Colonial Period: The Impression Of Europeans And Native Americans

The Europeans were the first in the United States to express their hatred and racist behavior toward the Native Americans once they settled onto U.S. soil in 1609. Their actions and behavior follows the conflict perspective, considering the elite (Europeans) did everything in their power to dominate the weak and powerless (Native Americans), thus denying the Native American of any resources found in the United States. Even then, the

The initial contact between Native Americans and Europeans was rather easygoing. Both cultures didn’t quite seem to understand each other and their ways. Nonetheless, both parties found methods to be partially reliant (for the Native Americans lesser than the former) on the other in ways that helped settle the original inept feelings. An example of such alliance was the start of Chesapeake colony, Virginia. Early settlements were dismantled by the inadequate environment and lack of food–only until the collaboration with the Powhatan tribe were they able to then barely survive. With the exchange of survival, the Native Americans were given goods such as metal tools, objects and other modern goods that helped ease day-to-day Indian lifestyle. Another example of positive collaboration in the

European explorers first landed on the shores of what would later become North America more than 500 years ago. Not long after the first explorers had entered the "New World" they found out that they were not alone on this new frontier. Their neighbors in this new land were the Native Americans who had been there for centuries, virtually unaware of life outside the continent. Thus began an inconsistent and often times unstable relationship between the European settlers and the North American Indians. Two nations who had particularly interesting relationships with the Native Americans were the British and the French, both of whom took different approaches to their relations with the Indians economically as well as culturally. Neither nation had complete trust for the Indians, nor did the Indians ever completely trust the men who arrived on "floating islands with many tall trees". Nonetheless, they did interact with one another in their daily lives. Both economically and culturally the French and British went about their interactions with the Native Americans differently. Through first hand writings and documents as well as observations by historians, it is evident that the British and French interacted with the Indians of North America in different ways.

The Colonial-Indian relations have been very poor throughout the very first contact with each other. The Native Americans often raided the villages of European settlers to gain revenge on the Europeans who had pillaged their land for slaves and other resources the colonial settlers needed at that time. The colonial government also had a role in the poor relations between the two. Very often the government would make treaties and break those treaties. The relations between the Native Americans and European colonists were very poor and hostile.

During the beginning of the colonization period within America, many Europeans were escaping their lives in Europe. America delivered Europeans from the social, political, and economic inequality. They no longer had to feel apprehension from the crop famines. They finally had a chance of freedom. When Europeans first encountered Native Americans, they saw them as the exemplification of freedom. Even though colonists desired freedom, they felt that Native Americans had the wrong type of freedom. They thought they were too free and lacked the structure that civilization provided. Because of the multitude of Natives in America they had no choice but to live around them, but the treatment of the Natives between the French and the English were vastly

Indians perceived Europeans as a problem. Indians didn’t like their government, they liked their way and their chief. Indians didn’t like the Europeans culture. The Indians thought of it as bad. The Indians didn’t like the Europeans religion either. The Europeans didn’t, think all living things had a soul and they didn’t give thanks to their first kill. Indians didn’t like Europeans, because they were trying to control them, take their land. It shaped Europeans and Indians relationship as a bad one. They got into wars, and killed each

Relationships between English settlers and Native American tribes were central to both the successes and the failures of the early English colonies in America. Although conflict often characterized relationships between the so-called “Indians” and the English, many of the initial colonies owed their survival and successes to the natives. The Native Americans were valuable trading partners, occasional allies, and aid in sickness and famine. However, various conflicts between tribes and settlers lead to attacks, murders, abductions, and even war. In other parts of America, natives were abused and sold into slavery by the Spanish, while treated as allies and partners in trade by the French. English relationships with the American Indians

Few topics of the colonial era of North America generate as much debate as the conversion of labor in 17th century Virginia from English indentured servitude to one based primarily on African slaves. Historians have attempted to ascertain why Virginia tobacco planters determined that an economic system based on African slave labor was advantageous to the traditional servant system used up to that point, and why that change increased rapidly beginning in the 1670s. The significance of these years on American History justifies the level of historical debate and amount of scholarship written on this subject. The decision by a relatively small number of Virginia inhabitants to evolve their means of labor to one founded on forced emigration and servitude, would prove to have profound economic and social implications that have not completely been removed in today’s society, three centuries later. It ushered in a system, and an era, which will forever result in one of the darkest stains to the legacy of the United States of America.

