How the Arrival of the Europeans Alter the Environment for Native Americans

Justine Hertwig HIS 416 Exam 1 How did the arriver of the Europeans alter the environment of Native Americans? Documentation and oral history help historians piece together the past. We whop when and who arrived in early America, unless we dont have the most detailed approximation of what the at present United States actually looked like because technology was at a bare minimum. Columbus arrived in1492 and reported wide empty estates mellowed for the taking. If America was properly surveyed at that time, Columbus may have had something else to tell the peace of his people.Perhaps he would have described huge civilizations and cities, massive agricultural centers capable of feeding thousands, and domesticated beasts in giant herds. When discussing the involvement of destruction on the early America, its easy to point a hitchhike at the Europeans as wasteful and intrusive. Louis S. Warrens American Environmental History gives points that support the idea that American Indians had already made a significant carbon footprint on the land.According to Warren, Bartolome de las Casa, a Spanish priest and author of many items of literature that demonized the Spanish for their cruelty to the natives, believed that more than 40 million American Indians had died before compound America had even begun to cattle farm west. The fact that very little commonwealth censuses were performed on the native peoples means that that number could be far more or far less. Either look 40 million people would need massive amounts of resources to allow their civilizations to thrive.Warren suggests a New World complete of 53. 9 million. -pg. 6 This notion would make Columbuss claim of vast empty lands ripe for the taking as a gross exaggeration. What we do know is that there are many animal(prenominal) land features that are greatly altered at the hands of the Native peoples not just the trespassing(a) Europeans. Warren describes cause that fire had been used as a means of c learing out land and pushing back forest lines for agricultural use in the early Americas long before Europeans arrived.Lightning solely could not have been the cause for these massive fires suggesting the American Indians as the culprits. We also know that as the skin trade began to explode, many feuds erupted over hunting lands needed to supply the Europeans with pelts. The Native peoples became dependent on outside(prenominal) goods such as copper pots and pans, guns, gun powder, and bullets, and tools offered by the European traders in return for huge poesy of pelts. This trade sparked the Beaver Wars which laid waste to many American Indian tribes and made the trade personal credit line even more competitive and cut throat.Besides the unwanted intrusion on enormous areas of pre-owned land and the spread of lethal disease, Warren describes the European settlers cutting down too many trees, over fishing the seafood commonwealth, and existence generally wasteful of the resou rces that, at the time, seemed infinite as their primary offense. Yet this claim wasnt until colonial America was concretely established and west pressd expansion began for an ever growing population and economic market. Pastoralism was the slue for settlers causing more and more land to be obtained questionably by unknowing American Indians.The European expansion pushed endemic go on and further out of their lands disrupting their ancient tradition forever. The environment became hostile straightway after the eldest Europeans arrived, not just from fighting over land ownership but because of the remnant brought on by foreign disease and threat of being captured during raids from enemy tribes and sold to the Europeans as slaves. Its obvious that European arrival greatly impacted and altered the physical environment for the American Indians, but to say that they were the only people that laid waste to forests and herds of animals is just egregious.Warren suggests that the land was significantly altered with primer erosion as wellhead as a growing medium left with little nutrients for further growing seasons. -pg. 90 Yet the question of Which civilization decimated the land the most? remains. If disease, forced relocation and war hadnt all but destroyed the American Indians by the 1700s whos to say that they wouldnt have ravaged the land and its resources to support the massive native population. 100 years after first European contact the native population was reduced by over 90%.This gives convincing evidence that the landscape that colonial settlers described as lush, wild and unused was once extremely modified by natives a a couple of(prenominal) hundred years before European arrival. How has disease shaped the historical growth in the United States? Until the arrival of the Europeans, the New World was free of measles, typhus, cholera, and smallpox. When the Spanish invaded Mexico, they brought with them a silent grampus more potent than any arm y. The infectious diseases ravaged the American Indians because they had no immunity.By the early 1600s, the indigenous population was decimated from smallpox, mumps, measles and other European diseases. The large-scale epidemics that followed devastated native communities creating cultural disruption. This greatly weakened their capacity for army response and inadvertently paved the way for rapid European expansion and cultural dominance. Disease didnt just give the Europeans the upper hand for domination by reducing American Indians ability to fight back with numbers, it deeply disturbed the native religion.American Indians had shamans or medicine men that, for centuries, provided all that was needed to interact their ailments. Warren lists the diseases not foreign to the natives as pinta, yaws, venereal syphilis, hepatitis, encephalitis, polio, some varieties of tuberculosis and intestinal parasites. -pg. 51 As Old World disease took hold of the American Indians they turned to their shamans and medicine men for solution. Like the Puritans, American Indians first believed sickness was caused by sin.Their God, or in American Indian sense their spirit world, was self-aggrandising ailment to punish those not lifetime correctly. The shamans gave instruction on proper ritual and ceremony carrying out to rid the infected of sickness. After this didnt work the tribes people began to lose faith. Their traditional medicine wasnt working and the disease seemed to be indiscriminate to man and woman of any age. This caused the American Indians to look at the Europeans state of health. They werent affected as harshly because of immunity.Not knowing the concept of immunity, the indigenous began to forsake old ways and assimilate European culture into daily life in hopes to conglomerate strength from the European God that spared his people from sickness and death. Europeans brought catastrophic death to the American Indians as well as the seeds that sprouted a loss o f faith in their traditional native ways. The native population wasnt the only peoples greatly affected by disease. Warren illustrates the devastating effects of cholera and dysentery on colonial America. Many of the colonists just werent educated enough to take proper care of themselves when sick.Warren describes the few doctors that lost more patients then they saved. -pgs. 141-147. Many colonists also believed that many sicknesses were due to punishments by God or the doings of evil spirits. Colonial America had major problems with sanitisation. They didnt even know that poor sanitation was the cause for most of the illnesses ailing their people. Colonial homes had no bathrooms or running water. Their tushs were either a bedroom pot they kept under beds or a privy. Drinking wells were contaminated by discarding toilet waste into streams and creeks.A lack of understanding pathogens and how they survive caused many, who were able to recover, to get sick all over again. another(p renominal) problem was that the colonials rarely bathed. They felt that bathing washed away the layer of dirt that was their protection against germs and disease. When they did bathe, it consisted of serve with a cloth dipped into a basin of water. We know now that this could actually spread germs and bacterium instead of ridding them, especially when using the same infected washcloth to bath the sick and the healthy.Cholera itself wont kill a person, but lack of hydration while expelling most of ones form fluids while sick will. In hopes to escape the disease that ravaged people in close living quarters, colonists moved to what Warren describes as open air and waters of the countryside. -pg. 154 This caused many to expand their communities to areas unaffected by pathogens and inadvertently kicking out American Indians through manipulation while simultaneously introducing them to more sickness.