Native and Anglo interactions in the new world.
The Migration of the Anglo Europeans to the Americas was as a result of Christoper Columbus’s voyages of 1492. He was an explorer in search of new trade routes and when he sailed west, that is when he discovered the Americas. The Anglo Europeans referred to it as the “New World” since it was far east and full of opportunities. From 1492-1763 many of the Anglo Europeans came to America, some were in search of more wealth to broaden their influence over the affairs of the world but some came to escape the religious persecution back home. Once they arrived they found about 60 million Native Americans already inhabiting the land (TON, 2000). The different tribes spoke different languages that were completely unknown to the Anglo Europeans and this created a big problem in their communication. The Anglo Europeans had to find a way of cohabitating with the Natives so they introduced their lifestyle to them. Since the natives were welcoming they did not object despite the consequences and intentions of the Europeans. The naivety of the Native Americans was one of the main reasons why the Anglo European’s agenda to colonize them became successful.
When the Anglo Europeans inhabited America, the land had been inhabited for over a decade millennial with diversified people who had their own cultures. Their arrival made it necessary to interact with the native Americans but the difference in language and culture created a barrier among the two peoples amidst the struggles for available resources for survival. The Anglo Europeans landed in America instead of Asia which was their destination at first. The heat and hot environment became hostile to the men and women from Europe as they were not used to such temperatures (Kupperman, 1984,p. 213 ) The climate made their bodies adapt and even susceptible to tropical diseases.
The Anglo Europeans had to learn and adapt to the landscape, the social environment, and the climatic changes to survive in the “New World”. Their location, the boundaries, and the social community available were very important to them (Rockman & Steele, 2003). This is one of the main reasons they had to come into contact with the Native Americans. The hurricanes that they encountered were something new to them and the Natives had to teach them how to build houses that were meant for tropical weather. On the other hand, the Native Americans had been vulnerable to colonization from the very beginning due to their lack of knowledge, the various diseases that affected them, and the profound slave trade. While they were isolated from the rest of the world, other continents were gaining trade knowledge, technologies for centuries.
The Africans, Asians, and Europeans used iron, kept domestic animals, had gunpowder, and several pieces of equipment of war. This left the Native Americans at the mercies of any colonizer who attacked them since they had no weapons like firearms and horses. The most consequential impact of the isolation of Native Americans was their biological composition. The exposed continents had exposed each other to diseases for centuries and had come up with an old-world immune system that acted as protection from the diseases. Even though the Native Americans were bigger and healthier than the Anglo Europeans, once they came into contact they were vulnerable to the European diseases. Many Natives were killed mainly by smallpox which killed millions of them (Patterson & Runge, 2002) together with diseases such as measles and influenza. The Native American population dropped by almost 90 percent in the first year they had contact with Anglo Europeans and this made it easier for them to be colonized due to the reduction of their population. The disease spread came as a surprise to both groups and the disease spread was accidental.
The Natives and Anglo Europeans had to find a way of living in the same land and benefit from each other. They ended up forming treaties and learning each other’s cultures. The Europeans Saw the lands they conquered as a potential source of agriculture the Natives started to have interest in the new ways of the Anglo Europeans. Their interest somehow aligned hence they had to coexist to survive. The language barrier was a hindrance to communication and a major issue between the two peoples as each community had several speaking languages and the Europeans had no idea how to communicate with Natives (LUSH, 2014).To solve this they learned each other languages and this made their trade sessions easier. They even worked together as craftsmen and scouts to develop themselves, the Europeans offered jobs for their expertise and equipment to the natives. The Native hunters would hunt for deers prepare them and go trade for colored cloth.
The Native Americans began to learn how to use the firearms, lead shots and abandoned their bows and arrows. They soon were dependent on the Europeans for their daily needs and this brought about consequences and conflicts. The desire to coexist led to conflicts between them since the two people had different cultures which found it difficult to incorporate the new changes. The cooperation soon turned into conflict since theAnglos did not respect the cultures and beliefs of the natives. Their dependence on the Anglo Americans made them lack ways of defending their culture and traditions. The Europeans brought rum and this was highly problematic to many of the native tribes and their cultures. They even exchanged the rum for land from the Natives, even though the culture of the Natives valued ancestral land.
