Essay On The Columbian Exchange

The time of exploration for European countries caused an explosion of innovative thoughts. As new explorers such as Christopher Columbus, Hernán Cortés, and Francisco Pizarro came over to the New World, they brought with them new ideas, foodstuffs, animals, and many other things. These items were dispersed through the Columbian Exchange. The New and Old World collided, which soon resulted in different groups of people interacting. The Native Americans had to quickly understand and adapt to the unfamiliar people who docked their ships on the coastlines. The movement of English, French, and Spanish pioneers and their goods caused both European countries and the Americas to be changed forever.

Out of the English, French, and Spanish, the Spaniards

were the first to reach the New World and connect with Native Americans. They first allowed Christopher Columbus to attempt to find a different route to the Indies because the eastern way was blocked off. When, instead of the Indies, he found the Americas, he brought back new spices and foods. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand were ecstatic. When other explorers heard of his discoveries, they had to see for their self. Hernán Cortés heard about some landmines of treasure in Tenochtitlan where the Aztecs dwelled. When Moctezuma first presented Cortés and his crew riches, they were only appeased. They quickly became a nuisance, and the natives fought back on noche triste. The last of the explorers reentered the city the next year and and overtook the city. In 1532, the Incas in Peru were demolished by Francisco Pizarro, which then led to an influx of a great wealth for Spain. The Spanish explorers sparked intense fear into the native population. They were greedy, forceful, and pernicious. They not only killed the natives, they labeled them as savages which only exacerbated the Spaniards likelihood to kill them. Because of their ferocious nature, thousands of Native Americans died. The Spanish explorers who opened up the world to a new continent, while simultaneously destroying its culture, changed the world forever.
When the natives first encountered the English settlers in Jamestown, they were just getting back on their feet from a deadly starving time. Captain John Smith, who would be captured in 1607 by the Powhatans, saved the town with his leadership. His kidnapping proved to only be a ruse in order to prove the native power. Pocahontas, the chieftain’s daughter, became the go-between between clans. Later she would marry John Rolfe and unite Virginians and Native Americans. While the English were not as bad to the natives as the Spanish, they would still fight and kill each other from time to time. They came over as families so they had little reason to have to expand and invade the native’s land. Overall, the English treated those who already lived in the Americas moderately kind and both clans cohabitated the land unless otherwise provoked.
Unlike the English and the Spanish, the French socialized with the natives in much different and more considerate way. The first French who sailed to the New World were Huguenots. These were those who were apart of the Calvinist faith. They were in search of a Northwest Passage to Asia, just like Columbus. However, they believe there was a passage farther up north rather than south by the Caribbean islands. They believed that the land they were on belonged to the natives and they had little right to use it. They were friendly and reproduced with the people who were there. Both clans traded their cultures, hunting techniques, and many other ideas with each other. They did not fight over what belonged to who. They even slowly began to become wealthy from the fur trade the Native Americans were apart of. Unlike the English and the Spanish, the French Huguenots changed the way some natives thought of explorers and spread their Old World values throughout some parts of the New World.
While the Native American culture and its people were drastically affected by the surge of explorers and newcomers, they were also enlightened with new technology, food, animals, and plants.

The Old World, many European countries, brought over animals such as horses, honey bees, sheep, and pigs. They also brought over the following: barley, wheat, peaches, pears, coffee beans, sugarcane, citrus fruits, steel, and bananas. Horses were vital to the natives and they soon learned how to ride and use horses to their advantage. Steel improved hunting, and sugarcane and coffee beans would later become vital to the America’s economy. The New World, North and South America, welcomed the pioneers with a plethora of new foodstuffs and goods. Some of the new items were as follows: pumpkins, turkeys, corn, tomatoes, peanuts, potatoes, tobacco, and cacao. Corn and potatoes were crucial to the New World once they were discovered. Corn was used as slave food on slave ships, and potatoes were a good nutrient source. While the Old and New World were the main components of the Columbian Exchange, Africa also played a part. They incorporated slaves into the mix once using indentured servants became tiresome. This entire trading and swapping of commodities was an effect of the clashing together of two different ways of

life.
The Americas and European countries did not only exchange products in the Columbian Exchange. European countries brought over a myriad of diseases such as smallpox, malaria, and yellow fever. These maladies completely obliterated Native American tribes. The Spanish, English, and French may have been absolute brutes when it came to taking over land, but they were nowhere near as brutal as the illnesses that they brought over with them to the New World. Millions of natives who were never near battles or fights would still end up sick because of the transfer of diseases from person to person. Smallpox, malaria, and yellow fever were more deadly than the actual fighting that went on in the New World.