The Interaction Between Europeans and Native Americans Essay Example

The colonization of America by Europeans resulted in the demand for a sea route to India, which was the source of silk and spices, products that had a high commercial value in the Old Continent. While sailing westward, Europeans intersected with the first habitants of New World, the Native Americans. Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, Native Americans saw their populations devastated by the loss of their land and animals, from diseases and war. The first Native American group encountered by Christopher Columbus was enslaved. Europeans also brought with them diseases to which Native Americans had no immunity. The fusion of Native Americans and Europeans during the years of settlement was also marked by the differences between their concepts of religion, gender relation, land possession, and freedom. Religion and beliefs of Native Americans were based on nature. They organized religious ceremonies around hunting and farming. Spiritual power was an important concept among this group of people. For Indians, everything was merely connected by a spiritual power such as the wind, water, animals and trees. In addition, they used to elaborate religious ceremonies which helped to define the leaders of the tribe. Native Americans definitely had an extremely strong spiritual belief. Contrasting to Indians, Europeans were skeptics about this intense spiritual religion. Although settlers admired the strong beliefs of Indians upon nature, they concluded that Indians had to be converted to the true religion, the Christian. Moreover, settlers used to follow a hierarchy system with God above everyone.. For settlers, religion meant to leave the life of sin to embrace the teaching of Christ. In most of the Indian communities, the gender connections were also not similar to the Europeans. The family decided how the women’s lives would be by creating a premarital sexual relation with their husbands. Divorce was also acceptable. Nevertheless, the children