The Influence Of Europeans On Native American Culture

The discovery of the New World by the Europeans is one of the most important events in American History. To be more specific, the coming of the Spaniards and later the movement of the Africans to Latin America had a lot of effects that are both negative and positive on the Native American’s culture but mostly negative. At first, the Latin Americans had their own cultural practices that they followed. They differentiated themselves by following their own beliefs in many different aspects. When the Spanish people entered The New World they got the chance to see how locals practice their culture and they thought that their practices were uncivilized and barbaric. The Spaniards were the first Europeans that explored and conquered the New World. They conquered Latin America using their strong military power. And they were able to conquer one of the most important empires which is the Aztec empire. The native societies were not advanced in using technologies compared to the Europeans. At the same time, the Europeans hated the local cultures

Foner (2013) explores how the native lives were characterized by “…religious ceremonies that often directly related to farming and hunting” (p. 12). This shows how they were social and how they used to interact with each other every once in a while. Also, the villages supported religious beliefs that were used to set directions of the society’s memberships. Any form of trade involved cultural practices like eating together, smoking tobacco which was originally from Latin America, and practicing other religious rituals designed to show acceptance by their gods. Positions that contained authority, respect, and power were held by religious leaders, medicine men, and other leaders with special powers. However, most of these leaders lost their positions with the arrival of the Spanish, which altered many the way that they used to practice their