Native Americans and Whites: 1600-1820

The treatment of Native Americans by whites in America during the period 1600-1820 illustrates the problems that can develop when people with different cultures come together. When Europeans first reached North America, they found hundreds of Native Americans tribes occupying a land abundant with natural resources. The whites had virtually no respect for the spiritual, cultural, and intellectual riches of the people they referred to as Indians. Whites believed they had "discovered" a new world which was their destiny to dominate. They quickly set about altering the way of life of indigenous people. For the Indians, the consequences of their interaction with whites has most often been tragic.

Prior to the 18th century, there was no national policy on Indians simply because the American nation had not yet come into existence. American Indians similarly did not possess a political or social unity with which to confront the various Europeans: "Tenaciously [the Indians] clung to their own way of life, although they lacked the numbers and disciplined organization to resist the intruders effectively" (Hagan, 1993, p. 2). The Indian tribes were far from homogeneous. Rather they were loosely formed bands and tribes, speaking nearly 300 languages and thousands of dialects. The most powerful Indian confederacy at the time was the Iroquois League, composed of the Mohawk, Cayuga, Seneca, Oneida, and Onondaga. A sixth nation, the Tuscarora, joined the confederacy in 1722 when

Related Essays

That Noble Dream & Historical Objectivity .... aggressively challenged the claims of any whites to speak .... side and the view from the Native American side .... not in America, from where most Americans viewed it .... (2676 11 )

Economics of Slavery in the New World .... overlords, simply enough, was that the native population could .... on the island as a whole whites outnumbered blacks .... They Came in Chains: Americans from Africa. .... (3580 14 )

ions that the federal government had made in granting land treaties to the Indians. Native Americans were virtually powerless to stem the tide of invading white squatters, who enjoyed the tacit approval of the federal government. Understandably, Indians reacted to the white invasion of their territory with violent resistance. By nature, the males of some tribes were warriors. Indians raided white settlements and mutilated the bodies of the slain. This activity struck terror in the hearts of Eastern residents who read lurid newspaper accounts of the massacres. By the early 1800s, whites feared that a full-blown Indian war was imminent. The United States cavalry encountered initial difficulties in stemming the tide of Indian violence. Indian familiarity with the terrain allowed them ample opportunities to elude capture. Indian tribes were extremely mobile and could break camp at a moment's notice. Complicating matters was the fact that the average white settler could not identify perpetrators of criminal activity within an Indian tribe because attacks on settlements occurred too swiftly. The marauding Indians presented a dilemma to federal bureaucrats who found themselves under unrelenting pressure from Western c

Category: History - N