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Paper Abstract: Discusses the responses of Native Americans to the arrival of Europeans after 1492. Variety of responses of different Nations of Native Americans. Superiority attitude of Europeans. Focuses on encounters between several Native American Nations and the Spanish & English settlers. Diffeent approaches to colonization of the 2 countries. Destruction of Indian way of living. Paper Introduction: Introduction The responses of the various nations of Native Americans to the arrival of Europeans after 1492, and the manner in which they subsequently dealt with their presence, varied widely from one group to another. Responses to the encounter depended on the cultural characteristics of the different nations, on the economic and political circumstances in which they found themselves, and, to a considerable extent, on the same factors as they applied to the particular groups of Europeans they encountered. Just as there was no uniform Indian response to the encounter there were also significant differences in the ways the Spanish, English, French, and others approached the peoples whose land they were intent on occupying. A brief comparison of various encounters between several Native American nations and Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. 81). Thus, because they regarded the Native Americans as people whosesouls could be saved and whose labor -- and portions of their socialorganization -- needed to be incorporated into New Spain, the Spanish tooka different approach to the Indians than the English did. Vol. The people's leader, Montezumahad feared that Cortйs was the god Quetzalcoatl who was returning "aspredicted by the Mexican religion" and he hoped to "postpone (and perhapsprevent) the god's arrival" in his capital (Roark et al. The Spanishtook advantage of the Indians' confusion, even going to the extent ofhiding their dead to retain the reputation of being immortal, and by thetime the Mexica decided that resistance was necessary they were weakened bydisease and outmaneuvered by the military skills of the Spaniards. In addition,the English in the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies arrived infamily groups or else fully intended to import more women and even whenthere was an acute shortage of women, as in early Jamestown, "intermarriagebetween Indian women and English men was rare" (Roark et al. A division existed within the Creek nation between those whobelieved in holding on to their lands and those who "preferred the mastersof the Land be the Spanish 'who enslave no one as the English do'" -- as acontemporary source put it (quoted in Saunt 157). . Because theirnumbers were small, and in their plan of ruling over an empire of variouspeoples were likely to remain small, and because there were so few Spanishwomen among them the Spaniards were not intent on driving out or wiping outthe native American population and "a great deal of concubinage andintermarriage took place between Spanish men and Indian women" (Roark etal. Thesediffering goals had a considerable effect on their relations with theNative peoples but they were alike in taking a completely pragmatic view ofviolence toward the Native Americans. When the vast plantationsbegan to be established and the number of African slaves quadrupled to overtwenty thousand between 171 and 173 the Creeks compared this new type ofarrangement with the lives of the one hundred or so slaves in SpanishFlorida who primarily served as household servants and skilled craftsmenwhile their northern counterparts engaged in backbreaking labor in the ricefields. 1. Similarly, the leaders of variousIndian nations were often torn by indecision as to what to do about theunprecedented emergence of these strange new people. This meant that, despite grave suspicions, the Algonquiansassisted the first settlers at Jamestown by trading food for Europeangoods. English settlers ingeneral developed their part of North America "on the idea of the'plantation' that would replicate Old World social and cultural models"(occasionally featuring a somewhat different approach to religion) andregarded any settlement that did not meet this standard as "un-English" andbeneath consideration (Bauer 676). When, as in New Spain, the Europeans weremerely a tiny minority of the population (in comparison with both NativeAmericans and, later, African slaves) or when, as eventually in happened innortheastern North America, they constituted a majority of the populationthey were dominant "in both power and status" (Roark et al. The English, on the other hand, were either Puritans who believedin their own predestined salvation and did not generally bother withconverting the Indians or were largely indifferent to religious questionsof this sort. Introduction The responses of the various nations of Native Americans to thearrival of Europeans after 1492, and the manner in which they subsequentlydealt with their presence, varied widely from one group to another.Responses to the encounter depended on the cultural characteristics of thedifferent nations, on the economic and political circumstances in whichthey found themselves, and, to a considerable extent, on the same factorsas they applied to the particular groups of Europeans they encountered.Just as there was no uniform Indian response to the encounter there werealso significant differences in the ways the Spanish, English, French, andothers approached the peoples whose land they were intent on occupying. But when the settlers had no food and prudence dictated that theAlgonquians retain what they had the English, led by John Smith, "did nothesitate to take hostages and shoot to kill when Indians were reluctant totrade away their corn" (Roark et al. This meant that the Spanish settlers could develop colonies that hadpolitical parity with the old country while exploiting the human resourcesof the region. This balance was, ofcourse, merely a temporary arrangement on the part of the English and theexpansion of their farmlands -- once they were well-established -- not onlydestroyed the Indians' way of living but continued the spread of diseasesthat killed off much of the Native American population. Just as Montezuma hesitated in his reaction to the Spanish forcultural reasons the reactions of Powhatan, the Algonquian leader in theChesapeake Bay region approximately one century later, were governed bypolitical and economic considerations. After 1622 the English had simply concluded that the Native Americans wereno longer necessary to their survival. 