Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

Comparison of Iroquois & California Indians

ng Native Americans from some traditional lands but of inducing others to exploit their land to the point of depletion in order to satisfy the demands of the European fur trade. For the Iroquois (and other groups) trade was desirable because the exchange offered them goods such as tools and weapons to which they had no other means of access. This trade induced a degree of dependence among the Indians, but it was unsuccessful in transferring the colonizer's economic ethic to them. Where the acquisition of goods was, among Europeans, a good in itself, the Indians (no matter how dependent they became or perceived themselves to be) did not want more than they needed. Raising the price for a fur, for instance, from one gun to two meant that the Europeans received fewer furs because the Iroquois still only needed the same number of guns. Attached to this conservative approach to trade was an even more conservative approach to resources. To deplete the land of the animals that were their capital would have been foolish. The introduction of alcohol as an object of trade, however, shifted the balance. Now the demand for the European resource far exceeded the availability of the Indian resource and groups such as the Iroquois and the Delaware over-exploited their environment. This resulted, as they had known it would, in the loss of a resource and, as their lands were increasingly opened to farming settlers, the Iroquois began to change in ways that facilitated the change to subsistence farming and "eased the Iroquois transition to reservation life in the early 1800s" (Champagne, American 139).

The Native American bands of southern California led very different lives from the Iroquois. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish troops and missionaries these peoples engaged in subsistence agriculture organized around village life. A few crops required relatively intensive cultivation, but most were only semicultivated and many dietary item...

< Prev Page 2 of 8 Next >

More on Comparison of Iroquois & California Indians...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Comparison of Iroquois & California Indians. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 02:07, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1690121.html