Near the end of the fifteenth century, Europeans started exploring new areas of the world in hopes of finding riches, trade routes, and new lands. Upon discovering the “New World,” Europeans came across native peoples. While the Europeans did learn from the indigenous people, they also tried to change the natives’ ways. This had a negative impact on the natives populations because many died. The overall impact exploration had on native peoples include enslavement, destroyed populations, and forced to change religion. One thing the Europeans did to the natives after taking their knowledge was enslaving them. “We shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as …show more content…
Explorers brought many diseases with them which the native populations were not immune to, which killed a large number of the population. The Europeans lived in an area where disease was prominent unlike the Natives who were isolated from such disease. “After the Spaniards fled Tenochtitlan after La Noche Triste, a great plague broke out here in Tenochtitlan... A great many died from this plague and many others died of hunger” (Document 4). Miguel Leon-Portilla describes in the previous quote how smallpox was introduced to Tenochtitlan. Because the natives did not know what the disease was, many died from it; those who did not die from the disease died from lack of nutrition because of not being able to look for food to take care of the sick. Most of the natives who died, were infected by one disease or another although some were killed by the Europeans. “ Many experts now believe that the New World was home to 40 million to 50 million people before Columbus arrived and that most of them died within decades...Mexico alone, the native population fell from roughly 30 million in 1519 to 3 million in 1568” (Document 6). While the natives were used to disease, they were not ever introduced to things like syphilis, tuberculosis, smallpox, measles, mumps, and yellow fever. Not having ever been around these diseases, the natives were essentially completely
... The plague was brought over by the Spanish who where immune to the disease, but the Aztecs weren't so lucky. Many where killed over the course of seventy days, including the new King Cuitlahucs (92). Obviously this had a dramatic impact because they lost their leader. Those that remained where very weak with a milder form of the disease (93). Obviously this affected their strength to fight.
There were millions of Aztecs and only a few hundred Spaniards. How was it then that the Spaniards, even with their steel and guns, could overrun them? The answer lies in a number the Spanish had even more of: microbes, which no one counted on. Yes, the encounters destroyed the Indians’ homes and made them slaves, but they also brought in disease and unknown illnesses to the New World. Millions had died, and generations disappeared. 50 years after the Spanish conquest 88% of the Mexican population was destroyed and only up to 200 thousand natives survived the ordeal. Also, the second in the list of causes of death had become the commonplace brutal treatment and poor conditions during slavery, and the third was by war
Some consequences of the exchange are the spread of disease to the Native people and settlers, the destruction of the Native population, and the disappearance of the Natives custom’s, beliefs, and way of life. Columbus’s arrival to the Americas, land that had already been established by the Natives, resulted in a spread of fatal diseases. Disagreement between the Europeans and the Natives and the enslavement of Native people helped to wipe out the population. Document 5 illustrates the fighting that occurred between the Natives and Europeans.
Aztecs were tribe. In Chronicler’s Account talked about Spaniards with Aztecs from 1519 to 1521.When the Spaniards arrived in Tenochtitlan, and they bought horses, guns and also smallpox that killed a lot of people there. A Text from the Chronicler’s Account saids “ at about the time that the Spaniards had fled from Mexico….there came a great sickness, a pestilence, the smallpox. It …. spread over the people with great destruction of men.” The Aztec chronicler was trying to be objective in what happened at that time. Aztec Chronicler wrote about struggled in
Beginning in the fifteenth century with the arrival of Columbus, natives of the Americas were infected with European diseases that proved to be deadly to the Indians. The population in northern Mexico suffered an immense decimation of 2,500,000 peoples to less than 320,000 by the end of the sixteenth century (Vargas, 30). The Spaniards’ cruel treatment of the natives aided this vast reduction in the Aztec and Mexican population, enabling the Spaniards to conquer the lands of the Aztecs and other native tribes. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Spaniards had expanded their conquests into the southwest region of what is now known as the United States of America.
The outbreak of diseases ravages the Native population. Due to geographic regions and limitations, the Natives never suffered from such strong illnesses as smallpox, measles and the black plague. Some of the European colonies gave the Natives diseased infested animals and clothing. The English and the Natives did cooperate with each other due to it being in the best of their interests. Their mutual trust would later erode due to the English going back to their old habits and started to steal from the Natives.
