How Did The Columbian Exchange Affect Native Americans

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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. …show more content…

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

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