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Native Americans and the colonization of America
History of relations with native America
History of relations with native America
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Recommended: Native Americans and the colonization of America
People have been living in the Americas for thousands of years. Only fairly recently, the past few hundred years, have foreigners begun to arrive and drastically disrupt the way of life of the aboriginal population. The situation has become so severe that a population that was one believed to be numbered in the millions, was at one point reduced to as few as 220,000 in 1910, and entire tribes have been either irretrievably warped or have disappeared altogether. While Native American Indians have almost completely recovered population-wise, they will never catch up to the rest of the world, and their culture can never fully recuperate. At the time the United States was settled by Europeans, it was abundantly populated by dozens of separate nations with diverse civilizations and cultures. Like other colonized regions, the indigenous people suffered first from the introduction of diseases that were common in the regions that the settlers were from, to which the Indians had no immunity. It is believed that millions died of smallpox, measles, whooping cough, and influenza. Some estimate that such epidemics were responsible for more than 80 million deaths during the early colonial period alone. Although The Indians numbers were never accurately recorded (estimates have ranged from in the low millions to as much as around a hundred million) it is certain that they are far from a complete recovery. For nearly 300 years the population of Native Americans had been declining, since shortly after Columbus arrived in the Western Hemisphere to a while after the civil war. But starting in the beginning of the 20th century the United States census bureau has reported an almost continuous increases in native populations (with some exceptions, notably an influenza epidemic that occurred in 1918). From the 1980’s to the 1990’s there is reported a growth of almost 500,000; from 1,478,523 in 1980 to 1,937,391 in 1990. Despite these promising statistics the population of Native Americans is only a small fraction (0.8 percent) of the hundreds of millions of other inhabitants in the United States. Despite their initial confusion to their situation after the arrival of Europeans, the Native Americans did not take their disenfranchisement from their own land lying down. Native Americans have a long history of "fighting back" against invaders encroaching on the land that ...
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... remained of their once vast civilization, Native Americans were beginning to make a recovery. Despite a long history of disease, broken treaties, and constant removal from their own land Native Americans can finally focus within their own society to try to rebuild what they have lost. Although they may never fully recover, Native American Indians are at the best position they have ever been in since their exposure foreign influences.
Bibliography
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Josephy, Alvin M. The Indian Heritage of America. New York, 1968. Pp. 53, 116. _________. Through Indian Eyes. New York, 1995, Pp. 330-332, 383.
Oswalt, Wendell H. This Land Was Theirs: A Study of The North American Indian. 1966, Pp. 399-400. "Indian Images." News report. ________. "First Nations Histories." http://www.tolatsga.org/compacts.html ________. "Top 25 Native American Tribes." US Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/race/indian/ailang1.txt (1995) ________. "The Native American Peoples: A History of Genocide." Boabab Press http://www.africa2000.com/bndx/ba0320.htm (2000)
Talking Back to Civilization , edited by Frederick E. Hoxie, is a compilation of excerpts from speeches, articles, and texts written by various American Indian authors and scholars from the 1890s to the 1920s. As a whole, the pieces provide a rough testimony of the American Indian during a period when conflict over land and resources, cultural stereotypes, and national policies caused tensions between Native American Indians and Euro-American reformers. This paper will attempt to sum up the plight of the American Indian during this period in American history.
Banks, D., Erodes, R. (2004). Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement. Ojibwa Warrior. Retrieved January 20, 2005, from http://www.oupress.com/bookdetail.asp?isbn=0-8061-3580-8
Epidemic diseases brought to the state by Spanish colonists and missionaries in the late 1700s to the early 1800s, turned out to be the most powerful and discreet method to surmount Native American population. The impact of the missionarie...
Thornton, Russell, Matthew C Snipp, and Nancy Breen. The Cherokees: A Population History Indians of the Southeast. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
...744,” in The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America, ed. Colin G. Calloway (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994), 101
Utley, R., Wilcomb, W. The American Heritage History of The Indian Wars. New York: American Heritage.
Towards the development of the United States of America there has always been a question of the placement of the Native Americans in society. Throughout time, the Natives have been treated differently like an individual nation granted free by the U.S. as equal U.S. citizens, yet not treated as equal. In 1783 when the U.S. gained their independence from Great Britain not only did they gain land from the Appalachian Mountains but conflict over the Indian policy and what their choice was to do with them and their land was in effect. All the way from the first presidents of the U.S. to later in the late 19th century the treatment of the Natives has always been changing. The Native Americans have always been treated like different beings, or savages, and have always been tricked to signing false treaties accompanying the loss of their homes and even death happened amongst tribes. In the period of the late 19th century, The U.S. government was becoming more and more unbeatable making the Natives move by force and sign false treaties. This did not account for the seizing of land the government imposed at any given time (Boxer 2009).
Even though the major catastrophe for Native Americans was a long time before the foundation of the United States, the last calamity was brought about somehow by Jefferson’s concepts that land and agriculture are the bases of a civilization. Today, Native Americans live in reservations with hard conditions, similar to those of the Third World countries, in terms of employment, accommodation, and health. Many young people do not have jobs, and those who work earn less than the minimum wage. Thousands of people are homeless, the rest of them live in houses some of which lack the essential services such as electricity, telephone, sewers. Native Americans also suffer from several chronic diseases such as diabetes, and cancer without having adequate supply of health care (Living
Josephy, Alvin M, The American Heritage Book of Indians, New York, American Heritage Publishing Co,1961
Stark, H. K., & Wilkins, D. E. (2011). American Indian Politics and the American Political System. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
In his essay, “The Indians’ Old World,” Neal Salisbury examined a recent shift in the telling of Native American history in North America. Until recently, much of American history, as it pertains to Native Americans; either focused on the decimation of their societies or excluded them completely from the discussion (Salisbury 25). Salisbury also contends that American history did not simply begin with the arrival of Europeans. This event was an episode of a long path towards America’s development (Salisbury 25). In pre-colonial America, Native Americans were not primitive savages, rather a developing people that possessed extraordinary skill in agriculture, hunting, and building and exhibited elaborate cultural and religious structures.
The circumstances the Native American people endured clarify their current issues. American Indians have poor education and a high percent are unemployed when equated to “U.S. all races” (Spector, 2009, p. 205). Many American Indians still live on reservations and work as a
of Native American Culture as a Means of Reform,” American Indian Quarterly 26, no. 1
Indigenous people are those that are native to an area. Throughout the world, there are many groups or tribes of people that have been taken over by the Europeans in their early conquests throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by immigrating groups of individuals, and by greedy corporate businesses trying to take their land. The people indigenous to Australia, Brazil and South America, and Hawaii are currently fighting for their rights as people: the rights to own land, to be free from prejudice, and to have their lands protected from society.
The American Indians Between 1609 To 1865. Native Americans or American Indians, once occupied the entire region of the United States. They were composed of many different groups, who spoke hundreds of languages and dialects. The Indians from the Southwest used to live in large, terraced communities and their way of sustain was from the agriculture where they planted squash, pumpkins, beans and corn crops. Trades between neighboring tribes were common, this brought in additional goods and also some raw materials such as gems, cooper.