The aspect of trade and land disputes were the major causes of conflicts between the communities. As time went by the colonists began to expand their territories which meant that the Native’s land was being occupied, this brewed more enmity. Anglo Americans were having trouble in their plantations and their crops. They were forced to look for more land because their current land was either too dry, wet, or sterile to sustain any plant growth. The Anglo Europeans started to exploit the Natives in that they would offer goods, weapons, and tools to Natives. In return the Natives would bring one of their own as an exchange, the traded native would be made a slave work in the fields and this became a habit. The population of the Natives was very low hence the Europeans recruited the Africans who had migrated to America hence the beginning of the slave trade. Some Natives were captured forcefully and forced to be slaves since the Europeans needed large labor to operate their activities in plantations.
The conflicts between the Natives and Ango Europeans escalated to be serious warfare. The quest for more slave workers led to full-scale war because the Native workers died of diseases and the Anglo Europeans needed more workers. When they turned to recruit Africans as slave workers they disrupted the African political systems and the Native treaties as well, hence slave raiding was now a full-scale war activity (Jennings, 2011) The natives had to fight for their ancestral land and the Africans had to fight for their freedom. A lot of factors contributed to the deteriorating relationship between the Anglo Europeans and the Native Americans with many factors arising from the politics of colonization. The Anglo Europeans colonized the Americas successfully but after some time, the issues of who owned which land started to arise between parties like England, France, Portugal, and even Holland which wanted to claim the land. The treaties were disrupted as the incidents of war between the colonizers and even the natives increased.
The Native Americans at first were friendly and welcoming of the Europeans. However, the Anglo Europeans brought to them Slave trade and diseases with them. Native American tribes had to become resistant and fight for their freedom, their land, and their culture. The Europeans wanted to convert the Natives to Christianity and their refusal to conform to the European cultures angered the colonists and thus they also raged war against them. Apart from religion, the Europeans wanted to have economic gains from the labor and land of the Natives, the Natives resistance made them result in warfare.
The Europeans’ quest for Success, economic gains, and Religion was the main reason they invaded the Native’s land even at the expense of the millions of Natives and Africans who lost their lives. This resulted in several wars such as Queen Anne’s War, King William’s, and even King Geroge’s war (Hamilton & Herwig, 2003). They had no care for the wellbeing of the inhabitants of the land, even after they helped them assimilate to the new land and learn how to navigate the hot temperatures and hurricanes. They were non-appreciative of the efforts the natives gave them at the beginning and even went ahead to enslave them. Their relationship can be described as manipulative and self-seeking. They used the ignorance of the Natives to cheat them into slavery, try and rob them of their culture and religion, steal their land for economic gains as they watched them die from the diseases that they had brought to them from their previous origin. The slave trade and wars brought by their weapons destroyed many native families who were already dying of various diseases.
Works Cited.
Primary sources
LUSH, R. (2014). Wampum, Bibles, Treaties, and American Letters: Native American and Anglo-American Communications in Early America. Early American Literature, 49(3), 771-785. Retrieved June 18, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/24476644
Jennings, M. (2011). New Worlds of Violence: Cultures and Conquests in the Early American Southeast. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press. muse.jhu.edu/book/13435.
Kupperman, K. (1984). Fear of Hot Climates in the Anglo-American Colonial Experience. The William and Mary Quarterly, 41(2), 213-240. doi:10.2307/1919050
Patterson, K. B., & Runge, T. (2002). Smallpox and the native American. The American journal of the medical sciences, 323(4), 216-222.
Secondary sources.
Rockman, M., & Steele, J. (Eds.). (2003). Colonization of unfamiliar landscapes: the archaeology of adaptation. Psychology Press.
Hamilton, R. F., & Herwig, H. H. (Eds.). (2003). The Origins of World War I. Cambridge University Press.
TON, R. T. (2000). Population history of native North Americans. A population history of North America, 9.
The total slave trade to islands in the Caribbean, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States is estimated to have involved 12 million Africans.[29][30] The vast majority of these slaves went to sugar colonies in the Caribbean and to Brazil, where life expectancy was short and the numbers had to be continually replenished. At most about 600,000 African slaves were imported into the United States, or 5% of the 12 million slaves brought across from Africa.[31] Life expectancy was much higher in the United States (because of better food, less disease, lighter workloads, and better medical care) so the numbers grew rapidly by excesses of births over deaths, reaching 4 million by the 1860 Census. Slaves were a valuable commodity both for work and for sale in slave markets and so the policy of actively encouraging or forcing slaves to breed developed, especially after the ending of the Atlantic slave trade.[