How Did The Columbian Exchange Affect Native Americans

There are both similar and disparate aspects of how the Columbian Exchange affected Europeans compared to how it affected Native Americans. It embodies both negative and positive results of contact between cultures, and how all involved cultures are drastically changed by these interactions. Crops, technology, and diseases were shared to and from Europe and the Americas, drastically changing cultures and imposing both beneficial and detrimental effects on both groups.

When Europeans arrived in the New World, they were provided with crops such as corn, potatoes, chocolate, beans, and tobacco. The Europeans were able to develop a global commodity from the cash crop tobacco, which stimulated the growth of an economy based on agriculture. However, the appropriation of America’s products such as the chocolate drink xocolatl and chica, a corn beer, which were traditionally used in a religious or spiritual manner, disrupted the existing native economies. Europeans were now benefitting from Native American products and discoveries, discrediting the work of native peoples. This lead to around 60% of all global crops grown today having originated in the New World.

The few crops that were brought by Europeans, such as sugar, became staples of agriculture in the New World.

Sugar cane could barely survive the harsh climate of Europe, but thrived in Hispaniola and Central America, and the large plantations formed for this crop drove the later enslavement of native peoples to create a cheap labor force. However, the numerous diseases, such as smallpox, the plague, and the flu, brought by Europeans devastated the native population, leading to the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Europeans were unwilling to abandon the hope of free labor with the declining native population, causing them to search for another source of labor. Africans brought to the Americas were forced to work on plantations that would not have existed without European crops brought to the New

World.
Although the effects on Native Americans were more detrimental to their culture than to European culture, not everything brought to the New World caused their downfall. The introduction of horses, cows, pigs, and chickens improved their means of hunting and gathering, horses especially transforming it into a more mobile practice, while also introducing the idea of farm animals, creating an easier method of obtaining food. This shifted the entire culture of native peoples from a mobile one to a culture that can form closer bonds between people in the creation of towns and cities based on agriculture. This is due to the fact that they were no longer forced to move when a source of food in a particular area is depleted.
While the Columbian Exchange drastically changed the culture of both Europe and Native Americans, the effects were more beneficial to Europe than to the native peoples. Due to the Columbian Exchange, Europe’s economy boomed, while the Native American economy was disrupted by the European invasion. The few benefits to native peoples were strongly outweighed by the detrimental effects of the introduction of deadly diseases and the slave trade, which decimated their population. Europe took advantage of the weakened population to institute their own control over North America in their search for wealth, furthering the beneficial effects on Europeans. One of the only disadvantageous effects on Europeans was the introduction of the lethal sexually-transmitted disease syphilis, however, this did not cause as much pain and suffering as what was inflicted on Native Americans due to the Columbian Exchange.