Have you ever wanted to know what life was really like back in the colonial days? If you have you are not alone, many people have studied primary and secondary sources for a long time. Although some accurate details have come up, life back in the colonial days was not what it is said to be.

f the Indians have never been out of the forest, they will not refuse to return to the forest, it will not be tragic death. Just like a Fang Niuwa never been out of the mountains, and his wish is to grow up quickly cow, make money and have more cattle, then bigger can hope to sell cattle to marry his wife, and is selling the cattle can feed baby, then the baby becomes again wish. Then one day, a good-hearted people the baby out of the mountain, let him know that the cattle grew better than looking forward to the things of the world, and then you say that you have to talk to the baby back in the mountains or going to die and I think ...... the truth about this.

During the early colonial period in America, new American settlers did not get along well with the Natives. The Native people gave the American people many problems when they came to settle in the New World. Most of these problems included the Natives capturing Americans and keeping them as hostages during the wars. Depending on the reasons why these Americans were captured and who captured them, depended on what kind of experience these Americans would have during their captivity. The Americans experiences would also depend on what gender they were and that would determine how they were treated and what role they would play in the tribe. During the early colonial time, there were two important American settlers named Mary Rowlandson and

It is important to note here that it is very easy to villainize the European Americans, and without a doubt there were many people who used the education of the Native Americans to do very villainous things and on the whole the Native American Boarding schools were an exercise in abuse, but (and this is a big but) by and large the intention of the European Americans was to help the native Americans. The situation is not a black and white “Good” vs. “Evil”. The problem was cultural. The Native way of thinking was a problem for the European Americans who had found the land and wanted to use it their way. There was, if course a contrast to how the Native Americans viewed the world and their place in it and when the Native Americans fought back against the appropriation of their land, there was blood shed on both sides. This lead to the European view that the Indian was not to be trusted. There were also differences in religion. One has to remember that the Christian religion dominated the European population of U.S. and one

Like you, I was also struck a bit by the realization that education reflects the American colonial experience, and it is skewed to reflect European experiences and historical traditions. When I was younger, my grandfather always told me that history is written by the " winners." Perhaps I was too young to understand it, or dwell on it, until recently. Growing up in Poland under the watchful eye of the " big brother" from the East, as we called the Soviet Union, the history of Poland I had learned in schools excluded a lot of information. Information which had been brought to the daylight just recently, after the fall of the Soviet Union Block, Poland's joining the NATO alliance and the European Union. Only then the truth came out about the Russians simultaneous with Germany invasion of Poland, the killings of the Polish officers, professors, and other educated people at Katyn, to wipe out the opposition driving forces, as well as many other atrocities committed by the Russians on the Polish people. History, which many people apparently knew about, as they lived through it, but were unable to speak of, in fear of persecution. What we had learned in school was dictated by the interests of the Soviet Union, who disguised their domination over Poland under the blanket of "friendly" relations.

Suspicion and hostility, branching from technological and cultural differences, as well as, mutual feelings of being superior, have infused relations between Native Americans and non-Natives in North America. Intertribal conflicts among the Indians, and nationalistic rivalries, lacking faith, and expansion desires on the part of non-natives worsened these tensions. The resulting white and native conflicts often took a particularly bad turn and resulted in the near destruction of the native people(Native American).

Imagine living in one place your whole life, that place is the only place you know. Now imagine people you have never seen before come, kill your family, spread disease, and take the land for themselves. That is what happened to the Native Americans in the 1700’s and 1800’s. One of the most disrespectful and saddest times in American History was in the 1850’s with Westward Expansion and the war on Natives. During that time, there were many new cities being built in the East and the United States inevitably got too crowded in the East. Americans traveled west for more land and opportunity, but this is where most of the Indians were living at the time. Did the Native Americans have an aggressive nature, or did the Whites cause them to be hostile? The Whites greed almost caused the extinction of Native Americans and caused them to become hostile towards the Whites.