilous voyage to North America, seeking to start anew, with a clean slate. These immigrants forever changed the lives of those who were natives to the continent in terms of their socioeconomic standards, cultural …show more content…
It was the European immigrants who brought a new, “modern” socioeconomic system and implemented it with the natives who did most of their business with quipu beads and basic bookkeeping techniques of the sort. With the beginnings of the Triangle Slave trade, there was a clear establishment of social class in the Americas, most prevalently in the Caribbean where people’s statuses were determined by their blood lineage. This introduction of class based on blood lineage was unheard of before European immigration because class was not really a thing in pre-European Native societies, as social distinctions did not exist based on that concept. Economically speaking, Europeans brought exotic trade commodities to trade with the Natives, and moreover, made much more profit than usual since the Native Americans had never been exposed to these