62). The differences between the English and Spanish settlers, as perceivedby the Seminole and Creek nations in the eighteenth century -- although itwas a misleading view of their differences played an important role in thehistory of these two nations. There were also significant differences in the approaches tocolonization taken by the Spanish and the English -- the former havingarrived in the New World searching for the path to riches and the latter,for the most part, arriving with the intention of settling. Hartmann. Even this response did not finally persuade Powhatan who continued tohope that a balance could be established with the English and they lived inproximity on, for the most part, peaceable terms. Once the English and Spanish had established their various footholdsin the Americas their relationships with the Indians differed considerably. . Boston: Bedford, 1998.Saunt, Claudio. In Mexico, forexample, Hernбn Cortйs began his expedition against the so-called Aztec(actually Mexica) people in 1519 because he had received, among othergifts, a finely worked gold disk that promised the existence of theportable riches he was intent on finding. The Spanish had, since the time of Columbus, seen theconversion of the native Americans as a primary duty (even when it wascoupled with their virtual enslavement) because they saw the Indians'religions and culture not as "the natural state of the savage but [as] thedevil's (reversible) perversion of God's natural order" which could andshould be corrected by conversion (Bauer 677). This perceiveddifference between the English and Spanish extended its influence into thenext century as well. Johnson, Patricia Cline Cohen, Sarah Stage, Alan Lawson, and Susan M. But in the early days of the Carolina colony there was "a kind offrontier equality among its inhabitants, slave and free" and the Creeks didnot see the kind of violent relationship that would become the norm between'owner' and slave in later decades (Saunt 158). 48). The division of opinion among the Creeks was to bethe source of the early nineteenth century civil war in the Creek nation,after which part of the nation sought refuge with the Seminoles in Florida,the weakened remainder were more easily driven out of their lands, and theIndians of Florida were "steeled . The English neither believed (at least in largenumbers) in the possibility of Indian salvation nor desired to incorporatethe Indians' labor into their own colony-building enterprise. The effects of theseencounters were long-lasting and the problem of how to confront theEuropeans did not end for Native Americans until the late nineteenth-century -- although in some places it can be said it has never ended. The Creeks, who inhabited parts of what wasto become Georgia and Alabama, had initially accepted the English settlers'use of slaves and sold their own captives as well as women and children tothem. There was, however, one uniform characteristic among the Europeans inthat "all Europeans of whatever social origin considered themselvessuperior to the Native Americans" and this was reflected in their relationswith the Indians and in the form of the societies they established in theAmericas (Roark et al. against leaving Florida" (Saunt158).Conclusion The differences among Indian nations and the differences between theSpanish and English settlers and their goals in the Americas affected thenature of the encounters among the various groups. 85). Abrief comparison of various encounters between several Native Americannations and the Spanish and English settlers of various period willdemonstrate the multiple factors that had an impact of the relationshipsbetween the various groups. As time passed it became somewhat less difficult for the NativeAmericans to make decisions based on what they thought the Europeans woulddo. 79). 61). "'The English has now a Mind to make Slaves of them all'": Creeks, Seminoles and the Problem of Slavery." The American Indian Quarterly, 22 (1998): 157-7 . On the one hand he was constantlyengaged in war with other tribes and believed that "these powerfulstrangers would make better allies than enemies" and Powhatan accordinglytreated the English as he would have treated any other group "that he couldally with and use to his own advantage, with proper diplomacy" (Roark etal. 86). 81). Bauer compares thisapproach with that of the English Puritans of the New England region andpoints out that the Puritans, who saw themselves as a chosen people,believed in a "theology [that] equated the state of nature with a state ofsin" and excluded any who were not already among the saved from seriousconsideration as potential converts (Bauer 677). "Creole Identities in Colonial Space: The Narratives of Mary White Rowlandson and Francisco Nunez de Pineda y Bascunan." American Literature 69 (1997): 665-79.Roark, James L., Michael P. The Spaniards were intent on the extension of Spanish power and theirnotion of empire, "which was largely derived from the Roman model, restedon the medieval theory that existing regional structures could beincorporated within the baroque structure of the absolute state" (Bauer676). The American Promise: A History of the United States to 1877. When Powhatan diedin 1618 his brother assumed leadership and organized, in 1622, "an all-outassault on the English settlers" which began with the massacre of 347people -- nearly a third of the settlers -- that resulted in "a murderouscampaign of Indian extermination" that pushed the Native peoples entirelyout of the immediate range of the burgeoning settlements (Roark et al. Butit was the similarities among the European settlers that were mostimportant -- their assumption of social and moral superiority, theirwillingness to use violence to get what they wanted, and their completeindifference to the Native Americans' prior claims on their lands.Operating from these premises the differences among groups made littledifference in the longer run. Works CitedBauer, Ralph. The result, in either case, was that "few Indians convertedto Christianity, and the English devoted scant effort to converting them"(Roark et al. 62). If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.