Early American Encounters

Early Encounters Between Europeans and North American Aboriginal Societies: Revealing Christianity To The Americas

Early Encounters Between Europeans and North American Aboriginal Societies: Revealing Christianity To The Americas

In the time of the discovery of the Americas, culture and religion had been playing a massive role in fuelling massive movements that would shape the world as we know it to the present day. This essay will prove that the European colonial powers used culture and religion as a means in which to justify large scale imperial expansion and to exploit the native populations.

With the discovery of the Americas across the Atlantic ocean, and the subsequent discovery of the Indigenous peoples that inhabited…show more content…
He takes their origins as a clear identifier that they’re able to be saved. Professing that they’ve come from strange lands and that that went through many hardships to get to where they came from. These pieces of evidence that the priest describes lead him to conclude that they were a part of the ten tribes of Israel that the king of the Assyrians captured as in the fourth book of kings.[3] As European expansion grew, the Native peoples around were forced to abandon their “heathen” lifestyles and practices and adopt Roman Catholicism.[4] The Church, under the false pretence of freedom and choice of marriage attempted to control the Natives’ marriages choices and slowly integrated the Native peoples into natural law and Christian morality.[5] The Church, despite its own issues with the matter, attempted to set limitations to sexual practices that were of heathen nature, such as polygamy, and “trial marriage”. These limitations further allowed the conquering and subjugating Europeans to further dampen and eek the Native people’s old cultures out of them. Allowing them to be even easier to conquer in the long run of the European imperialism. Along with the church’s vies for expanding their power in the Americas, the citizens of the Eurpoean powers were looking at how the Native Americans should be treated in these new…show more content…
The European powers managed to conquer all of the Americas and spread their influence throughout the world. Using culture and religion to conquer many peoples and exploit them to the fullest of their ability. One could ask, how the world would be different if the Europeans hadn’t discovered the Americas? We’ll never know.

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[1] Games, Alison F. and Adam Rothman, Major Problems in Atlantic History. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, (2008), 65-69

[2] Games, Alison F. and Adam Rothman, Major Problems in Atlantic History. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, (2008), 78-81.
[3] Games, Alison F. and Adam Rothman, Major Problems in Atlantic History. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, (2008), 78-81.
[4] Games, Alison F. and Adam Rothman, Major Problems in Atlantic History. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, (2008), 89-90.
[5] Games, Alison F. and Adam Rothman, Major Problems in Atlantic History. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, (2008), 90-91.

[6] Games, Alison F. and Adam Rothman, Major Problems in Atlantic History. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, (2008),