Prior to European settlement, Native American tribes populated North America and lived according to their environment and traditions. The arrival of Europeans brought diseases that killed many Native Americans who lacked immunity, as well as conflicts over resources as settlers continued moving westward. While some early interactions were peaceful, tensions often arose due to disputes over deals between Native Americans and Europeans. This sparked conflicts between tribes for shrinking hunting lands and power struggles as European influence grew.
Prior to European settlement, Native American tribes populated North America and lived according to their environment and traditions. The arrival of Europeans brought diseases that killed many Native Americans who lacked immunity, as well as conflicts over resources as settlers continued moving westward. While some early interactions were peaceful, tensions often arose due to disputes over deals between Native Americans and Europeans. This sparked conflicts between tribes for shrinking hunting lands and power struggles as European influence grew.
Prior to European settlement, Native American tribes populated North America and lived according to their environment and traditions. The arrival of Europeans brought diseases that killed many Native Americans who lacked immunity, as well as conflicts over resources as settlers continued moving westward. While some early interactions were peaceful, tensions often arose due to disputes over deals between Native Americans and Europeans. This sparked conflicts between tribes for shrinking hunting lands and power struggles as European influence grew.
Prior to European settlement, Native American tribes populated North America and lived according to their environment and traditions. The arrival of Europeans brought diseases that killed many Native Americans who lacked immunity, as well as conflicts over resources as settlers continued moving westward. While some early interactions were peaceful, tensions often arose due to disputes over deals between Native Americans and Europeans. This sparked conflicts between tribes for shrinking hunting lands and power struggles as European influence grew.
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NATIVE AMERICAN CONFLICTS
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Prior to European settlement in North America, Native American tribes populated specific
areas of the continent. Their cultures, food, traditions, and beliefs were wrapped up in their environment. Plains Indians, for instance, hunted buffalo and used the entire animal for food, clothing, shelter, kitchen goods, and other important materials. Though it is believed that Native Americans engaged in battles between tribes prior to European settlement, the presence of the Europeans helped spawn conflicts and circumstances that would dramatically impact the lives of Native Americans across the continent.
Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Europeans sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in hopes of settling new land and obtaining resources. North America seemed like a dream: lush forests, plenty of freshwater lakes, the promise of gold (even though it would be a long time before gold was actually found), and new uncharted lands lured European explorers to the continent. They brought along with them crops and new technology. They also brought along diseases that caused the deaths of many Native Americans. The arriving settlers had grown immune to such diseases because those particular diseases had been in Eurasia for over five centuries. Native American tribes had not built up immunity to these infections, including smallpox. Some estimate that during smallpox epidemics in North America, 80 to 90 percent of fatalities were part of the Native American populations.
There were many instances when Native Americans traded in peace with the Europeans. The Native Americans made good use of some of the technology the Europeans brought, like metal tools. The Native Americans often exchanged food or rights to hunting lands. However, wars would break out often due to disputes over deals between the Native Americans and Europeans.
In Jamestown, Virginia, for instance, European settlers found themselves in peaceful times with Native Americans when they were able to make agreements. Though the settlers, who founded Jamestown in 1607, had to depend on the Native Americans for some food and resources, they also typically viewed the natives as people who should be conquered. When hard times came for the settlers in 1608 and many of them did not have much food, they pressured the natives into giving them food. These aggressions began a slew of conflicts now collectively called the Anglo-Powhatan Wars, which lasted several decades with thousands of Native Americans either dying or being displaced.
1 The consequences of European arrival to North America negatively affected the relationships even between Native American tribes from time to time. Native Americans were suddenly scrambling to share resources with whole new groups of people who had access to powerful weapons, technology to build sturdy buildings, and the ability to call for
reinforcements from thousands of miles away. The relationships Native American tribes had built with each other became tenuous as the mounting pressure coming from European settlers threatened to destroy their ways of life. This sparked many skirmishes between tribes over hunting land that was becoming more and more scarce as Europeans continued to settle further into the West. At this time, land was both currency and livelihood. If tribes were forced off their lands, they needed to either find somewhere else to go, or learn to live with the Europeans who had taken over and assumed power, which proved impossible much of the time.