The European influences to the Native Americans were Europeans carried the new diseases to the Indians. “Europeans were used to these diseases, but Indian people had no resistance to them. Sometimes the illnesses spread through direct contact with colonists. Other times, they were transmitted as Indians traded with one another. The result of this contact with European germs was horrible. Sometimes whole villages perished in a short time” (Kincheloe). Slave trade was another influence to American Indians. Europeans soon realized that they could provide commercial goods such as tools and weapons to some American Indian tribes that would bring them other Indians captured in tribal wars, and these captured Indians were bought and sold as slaves. Therefore, “slavery led to warfare among tribes and too much hardship. Many tribes had to move to escape the slave trade, which destroyed some tribes completely. In time, the practice of enslaving Native peoples ended. However, it had greatly affected American Indians of the South and the Southwest” (Kinchloe). Lastly, Europeans change Native America and African’ roots. Native Americans
The Columbian exchange was the widespread transfer of various products such as animals, plants, and culture between the Americas and Europe. Though most likely unintentional, the byproduct that had the largest impact from this exchange between the old and new world was communicable diseases. Europeans and other immigrants brought a host of diseases with them to America, which killed as much as ninety percent of the native population. Epidemics ravaged both native and nonnative populations of the new world destroying civilizations. The source of these epidemics were due to low resistance, poor sanitation, and inadequate medical knowledge- “more die of the practitioner than of the natural course of the disease (Duffy).” These diseases of the new world posed a serious
Considering historical evidence, the notion: Native –Americans was not the first inhabitant of America is a complete false. For centuries, history kept accurate and vivid accounts of the first set of people who domiciled the western hemisphere. Judging by those records, below are the first set of Native-American people who inhabited America before the arrival of another human race; the Iroquois: The Iroquois of Native Americans was one of the tribes that lived in America before other people came. Based on historical evidence, it is believed that the Native Americans came from Asia way back during the Ice Age through a land bridge of the Bering Strait. When the Europeans first set foot in America, there were about 10 million Native Americans
The Spread of Disease In the New World The extraordinary good health of the natives prior to the coming of the Europeans would become a key ingredient in their disastrous undoing. The greatest cause of disease in America was epidemic diseases imported from Europe. Epidemic diseases killed with added virulence in the " virgin soil" populations of the Americas. The great plague that arose in the Old World never emerged on their own in the western hemisphere and did not spread across oceans until Columbus' discovery.
While the Europeans were traveling to the New World, they often brought domesticated animals with them for sources of food and livestock. When animals and humans are living in close quarters together, it is very likely for exposure to germs to occur. New diseases were brought over by foreigners looking for fame and gold that killed off many of the natives in the new lands. The natives did not stand a chance against these new threats because of a lack of knowledge and supplies to cure themselves. Once the Europeans established diseases as they made land in the New World, their journey had only become easier as their competition were being wiped out from the rapid spread.
That all changed, however, when European explorers, Spanish conquistadors in particular, unknowingly brought the deadly disease of smallpox into Latin America. A recollection of days before the Spanish by an Indian of the Yucatan from the book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel shows just how disease free natives were before the Spanish arrival: “There was then no sickness; they had no aching bones; they had then no high fever; they had then no smallpox; they had then no burning chest; they had then no abdominal pain; they had then no consumption; they had then no headache. At that time, the course of humanity was orderly. The foreigners made it otherwise when they arrived here.” Then, after the Spanish came to the New World and spread smallpox to the natives, over 95% of them were killed.
The Effects of Colonization on the Native Americans Native Americans had inherited the land now called America and eventually their lives were destroyed due to European colonization. When the Europeans arrived and settled, they changed the Native American way of life for the worse. These changes were caused by a number of factors including disease, loss of land, attempts to export religion, and laws, which violated Native American culture. Native Americans never came in contact with diseases that developed in the Old World because they were separated from Asia, Africa, and Europe when ocean levels rose following the end of the last Ice Age. Diseases like smallpox, measles, pneumonia, influenza, and malaria were unknown to the Native Americans until the Europeans brought these diseases over time to them.
“Perhaps there is no other group in the world that has quite so diverse and rich culture as that of the Native Americans. With their gilded history that is rich in strife, struggle, and triumph, the Native American culture is indeed very colorful” (Bantwal). Native American culture is very diverse and it has a very colorful history. It is extremely diverse and in fact the term Native American is a broad term that is used to cover all Native tribes in America. Throughout history there has been conflict not only among the different tribes but also there was plenty of fighting against the white men. Much of the fighting between the Native Americans and the white men was due to misunderstandings, mistrust, and miscommunication. Many thousands of years ago “the nomadic ancestors of modern Native Americans who hiked over a “land bridge” from Asia to what is now Alaska” (History.com). Once they reached Alaska they slowly spread out across the continent of North America. They spread out and separated into different tribes who all have many of the same core ideas but the main thing that separates them is their location in the country. There are Indians from the plains, the pacific coast, the southwest, and the northeast and different locations also. One main idea that is pretty much the same for each tribe is the closeness and respect they show for the land they live on. The history of the Native Americans as a whole is pockmarked by conflict. The conflicts between the tribes were very common and happened because of land disputes or just because of the close proximity of the tribes. But when the white men entered the picture this is where miscommunication and mistrust came into play. The white men wanted the land that...
The very existence of the Europeans posed a threat to livelihood of the natives. They had a disease called smallpox which the natives did not have an immunity to. The disease was a plague among the natives very rapidly. When the Spaniards fought and temporarily left Tenochtitlan, many Aztecs died due to the smallpox of the Spaniards as recorded by Miguel Leon-Portilla (Doc. 4). When the Europeans learned of how their disease was affecting the natives, the Europeans took advantage and used it to kill natives that were in places of possible settlement. Geoffrey Cowley gives some modern statistics of just how many natives died. In Mexico alone from 1519 to 1568 the native population dropped from about 30 million to 3 million (Doc. 6). The disease brought horror to the New World but did manage to clear the way for many colonies for the Europeans. Sadly these colonies were built because there were no natives to stop them after they were