Exam 1 Essay
Exam 1 Essay
Exam 1 Essay
Professor Johnson
Exam 1 Essay
Let’s say we time traveled back to when the Europeans begin to colonize the New World. I was
a Native American during that time and age. I was probably living a very good life, hunting,
fishing, and farming etc… Suddenly in the 1500s, Europeans discovered this New World that I’m
living in. Before the 1500s, this continent was an unknown place to them. They saw this land to
discover new animals and plants. Us Indians were very creative. We had found ways to live in
deserts, forest, along the oceans and on the grasslands. Europeans encountered with the
Indians by the coast first and then with more as they expanded westwards.
The arrival of Europeans impacted and changed our lives drastically. As they sailed
across the Atlantic they brought with them diseases. They brought diseases like smallpox,
measles and flus. As an English explorer Thomas Harriot observed and wrote, “Within a few
days after our departure from every such [Indian] town, the people began to die very fast, and
many in short space; in some towns about twenty, in some forty, in some sixty, & in one six
score [6 x 20 = 120], which in truth was very many in respect of their numbers. . . . The disease
was also so strange that they neither knew what it was nor how to cure it.” This was after the
Europeans had visited our tribes and left. Experts believed that 90 percent of us Indians died
Native Americans tribe had their own government. After the Europeans, we had no kind of self-
determination at all. The Europeans needed workers to build houses and clear fields. This was
another big change that came about after the Europeans had arrived, slavery. Europeans
realized that they could trade goods with certain Indian tribes that would bring other Indians
captured in tribe wars. They would be bought and sold as slaves. After that no Indian tribes had
self-determination at all. A lot of tribes had tried to escape the slave trade, which destroyed
some of the tribes completely. Later in time, enslaving of the Native Indians ended.
When the Europeans arrived, we had the option to see what they could provide and
what they had that we did not. We were very interested with the things that they could provide
for us. We even started to trade with them for the new-found items that they had. We even
started to use these new materials and product in our everyday life. They had firearms, powder
and lead shot which lead us to let go of our bows and arrows that we used for hunting. You
could almost say we got along with the Europeans. New trade goods across the Atlantic had
changed our lives forever and brought us more options to do stuff efficiently. Soon we had to
Citation
“500 Nations - The Story of Native Americans - Part I.” YouTube, YouTube,
Davidson James W. US: A Narrative History, Volume 2: Since 1865 7th Edition McGraw Hill.
June 2017.