They would kick the Indian out of their land and take it for their own, The United States quickly became one of the twentieth century’s most powerful nations after settling more than three million square miles of rich, diverse land. But despite all the riches it came at a great cost and destruction to the American Indians. The warfare between the US and the Indians began as early as 1809 and lasted until 1890, to which the Indians losing and being forced to live on reservations. Despite military involvement in early wars with the Indians, the final conquest was the white settlers wrestling land from them. One conflict was the gold rush of 1849, where some gold was found in what is now California, and millions of settlers went west to get rich on gold, and in the process fought with the Spanish who lived out there, and then killed many Indians who also settled in that land.
The only territory remaining were the American Indians located in Colorado. A major driving force that sparked this massacre was the gold and silver rush that attracted white settlers to this region. This created a considerable amount of anger toward the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. Involvement of U.S settlers in their land produced violence between both parties, however, after the Civil war violence intensified even more. Throughout this historical era, a series of wars continued with U.S expansion for the rest of 19th century, however, the battle of Sand Creek illustrated a disturbing massacre by the United States that could have been avoided.
Chapter 1 Chapter 1, entitled Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress depicts the Europeans’ initial encounter with the Arawak Indians of the West Indies . The Arawaks greeted Columbus and his crew with hospitality, but little did they know they would soon be taken advantage of and have their culture virtually destroyed. Columbus’s journal entries about this first meeting indicate his feelings of superiority to the Arawaks, which led to enslavement, murder, and rape. The Arawaks were forced to work in gold mines and were killed at the will of the Europeans. Millions of natives were killed in slavery, war, and, mining.
These pioneers shared the same goals of Columbus, greed. They would go out and load ships with slaves, merchandise, spices and just about everything else that they could find to satisfy their needs. Beginning the of excerpt, “God, glory, and gold--not necessarily in that order--took post-Renaissance Europeans to parts of the globe they had never before seen” (1). This quote is a perfect example of religion also taking part in greedy necessities. During these arrival of European explorers, they began a new era of disease within the villages and caused the death of hundreds and hundreds of Natives.
With the arrival of Spanish colonies in the Americas in 1492 following the first voyage by Christopher Columbus, a worldwide exchange of plants, animals and pathogens took place between Europe, Africa and Asia that significantly impacted of all civilizations. This involved introducing foreign products that largely affected the livelihood of the receiving country, whether it being new foods brought in to resolve nationwide problems of famine or starvation, or the crippling population decline of the Native Americas through exposure of disease brought over by the Europeans. Having no previous contact with Europeans and therefore no natural immunity, new diseases such as smallpox and measles, an outbreak infected the Natives that quickly wiped out much of the population, most notably were the indigenous population of the Caribbean Islands who were almost driven to existence due to the epidemic alone. By 1540, it was recorded that up to 90 percent of the entire population succumbed to what was described as a plague that would last from weeks to months before spreading to a different area, effectively the most devastating death toll even compared to the following wars led by the Spaniards. The amount of death did not stop the Spaniards from taking advantage of the fertile land for the crops and livestock they brought over.
This led to Indian suffrage and deaths of thousands of Native Americans. The Indians called this the trail of tears, describing it as a journey that sickened and starved them. Some Indians tribes, like the Cherokees, tried to resist the acts and made treaties to protect them. But they were brutally harassed and angered. Indians depicted it as becoming denationalized as document H explains.
We are always taught that the white settlers came and took all the Indians’ land and killed many of them in doing so. Both of those are terrible things, but it is even more important to look more closely, and realize the smaller, just as important things that were ruined, like the incredible, self taught languages that they developed. Now, we can look back and appreciate the language for being so incredible, but we can also look back feeling shameful that something like that happened. It is such a shame that a sense of greed (land and expansion) on the settlers’ parts led to the destruction and near extinction of the people that were here
When Columbus stumbled upon the “New World” in 1492, he unwittingly initiated one of the most profound transformations in world history; a transformation that continues to shape the world in which we live today. The conquest of the Americas is known to being a brutal and vicious tragedy. While the newcomers cherished their new findings of spices, sugar, tobacco, coffee, gold, forest and fertile lands, the indigenous people were attacked with diseases, humiliation, destruction of culture and living conditions, and mass death. Since the conquest, historians have puzzled over one question in particular. How did so few Spanish manage to conquer such huge territories and the population taking up those lands?
It defined what Mexico was as a society.r Poverty persisted among the vast majority of the population. Mexico’s social structure had a direct effect from the wars. In the late 1820’s the New Government issued a decree expelling all Spaniards from Mexico, which deprived Mexico economy of an important source of capital. The central foundation of economic activity in Colonial Latin America was Indian labor. Wars, diseases, and the acquisition of status led to the mixing of races.
The role that power and inequality play in the broader picture of service work with Native America is complicated and brutal. White men came to America and inserted their power so much so that a land once populated by millions of indigenous peoples is now, a few hundred years later, colonized, gentrified, industrialized and completely taken over. In that time, native people were murdered, given diseases, forced to migrate, used as slave labor, forced into war, “Americanized” in violent boarding schools, stripped of any traditional ways of life and pushed on to tiny reservations that are concentrations of some of the deepest poverty in the world. Though this history seems like a distant past, these same themes of forced suppression and white