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As early Europeans first stepped ashore in what they
considered the “New World”—whether in San Salvador (West Indies), Roanoke
Island (North Carolina), or Chaleur Bay (New Brunswick)—they usually were
welcomed by the peoples indigenous to the Americas. Native Americans seemed to
regard their lighter-complexioned visitors as something of a marvel, not only
for their dress, beards, and winged ships but even more for their
technology—steel knives and swords, arquebus and cannon, mirrors, hawkbells and
earrings, copper and brass kettles, and other unusual items.
Nonetheless,
Native Americans soon recognized that the Europeans themselves were very human.
Indeed, early records show that 16th- and 17th-century Native Americans very often
regarded Europeans as rather despicable specimens. White Europeans, for
instance, were frequently accused of being stingy with their wealth and
avaricious in their insatiable desire for beaver furs and deer hides.
Similarly, Native Americans were surprised at European intolerance for native
religious beliefs, sexual and marital arrangements, eating habits, and other
customs.
To
many Native Americans, the Europeans appeared to be oblivious to the rhythms
and spirit of nature. Nature to the Europeans seemed to be an obstacle, a
commodity. Some Europeans perceived the Native Americans themselves as a
resource. Europeans, in sum, were regarded as somewhat mechanical—soulless
creatures who wielded ingenious tools and weapons to accomplish their ends.
“We came here to serve God, and also to get rich”, announced a member
of the entourage of Spanish explorer and conqueror Hernán Cortés. Both agendas
of 16th-century Spaniards, the commercial and the religious, needed the Native
Americans themselves in order to be successful. The Spanish conquistadors and
other adventurers wanted the land and labour of the Native Americans; the
priests and friars laid claim to their souls. Ultimately, both programmes were
destructive to many indigenous peoples of the Americas. The first robbed them
of their freedom and, in many cases, their lives; the second deprived them of
their culture.
Contrary
to many stereotypes, however, many 16th-century Spaniards agonized over the
ethics of conquest. Important Spanish jurists and humanists argued at length
over the legality of depriving the Native Americans of their land and coercing
them to submit to Spanish authority. For the Native Americans, however, these
ethical debates did little good.
The
situation for Native Americans was considerably less destructive in Canada,
where French commercial interests centred on the fur trade. Many of the
indigenous peoples were vital suppliers of beaver, otter, muskrat, mink, and
other valuable pelts. It would have been ruinous for the French to have
mistreated such useful business partners. It was also unnecessary, as the lure
of trade goods was sufficient incentive for the native hunters to transport the
pelts to Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and Quebec.
Another
factor favouring the relative independence of the indigenous peoples of Canada
was the French need for allies in their wars with the British—both to the
south, in the 13 colonies, and to the north, on the shores of Hudson Bay. Both
the French and British employed Native Americans as auxiliaries in their wars.
While
the French tended to regard the indigenous peoples as equals and intermarriage
as acceptable, the English were not so inclined. English scorn for Native
Americans no doubt derived in large measure from the tensions and friction
generated by the English desire to acquire more and more land. Unlike the
French in Canada, the English settled the Atlantic seaboard of the present-day
United States on a relatively massive scale, and in the process displaced many
more Native Americans. Moreover, Native Americans were not considered nearly as
important to the English economy as they were to the French. The result was
that the English generally viewed them as an obstacle to progress and a
nuisance—except when war with France threatened; at such times the English
attempted to purchase the support or neutrality of the indigenous peoples with
outlays of gifts.
In
1492 the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, and Andean South America were among
the most densely populated regions of the hemisphere. Yet, within a span of
several generations, each experienced a cataclysmic population decline. The
culprit, to a large extent, was microbial infection: European-brought diseases
such as smallpox, pulmonary ailments, and gastrointestinal disorders, all of
which had been unknown in the Americas during the pre-Columbian period. Native
Americans were immunologically vulnerable to this invisible conqueror.
The
destruction was especially visible in Latin America, where great masses of
susceptible individuals were congregated in cities such as Tenochtitlán and
Cuzco, not to mention the innumerable towns and villages dotting the
countryside. More than anything else, it was the appalling magnitude of these
deaths from disease that prompted the vigorous Spanish debate over the morality
of conquest.
As
the indigenous population in the Caribbean plummeted, Spaniards resorted to
slave raids on the mainland of what is now Florida to bolster the work force.
When the time came that this, too, proved insufficient, they took to importing
West Africans to work the cane fields and silver mines.
Those
Native Americans who did survive were often assigned, as an entire village or
community, to a planter or mine operator to whom they would owe all their
services. The encomienda system, as it came to be known, amounted to virtual
slavery. This, too, broke the spirit and health of the indigenous peoples,
making them all the more vulnerable to the diseases brought by the Europeans.
Death
from microbial infection was probably not as extensive in the Canadian forest,
where most of the indigenous peoples lived as migratory hunter-gatherers.
Village farmers, such as the Huron north of Lake Ontario, did, however, suffer
serious depopulation in waves of epidemics that may have been triggered by
Jesuit priests and their lay assistants, who had established missions in the
area.
Without
a doubt, the indigenous peoples of Canada suffered fewer dislocations than did
those of Latin or English America. This can be partly explained by the nature
of the fur trade, which militated against settlement; the idea was to maintain
the wilderness so that fur-bearing animals would continue to flourish.
Furthermore, French settlement in Canada was restricted to a thin line of seigneuries
(large tracts of land) and villages along the banks of the St Lawrence and
lower Ottawa rivers. This demographic and commercial legacy continues to be
felt in present-day Canada, where numerous indigenous groups may be found
living in a more or less traditional manner, at least for part of the year.
In
contrast, English-Native American relations in the 17th and 18th centuries were
marked by a series of particularly vicious wars won by the English. The English
exercised the mandate of victory to insist that the Native Americans submit to
English sovereignty and either confine their activities to strictly delimited
tracts of land near areas of English settlement or move out beyond the
frontier.
Disease
was also a grim factor in the American colonies, where the majority of the
Eastern Woodlands people lived as village farmers. Severely affected by
smallpox and war and harassed by settlers, many of the peoples indigenous to
the eastern coastal areas gathered together their remnants and sought refuge
west of the Appalachians.