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 ôdiscoveredö 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: ôTenaciously [the Indians] clung to their own way of life, although they lacked the numbers and disciplined organization to resist the intruders effectivelyö (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 driven from North Carolina by white settlers. The Iroquois League formed one nation, but each also kept its own identity. In describing the once-great nation, Thomas Jefferson wrote, ôSpirituous liquors, the small-pox, war, and an abridgment of territory, to a people who lived principally on the spontaneous productions of nature, had committed terrible havock among themö (Jefferson, 1984, p. 221). The collective identity felt by Indians today is a result...