I am fascinated by the thought of North America as it was, inhabited by Indigenous Peoples, and I enjoy studying specific tribal groups. I also enjoy researching the earliest contacts between Natives and Europeans, as it happened within the different cultural areas. Professor Neal Salisbury of Smith College thoroughly summarizes these interactions while providing an in depth look on the effects on different American Indian tribal groups. The map included below outlines tribal lands and helps visualize the first encounters with Europeans from a geo-cultural perspective. In the tenth century, the Norse arrived and settled in Greenland and Newfoundland, trading “metal tools and woolen cloth for animal pelts and ivory” (Para 4). What is interesting, is that they left by the fifteenth century, partly due to hostile clashes with the Indians. This is when other Europeans started to infiltrate, resulting in a variety of outcomes. “Observing native norms of reciprocity,” (Para 4) the French began trading with American Indians successfully in the Northeast, whereas the Spanish managed to cause “Indian distrust and resentment” (Para 4) in the Southwest to Mexico, and in the Southeast, where “European diseases proved especially virulent…undermining most Mississippian temple-mound centers“ (Para 4). Within one paragraph, Salisbury illustrates the initial contact in four different regions, and then goes on to describe how Europeans continued to capitalize on “alliances and instabilities…to establish permanent colonies” (Para 5) starting in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The epidemics also enabled the English and Spanish to expand their newly established territories. The trade alliances between Europeans and certain tribes alienated others, causing rifts between Indian Nations. For example, the Montagnais and Hurons prevented the Iroquois from trading with the French, and the latter protected the them from Iroquois attacks. The Iroquois subsequently traded with the Dutch as a result. The populations of beaver became depleted, and the Iroquois used guns received from the Dutch to decimate the “Hurons, Petuns, Neutrals, and Eries” (Para 8) in the “Beaver Wars.” When the English took over New Netherland, the Iroquois found themselves aligned with the English to defeat the Indians against them. With the new conflicts against the “New France’s western allies” (Para 9) culminating into King William’s War, the Iroquois could not rely on the English for protection, and as a result they signed treaties in the Grand Settlement, with “France and England in 1701“ (Para 9).
Salisbury details several other conflicts between various tribal groups in other regions, and ultimately leads up to the beginnings of the Revolutionary War, where the majority of Indian Nations sided with the British hoping to retain “political sovereignty and cultural integrity” (Para 16). I highly recommend reading the entire passage, as it creates an understanding of how the colonization process radically changed American Indian culture, and relationships between tribes, and between Indians and Europeans.
Salisbury, Neal. Indian-White Relations in North America Before 1776. Encyclopedia of North American Indians. Houghton Mifflin. 1996. Print.
http://search.credoreference.com.library.esc.edu/content/entry/hmenai/indian_white_relations_in_north_america_before_1776/0
