The Early Native Americans And The Early European Settlers.

I believe that there are good people and bad people in every group of people. And it's sad to look back on our American history and to see a lot of discord between different groups of people that might have both blamed and / or that might have hated each other.

The early Native Americans and the early European Settlers were comprised of many different groups of people, of course. Ones that warred amongst their own peoples, no less. Not all of the tribes of Native Americans got along with each other, and not all of the European settlers got along with each other, either.

In the new world, the British, the French, and the European settlers all fought against each other at one time or at another time. The Native American Indians (they were called "Indians" because of the fact that some of the early "discoverers" had mistakenly thought that they had travelled to the east [although ... a certain post online claims that that is wrong since India apparently went by a different name at the time]) even had wars that went on between the differing tribes, such as: the Mohicans versus the Huron, the Iroquois versus the Algonquins, et cetera.

The Native Americans and the Europeans had cultural differences, different morals, different values, et cetera. They believed in different things about land and religion (or, rather, faith).

The Native Americans considered themselves to be "caretakers" of the land, whereas the Europeans felt that owning their own properties was very important.

"And to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them, why, the land that they live on is like their Mother. It's the only thing that lasts, that worth working for, for fighting for." - Mr. Gerald O'Hara ("Gone With The Wind" [1940]).

It's not that either side didn't try to make peace with each other, because a lot of them did try to do so. But not everyone would honour the peace-making at the time.

There's nothing really wrong with wanting to try to live in a different place, as long as we can all just try to show common courtesy to our fellow living beings. That doesn't necessarily mean that we all have to agree on all subjects ever.

The British seem to have painted an optimistic picture for the European travellers of how they would be able to get along with the indigenous people of the new world that would welcome them and that there could be peace between them, but the Spanish seem to have painted a pessimistic picture for them of how the natives were blood-thirsty and flesh-eating.

Some people on both sides seemed to mistrust each other, and - for others - greed, pride, and / or a sense of supremacy seemed to overtake them. But it would not be fair to say that everyone on both sides hated each other.

There were sweeping generalizations aimed at both sides.

The Native Americans were seen as so-called "savages" that lived in "primitive ways" and that could be "brutal" at times.

The European settlers were seen as "greedy", "liars", "thieves", "tricksters", and "disloyal".

It's sad that that was the way many different people of such different - but beautiful - cultures had to end up feeling about each other.

Warring with each other. Killing each other. Many lives were lost; men, women, and children.

One would attack another, provoking another attack back. So many lives were lost because of the misunderstandings and because of the vengeful hearts of so many people.

The Spaniards took the Native Americans as slaves for many years, and the Mexican Government paid for people to kill and to scalp Native Americans since they were afraid of not being able to protect their own people from "Indian attacks".

"The Scalp Industry":
"Although the origins of the practice of scalping may be lost in the nebulous hinterlands of the past, the industry of scalp hunting has a specific and documented history. Although some of the particulars may be shrouded in rumors, the scalp bounty laws instituted a peculiar economic venture between the Mexican government and, primarily, American citizens. Between 1835 and the 1880s, the Mexican authorities paid private armies to hunt Native Americans, paying per kill and using scalps as receipts. The practice began when the Mexican government could no longer provide adequate protection to its citizens from the marauding Apaches and Comanches. The natives rode down from the U.S. killing peons, kidnapping women, and stealing livestock and then would escape back over the border. Because the Mexican military was unable to effectively ward off the threat over such a large expanse and because the Mexican farmers either could not afford or were forbidden to possess arms, the government had to look to alternative methods of suppressing native violence." - Http://XRoads.Virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/scalpin/oldfolks.html.
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TL;DR: The Mexican government paid people to kill and to scalp Native Americans, because they felt like they couldn't adequately protect their own citizens from some "Indian attacks". Although ... who is to say that some innocent individuals didn't get caught up in it and didn't lose their lives and their scalps?! Objectively, that was a part of history that many different people participated in (regardless of their race / regardless of their country), but one might wonder about the innocent people that might have been dragged into it.

When the Europeans came to America, they encountered the disease Syphilis, and the indigenous people encountered diseases like smallpox.

Of course, not all of the Europeans travelled to the new world simply to escape British tyranny, but there were also matters of mercantilism and militarism.

The British leaders (?) in America at the time tried to make treaties with the Native Americans, but the treaties were not always honoured, which led to more problems. 

Eventually, the Native Americans were pushed off of the land that was supposed to be their own (remember those treaties? Agreements were made that basically meant that certain areas would belong to the European settlers and that certain areas would belong to the Native Americans) ... even though, at first, it was supposed to seem like "negotiations" to exchange lands.

"The Indian Removal Act was signed by President Andrew Jackson on May 28,1830. The law authorized the president to negotiate with southern Indian tribes for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for their lands." - Wikipedia.

Approximately 40,000 Cherokees died on what is called the "Trail of Tears".

