What was the impact of white settlement on Native Americans?
...ts supported themselves by agriculture. By 1755, most Indian communities were economically dependant upon Europeans to some degree. Trade also had huge social effects as the natives were sought after by Europeans to become trading partners thus exposing them to white culture such as firearms and liquor. This had an enormous impact on the life of the native Americans. Traders brought alcohol which brought death and disruption to Indian communities, later realised by village chiefs and colonial officials as many natives died from excessive drinking. Evidence of this indecent behaviour caused by alcohol abuse is through the words of a British agent in 1777 in the Choctaw towns. He saw “nothing but Rum Drinking and Women Crying over the Dead Bodies of their relations who have died by Rum”,# signifying that the chiefs of the tribe were powerless to stop the social chaos that resulted. A common fondness for alcohol increased the likelihood of intercultural hostilities and so it became impossible to resist and extraordinarily destructive. This drunkenness enhanced the fierceness of the warriors of a tribe, leading to them challenging the authority and tradition of the old leaders in the village, therefore not maintaining the peace. This had dramatic social effects which resulted into a change in the traditions and beliefs of a tribe. During the 17th and 18th century in Eastern North America the natives began to get caught up in an international economic network as they began to produce goods especially for a foreign market, evidently showing that trade due to white settlement had become greatly important to native Americans and had become a valid way of life. Many towns and settlements that grew into America’s cities began life as trading posts, which also encouraged close interaction between natives and Europeans White settlers brought with them diseases such as small pox, of which the native Americans had never been exposed to, leading to mass destruction of enormous numbers of natives and inevitably whole tribes. The natives were not immune to these diseases and so could not escaped the deadly bacteria that spread like wild fire across America. This biological catastrophe had lasting effects as death had an adverse effect on the older members of a tribe and the youngest, therefore population levels declined. Some villages lost 50%, others lost 90%. This decline also had vast social effects as significantly as older members of a community were struck with disease, collected wisdom of generations would vanish within a matter of days, destroying sacred traditions and skills which would generally be passed down from generation to generation. Disease from the white settlers also stripped communities of their most precious resources and population, two of the most important assets that were necessary to successfully maintain their existence. The result of disease was that the native people were compelled to construct new societies from the remnants of the old, and some found it obstinate to do so, therefore vanishing from existence. These disease were recurrent and therefore stopped the population from recovery until immunity to the diseases were established When the Europeans arrived in native America they realised that the land was not empty as they had expected but full of native people. At the beginning of white settlement the Indians welcomed the whites into their land, and allowed them to have some land but they soon realised that the settlers were there to change the ways of the native people and this is when the conflict between the settlers and natives began- “… The white and red man lived contently together for a long time, though the former asked for more land which was readily obtained…, until the Indians began to believe that they would soon want all their country, which in the end proved true.” #The diversity of tribes was colossal and therefore did not have a common sense of identity. It was the Europeans that created the concept of “Indian”. John Lawson,# a colonist in 1701 noted the striking differences in language, dress and physical appearance among Carolina Indians living only a few miles apart, evidently showing the variety of native people, and that they could not be put under one umbrella. This difference between tribes was essential because when wars were fought between the natives and Europeans, some Indian tribes sided with the Europeans against their own native people, showing that inter tribal relations were not strong. A primary example of a war between the white settlers and the natives would be the Pequot War, in which a whole Indian village was massacred. This small scale conflict of a short duration cast a long lasting shadow upon native and white settler relations. This event is evidence that strong cultural and religious differences existed between the natives and the white settlers. Within an hour, the intact Pequot village was burned to the ground killing between 400-700 men, women and children. The effects of this event are exceptionally important as native culture simply vanished. The Pequot war became a significant factor in the formulation of colonial/ American native policy over the next three centuries as it became a vital part of American frontier mythology and shaped the foundations of colonial history. Social disruption within tribes due to the white settlement and new found luxuries like alcohol created random individual acts of violence, more so than before colonialism and therefore warfare reached new levels of potency. Status within tribes changed as the older, wiser members influence was reduced due to war, as the younger warriors overtook status in the tribes. War, due to white settlement gradually became a part of everyday life and due to the new warrior culture that had developed due to the vast amount of European/India...