Exploring The New World Essay

In 1492, the world was forever changed when Columbus discovered the new world. This exciting news inspired hundreds of new explorers to come see what else the world has to offer. The explorers were Europeans who traveled the Atlantic ocean to conquer the Americas. They wanted to conquer the Americas for glory and gold. The Europeans wanted to make their country the best and they had already experienced brutal wars in Europe for the fame. They had experience, and the Americas did not scare them. The colonization process happened from a span of 1500-1600. The native populations who lived in the Americas had to suffer drastically, as they saw their home land get destroyed. The native populations of the New World suffered due to the purposeful

The long history between Native American and Europeans are a strained and bloody one. For the time of Columbus’s subsequent visits to the new world, native culture has

For years, the Native Americans lived a very solitary life with their own unique way of living, that was until the European’s showed up with their very complex way of living. Harmony with nature was a very important aspect of Native American culture. The Native people embraced nature with no intention to modify it unlike the Europeans. They simply cared more about nature and what it had to offer. The spiritual connection between the land and these Natives were distinctive from the Europeans also due to the fact that to the settlers, land meant wealth. As a European, if you owned any land you were considered a wealthy upper class human being. As a Native, no one owned the land and anyone could benefit from the land.

Until the late 1400's, Europeans did not know the existence of the two American continents ( North and South America ). To the European explorers, exploring the other side of the Atlantic was like exploring an entire different world, hence the name- the New World. In 1492, Christopher Columbus unknowingly discovered the new continent. His original motives for exploring was to find an easier route to Asia but instead, he discovered the New World. Thus; Spain, France and England began sending out conquistadors and explorers to the uncharted terrains of the new continent. Motives for the Spanish, French, and English explorers varied greatly, however, they were similar in some ways. The motives of the Spanish explorers were acquisition of

The Native Americans sustained and took care of their home, while the Europeans pushed and pulled for more money to fall from it. This caused the land to lose a lot of its density and eventually the Europeans’ wealth as well. Things that were lost were proper farming grounds, culture of the Native Americans, and wild life. Different views of the Europeans and Native Americans caused a lot of conflict. The Europeans’ views on the Indians’ way of life became critical once they saw and felt as if their society was not controlled

To better understand the conflict between the Europeans and the Native Americans, one must closely examine the state of Europe’s economy at the time. Europe struggled with difficult conditions. This included poverty, violence and diseases like typhus, smallpox, influenza and measles. There were widespread famines which caused the prices of products to vary and made life very difficult in Europe. Street crimes and violence were prevalent in cities: “Other eruption of bizarre torture, murder, and ritual cannibalism were not uncommon”.2 Europeans

In the essay “The Meaning of Property,” C.B. Macpherson states the argument for how property is “a concept of rights (15),” not a thing that can be claimed. The Native Americans loosely used this idea of property in their lives. Their land was a recognized right by the surrounding communities and ownership rights within a territory usually meant what one had made with their own hands. The European colonists had the notion that “Indians seemed to live like paupers in a landscape of great natural wealth (Cronon 50).” Since the Indians utilize many resources from the land, and not totally dependent on farming, Colonists used this to justify taking the their land. Europeans observed how the Indians did not make a permanent, exclusive mark on the land as a “token not of their chosen way of life but of their laziness (Cronon 50).” John Winthrop claimed that the Indians didn’t actually own any land since they failed to inclose any land,“fences and livestock were thus pivotal elements in the English rationale for taking Indian lands (Cronon Fields 66).” The European way of thinking also saw property as a means of wealth, power, and social status. European treatment of nature can be reflected upon their culture. The culture they came from focused on capitalism, so they saw the new lands as a means of profit. Native American culture differed since they collected from the land what they needed. They had respect for the land and even realized the danger of over fishing salmon in the rivers. The Indians would make sure to only catch enough fish to feed themselves and then stopped fishing to let the fish go back upstream to reproduce. European culture on the other hand, depleted the natural resources they found, which could be seen through the depleted beaver population due to the high demand and profitable fur

