Freitag, 29. Mai 2009

History of Native Americans

America is known as the melting pot because it has always been a nation composed by immigrants of all races. The first humans to inhabit the North American continent were migrants from northeast Asia and the Pacific Islands who established settlements in North America as early as 8000 BC and possibly much earlier. These early immigrants survived the harsh times and difficult American climate as well as the wilderness on primitive basic instincts. The immigrants where mainly hunters and gatherers who had little control over their environment and food supply. They brought with them their own spiritual beliefs and ideas. To protect themselves from the cold in winter, most tribes constructed snug homes and wore the furs of their prey on their backs.
But not all of the early settlers where of Asiatic origin. The Norse Vikings explored the North American mainland in the 10th and 11th centuries and settled native Indian people, the Indians were not pleased by their stay. The Indians were unsuccessful in driving the Norse out of the land. It was the Norse who destroyed their own colony after a series of quarrels amongst themselves and sailed back to their homeland.
As the climate conditions changed in America, people adapted to the new, warmer conditions and were motivated to spread south of the region. While some tribes lived well on the hunting and gathering, fishing and farming, other settlers began to cultivate their own grains and plants and farm their own animals.
From the arrival of Christopher Columbus (1492) to the present day, the Native Americans have been misunderstood and treated like beasts. Beginning in the 16th century, many of the European settlers wanted the land that the natives called their homes, and because they wouldn’t give up without a fight, Europeans found other ways to deprive them of it. Diseases such as small pox, measles and cholera were deliberate acts of germ warfare and along with war, imprisonment, malnutrition, enslavement and inhumane behaviour of the white man, close to 99% of first nations people were wiped out. The U.S. government continually made new treaties with the native people. But there were often loopholes and the treaties were broken, taking more land away from the people who first lived on it.
In 1864, the government forced about five hundred Cheyenne into a barren territory near Denver called the Sand Creek Reserve. The reservation consisted mostly of women, children and the elderly. But on November 29, Colonel John M. Chivington and approximately 700 troops attacked the defenceless tribe. As the troops drove the Cheyenne out of the camps, some of the Native Americans were able to escape. Others, mostly women and children were shot at close range with high- powered guns.
An example is the Wounded Knee Massacre, which is known as the last of the Indian wars. It all started in late 1890, the Sioux tribe was suffering tremendously from loss of people and cattle to disease. To stop white settlers encountering Native Americans, the Sioux thought that they would have to perform a ritual called the Ghost Dance. The U.S. government feared that the Ghost Dance was actually a war dance that would eventually lead to mass deadly riots. In an attempt to stop this revolution, 40 Policemen were sent to arrest Sitting Bull, the leader of the Sioux, but ended up putting 350 Sioux into a camp in South Dakota called Wounded Knee.
There the Native Americans were forced to drop all their weapons, but there was one Sioux who disobeyed orders and fired his gun. This disobedience caused the soldiers to fire back and kill about 300 of the 350 Sioux, including some children.
Another unjust slaughter of Native Americans was the Trail of Tears. In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which provided funds for the forced relocation of all Native Americans east of the Mississippi river to somewhere west. In the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole tribes were forced into designated points somewhere within their territory.
Once everyone was rounded up into these certain points, men, women, children and the elderly were forced by U.S. soldiers to march at gunpoint for hundreds of miles. The government provided the Native Americans with insufficient amounts of food, shelter or medical support. Appalling numbers of Native Americans died on these journeys.
As well as unjust slaughter, the U.S. government also unjustly enslaved the Native Americans. Americans refused to accept and understand the Native American culture. The American and Native American ways of life are very different from one- another. This difference in cultures caused almost 300 years of violent conflicts.