"The first meetings between settlers and Native Americans would follow the same course in almost every European settlement along the East Coast. The two groups would meet as friends. They would begin by trading for food and other goods.

In time, however, something would happen to cause a crisis. Perhaps a settler would demand that an Indian stay off the settler's land. Perhaps someone was killed. Fear would replace friendship.

One side or the other would react to what they believed was an attack. A good example of this was the conflict known as King Philip's War.

Metacom, also known as Metacomet, was a leader of the Wampanoag tribe. He was the son of Chief Massasoit. Without the help of Massasoit and his tribe, the first European settlers in the northernmost colonies might not have survived their first winter. The Wampanoag Indians provided them with food. They taught the settlers how to plant corn and other crops. The two groups were very friendly for several years. Massasoit and his court attended the first harvest feast, which became known as Thanksgiving.

As the years passed, however, fear and mistrust replaced friendliness. Metacom 's brother died of a European disease. Metacom, who was known to the English as King Philip, blamed the colonists. He also saw how the increasing numbers of settlers were changing the land. He believed they were destroying it.

One small crisis after another finally led to the killing of a Christian Indian who lived with the settlers. The settlers retaliated by killing three Indians. King Phillip’s War quickly followed. It began in sixteen seventy-five and continued for almost two years. Men, women and children on both sides were killed. Historians say as many as three thousand Native Americans died in the violence. More than six hundred settlers are believed to have been killed." - "American History: A New World Clash of Cultures" by Steve Ember.

Jens Böttiger, I have a degree in history

Answered Apr 29

Original Question: I mean , Europeans could have asked for land through mutual understanding and cooperation, explaining why they fled from their countries. Both the groups could have taken time to learn about each other's culture and could have helped to educate/support each other, couldn't they?

They actually did. All the time.

Your concept of the situation is completely wrong.

There is no “both groups”. There was no European group, and there was no Native American group. That’s how you think about it today, because they do a piss-poor job of teaching history.

There were dozens of independent colonies and separate European governments fighting or negotiating with hundreds of native nations. They had nothing to do with each other. AT ALL. They fought and murdered each other all the time. They were all in competition.

Those colonies and those native nations fought among themselves more than anyone else. They would often make treaties or alliances with the colonists or the natives to help them with their own rivalries.

European immigration along with European food production and medicine allowed Europeans to out-breed native populations at an insane rate, which quickly made them obscenely dominant on the continent, at which point the newly minted US government mostly lost interest in cooperating with them, and simply ignored their own treaties and obligations, and just took control.

They then crushed native cultures, not by war or direct violence, so much as state organized ethnic cleansing through child abduction and brain washing.

Worst of all, it is still going on in some US states TODAY: Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families

1.1k Views · 23 Upvotes

Paul Cortez, Full-blooded member of the Bilagáana tribe.

Answered Apr 26

The question as written is overlooking extensive amounts of the details in the historical narrative of European exploration and settlement in North America, much of which had nothing to do with religious settlements, and was instead explicitly about the expansion of empires and the acquisition of greater wealth and territory for said empires, most notably the efforts of the Spanish, including in particular my ancestral namesake, Hernando Cortes. There was little negotiation to be made when conquest and subjugation were more or less the declared intentions of the expeditions.

I wanted to say that the problem with this question is that it is trying to apply 21st century standards of cultural morality to the 16th and 17th centuries, but the more I think about it, you're really trying to apply just 18th century standards and still missing the mark. What I am referring to is the Age of Enlightenment, wherein the philosophical groundwork was laid down for all these cultural virtues to which we presently ascribe a sense of moral superiority and take for granted as universal truths: democracy, natural rights, self determination, social contract, etc. Very little to none of this thinking really existed, or was put into practice, before the mid to late 1700s. Had these philosophical notions existed in widespread form 300 years prior to their development, settlement in the New World might have been been approached in a wholly different manner.

I want to conclude by reminding readers to be wary of believing the stereotype of the Native North Americans or Mesoamericans as being these wholly peaceful people who would have cooperated within reason (whatever that means) with European settlers and conquerors but were instead utterly taken advantage of and exploited. Nearly every indigenous people group in North America has a strong associative identity with warrior ethics. because it’s an integral part of their history and culture. They weren’t above fighting with one another well before the Europeans showed up or committing atrocities of their own, none of which I necessarily begrudge them. I am of the belief that one of the main reasons they lost the inevitable conflicts was because they were merely outdone by virtue of both greater numbers and technology carried over from Europe, the latter of which they made great efforts to rectify in an attempt to somewhat even the odds. It certainly wasn’t for lack of heart when it came to fighting for their lands that they were ultimately defeated. Conversely, I suspect that if the Aztecs had ever figured out how to build oceangoing ships and/or muskets, there’s a better-than-average chance that Big Ben would be overlooking the Thames from atop a temple to Quetzacoatl rather than a vertical tower.