The great land dispute between Native Americans and the European settlers first began when our founding fathers began claiming land that was already Indian Territory. As the population of new settlers in America increased, the population of Native American decreased. Native Americans were exposed to many European diseases for the first time, not to mention the advancement in warfare the Europeans had. Very few tribes survived the deadly early years of American history, but of the surviving tribes, Choctaw, Chicksaw, Cherokee, and Creek became known as the “Five Civilized Tribes”. (Gale, 2014) In 1813, there was a dispute amongst the Creek Indian known as the “Creek War” the Creek Indians divided into two sides after Americans threatened to secede their land, those

Over the course of America’s history, audacious explorers from Europe sought to make an impact through setting colonies in the Americas during the 1500-1700s. The duration in which Europeans explored their outside world is referred to as the Age of Exploration. Despite the dangers, such as storms, no GPS, being lost, and diseases like scurvy, the motivation behind this era could be stated in three simple words: gold, glory, and God. The long lasting effects of the fifteenth and seventh century include contentious disputes, essentially, who truly discovered the New World, was Spain explorer Christopher Columbus an overrated American hero, or a conqueror regardless? These particular controversies are each primary components of the overall bewilderment, if the changes that occurred in the Americas a result of European exploration either had a positive or negative influence on the Americas. Although the impact on the Americas was both beneficial and negative, the negatives outweigh the positives. The escalation of diseases, servitude, and abuse of the Natives arrived from the events such as the Colombian Exchange, Middle Passage, as well as forced Christianity in the form of the Requirement.

When the Europeans made their first conquests of the Americas, they were greeted with a whole new environment of flora, fauna, people, and cultures. Likewise, the Native Americans were introduced to a people that in many ways were vastly different from themselves who brought with them new ideas, diseases, and technologies. Their interactions within the Americas would change both their own lives and cultures as well as the very environments they lived in. Indeed, European contact with Native Americans introduced the Europeans to a new world while creating a new world for the Native Americans. Their interactions would develop through the social and environmental developments of the Columbian Exchange, slavery, and Christianity.

There were many different policies and attitudes of European Americans toward Native Americans in the age of Discovery. The responses of the various nations of Native Americans to the arrival of Europeans after 1492, and the manner in which they dealt with their presence, varied differently from one group to another. Responses to encounters between both groups depended on cultural characteristics, or on the economic and political circumstances which they found themselves in. Just as there was no universal Indian response to the encounter there were also many significant differences in the ways the Europeans and others approached the natives whose land they were intent on occupying. Europeans having arrived in the New World were there in search for the path to riches and the latter not caring who was going to be harmed or whose property was destroyed in the process for their own selfish greed.

The Europeans colonization of North America has forever changed the lives and cultures of the Native Americans. The white settlers, in many ways, destroyed the Native American population. Throughout the 19th century, they brought fatal diseases,

Despite the intensive study of knowing how many people resided in the Americas before Columbus contact, it has been unable to reach a consensus regarding the consequences of European settlement in the decimation of native population. Considering that Alan Brinkley states “ How to balance the many achievements of European civilization in the New World after 1492 against the terrible destruction of native peoples that accompanied it is, in the end, less a historical question, perhaps, than a moral one “; In my opinion historians be addressing other issues, for instances how European encounter influence Native American’s patterns of health and disease. Furthermore, Historians should study about the consequences the past have today in the American

The effect of European settlement on Native Americans was devastating, on account of, the Europeans only wanted land and would accomplish this task by any means necessary. Despite the icy landscapes and coastlines, the Native Americans journeyed from Asia on foot or by boat to at different times and over thousands of year, making them the first to inhabit North American (Kincheloe, 2007). With this notion, the Native Americans never imagined how the European’s lifestyle would impact their lives drastically. First, the European brought diseases causing the Native Americans to become ill, due to, lacking immunity from the diseases and illness. Thus, the diseases eliminated many Native Americans.

In the old world, colonization of land occurred a lot. Sometimes building a colony was worth the cost, sometimes it wasn’t. One colonization that was certainly worth the cost was the colonization of the New World. The colonization of the New World was an event in which Europe began settling in America. While some Europeans, like Columbus, believed this was an extraordinary idea, some believed that migrating into America was not worth the costs.