290 Views · 6 Upvotes · Answer requested by Saujan Uprety

Denis O'Sullivan, Descendant from the Wendat nation, though a small part of my lineage

Answered Apr 29

You are looking at this matter through the perspective of the settlers and the natives. But, there were over-riding objectives of the mother countries in play too, such as mercantilism and military allegiances.

Don’t forget that the natives themselves did not even coexist in peace with each other. For instance, in the early days of New France, the French established a peaceful and seemingly effective relationship with some tribes such as the Wendat (a.k.a. Huron) and the Abinaki. But, that in turn led to a conflict with the Haudenosaunee (a.k.a. Iroquois), the enemy of the Wendat. Ultimately, a French regiment had to brought to New France to put down the Iroquois uprising in order to defend the settlers.

44 Views · Answer requested by Saujan Uprety

Brett Potomac, Has watched tons of the Military History channel.

Answered Apr 25

No, definitely not.

I will talk about a subject that no other answers have focused on: Native Americans (including North+South America) were easily just as violent as Europeans were. Tribes fought each other- a lot.

One culture I remember explicitly from school are the Aztecs. I remember them because of their gruesome, vile, and I will argue barbaric ways of treating tribes that did not pay tribute to them. The Aztecs were extremely big on human sacrifice. Like- really big. At their peak, estimates put them at 100,000–200,000human sacrifices a year! Holy cow! Furthermore, these were not “humane” executions as executions are today. Here is an excerpt from http://Mexicolore.com :

“THE AZTECS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURING TRIBES PERFORMED MANY TYPES OF SACRIFICE. CAPTIVES MIGHT HAVE THEIR HEARTS RIPPED FROM THEIR BODIES, BE BURNT ALIVE, FLAYED, OR CUT INTO PIECES. AZTEC CITIZIENS AND PRIESTS OFTEN PERFORMED ACTS OF SELF-SACRIFICE WHEREBY THEY PERFORATED THEIR TONGUES, EARLOBES, LEGS AND ARMS WITH CACTUS THORNS. AN ESPECIALLY PAINFUL EXAMPLE OF SELF-SACRIFICE INVOLVED PIERCING THE TONGUE AND PASSING LONG PIECES OF STRAW THROUGH THE WOUND.”

Sorry for the all caps, I got the information directly from http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/azte... (I fear posting images for they will be too graphic for Quora)

An interesting fact that resonated with me is that the torches in the religious temples were lit by burning the hearts they ripped out of the victims. (No wonder they needed so many sacrifices; I'm no expert, but I don't think human hearts burn for that long)

While the North American tribes were not as keen on human sacrifice as the Aztecs, warfare was not at all uncommon. The names of the tribes that we use today (Apache, Iroquois, etc.) are actually the names that enemy tribes would give their opposition. They mean “enemy”, “not us”, and other words along those lines.

Another fact I found interesting was that Europeans actually killed less Natives than Natives did each other. (Excluding disease), Europeans account for a minute number of warefare fatalities of Native Americans.

So no, it was not at all a Utopia in Native America.

3.8k Views · 47 Upvotes

George Goldsmith

Answered Apr 26

I’m going to focus on the “Native American utopia” part of your question. If you mean did Native Americans live in peace and harmony with the land and each other, the answer is yes regarding the land (nature, even animals) and a definitive no regarding each other. Read “The Heart of Everything That Is,” the story of Red Cloud, and you will see how violent, warlike and aggressive many Native American peoples were. Their culture prized warriors, very much like the Spartans, and they made war on each other, pushed other tribes out of rich, fecund lands, took prisoners and basically slaves, stole women, horses and other items from each other, etc. There is a particularly revealing passage when a drunken white officer confronts a native American at a banquet. The native american is complaining about the white man having taken all the indians’ land and pushed them out. The officer points out that that is exactly what the other man’s tribe did to all the tribes in the area. “You know why?” he continues? “Because you could, and we’re doing it to you because we can.” Rarely a more truthful commentary has been heard on humankind the world over. We don’t do things because they are right, we do them because we can, and Native Americans were no different.

1.1k Views · 17 Upvotes

David Grason, studied at Austin Peay State University (2016)

Answered May 16 · Upvoted by Lyonel Perabo, B.A. in History. M.A in related field (Folkloristics)

As a Native-American, I feel I’m somewhat qualified to provide an answer that would not really sit all that well with my tribal brethren. But I’m going to say it anyway because it is the damn truth!

The white man has always been condemned for his brutal treatment of the Native-Americans. The white man came here and conquered the indigenous peoples and then took their land. BUT HELL! That’s exactly the same thing all the native tribes were doing to each other anyway. The white man has never broken any established rules. Rather, he just did the same thing they had all been doing for thousands of years. Now, everyone is just pissed off because the white man was the strongest warrior. They criminalize the white man and label him a racist because of simple, plain old sour grapes.

40.7k Views · 2,154 Upvotes